For Thanksgiving this year my family decided to abandon the snow of Northern Idaho and retreat to the rain of Lincoln City, Oregon. It was a great time, and I got some good chances to shoot on the beach. Here’s a handful of my shots.

P.S. I’m revamping my main portfolio site. I think it’s going to turn out pretty cool, so keep an eye out.

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So once in a while when I’m bored I get the urge to set up a random photoshoot in my apartment. So after a quick run to the produce isle of the Coop, Tri-State for some fishing line, and Staples for some other stuff, I started shooting backlit cross-sections of fruit in my kitchen. Why? I couldn’t tell you, but I like the result. I think I’ll make a 32 inch print with all of them in a row and frame it.

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Eric and Nicole recently got hitched, and I got the pleasure of being their photographer. Here’s a few of my favorites from the big day.

I’m trying some different things to get rid of my photo overlap problem. It’s better, but still not fixed. Some of the photos below are still cut off, so click on a photo to see the full thing in a lightbox.

For the most recent edition of Blot magazine I did a photo essay called “Fashion Through the Decades.” Here are a few of the images that appeared. If you want to see the rest, you can view the PDF of the pages at www.blot.uidaho.edu

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So we had the last session of Mark LaMoreaux’s photography workshop last night, and I got a chance to do some photos in his studio. Here’s a couple of the shots. Thanks to Addie Callihan for being so easy to shoot.

Two posts at once! It’s cheating, I know. This is my attempt at surrealism for a photo workshop I’m taking.

I know Valentines day was awhile ago, but better late than never.

Holy crap, I haven’t posted in two months. I kind of took a hiatus from photo work over Christmas break, but now I’ve hit the ground running. A local theater group, Animal Fire Theatre Group, just did their first production and asked me to do some promo photos for them. They performed Henry V, and it was a great show. A lot of fun to shoot the group afterwards too. I tried to shoot and process the photos for a dramatic, darker effect with some low key lighting, and I am pretty pleased with the result. Here is a few of my favorites from the shoot.

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It was a sunny October afternoon when I set out to downtown Moscow with my camera and a tape recorder to capture the various faces that populate this town. I took quite a few portraits, but I narrowed it down to these 18. Click on each image to see it full size and get more info on each person.

Update: I’ve noticed on some computers the photos get overlapped. I’m working on fixing it. You can still see the photos full size when you click on them.

So I’m in Austin, Texas for the ACP/CMA National College Media Convention, and I’ve got to say this town is pretty freakin cool. It’s like a giant college town. As I heard one speaker say, “A bastion of liberalness in a conservative state.” I’m trying to come up with something for the photo contest this year. The theme is to capture Austin’s weirdness (the unofficial theme of the town is “Keep Austin Weird”). I don’t think I’ve quite done that yet, but I’ve still gotten some alright shots. Here are a few that I’ve gotten so far. If I get anything else worthwhile, I’ll probably make a second installment of this post.

Austin is known as a live music capital, so of course there are quite a few buskers around. These two weren't bad.

Here's another one.

All day Thursday the weather alternated between sunny and torrential downpour. I went out exploring in just a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, so at times like this I just hunkered under storefronts to keep my gear from getting too drenched.

Like I said, the theme of this year's photo contest is capturing Austin's weirdness. I think this is the closest I've come so far.

My friend Nick Groff showed me this, and it is pretty awesome. This entire video is made from still photos compiled in Final Cut Pro.

Whew, haven’t updated in far too long. Once school and work kick in it’s hard to find any time for my personal photography work. Anyways, I was going through some of my old work at the Argonaut, and I pulled out a few photos I like that I never posted online.

I took these awhile back and have been meaning to go through them. On the way home from Fishtail we stopped at Lewis and Clark Caverns in Montana. Probably one of the most spectacular natural formations I’ve ever seen. While it wasn’t as photographer friendly as Yellowstone, I made the best of it and dealt with the low lights. I took over 300 photos in the caverns, but these are my favorites.

This is honestly the natural color of the rock. It's absolutely amazing. This was by far my favorite room of the caverns. Click the photo if you want to see it bigger.

This was the exit tunnel. The whole time you are in there you feel like you are deep underground, but then you exit out this tunnel from the base of a mountain. You enter the caves far higher than you exit, and at points you are over one mile in elevation despite being underground.

I recently learned a few new portrait editing techniques for softening and spotlighting in Photoshop, and I put them to the test on some of my older photos. I was pretty pleased with the results.

Here a new layer was added with gaussian blur and switched to screen blending mode. It softened the harsh highlights and gave her a kind of glow.

I used the same softening layer as before, but much more subtle. I also used a layer mask to spotlight her face a little.

Same effects as before, but with the warm light I had to increase contrast and saturation a little to keep the image from becoming flat with the softening. I also edited out the stray hairs in the corners to clean things up a bit.

So I just finished the book Evidence of My Existence by photojournalist Jim Lo Scalzo. It is a memoir of his 17 years of wonderlust and amazing work. I highly recommend it to anyone, even if you have no interest in photography, travel or journalism. It is just a good book. If you are interested in any of those things, it is a must read.

Also, Mediastorm.org has a great visual synopsis of the memoir.

“Combining passages from his book with photographs, video, and Super-8 film, Evidence of My Existence brings to life a deeply personal account of 17 years spent moving from one new story to the next. Like the book, it is a manic exposition on a life in photojournalism and the consequences of obsessive wanderlust.”

Last weekend was my girlfriend’s family reunion in the tiny town of Fishtail Montana. The reunion was held on the family ranch that has been there for quite some time. It was a fun time. Good food, good weather, and I was able to make some pretty good photos. This is what I got from the ranch. I have some more photos from a hike and from a trip through Lewis and Clark Caverns, but I haven’t edited those yet (I have over 1000 photos from the trip.)

Click on an image to view it full size.

Of course it wouldn’t be the Fourth of July without some fireworks photos. The show in the Pullman park is pretty good, as long as you show up in time to grab a good seat. There was a very pretty pond in the park that I was pretty psyched about getting some firework reflection photos in, but it turned out the fireworks were shot off in a different spot than I anticipated.  This resulted in trees blocking the reflection shot and also partially blocking the view from where I was sitting. I made the best of it though, and here is a few of the shots I made.

At the beginning of 2009, I did something I usually don’t do: make a New Year’s Resolution. I decided to create an alphabet series of photos. One photo for each letter of the alphabet. So far I am to G (promptness obviously isn’t a priority with this project). It is something I dove into hoping to improve my creative thinking. Here are my newest additions for the letters F and G. I hope to do H this weekend. I’ve got a pretty good idea cooked up if I can pull it off. If you want to see the earlier ones, take a look at my Flickr account, www.flickr.com/jakebarber

F is for FREEDOM!

It took me awhile to come up with something for F, but you can't go wrong with Braveheart. On a historical note, the blue face paint (called woad) used by Mel Gibson in the film wasn't actually used by Scottish warriors, but by ancient Celtic warriors way before William Wallace's time.

G is for Geronimo!

I’m pretty sure my neighbors across the street think I’m crazy now. They watched me jump around in the front yard for quite awhile.

If you ever wondered why people yell Geronimo before a large jump, Wikipedia has an interesting answer.

So this summer I’m taking an environmental journalism class. Our most recent field trip was to Craig Mountain outside of Lewiston, Idaho to study wildlife management and land use. The trip, guided by Fish and Game biologist Justin Barrett, was very informative and the views were amazing. I am working on my article for the class, and I will probably post that when I am done. For now here are some of the photos:

This was taken at the top of Craig Mountain and I generated an HDR photo back home. It was an amazing view, and nothing I could have taken could really convey the vastness of it all.

Chris takes a look though binoculars at the top.

This boot wasn't really made for walking

We found this boot on a fencepost near some cabins. It has obviously seen better days.

This is one of the cabins in the ghost town of Zaza on Craig Mountain. Looks like this one has been used a little more recently than the rest.

The roof of another of the cabins in Zaza. For an 18th century cabin, this thing was still plenty sturdy. They just don't make them like they used to.

Fish and Wildlife biologist Justin Barret puts out a smoldering bonfire left by someone's party in a parking lot on Craig Mountain. The lot is covered with nails, mattress springs, bullet casings, and a lot of the fencing has been torn out for fuel and to allow mudders to get their vehicles through (and cause pretty heavy damage to the land).

At the top of Craig Mountain we got together for a group photo. Forgive the poor composition, my camera was balanced on a rock and set to a timer.

So I’ve been working on getting this blog going for awhile now, but today I got a chance to speak with AP photographer Ted Warren. He talked about the importance of establishing a web presence and getting online with some photojournalism work and personal projects, and it got me all fired up again about working on this stuff. I’ll do my best to update often, and I hope you enjoy my work.