Junction Day 1

Mention "Junction" to any Texas Tech photog and they'll instantly know what you're talking about and why you have that big goofy grin on your face. Junction,Tx is where the photography intersession course is held that is taught by Wyman Meinzer, state photographer of Texas. Wyman is a great guy. This is the third course I've taken with him, the first one allowing me to shoot right next to him and get one-on-one advice and experience.

So far the day has been real laid back. Some have referred it to "Photo Boot Camp" but we have yet to begin the training. It has been real overcast skies lately. This morning we went out to shoot flowers and bugs. After an hour of doing that I was tired of shooting flowers and bugs in the field we were in. I wanted to shoot Bigger flowers and Bigger bugs! (After an adventure walk with Nick and John we found out where they were growing/hiding. I'll be sure to hit that spot up later.)

Nick and I modeled a bit for a small lesson in portrait photography. We are shooting Velvia ISO 100 film and the color it picks up is incredible! I love how the transparency looks when we get it back from being processed. I'll be spending a lot of time scanning slides after this class, I know. Wyman likes to pick on people. Especially those he knows a bit and knows he can kid around with. Just for kicks we all got tested on how slow we could shoot a 200mm lens hand-held. Now, this baby is big, and much heavier than a 35mm lens. My slowest hand-held speed was at 1/250. I felt pretty good about it. It was a challenge and there was only 2 people who could shoot faster than 1/125.

Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner was wonderful. Cheese omelets. Burgers. Lasagna. Yum Yum Yum!

This evening we went out to paint a church. We got out there after our beer run and got all set up. The light was perfect and pink on the horizon, we all had our cameras and tripods in a line, beer in one hand, shutter release in the other and then it began to rain on us. We grabbed our cameras and dashed under the porch of the church. It stopped raining. The light was bluer but still had a tint of orange glow so we set up our tripods and cameras again, refocus our lenses, sip our beer in one hand and hold our shutter release in the other and then it starts to rain again. We finish our first beer and it stops raining...again. We run back out there, set up again, and Wyman starts painting the church before it rains on us for a third time. We get five 60 second exposures in before we have to call it a night because it began to rain AGAIN! We'll head out and redo the shoot, but it was fun regardless. All of us were laughing throughout the night. Here is one of the shots I got with my digital. I was shooting my film high and my digital low at the same time.


I have had a great first day. I know tomorrow will be a hundred times better.

Goodnight for now, I've got to wake up early tomorrow!