Microwave truck towers on display between the central and south halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center during the NAB show held in Las Vegas, Nevada, Wednesday, April 18, 2012.

There’s a certain, unmistakable camaraderie that exists among people involved in all of the fields that I work in. Even if I’ve just met a fellow photographer or lighting designer, working with them on a complex show or shoot within minutes of a first hand shake, there’s always a mutual respect and understanding right off the bat — something that might take months to form with an average person off the street. No, I’m not saying we can’t be on the same wavelength if you’re not involved in a visual profession! But, you might have to wait out front while the in-crowd is ducking into the VIP entrance of my brain.

Naturally, then, huge trade shows where thousands of talented, like-minded creative types gather to geek-out at the latest and greatest storytelling tools are always a favorite of mine. I’ve strolled the show floor of LDI, a trade show geared toward lighting design, three times in the past ten years, each time at the Las Vegas Convention Center. This year, the “LVCC” welcomed me back for my sophomore visit to another great show, NAB. The largest production convention in the world, NAB caters to anything and everything that is video. From cameras and lenses to editing software to extension cords and light bulbs, if it’s involved in the production world, chances are it will be on display at NAB.

The sheer scale of NAB is daunting. Three massive trade show halls filled to the brim (totaling more than three million square feet) stand ready and waiting for visitors, mocking anyone’s feet unfortunate enough to be suck in dress shoes. I’m sure I walked for miles, literally, in my three days taking in just the central and south halls!

The show floor, and those packed into their favorite manufactures’ booths, carries a palpable creative buzz. The irony of dodging video crews darting around to cover newly released video equipment never tires. One doesn’t need to people-watch for too long to spot someone’s eyes lighting up with the realization that an idea could be realized with a new piece of equipment in their hands for the first time.

A visitor to The Stratosphere Tower documents the view looking west over Las Vegas, Nevada, Saturday, April 14, 2012. NAB 2012, the largest production convention in the world, was held in Las Vegas the following week.

This creative buzz seems to leave most visitors to the convention in an affable mood, similar to the one I’ve experienced at small airports when covering pilots and air shows. There’s something about being shoulder to shoulder within a convergence of people who “get it” — people who truly understand what you’re passionate about — that can’t be matched off the show floor. That is, unless, we’re talking about the silent nods when passing someone in your hotel lobby later that afternoon while still wearing your NAB show floor badges — “Yellow? Oooh, an exhibitor!”

NAB wasn’t all smiles and sunshine, however. I did visit a few booths where I got the impression that I was bothering manufacturer representatives with my questions about their products, despite my typical polite, defused demeanor (and despite visiting when their booths were not crowded). I know that NAB days are long and everyone gets a little cranky after eating from that BBQ place out front for the fifth time, so I’ll take the few poor attitudes I received with a grain of salt.

I understand everyone gets a little tired and cranky at NAB, but at least pretend that you’re glad I’m visiting your booth. I might be able to afford your products one day, and I’d hate for your salty mood to sway my decision.

I realize my badge doesn’t say NBC on it (yet), but I think the fact that the NAB show floor is open to people of all career levels is what makes it so great. Gathering for a presentation alongside a college student from Des Moines and a network executive from Los Angeles doesn’t happen in too many places. So, ornery exhibitors, you never know who you’re making a poor impression upon, or what they may be capable of purchasing (or swaying someone else to purchase) in the not-too-distant future. Put on a fake smile, humor me with a brochure, scan my badge, and make me feel welcomed. After all, it’s what you or your company is paying all that money for to be on the show floor in the first place.

Salty BBQ and moods aside, my visit to NAB this year was well worth it. I got to see new products I didn’t realize would be on display (such as the new ETC Source Four LED lighting fixture), and ones that I did (like Canon’s new 1DC 4K DSLR). I got to catch up with colleagues on the show floor (like a surprise run-in with Wisconsin-based photographer and videographer Dave Stluka), and colleagues away from the show altogether (like musician friend Erik Ramirez, who’s band I did an amazing sunset portrait of on a mountain over looking the Las Vegas Strip).

NAB 2012 brought with it interesting glimpses at where the industry is at right now (thank God 3D was less present this year!), and where it might be headed (4K… 8K?). One thing is certain, storytelling tools previously locked in high, untouchable echelons have never been so accessible to mainstream filmmakers, and with unprecedented quality. Cameras costing just over $1,000 are capable of delivering images that, fifteen years ago, would have required something costing $100,000. I left the show for the second year in a row with those thoughts in mind. The success of any production, today and from here on out, squarely falls on the the talent and dedication of those who decide to undertake a project. “We don’t have a nice camera,” is no longer a crutch. It’s an invigorating time to be shoulder to shoulder with another creative person, whether long time comrades or having just met, that’s for sure!

I was very excited and surprised to see ETC’s new Source Four LED fixture on the show floor. While it’s not able to hold a candle to an open white 575w tungsten Source Four just yet, the possibilities for where this technology is heading are quite exciting. Can you imagine a theater completely devoid of dimmer racks? Can you imagine lighting a show with 48 fixtures with only 4 20 amp circuits? That’s where we’re headed, ladies and gents.

While not necessarily new technology, I always love stopping by the Canon booth and playing with monster 80x and 100x video lenses. Picking out someone’s eyeglass screws 100 yards down the aisle of the show floor (I’m not exaggerating) and practicing my follow focusing as they stroll around never gets old!

Also at the Canon booth was the new 1D C 4K DSLR. Put away plans for that new car, because you’ll need about 15 grand (yes, $15,000) before UPS brings this baby to your door. Ouch! On the plus side, the aliasing and moire issues that make my 1D Mark IV cameras a challenge to work with in video mode have been greatly reduced, if not eliminated, on this model (despite “line-skipping” and down-sampling still occurring). And, you can now shoot 60 frames per second at 1080p for buttery, high-rez slo mo shots!

Yeah, and Canon, while we’re chatting about gear I can’t quite afford, I wouldn’t mind if you left my new 1DX in this paint scheme! Is this a cool look at a camera’s physical form or what?

Visitors to the Las Vegas Strip late Monday, April 16, 2012.

A pedestrian walks in front of a lighted wall on the southern end of the Las Vegas Srip late Monday, April 16, 2012.

Academy Award winner Garrett Brown (right), inventor of the Steadicam, demonstrates his revolutionary tools at the Tiffen booth on the NAB show floor. I had the chance to speak with Mr. Brown at least year’s NAB, and was pleased with how approachable he was given his mind-boggling list of accomplishments in cinema. If you’ve seen the films The Shining, Rocky, or Indiana Jones (to name just a few), you’ve seen Mr. Brown’s work.

“Go Pro, Go Pro, Go Pro!,” chant the fans at the Go Pro camera booth at the daily 3pm giveaways. This chanting could be heard across the central hall show floor, and was clearly effective at drawing a crowd. I’m a huge fan of Go Pro products, but as with last year, the Go Pro booth was always just a bit too crowded to enjoy.

I’m attracted to lines of colored lights like a moth to a bug light in a restaurant kitchen, so this array of Arri L7-C color-mixing LED fresnels made me stand briefly with my mouth agape and eyes glazed over. As with most Arri products, you’ll pay a pretty penny for these (around 7 grand if memory serves me right), but the build quality is unmatched. I own several Arri tungsten fixtures, and they’re tanks! The open white on these at 5600K still won’t beat a 575w HMI outdoors, but again, the potential for this technology taking off even more in the future is quite exciting.

On the LED front with something that actually seems ready for prime time right now is the Litepanels Sola ENG fixture. It’s daylight balanced and BRIGHT! Fully dimmable and focusable, it will set you back about $720 big ones in kit form.

What day on the show floor wouldn’t be complete without a sinful, cupcake treat? The Cupcakery, located in the Monte Carlo Hotel, was probably responsible for around 2 pounds of my total Las Vegas weight gain. The Southern Belle (foreground) red velvet confection, topped with heavenly whipped cream cheese frosting and luminescent, sugar crystal sprinkles ended up being my decadent pastry of choice.

Wow, he’s good!

I wonder if their feet hurt as much as mine from all that walking on the show floor?

The future of post-production? Adobe, I already love Photoshop, so I’m not ruling you out for video! When I found out at the booth that Premiere doesn’t have to transcode footage from DSLR or AVC formats to edit, it quickly became more than just a blip on my radar. I would have loved to have compared it to whatever Apple has in store for Final Cut Pro, but as with years past, they were no-shows at NAB. I hate feeling abandoned by products I know and trust.

The cool set at the Panasonic booth, complete with live models to frame up with your favorite new camera or lens!

Until next time!

Waves crash onto rocks surrounding the Michigan City Lighthouse as the Aurora Borealis luminesce in the sky over Lake Michigan in Michigan City, Ind., Monday, April 23, 2012.

There’s something special about photographing fleeting, natural occurrences that are completely out of your control. Lightning, sunsets, interesting cloud formations, they all rank up there with beautiful things that I enjoy capturing with 0′s and 1′s. I suppose I find it liberating that Mother Nature’s fleeting spectacles fly in the face of the rigorous control necessary to create clean, photographic images. Successfully capturing them, as a result, is immensely rewarding.

The Aurora Borealis, aka The Northern Lights, are probably among my favorite natural phenomenon to document. Seeing the sky light up with neon greens to dull magentas and reds is a treat that I’m not sure I’ll ever grow tired of witnessing. Tonight marked the third time I’ve viewed and captured the Auroras here in the Chicago area, with the previous times occurring during a modest showing in 2002, and an all-out spectacular display in 2004 (there’s an image from that memorable night in my editorial section of my photo gallery here on the site).

The Aurora Borealis luminesce in the sky over Lake Michigan in Michigan City, Ind., Monday, April 23, 2012.

Over the past eight years, there have been several solar storms that were forecast to produce visible Auroras here in my neck of the woods, but Mother Nature always seemed to decide to cancel the show with something else. Cloud cover, bright full moons, and inclement weather have put a damper on around six (give or take) treks to capture this beautiful show in the sky. Still, each time an alert is active, I journey to the places I know the sky will be dark, fingers crossed, hoping that I’ll luck out.

Tonight, luck was on my side with nearly ideal conditions. A crescent moon that was just setting in the west along with clear skies combined to allow the strong Auroras to glow just above the northern horizon. I photographed tonight’s show over Lake Michigan from the Michigan City, Ind., lighthouse at nearby Washington Park. I chose the location because I knew the sky would be darkest and unobstructed over the lake, along with the lighthouse giving me a nice foreground element to play with. The Auroras, like lightning and fireworks, always look better with something else in the frame to add a layer or two.

I’d hoped to compose the Michigan City Lighthouse in my frame with the Auroras, but they were in the wrong part of the sky for this composition to work from my location. Additionally, a radical exposure difference between the dark Auroras and the bright lights along the lighthouse catwalk would have made this very difficult. This image of the dark part of the crescent moon lit up with some “Earth shine” was a nice consolation prize. The distant Chicago skyline is also visible at the bottom left of the image.

Unfortunately, the Auroras weren’t in a part of the sky where I could place them with the lighthouse in the same frame. Compounding this issue, bright lights that were added to the lighthouse catwalk created a radical difference in exposure between the foreground and the Auroras (which were all captured with roughly 20 second exposures), so I had to settle for the darker beach area and some rocks along the pier to provide some layering. In previous years, the lighthouse catwalk and pier here were pitch black at night, offering visitors a sketchy, somewhat terrifying opportunity for late night strolls.

The four keepers you see here on the blog were about all I came away with, but they’re certainly better than nothing. If you’re interested on keeping tabs on the Aurora Borealis in your neck of the woods, bookmark the NOAA POES Auroral Activity maps, as well as the Aurora Forecast from the Geophysical Institute from the University of Alaska. I use these two sites each time there’s mention of Auroras or solar storms in the news to decide whether I should head out, and tonight, they were both right.

The Aurora Borealis luminesce in the sky over Lake Michigan in Michigan City, Ind., Monday, April 23, 2012.

Acrylic paint spreads through water during an experimental shoot, Friday, March 16, 2012.

Sometimes, when people ask what I do for a living, I respond, “I get paid to play with my toys.” And, while I’m sincere in this credo, the toys are often in use to realize a client’s vision, or to complete a client’s project. It’s not frequent that I have the time to take on a personal, just-for-fun project, even though there’s tons of ideas swimming around in my brain at any given moment. Unfortunately, many of those ideas would amount to long-term projects that my schedule just won’t accommodate.

Yesterday, my friend and fellow photographer Taylor Irby shot me a link to some fascinating portraits of ink being poured into water. I was stunned at the simplicity of what was going on in the images from a technical standpoint, contrasted with the beautiful complexity of the lines the ink was creating as it flowed through the water. I immediately knew I had to try this for myself, and I was thrilled that I had a fun project on the table – just-for-fun – that would only take a couple of hours.

The biggest hurdle in accomplishing this project was finding an aquarium. I was pleased to pick up a brand new 5.5 gallon model for just under 11 dollars. Pretzels, while optional, are also highly recommended.

I purchased a five and a half gallon aquarium from Meijer, my official store, for $10.49. Rather than purchasing ink, I decided to use acrylic paint diluted with water to create my designs. Acrylic paint is easy to work with and easy to wash off your skin (I could see ink getting very messy).

Here’s the setup for the color paint pours. The aquarium was backlit with an Elinchrom Style 600 strobe at about half power, placed inside a Photoflex medium softbox. To the left of the aquarium was a Vivitar 285HV flash set to 1/4 power, and below, another Vivitar set to 1/2 power. To the right of the aquarium, I placed a piece of white card stock for fill. The images were shot with a Canon 1D Mark IV with a 50mm f1.2 lens. My base exposure was 1/250th @ f16 @ 50 ISO.

Detail of a color pour. The four dots in the upper left corner are actually fragments of paint that didn’t dilute in the water prior to the pour.

Despite the ease of working with the acrylic paint, and the similar results to the ink that it created, the project turned out to be quite time consuming. Each “pour” required me to use a clean five gallon bucket to fill the aquarium with water. After filling the aquarium, I used Windex to clean the aquarium’s outside glass surfaces of any paint residue (the humidity on the night I shot also made keeping the glass clear a huge challenge). Next, I’d pour a small amount of the acrylic paint into a cup and dilute it with a very small amount of water.

With the paint ready, I’d head over to the aquarium and grab the camera’s cable release in one hand, while pouring the paint into the water with the other. I’d shoot about 20 frames or so of each pour, capturing the paint as it poured into the water and spread out. Once I was done shooting, I’d have to carefully lift and carry the heavy, almost-full aquarium over to the sink to empty it and wash it out. Repeat, repeat, repeat. This project isn’t for those who lack patience. For instance, my first two pours didn’t work too well because I was diluting my paint too much.

While cleaning out the aquarium in the sink after my first couple of test pours (the ones that didn’t turn out well), I was struck with the way the colors of paint were running together that had settled to the bottom of the aquarium. I took the aquarium back over to the lighting setup and fired off this frame.

I came up with this high-tech rig to allow me to pour two colors of paint simultaneously with one hand (since my other hand was operating the cable release for the camera).

The resulting pour. I flipped this one 180 degrees as with most of the others.

Surf.

Atomic.

Tornado.

Wildfire.

I changed the lighting setup a bit when I poured the white paint. I used a black flag as my background, and 2 Vivitar 285HV units (one overhead at 1/4 power, and one from below at 1/2 power) with pieces of blackwrap attached as barn doors to cut the light off the background.

Smoky.

Thunderstorm?

The final images from the project were toned as I would any other image. To aid in my edit, I shot an image of an X-Rite Color Checker inside the empty aquarium under my strobes to help me eliminate any color casts the aquarium glass would introduce. Most of the images were flipped upside down, as I found the paint looked more interesting this way. Some of my favorites from the project are the images where I used white paint against a black background. The designs remind me of cumulonimbus thunderstorm clouds! What do you think?

Visitors to Chicago’s Millennium Park enjoy the Luminous Field projection exhibit at the Cloud Gate (a.k.a. “The Bean”) sculpture in Chicago, Ill., Saturday, February 11, 2012.

As a photographer, I felt a bit guilty strolling around the Cloud Gate sculpture (a.k.a. “The Bean”) in Chicago’s Millennium Park while viewing the Luminous Field projection exhibit. Each time I lifted my camera to my eye, the projections by artists Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero presented a wonderfully abstract landscape in light. Add some human beings wandering around in the mix, and you have a photographer’s dream.

So, where does the guilt enter the picture? The reality is, all the great images at Luminous Field were created for me by someone else (the projection designers). True, I found semi-unique ways to incorporate the reflections of the skyline and visitors into the images. At the end of the day, however, I felt like I could have swung my camera around by the strap and come up with awesome looking abstract images of saturated colors. Actually, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea…