ISO: 160 APERTURE: 13.0 SHUTTER SPEED: 2.0 I went to the fir three times, paying all three times to only take pictures for a couple hours. It was worth it though. I wanted to play around with time exposure because the fair is full of opportunities in regards to time lapse. I wanted to use off camera flash to stop action. I had my lovely assistant Ashley Tyson holding a 600 flash on a monopod pointed towards the people sitting in the swings. I put a flash on my camera and used it just as a trigger making it the master. I used the studio concept and painting with light idea of killing ambient light, so I set my ISO very low. I played with my aperture until it looked right because I wanted to drag my shutter for the moving swings effect.

ISO: 800 APERTURE: 2.8 SHUTTER SPEED: 1/250 I had to take a picture of a girl in my instructor's class for a feature over her hobby; drag racing. It was suppose to be an environmental portrait. Smith knew how he wanted the image to look, so we discussed the off camera lighting set up while I was packing gear to take on my assignment.  This is the scratch preview of the setup.  So, basically, we would have her truck and her car nose to nose with her standing in the center. Off camera to the left, there would be a 600 flash set on a light stand hitting her back for a rim light, zoomed to 200. Off camera to the right, there would be another 600 flash, but instead of being directly to her right, it would be facing more behind her. That way her face wasn't lit super brightly. This would be zoomed to 80. These would be put in slave mode and ETTL. The flash on my camera would be bounced and used strictly as a trigger until I realized I should use the kick card to...

I was the first student from Texas High to ever enter into the advanced portfolio category in ATPI. These are the images I entered and won first place with. These were shot in a compiled time of two afternoons in different locations.  ISO: 500 APERTURE: 4.5 SHUTTER SPEED: 1/13 This is my least favorite image in the portfolio. I had taken an image the exact other side of this and it was perfect. Exactly what I wanted. The only problem was the background was a fireplace. I wanted it to at least look like a studio of sorts rather than a basic living room, so I came to this side and took this image. I ended up just settling with this. Lighting it was super hard until Kelsi Brinkmeyer who helped with my portfolio, had the genius idea to move the blinds and use natural lighting from the setting sun. Like I don't know why we were so stupid and didn't think of that before. I used a 10-24mm, and the problem I ran into was that because she was leaning towards the camera, her u...

Since I am one of Smith's first students to ever actually want to take this profession in a teaching aspect instead of an actual freelance photographer, he allows me to help orchestrate his first year classes. How fitting, seeing as I'm our senior staff photo editor. Last class, during his B4 photojournalism class, Smith was absent at home taking care of his daughter. I had to basically teach the class like I knew he would. He left instructions to make a new photo challenge for the class's next project. I had everyone brainstorm ten ideas on a piece of paper then turn them in. We read them aloud and discussed them as a class until we all agreed on thirty ideas. We talked them out and wrote them on the board. After that, I sent them with cameras and their phones to go start on their project. I think this helps me like a real world environment. It would be an everyday situation I would be in. I really enjoyed it because the class all came together to discuss. It made me more ...

ISO: 200 APERTURE: 8.0 SHUTTER SPEED: 1/200 This was a picture that I had to take for a feature in print over kids who devote their time to World of Warcraft. We tried getting kids out several times that the story featured, but their teacher wouldn't let them out. The story was on deadline and needed to be sent to print so I snapped this picture of a kid I knew could get out of class real quick and played the computer game, but the staff writer didn't want to use it. She finally got the kids out, and I got the same picture. This was taken in our classroom. I had two girls hold a white background sheet behind the subject and put a fake monitor, keyboard and mouse on the end of a desk. I put a 600 flash in front of the screen in slave mode. To make the image look blue like a dark computer in a room would, I turned the white balance to tungsten. Tungsten adds more blue to the image to balance it and correct it to white, but this way we manipulated it to look blue. This ...