8/7/08
Last week, I had an interesting journalistic dilemma. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been working on a project at a skate park. I had just finished doing some video interviews for the web portion of the project, when someone came running across the parking yelling that a biker had broken his leg. I had just finished interviewing the guy. The emergency crews were already on the way. I stashed my video equipment in my car, and then my cell phone rang. Although our newspapers are small, we normally don't cover broken legs. But that day we were doing a story about EMS workers, so the city desk wanted so photos of them in action. I grabbed my camera a trudged back into the park. I knew I could be blowing all of the trust I had earned with these kids, but the job had to be done. The biker was not a minor, and I was on public property. I got the shots. Some of the kids made it clear that they thought I shouldn't be doing it. I went back to the park yesterday, but many of the kids weren't there. I should be finished with the project after next week, so we'll see how they react when I go back for the last time next Wednesday. Here are the shots, I'm not sure if I'm going to include them in the project or not.

8/1/08
In my continuing love of all things obscure in photography, I have hunted down a small quantity of very expired film. I recently shot a roll of black and white Kodak Tri-X from 1997. Being a photographer, my girlfriend hates having her picture taken. But since I work to be as unintrusive as possible everyday, I've gotten pretty good at sneaking the occasional shot. Here she is, on 11-year-old film.

7/22/08
As much as I love photographing children in graveyards and people dancing, there is a special place in my heart for skate parks. It has always been my fallback when I really need to find a picture quick, and frankly skate parks are the last real place groups of teenagers go to hang out and actually do something. Drive-in's are gone, business-owners don't want the trouble. Anyway, you can expect an update soon on a piece I'm doing on a local skate park that is having its 10-year anniverary. For now, here's a shot from a local park that was taken this summer.

7/13/08
So as you can tell from the dates on this blog, I'm playing a bit of catch up. I hope you won't mind, but I shot this photo during Hamilton's Independence Day celebration. The stark contrast of children and cemeteries has always been powerful to me. The imagery suggests both the enduring quality of life, as people die more are born, and temporary nature of our existence on our planet. The idea of this seeming paradox cannot be fully explored in a photo, but I still like to try.

7/8/08
It seems that my predictions about me lagging behind on this blog have almost come true, and yet, here I sit. I'm arising from the ashes like a phoenix. So here's the story for the week: over the scanner waves we heard news of a person who had driven their car into a bank. Hoping for a modern day Jesse James in action, I sped to the scene. By the way, if you know that all of the police are in a specific place, you can count on not getting busted for speeding. The woman in the photo is examining the damage that her car caused. The police reported that she first said her brakes went out, then she said that she thought she was going through the drive-thru. The police found out she was diabetic. They also found three empty containers of non-alcoholic beer in her car. You can't make this stuff up.

5/19/08
Ok, I skipped a week. Forgive me. On with the show. Nothing brings out the worst in both geneologists and public affairs journalist like a good old courthouse fire. Thousands of courthouses have burnt down in the United States over the years destroying countless documents that could have led to relatives or scandal. Well, we recently had a courthouse fire, and due to the lore about them, we covered it completely. It turned out to be little more than a small basement fire, but water flooded a lot of the building. Here's an artsy shot I got in the midst of it all.

5/4/08 - The Saddest Days
A few weeks ago, I got a call that a 2-year-old child had been hit by car. I was the only photographer available so I went to seen as quickly as I could. When I arrived the child had already been transported to the hospital. Amari Ross later died, but when I was at the scene, I took this shot of the women who was driving the car at the time of the accident. As photojournalists, we sometimes have to cover news like this. Let's just say, it's not my favorite thing to do. In telling the story, I try to show that the victim was loved and that those involved feel remorse and regret. I don't want to exploit carnage and wreckage, when the real story is about emotions and loss. Our paper received this email a few days later:
"Oops, they’ve done it again. I am so tired of the tacky front page photos of families and friends mourning over the lost of a loved one. The photos always seem to be submitted by Cameron Knight. Where is your tact? How can a newspaper that wants to be accredited and should be accredited continue to publish such tacky, ill-feeling photographs of people that are mourning. That’s not news."
First, I want to clear up the issue of accreditation. Newspapers do not undergo any type of accreditation process. Universities and individual professionals like nurses and police face accreditation. Secondly, what made this story important was the that the apartment complex where the accident took place had faced recent traffic issues. With summer upon us, more children will be outside playing. Maybe someone that saw this picture and read the story drove a little slower the next day. To me, that would be a victory.

4/27/08 - Dance Dance Revolution
First, I'll apologize for not posting sooner. I've been very busy lately with my new managment position. This means two things. One, I've been behind a computer a lot lately instead of behind my camera. And two, I've been behind a computer a lot doing work instead of updating. Again, my sincere apologies. So the photos this week are from a shoot I did with a local dance studio. I love shooting dance because the the unique challenge it presents; dance is (for the most part) all about motion, and photography (for the most part) is still. So the challenge becomes choosing a technique to show the motion. These photos demonstrate the fine art term and technique called "anticipated movement." This term means that an object is shown in a way that if it were to suddenly come to life, it would have to fall or move due to gravity or some other force. Showing things off balance or in mid-air is the simplest form of this technique. The first photo is a little self portrait that happened by accident during the shoot, the second two are finished frames. By the way, if you ever get the chance to shoot anything involving gymnastic-style trampolines, do it...you won't regret it.

That's me in the red shirt, elbows tucked, feet shoulder width apart...very challenging.

Four of the dancers, pretty straight forward.

Two of the dancers, completely different feel. The hardest part was getting everyone in the air at the same time.

04/14/08 - Batty Teenagers
So I have two photos to post. They are completely different and unrelated. The first required me to tromp through mud along a river. A bridge in Butler County is being rebuilt, and the process requires a bunch of trees to be cleared along the riverbank. But this job had to be rushed to beat the migration of bats which nest in the trees. If the bats came back and nested before they could clear trees, then the trees would have to stay up because it would be illegal to disturb their habitat.

This second photo is from the Lakota West prom. It was a very similar experience to my last post...a blast from the past. But I managed to get a nice photo out of it. The lone girl wandering across the dance floor. I just thought it looked cool.

Have a good week, and enjoy the nice weather...if you've got it.

04/07/08 - Young Love
I recently attended a junior high school dance. I went with the intent of documenting the boy-girl ackwardness factor. I thought these shots turned out alright. It was a bit strange attending something that I remember being so exciting and scary. The most depressing thing about the experience...the reporter and I couldn't find each other because we were both the same height as 90% of the kids there. But it was really fun, and brought back some good memories of being a kid and having fun. Oh yeah, check out a new project (well, new to the site), it's called "Keeping Memories." Click the link.

I totally relate...

Fun times.

03/27/08 - Back In Time
I always enjoying using different types of cameras and unusual lenses to push myself as a photographer. I own a Holga, a Russian rangefinder called a Zorki 4-K (it took months to arrive from the Ukraine and all $30 of it was protected during shipping by butcher paper and twine), a Minolta 16 subminature camera, and even a Brownie No. 2 Autographic that allowed you to write in the margins of the film as you progressed through the roll. But lately, I've been experimenting with pinhole photography. I had an old, very inexpensive rangefinder called a Beauty Super II. I took a hacksaw to the lens and used the bottom of pringles can to replace it. For those of you who don't know, pinhole cameras use a very, very small hole instead of a lens. Finding my way through this seemingly simple form of photography is actually very challenging. Photojournalism is really all about people, which for the most part involves a lot of faces. Everyday I try to capture emotion in the eyes and expressions of my subjects. But with pinhole photography that comfort zone of storytelling and art is stripped away. Due to the long exposure times, snapping candid shots of moving people (let alone their faces) is basically impossible. I have to rely on form, shape, composition, and line more than I ever have before. Anyway, I've included some of my first pinhole images, hopefully I'll get better...there's no where to go but up. A couple of fun pinhole facts for you photographers out there: 1) pinhole cameras have infinite depth of field, but that just means that everything is equally out of focus unless the size, shape, and focal length of your pinhole are just perfect. 2) Pinhole cameras can produce very wide angle images, but as long as the film plane is flat everything will remain rectilinear...no wide angle distortion.

A double exposure of the High-Main Bridge in Hamilton

An old, closed-down shop near our office. I have a feeling this will be a common subject for me when the light gets better this summer.

An exposure of the windshield of my car in the rain...I'm sure pinhole images will pop up here again, so keep an eye out for them.

03/22/08 - Flooding
As many of you may know, the Midwest has been plagued by some serious flooding the this week. Some areas still have rising water. Southwestern Ohio was hit hardest on Wednesday. I spent the day in a town called New Miami which lies near the Great Miami River about 5 miles north of Hamilton. The first two photos are from there. Obviously, there were some differing attitudes toward the weather. The last photo is from Hamilton, which the National Weather Service said was protected from flooding until the river level was over 81 feet. I thought that was pretty amazing. You can view more photos HERE.

03/19/08 - My Nieces
I recently took a trip to Gaitlinburg, Tennessee to watch my brother, Jason, get married. I took the opportunity to bust out my brand-new (to me) Nikon F3HP. I had one of these cameras in high school and halfway through college, but sold it... because I'm dumb. Anyway, tax refund time and I decided to take the plunge. Anyway, these pictures are of my nieces. Cadence, my brother's daughter, and Lauren, my new sister-in-law's daughter. They are both well-spoken, intelligent girls...and they can melt your heart and get absolutely anything they want. Just look for yourself.

This is Cadence, told ya.

And this is Lauren, admit it, you'd give them both your car keys.

03/12/08 - IKEA Campers
IKEA, the Swedish home furnishings store, opens in West Chester today at 9 a.m. Below, in the first photo, is Kem Moorer who was first in line.......MONDAY morning. By the time she enters the store she will have been in line for 52 hours. People love this store, it's crazy. Below her photo is the third person in line, Kelly Covey (seen in her tent), brought her Australian terrier Jack with her. The first hundred people in line get a free chair, and the chance to meet all the other people that love IKEA as much as they do.

03/10/08 - A Child Returns
This is my first attempt at blogging, so I should introduce what I plan on doing here. I am a daily shooter, meaning I shoot for a daily newspaper and produce many images a week that will never make it into my portfolio. Many of my assignments are fun or have good stories behind them or might just make me laugh. I'll be refraining from to much opinion here since many of these stories are running in papers across Butler County, Ohio. Anyway, here's the first installment. A few weeks ago, our paper found out about a girl who had spent the last few months at Children's Hospital in Cincinnati. She had brain tumor removed, and although the operation went well, complications with pneumonia and a collapsed lung kept her there longer than expected. When she returned home over a hundred of her friends and classmates lined the streets of her neighborhood to meet her. Here are the photos: