Brian Urlacher is retiring. I photographed the UNM Lobo and Chicago Bear great a few times, and I also made the picture above in his home town of Lovington in the days leading up to the Superbowl. The mural was created by Nike for a commercial, and before that big game the mural was photographed by a number of local and national publications, but I liked my picture the best. I was the only photographer willing to wait around for the golden hour. I recently drove through town, and I was dishearten to see that the mural had been covers over with plain white paint. Everything is temporary.

Here are a few frames from one of my favorite annual events, the Gathering of Nations. The challenge when you photograph an event year after year is trying to find new and fresh ways to see it. My first thought was to shoot some formal portraits, but for reasons I wont go into I wasn’t able to make it work, but that’s ok, I’ll keep that in my pocket for next year. One idea was to try to take advantage of amazing ISO capabilities of my Canon 5d Mark II and  shoot with a long (300mm) lens at a small aperture (f11 I think)to compress all the amazing faces and details. This is total rip-off of a picture my friend Craig Fritz made a few years ago at The Trib, I admit it, but I intentionally didn’t look at that picture before I went this year knowing I would most likely approach it from a little different perspective and that the moment would also naturally be different.  I know that last vertical photo is big, and I hope don’t have to scroll to see the whole thing, but even if you do you can still start to appreciate how these would look as giant prints.  You can see more photos from the Gathering of Nations on my archive here. Photos from 2010 Gathering of Nations are also availabe for liciense, that was amazing because the event was outside at University Stadium while the Pit was being renovated. Anyway, thanks for looking.

I just wanted to make an official blog post to recognize my being named a Gold winner in Photoshelters Jump Start your Photography Business contest. It is a really nice honor, being selected out of a field of over 2000 entries from all genres of photography. Big thanks the good people over at Photoshelter, who host both of my portfolio & archive websites. They are constantly making updates and producing great free educational materials. (Here is a link you can use if you want to give them a try) Photoshelter also started a great community on Google+ for everyone who entered the contest where people can share ideas and experiences.

I also want to thank the sponsors Calumet Photographic and American Society of Media Photographers (an organization I’ve been wanting to join for years now) and everyone who has supported me. Being an independent photographer is really difficult, but the encouragement from everyone really helps me find the strength to keep going.

If you follow me on Instagram, then you probably already know that recently Boo has come to live with me. She is my co-pilot, my seeing eye dog and activities director here at Steven St. John Photography. Just say go and she is ready.

My friend Dan Mayfield is reporting that Gertrude Zachary has died. I had the wonderful opportunity to photograph her and her downtown Albuquerque castle for the Wall Street Journal, and Yahoo picked the images up, making it one of the most widely seen shoots I’ve ever had. Gertrude and I stayed in contact after the shoot and I gave her some prints for her collection. My thoughts are with her family. To see more from my time inside the castle, visit my archive:

http://sstjohn.photoshelter.com/gallery/Gertrude-Zacharys-downtown-castle/G0000qkzqE0lAVNk/

Kate Nash and Jim MontobanoMark Holm

I had  a great time speaking on a panel about cooperation in the newsroom with Mark Holm, Kelly Brewer and Jakob Schiller last weekend as part of the Daily Lobo Bootcamp. Working with students is really rewarding. We didn’t have much time, there’s a lot to learn but at moments you feel like you can almost see the light bulbs on top the students heads going off when you make certain points. They have a lot of bad ideas about what newspapers are and how newspaper journalism should look. It’s can be a lot of work but I’m only here because of the kindness and generosity of numerous other photographers and journalist who shared their vast knowledge with me. But the truth is I think we speakers get as much inspiration from them as they get from us.

Mark, Kelly Jakob & I all worked together at the Albuquerque Tribune. Myself and many other people who knew of The Trib often speak of it is a magic place for photography, but it wasn’t just that the photography was making magic. Every year our goal was one particular award, Best Use of Photography from Pictures of the Year International. Here’s why. From the POYi site:

“Photo editing should demonstrate sensitivity for the selection and organization of documentary photojournalism and the appropriate use of photo illustrations. Page design should reflect consideration for the reader and respect for the vision of the photographer. Judges will consider the effectiveness of the captions, headlines and other display typography as well as photo content. Aggressive local coverage and imaginative editing of wire and syndicated photos are important. Layout of inside pages and section fronts will be evaluated.”

The communication and teamwork at the Tribune or what made the photography great. The Best Use award was presented to the photo staff, but really it was an award for the entire paper. Journalists were treated as equals regardless of what media they used to tell people’s stories, and man did we tell some stories well. The design and copy desks were the real unsung heroes, bringing it all together and making all of us look a whole lot smarter. Given how poorly most newspapers treat their design and copy editors these days, it is no surprise that the students aren’t familiar with good newspaper journalism, it’s harder to find than just a few years ago. I just hope that some of the good work the Tribune did can inspire the students to go further, do and be better. I know it did for me.

]]> http://sstjohnphoto.com/blog/index.php/archives/2344/feed 0 http://sstjohnphoto.com/blog/index.php/archives/2328 http://sstjohnphoto.com/blog/index.php/archives/2328#comments Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:13:29 +0000 Steven St John http://sstjohnphoto.com/blog/?p=2328

Recently I had my first assignment for AARP Bulletin, a publication I really respect because they have been working with some wonderful photographers and producing interesting and innovative journalism under the thoughtful direction of picture editor Michael Wichita. For this particular shoot, AARP was having one photographer in each state make a portrait of a subject and then ask them a few questions about the economy. The catch was it had to be done with my phone and processed using Instagram. Like I said, interesting and innovative. I was cool to be included along with a number of my photo friends and acquaintances, but I think my favorite photo from the series (so far) was composed by Ian C. Bates, a student at Ohio University. I can’t get a direct link to that picture, so you’ll just have to follow the whole project on Twitter  or on Instagram.

Finally, big thanks to my subject Daniel Espalin for taking the time to talk with me and allowing me to photograph him as a winter storm rolled into town.

I know, I know, it has been a long time since I posted on this blog. I’ll try to post more often in 2013 – not a resolution, just something I need to do.

Here is a portrait shoot I had recently for The Chronicle of Higher Education, one of my favorite clients. You can read the entire article by clicking here. Big thanks to Rose and Erica for being wonderful editors. Also, thanks to the James Kelly Contemporary Art Gallery for letting us shoot in their space. There are some outtakes available for licensing on my archive.