classical literature, classical cars

I spent a bit of my time at work tonight with long-time English professor Robert D. Stock. He was a very amiable, approachable man – I seem to be having good luck with portrait subjects recently. Stock told me he has been teaching English at UNL for 43 years now, and it was apparent that he was very knowledgeable in what he taught.

Despite being an English teacher on mostly classical literature, the first thing Stock mentioned to me when I walked into his home this evening was his car. It makes sense now that I think about it though, just as he enjoys classical literature, he enjoys classical cars. We walked to the back of his house and a 1959 Jaguar was sitting in his driveway.

This blog post is dedicated to his car, which he has maintained and kept in working condition since he bought it decades ago. Look for the first and second image in the paper tomorrow.

All photos by Andrew Dickinson.

like dancing

Shooting is a lot like dancing. Everyone does it, some people do it well and the best realize its more of an art than a hobby.

Shooting sports is like the waltz of dances. For photographers we shoot it all the time. Over and over again. It gets boring. To help keep our sanity, we take some liberties when shooting. After we secure the safe shots, we bounce around trying different things. These photos are those different things.

You won’t see these run in the paper, but maybe you’ll enjoy seeing them anyway.

Patrick Breen

Photo Editor

outtakes from a portrait shoot

Today I spent about 20 minutes with UNL calculus professor Bo Deng, doing a portrait to go along with the professor profile that will run in the March 30 issue of the Daily Nebraskan. I struggle with every aspect of photography; there’s always something I could and should be doing better. But of all the types of photography a photojournalist gets to shoot, portraits are the hardest for me. I’ve simplified my lighting gear down to one off-camera flash, and am hoping that “practice makes perfect” will come true. Deng was a great portrait subject. When I asked him if we could step into the stairwell in Avery for a few frames, he quickly agreed and even offered to go outside if I’d like to. He easily felt comfortable in front of my camera, and we shared some laughs about traveling in countries where you don’t know the language. The portrait that will run in the paper is the last frame in this post.

Spring Break update

Andrew Dickinson

I spent my spring break in the midwest. It’s not the most exciting or thrilling location, but there is always somewhere you haven’t been. I spent the first half of break in Ames, Iowa, and the second half of break in Overland Park, Kan., where I grew up. Just driving around town while I was home, I found neighborhoods I hadn’t taken the time to drive through and saw the light throughout my house in different ways. The make-up photo is taken in my sisters room, lit by a lamp with an orange shade around it in a dark room. The dog photo is lit in the way most of what I shot over break was – under an overcast sky. The (relatively) cold temperatures held break back from truly feeling like spring, but time off from school is always refreshing this time of year.

Anna Reed

Over spring break I went back to my hometown of Omaha.  The first order of business was the Lady Gaga concert on March 17, 2011 at the Qwest Center.  My roommate, Michelle Clifford, and I stood in line for hours in order to ensure good spots in general admission.  We ended up being right on the rail!!!  We were so close that we could see her teeth and freckles.  I was so happy I could have died.  On March 23, 2011 I went to the Old Market, specifically Ted and Wally’s, with three friends.  My friend Season Cowley ended up getting her tragus pierced that night.  After all the shops closed, we went back to my house, and my parents fed everyone gumbo.  Yum!  The Friday before coming back to Lincoln, I went bowling for Derek Steven’s birthday.  My boyfriend, Mike Bristol, won me a pink teddy bear (mainly because he was too stubborn to quit the game until he could beat it), but I appreciated it anyway!

Kyle Bruggeman

I spent my spring break sleeping in and catching up with class work. I spent one night shooting baseball in really nice sunset light, the light hitting memorial stadium was exactly the same exposure of the field, so I took advantage of it. The second photo is on an unidentified girl who skipped in front of my subject, a profile I’m working on, at I caught her in mid air. Otherwise, a fairly un-eventfull break.

Patrick Breen

My break was spent in the happy valley where it is truly a “happy valley.” A reporter and I are working on an in-depth project on the college which was the last to be brought into the Big Ten, which Nebraska will now be a part of. We were lucky enough to meet the lovely folks of the Daily Collegian, a pacemaker finalist, and just plain amazing paper. We spent time with Liz Murphy (pictured above, not the lion) and her staffers and we thoroughly enjoyed our time and learning what we could in our short period of time. To see the Daily Collegian click here.

Because photos can be fun

The following photos are the type you don’t see in print, but are still worth looking at. All photos in chronological order.

 

By Anna Reed

By Taylor Meyer

By Patrick Breen

By Kyle Bruggeman

By Danielle Beebe, the people are hypnotized.

By Andrew Dickinson

By Marcus Scheer

Snow Daze

All photos and text by Kyle Bruggeman

Pioneers Park offers a sledding hill to launch sledders downward.

The day grew dreary and many hearts grew weary as Lincoln saw its first big snowfall for the winter season. Dangerous driving conditions didn’t stop some Lincolnites from enjoying a little recreational sledding. Pioneers Park offers a sledding area for those who want their trip downhill to last longer than a few seconds.

 

Alex Gifford, 7, (pink hat) gets a taste snow at high speed.

A face full of snow doesn't stop Steve Bramhall, 7, as he trudges uphill to sled again.

Deadline

Hi.

You probably know me as the photo editor of the DN. I don’t usually get out and shoot too much anymore unless it’s a sporting event. That’s going to change. I realized a few weeks ago that not shooting regularly, even if it’s just shots of friends, is bad. I got really wrapped up in shooting sports, and to be honest, that’s not the way a photographer should work.

This is an outtake from a wildart shoot last week. None of my staff was around because they were studying for tests or other college things, so I went out and tried to find something visually appealing for the paper.

It was nice weather, people would be out, right? No. It was a blindingly sunny Sunday, but there was not a soul to be seen.

I drifted to the Haymarket, yes, it is cliche, but I was desperate. I sat down on the curb and was about to give up when I noticed this scene. They light was coming through this canyon created by the Harris overpass and the building on the left. After a few minutes of shooting passing cars, a cyclist sped toward my location. I held steady and waited, but as the cyclist past, a car going to opposite way passed me at the exact same time.

I started to think the photo gods were working against me when I heard the buzzing of this moped. Though it’s an outtake, I like it. It’s something I can be proud of.

The main thing to understand when you’re a photographer is that if you aren’t in a slump from time to time, you’re doing something wrong.

Embrace it, then move on and figure out how to get out.

(Insert poultry joke here)

A picture is worth a thousand words. We’ve all heard that one, but what if the words form a question?

There is something about images that ask more questions than they answer that I really enjoy looking at, and therefore I tend to take those photographs quite often, much to the dismay of my photo professor.

However, since this blog is meant to be a behind-the-scenes look at how we DN photogs live, I will explain this one a little bit more, starting at the beginning. Before taking a Mass Media Law test, I debated bringing my camera with me to the testing center. Only for a second though, bringing a camera should never be a question.

On the way back to the DN, fellow photographer Natasha Richardson noticed a group of people dressed up in costumes. One of the first things I learned as a photographer was that unusual costumes always make good photographs.

There were a million ways to photograph this scene. I could have showed the friend filming this guy in a chicken suit, I could have showed the Lincoln skyline in the background or used the Sheldon as a backdrop. It’s not a perfect image by any means, but here is an image that asks so many questions to me. “Where is this? Who is this?” and “Why the chicken suit?” among them.

Often, the photograph (or series of photographs) in newspapers is meant to convey exactly what happened and make the reader feel as though they were present. Sometimes though, it’s okay to break the rules. It’s okay to make the reader do a double-take, make them think twice.

So in honor of the mood of the photograph…I won’t explain it any further. I will leave it up to your interpretation. Have fun.

A new state of mind

I can pretend I know exactly what I’m doing when I’m on a photo assignment, but the truth is most of the time I have doubts running through the back of my head.

I have been shooting for less than a year at the time that I am writing this, and there’s always some part of me that questions whether or not I’m getting the best moment from an event, composing my frames the right way or approaching subjects in the best fashion. A million different variables go into the makings of a good photograph, and trying to control as many of those factors as possible is one of the things I’m working on. Tonight I came closer than I have before to feeling like a true photojournalist.

I covered the FUSION party’s election night watch party, which was the culmination of weeks of work towards becoming the next party to control the Association of Students of the University of Nebraska. Party members were milling around the back section of Yia Yia’s, a pizza joint in downtown Lincoln, which they had reserved for that night. I shot for about an hour and my brain was in regular expose, compose and take your time doing it mode. Looking back through my take, I took some frames that I was happy with while my brain was in that mode.
Then the phone call came that everyone had been waiting for.

FUSION presidential candidate Reid DeSpiegelaere walked outside to receive the results of the election via phone, and internal vice presidential candidate Kiana Mathew and external vice presidential candidate Emily Schlichting followed closely behind.

My brain went into a completely different mode at this point, and it’s hard to describe. I knew that, in the next 10 minutes, I had to take photos that told the story and captured the emotion of those 10 minutes. The light in the restaurant was awful at best, and I struggled to manually focus, compose and point my hot-shoe flash in the right direction all at the same time. Mathew was crying in front of me and I ended up quickly getting the shot I needed there. DeSpiegelaere was standing on a booth telling the crowd that their party had made it through and would participate in a runoff election with NVISION next Tuesday, and I layered and shot that photo next. I moved further towards the back of the crowd after DeSpiegelaere’s speech and found Matthew again, sitting next to Schlichting in a booth alone.

In the chaos surrounding them, they found a spot to celebrate about their party surviving the first round of the election, and, to me, this moment was stronger than any of the others I captured that night.

For one of the first times I felt like my mind took control and I knew exactly what to look for and what to shoot. I found the right moments and captured them in a way that I felt told the story of the night.

It’s a good feeling.

28-0

Welcome to Through Our Lens, the Daily Nebraskan Photo Staff’s photo blog. If you’ve ever wondered what goes into producing award winning images, what images didn’t make it into the paper or who those good looking people wandering around campus with cameras are, this is the blog for you. On Through Our Lens, we will explore each photographer’s personal style and dive a little bit deeper than what you see on paper.

The above image I made at the women’s basketball victory over Kansas last night. Yvonne Turner is one of my favorite basketball players to photograph. At any one point she is usually smiling, and it’s obvious her good mood is infectious to the rest of the team. I caught a moment between her and her mother Vanessa when the seniors were being introduced before the start of the game.

Good luck in Kansas, ladies.