I thought I should introduce myself as well.

I’m Steve McEnroe, the chief photographer at the RCJ. I’ve been in the business, more or less, for 30+ years and have been on staff here at the Journal for 21 years, come October. That might seem like a long time, but Don Polovich, who recently retired, was on the photo staff for 38 years I think, so in a sense I’m still a new guy.

This blog was the idea of Seth McConnell, the real “new guy” on the photo staff - a kids about 24 years old and part of the X generation (or is it Y generation now) brought up connected to their iPods and actually knowing how to text message on their cell phones. So it’s all his fault and we now know who to blame if the need ever arrises.

We hope to hear from you guys - on any topic, within the realm of photography and photojournalism and we will try to keep things interesting here.

Today I am including a portion of an e-mail I received last week from Ken Jacobson, an artist out west who keeps tabs on our region via the Journal’s website. He analyzed one of my photos from my online slideshow shot at the recent “RingWars” event at the civic center. I don’t think I have ever had a photo examined so thoroughly - even during student work critiques back in college. He even included an historical reference which I have also attached. While I doubt the fighter is very Christ-like, there certainly are similarities in lighting, action and layout (if you use your hand to eliminate the lower 40% of the Caravagio painting.

Ken wrote the following description to a friend before passing it along to me - “This one is like a Renaissance painting . . . Notice the way someone is holding the victim’s hand? And how his head is framed? The red colors behind his head and the green below him and
the blues that pop in and out all over? Notice how everyone else is
half-lit but the main character has full lighting? Notice how there’s
an almost perfect square near the center of the photo, marked off by
the guy with the black shirt on the right and the arm of the man with
the blue shirt on the left, and the ropes top and bottom? And with
the victim’s head perfectly balanced by the man looking down at him
above him and to the left within that little subpicture? Notice how
all the people outside that little frame are just backs or parts
while within that little framed area are faces and hands, all the
action and emotion focused in that little enclosed area? And how it’s
split exactly in two, with all the action above and total calm below
and it wouldn’t make any sense without everything else around it
pulling it together?”

Of course, I explained to Ken that all I did was see that I had a clear shot of the injured fighter, despite his being surrounded by about six EMT’s and other emergency personnel. I did notice the one person holding the injured man’s hand. Any other analysis of the situation by me at the scene would have been simply instinctive, although I did work on this angle more so than in most “action” sports shots where you just hope to be in the right place at the right time, and you keep your finger on the shutter and follow the action as best you can through a viewfinder.

Well, I hope you find “A Wide(r) Angle” fun and informative and please let us know what you think. Blogs are two-way streets.

By Seth A. McConnell

Sometimes due to space issues images are not run in full.
Sometimes the images still work, but more often than not something is lost.

This mornings paper was a perfect example of this.

Saturday morning fellow photographer Steve McEnroe ventured out to Hermosa to cover the aftermath of Friday nights flash flood. Steve managed to capture this great image of a 1954 Chevy truck headlights deep in the flood water.

photo by Steve McEnroe/Journal staff
This shot, in my book, is fantastic. It really captures the moment in every way possible. It didn’t run in Sundays paper, for whatever reason, so I contrived a plan to get it in Thursday’s paper, Wednesday afternoon after I found the truck myself.
A before and after shot.

photo by Seth A. McConnell/Journal staff
After tromping into the middle of the field covered in slippery, smelly, sucking mud (you know the kind when you take a step your foot sinks in 3 inches and your instantly suctioned to the ground…) the light peaked through the clouds briefly and I got my shot.
Neither image was run in full in todays paper, losing the intended affect of both shots.

What are your thoughts on the images? Did they look better cropped in the paper or did they lose something? (If you want to critique, please do)

-S

By Seth A. McConnell

Welcome to Wide(r) Angles, the official blog of the three rogue photogs of the Rapid City Journal.
I’m taking care of the first post here as this blog was at my insistance.

Our goal with this blog is to go behind the scenes of a photo.
Whether there is an interesting story accompaning the shot, the lengths it took to actually get the right angle or the technique used to get a certain shot we will go in depth here.
We will also post our favorite photos that don’t, for one reason or another, get run in the paper (ie its a horizontal and they need a vertical or vice-versa) or may not be run in full do to space and time issues.
Plus tutorials on how to shoot different events, depending on the time of year.

from:

Fireworks

Lightening

Smoke rises from a burning light bulb element.
To out of the ordinary studio techniques.
(This is not photoshop, This is how the image came out of the camera)

Plus other things that rise out of an occasion or event.

If you have an interesting photo you would like to share we invite you to share with us as well. We would like to keep this as interactive as possible, so feedback is appreciated.

Now onto the introductions: (I hate writing about myself, but a bit of background is always nice.)
My name is Seth A. McConnell and I was born and raised right here in the Black Hills of South Dakota where I graduated from Stevens in 2000. I picked up a camera for the first time in 2001 and I haven’t looked back since. I Went to school in the tiny town of Powell, WY, graduated with a degree in Photography (more specifically comercial photography so I know product and portrait photography and studio lighting like the back of my hand) in December 2005. I moved home shortly there after and spent all of 2006 free lancing for magazines and newspapers around the country and world. In January I started at the Journal on a part time temporary basis, worked hard and finally landed the position of staff photographer in March. Not only am I the newest photographer on staff I’m the youngest coming in at the ripe old age of 25. I’m probably a little to gung ho for my own good, your only young once right?

I’m a Canon guy and have been since the start. I prefer wide lenses and crawling in the mud, dirt, oil and burnt rubber, etc to get the right angle. The closer, the better. The dirtier, the more fun it was to shoot.

Post Sundance Burnouts during Rally week.