Reaction Paper #3
Steve McCurry Video


     Steve McCurry is a photographer for the National Geographic magazine. In our seminar class we watched a video on his work. The video was about Steve shooting the last roll of Kodachrome that was made. Steve began shooting his photographs with Kodachrome film. He left for a trip to India with a few rolls of Kodachrome and his camera to shoot photos for a small newspaper job. The images he came back with landed in the National Geographic magazine. National geographic asked Steve to shoot photos for them after that trip to India. Now Steve is known as one of the greatest photographers in the world. 
      Kodak annouced in 2009 that they will stop producing Kodachrome film. Steve saw this as a great opportunity and asked if he can shoot the last roll Kodachrome. Given his reputation it's no superise that Kodak let him shoot the final roll of film. The national Geographic crew gathered up to film Steve process of shooting the roll of film. In the begining of the video Steve wanted to Shoot photos around the city. He was finding anything in the city that would worth the shots on the last roll. He then came up with the idea to shoot portraits. Will Steves connections he has he was able to get Robert De Niro to sit for a portrait. After that session Robert travels around taking portraits of important people and the way people are living. 
     I thought the video was really interesting and was glad I got to watch it in class. Steve really shows his love for Kodachrome in the video. He also shows how important every shot was for him. Film is a great way to learn how to shoot photographs. Using a film camera teaches you to make every shot count.
     

 This past weekend has been absolutely crazy. Rushing this final project was not a good idea. My time Management has sucked because of how much is going on. But I was able to push through it and shoot a bunch of images for my final. I had so many ideas of what i wanted to shoot for this project but most of them did not work out. I love shooting life style pictures and I just recently got into shooting portraits. So I wanted my final projects lifestyle portraits. Here are some of the images I printed out for my final. I learned my lesson with time management with this project and will be a lot more on top of my next photo project.

Photo by John Messinger

John Messinger came into our class to talk to us on 11/29/16. I was super pumped on listening to his lecture he had for the class and was interested in what he had to say about photography. John is one of Professor Cyr friends from college and professor Cyr showed us a video on John Messinger on how he shoots his projects.
 John first showed us a video that Fuji Film made on him for a project they were working on. The project they were working on was with the new Fuji Film Instax. John's work was made of multiple Instax instant pictures that were put into grids and all taped together. All of his pieces looked very abstract. He zoomed into pictures on a digital screens and came up with all of these unique colors. John explained the process how every photo has to be produced the same. From the timing he peels the cover off of the photos to the angle he shoots the photos. Some one in my class asked him how he came up with this idea. He said that he always kept the history of photography and one day he was taking pictures of the girl swinging on a swing from a odd prospective. Every time he took a photo he laid the photos out on the ground next to the swing. When he looked over his photos from that day he liked how he was making a grid with all of these polaroids. John then applied to use a space at a museum in the Hamptons. He told us it was one of the worst applications he has ever filled out. The museum gave him a shot to produce work that they were going to present. They gave him the winter to shoot photos for them. Shooting in the winter is tough because there is not a lot of color out doors. He shots photos outside the building and he thought the out come was terrible. He then was in the darkest room in the museum and looking at the computer screen and started shooting photos of the wallpapers of the screen. He was impressed with the colors that were being produced. Making a grid out of the polaroids. Thats how he came p with his style. John works as a visual artist and is self employed but sometimes during the year companies will hire him to do projects for them.

This past weekend  went to the city. I didn't bring my Sony A7 or Canon 7D because, I went there to ride my bike with my friend and I didn't want it to be in the way of my riding. I felt really empty without my camera and every spot I went to that day had something I could shoot at. So I took out my phone and just started taking pictures.

This past weekend I went to Penn State to go watch the hockey team play. I wanted to shoot photos of the hockey team and I thought it was a great opportunity to put my Sony A7 to the test. I knew that my Sony A7 was able to capture a great image when subjects are still and slightly moving but, I never shot any action shots with this camera. The game started and everything was moving at such a fast paste. I turned my camera setting to the fastest shutter I can shoot at. This was the first time i shot with a fast shutter speed on this camera and I realized that the camera wasn't handling fast moving subjects that well. That's why most of these images are clear because I had to wait when the players aren't moving as much. I wasn't expecting a great outcome with this camera with action sports but I wanted to put it to the test.

I went to Vermont this past weekend. Took some landscape shots of the mountains. When i was editing the photos I stuck with my warm tone feel that a lot of my photos have.  

  Tonight I made a spontaneous discussion to drive out to Montauk to capture some stars. I think these came out pretty well.