Category Archives: Life

It took me a while to post these.  I wasn’t really happy with them.  Last weekend, I attended a Hip Hop dance competition called City vs City.  It was like something out of a movie.  If you have seen the movie “You Got Served” this competition really was just like the last dance scene in the movie (minus Lil Kim and the bright lights).  It was an interesting day, because I pretty much hated everything I shot while I was there.  But the day turned out to be a good thing for me.  First of all, it allowed me to try to shoot something that I’m just not at all good at capturing.  And second, it really was a good ego check.  I had been a little less humble about my skills with a camera lately.  Most of the photogs I know will agree that any sense of satisfaction with their images is completely ephemeral.  I think I’d like to restate it: if you love all your pictures, you’re not shooting enough.  Which has definitely been the case lately.  So I went and stunk up the joint to the tune of 1500 images.  These are some of my faves.   I really want to thank KBev for inviting me to tag along and for showing me some of his tricks to capturing the best action, even though I wasn’t able to come close to emulating his great photos.

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  • Kareem

    Nice shots! Funny how alot of us techies ended up exploring our creative sides with more passion than what we majored in.

I don’t think I’d seem Lem since college.  And I have only seen Sam once in the last 15 years.  But this weekend the three of us got together in frigid Minneapolis.  A gathering of the fellas to talk about…anything and everything.  Both Lem and Sam were grad students whom I met as a freshman at Northwestern.  They were great role models then and are even better ones now.  Seeing Lem’s family (his wife was actually my freshman Chemistry TA) was especially fun, and you can see from the pics that none of his 3 kids is especially camera shy.

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I know I should delete more photos.  I know it.  Dealing with too many at once slows down my machine, I can’t tag them all before filing them away, and literally 95 out of 100 never get seen more than once.  But every deletion party has its rediscoveries.  Moment’s when I wonder what I was thinking to have passed over a certain shot the first time around.  Maybe I thought another in the series was better.  Or it wasn’t what I thought the client might like.  Or maybe I’m just in a different mood.  While deleting 1200+ images last night, as each called out to be spared for the chance at a future moment of fickle fondness, I was stopped in my tracks by this portrait.  The wall’s textures, the dramatic shadows, the highlights in Lisa’s hair…I love it all.  For some reason, I moved right past it the first time around.  It didn’t even make it to the second round.  Totally unconsidered.  Oh well.  Today, its a winner.  I can’t say that my mood always impacts what I like to look at, but what I just described happens often enough for me to know that it definitely plays a part.  And that’s one of the things that I love about photography…one of its most powerful little secrets.   Like any language, you can learn as much or more about the person behind the camera as the subject if you “talk” to their photos long enough.

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  • Akintayo Adewole

    Excellent save.