Parents of newly arrived freshmen students sleep in a gym at the Central China Normal University in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province Wednesday Sept. 3, 2008. The university opened its gym overnight to allow parents of freshmen students to accompany their children on their first day of school.  (AP Photo)

Yesterday when I was editing the wire these two photos caught my eye. I loved examining all the different ways people sleep. Then I tried to imagine my parents sleeping on a mat in a gym with hundreds of other parents, and it made me laugh.

“What I love about [photographer] Rob [Howard’s] work is that he has a graphic approach to composition and framing. Note the left-hand photo on the opening spread. An iconic white house on the beach is almost center frame, with enough environmental details surrounding for most US readers to know that is an eastern seaboard location. The side of the house is parallel to the film plane, increasing visual impact of the pentagram-like shape. Designers like images like these not only because they are powerful enough for a full page, but also because there is plenty of room for type over the image at the top of the frame.”

Mmm, tasty writing that is informative and visual. It’s easy as a photographer to neglect a designer’s vision when we’re out shooting. (Except the Post-Dispatch designers of course, I love them, they love me, right?) We’re in the zone, making pictures, thinking about ourselves and the subjects in front of us. Having this refreshing perspective really helps us shooters think about the whole collaborative process instead of wondering why we missed key ideas and details long after the shoot.

Next time you can, take a look at any of the Post’s section fronts. These pages are a product of collaboration between photographers, editors, writers, designers everyday.  One non-daily example is our Saturday LifeStyle section. Each week we visually drive great style stories with killer design and photography. It’s one of the lighter sides of the daily newspaper that really lets us flex our creative muscles. Note: that may also been a slightly shameless promotion because I happen to enjoy a lot of feature photography. Ahem, moving along…

Okay, so what else is happening today in photo land?

Well, Canon is pulling out the drool factor with a splashy new tease to an upcoming camera body. Looks like something’s clearly almost ready for market. Can’t wait to see what it is. No rumors though, they just fuel bad fires. It’s just a wait and see game now.

Oh, also, my daily read DPreview has a great Photokina 2008 preview out, and it’s worth a few minutes to check out their hopes and a list of all the cool new stuff. Here’s my favorite hope from their list.

“Compact camera complacency - It pretty much goes without saying that we will see a cohort of slightly re-engineered compact cameras with higher pixel counts, larger screens and multiple-color options but little else to excite the market. It really is time for the manufacturers to sit up and realize that this can’t go on for very much longer, the compact market is crying out for some real innovation, and bravery (fewer megapixels, better / bigger sensors, better lenses) in the face of what they (or rather the big buyers) think they we want.”

What? You mean it’s not the hope for better DSLR lenses (yes, that too) or the full-frame sensor evolution (yes yes of course), but really, it’s time for manufacturers to start trying new things on some of the smaller consumer cameras. I would love a compact camera that acts like a DSLR without actually being a DSLR. That would mean larger sensors (not MORE megapixels, I’m talking a larger sensor with larger pixels for finer images) and some decent optics. Those two factors (mentioned so nicely above) keep me from plunking down money for a travel camera. It’s like I want to take a compact camera on vacation and travel destinations, but I want the image and optic quality that I receive from my Nikon and Canon DSLR cameras. Maybe it’s an idyllic hope to truly have that kind of professional quality in a compact digital camera other than resorting to a visual show stopper: a Leica rangefinder loaded up with Fuji Velvia chrome film.

Okay, more tomorrow. I might swing by the traditional day of dog swimming at the Maplewood Family Aquatic Center later today for a daily photo feature. Catch me out there and bring your gear (and dog). We’ll hang out and shoot some pictures. See ya.

I was assigned to go to the Arch one day about two weeks ago to find someone to illustrate a story about handicapped accessibility at the National Park. I thought to myself - “this will be like trying to find a needle in the haystack.”

As I grow as a person and a journalist I find that it is often our attitudes that determine our level of success. So as I struggled to fight my personal doubts about being successful at my job that day, I decided to begin my assignment by letting the picture come to me. I staked out the handicapped parking at the top of the structure, and about twenty minutes later I found my first subject returning from the Arch. He had not been able to go up, because he could not complete the walk from the parking structure to the Arch. So he sat on a bench until his family returned.

Then, energized from finding my first subject, I began walking towards the Arch, and on the pathway I met another gentleman in a wheelchair who had been able to go up with some help from the park staff. For my third subject, I was standing outside the south leg of the Arch wondering if I should go inside when I met a young lady with a leg brace sitting with her family on a bench. She told me of her accident at age three, but that she was so used to operating in her brace that she felt like it did not hinder her to walk the Arch grounds. After about ten minutes passed, she and her family left for the huge staircase at the base of the Arch and as she climbed down on her own I made this picture. I found my needle, by staying calm and positive.

Toru Katsumoto, senior general manager of Sony’s digital imaging business group, said in a statement about the camera via CNET’s Stephen Shankland’s blog that “It’s not for the real professional, and that “we’d like to make this camera of course for professionals, but also for enthusiasts and high-end amateurs.”

I can deduce from this statement that Sony isn’t in a position to directly challenge Canon or Nikon for the daily pro work — I mean it’s plainly visible that every newspaper or wire service in this country (and most likely the world) uses either Canon or Nikon, and has been for quite some time. In fact those same organizations are some of the longest-running customers for those companies. The Post-Dispatch has been a Canon customer for decades.

Nevertheless, it’s an interesting game these guys play. Where’s the “sweetspot” of resolution where customers will throw in the towel for higher resolution in favor of better features? 21 megapixel 1Ds Mark III files viciously attacked 12 gigabytes of my external harddrive space from the fall fashion shoot last month. And star Vincent Laforet shot half a terabyte (p.s. never delete photos) during the Olympics, and he used nothing but Canon equipment exclusively on RAW. My measly MacBook harddrive can barely keep up with my daily RAW (yes, I shoot RAW + low res JPG and archive JPG on our server and RAW to DVD) intake. And that, mind you, is from my 1D Mark IIn 8.5 megapixel camera (sounds outdated in this context, doesn’t it?)

I tend to get a sense of a consensus of “sweetspot” indicators from the various photographers and hobbyists I run across every day on assignment. Right now it seems the 12-14 megapixel vicinity is a good number.  My professional views are a little skewed, because I work with whatever the paper gives me. If it is deemed that I never evolve from 8.5 megapixels, then it just won’t be. And I’m okay with that, because 8.5 does fills the need, and does it quite well actually. Personally, if money fell into my hands (hint hint to my editor) 10 is better, I’ll give you that, and 12 sounds perfect. For now, 8.5 is a-ok.

So is 24.6 megapixels too much to deal with? If Sony isn’t planning on walking into newsrooms and commercial photographers’ studios and taking over staff kits, then they must be thinking they have a good market for that camera. It’s expensive to make full-frame sensors, and it’s expensive to buy them on the consumer end.

So, what’s your take on it?  I don’t care if this is your first day with a pro or consumer camera (actually, tell me what the experience is like if it is). Granted, chips on point and shoot cameras are not exactly on the same caliber as their DSLR companions (the size of each pixel on a chip matters and leaves a lot to the quality), but camera companies sure pull out the marketing glop to push those precious pixels.

We have two cameras, an assortment of lenses, and accessories for our daily work. Inevitably your best stuff breaks first, because you use it the most. My 50mm macro lens that focuses slower than cold honey will probably work till the end of time because it sits in the camera bag. My 24-70 will bite the dust most likely because I use it every day. Now, take it on a trip and watch things magically fall apart.

Point is, keep extra! Lots of extras — think batteries as well. Our video and audio gear eats AA batteries alive, so when new shipments arrive at the Post I hoard them like cats. They of course always fail when you need them most — like the one time a year I actually use a flash on-camera. Even if you can swing a small personal camera and a lens, it’s worth it to keep around. I even have my wife’s point n’ shoot Canon A400 (read: old) that floats somewhere near the spare tire for that one last-resort time. And don’t even think about laughing about using a point and shoot on the job. Photo rockstar Alex Majoli shot huge essays on a pair of P&S cameras — not just in his hometown, but places like the Middle East and Africa. He intentionally ditched the high-end gear and went for the small setups. Basically it doesn’t matter what you’re working with — if you can make a fantastic picture when all else fails, then it’s worth more than the $5000 pro digital SLR camera with a whiz-bang stabilizing lens.

I decided to switch it up a bit and focus on the details of one particular hole of the course. So if you’re at the tournament this week as a spectator, take a closer look and see if you can see what I saw and photographed on the sixth hole.

Sitting in a New Orleans Denny’s restaurant with my family some thirty years ago, I eyed my first presidential motorcade. It was Jimmy Carter heading back to the airport on Interstate 10 from some long forgotten visit. For some reason, that image of a black column of vehicles roaring down a deserted highway stuck with me.

When presumptive Republican nominee for president Sen. John McCain came to town yesterday, it was my turn. I rode along, one of four people in what is known as the ‘local pool’, a group of journalists consisting of a newspaper writer and photographer, a radio reporter and television videographer. Sitting presidents and contenders often form these pools as a way for local journalists to join the national traveling media and get a bit closer to the action.

Here’s a look at the day:

1:45 pm - The pool ‘forms’ at the Frontenac Hilton, which translates into sitting on a couch and waiting for a very long time.

2:12 pm - Apparently there is a wedding at the hotel. The mother of the groom arrives carrying her purple sequin dress but McCain staff members and the Secret Service block access to her room because the lobby is on lockdown, awaiting the arrival of Sen. McCain from his hurricane-related detour to Mississippi. She’s not taking it well. Nobody told her McCain would be taking over the hotel on her son’s wedding day.

2:20 pm - A young girl and her mother try to get into the lobby to meet McCain but are turned away. Instead they run into former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney coming out of a restaurant. They settle for a picture with him. “Good second choice,” he says.

3:00 pm - The local pool is escorted from our holding area, the couch, to the media filing center where members of the national traveling pool are writing their stories, sending their pictures and devouring a buffet.

3:17 pm - The national pool board vans and the local pool moves back to the couch.

3:33 pm - We’re finally called up to be ’swept’. That translates into a member of the Secret Service using a metal detection hand wand to search us, just like at the airport. A bomb-sniffing dog from the airport police checks our equipment. He isn’t impressed. We are assigned to Press Van 4, the 11th vehicle in line behind the senator’s bus and one of more than 20 in the motorcade.

3:57 pm - Frontenac police officers stop traffic at Clayton and Lindbergh.

4:02 pm - We roll.

4:27 pm - The nonstop motorcade rolls along I-70, over the Missouri River and into St. Charles. St. Louis County police vehicles block the entrance ramps along the way, so it is smooth sailing for McCain’s ‘Straight Talk Express’ bus. I often wonder how many votes candidates and presidents lose to those people stranded on those entrance ramps.

4:29 pm - The ‘Press 4′ van makes an unexpected stop as our driver swerves right and slams on the brakes while fiddling with her cellphone, stopping inches from becoming one with ‘Press 3′.

4:42 pm - Motorcade arrives at T.R. Hughes Ballpark in O’Fallon. The pool departs from the four vans and photographers scope the scene, trying to quickly determine the best places to photograph. McCain staff members offer ideas, assistance and restrictions. For them, the goal is not necessarily getting us the best pictures, but getting the pictures that presents the best image of their candidate. The haggling begins, as photographers negotiate the best place to start when he takes the stage and how to stay as a pack so they don’t block each other’s view.

5:02 pm - McCain and running mate Gov. Sarah Palin exit the bus.

6:07 pm - The rally ends and staff members scurry the media back to the pool vans. It’s hard to stop shooting because McCain is still pressing flesh. But the reality is that if you’re not back to the pool vans in time, you’re out of luck when the motorcade rolls. Shortly thereafter, we’re rolling again.

6:40 pm - The motorcade arrives at the airport. I tell a quick goodbye to Getty Images photographer Joe Raedle, an old friend who I hadn’t seen in 20 years since our days working in south Florida. Joe is traveling with the national pool and boards the back stairs of the campaign plane with the rest of the traveling media.

6:47 pm - McCain gives a thumbs-up and disappears into the flying version of the ‘Straight Talk Express’.

7:17 pm - The plane departs and we are on our way back to the hotel on ‘Press 4′. This time though we have to stop for the red lights.

It’s always a gamble choosing to be in the ‘pool’. Sometimes it works and sometimes it is better to be where the rest of the journalists are positioned. You just never know. It’s all about making a choice and sticking with it. Looking back, Sunday wasn’t such a bad pool day.

I’ll usually show them my 35MM Canon SLR still digital cameras and answer with a correction that I’m a newspaper photographer for the Post-Dispatch. The major difference being that TV stations use video cameras.

Recently, this topic has become less black and white. Last week, while photographing a story about the Foundry Art Centre in St. Charles, artist John Dean asked why I was using a video camera for the newspaper? A very observant question.

With the overwhelming emergence of the internet, newspapers are supplying the demand for more online content such as audio slideshows and video. Nowadays, I carry a high definition video camera that is also capable of capturing a still image. There are major differences in the approach for video, but in the end, it’s still photography.

Our Luxe fashion section ran in certain editions of this week’s newspaper so I thought I would take some time to share before and after pictures to show how much went into producing the images. The storyline of the fashion photo shoot centered upon a heist from a bank vault, a chase scene, gambling with the riches and then getting caught.

Just so you guys know, there was absolutely no digital Photoshop manipulation in terms of adding or eliminating objects in any of the photos. That is not something we do or condone for anything outside of photo illustrations. So everything you see is done in-camera with exposure and lighting, only using Photoshop on a computer on the back end to adjust the brightness and color.

In the photo above, I found an alleyway in Soulard for our chase scene. To create the look we wanted, staff photographer Chris Lee, who helped me with the lighting for this and the other photo shoots, had two Calumet flash head units at the far end of the alleyway, just out of view of the camera. The lights were aimed at the back wall of the alleyway and adjusted to full power, thus creating the white-out effect. Staff photographer Emily Rasinski, who also helped out on a few of the photo shoots, donned a fedora and trench coat to play the role of the detective leaning around the corner while chasing our female model. The light on our female model in the foreground is a White Lightning X1600 flash head unit placed on a light stand about ten feet off the ground and angled down through a small window at the entrance to the alley (which is behind me, the photographer), thus creating the light falloff on the model due to the shape of the window and the use of a 10 degree spot grid diffuser on the flash unit. To add more mood to the photo we used a waterhose behind the building to spray the floor and walls of the alleyway.

For each of the fashion shoots, we figured out what we wanted from the situation in terms of mood, lighting and composition and spent the necessary time with adjusting flash units and camera angles. We spent just over an hour for the lighting set-up of each picture and another hour of actually taking pictures with the models. Check out the before and after pictures below.

A gambling table at Lumiere Place Casino.

An old holding cell at the downtown St. Louis Police Department.

The bank vault at City Musuem.

The tarmac at the Greater St. Louis Air and Space Museum in Cahokia, Illinois.

The new Nikon D90 features a 12.21 megapixel CMOS sensor (same as the D300), a 4.5 fps still photo shooting rate, LiveView (current on the Nikon D300/D700/D3)  and (now), 720p video capture.

The exterior of the camera is almost identical to its predecessor, the Nikon D80. Except now there is a small microphone grill situated near the D90 badge and a beefy 920,000 dot LCD screen for image review and menu selection. A few of the selection buttons have been changed to accommodate the new screen, and having worked with the new VGA LCD in the D300, the new screen should provide plenty of satisfaction when using the LiveView function and recording video.

Note microphone grill near D90 badge.

and the revised selection buttons. Here is the old D80 below for comparison.

The older D80 camera. Note the change in selection buttons and larger screen.

What’s really exciting about the evolution of video from a still camera is the ability to ditch the dedicated video gear we lug around and replace it with a video feature in our primary still cameras. This could do three things — first, make it easier to record stills and video from one event and mix them together for a multimedia piece without hauling a ton of gear– and two — wreak havoc on the television market in venues where TV owns video broadcast rights. How that will play out is beyond me, but it’s something that will absolutely have to be addressed soon. And third, we don’t have to learn multiple sets of gear AND it should keep equipment costs down while bridging the still/video gap to our daily multitasking.

In addition, we aren’t confined anymore to a fixed zoom on a videocamera. We could opt to use a 400mm lens while covering a high school baseball game, or go for a funky video using a fisheye lens –  in addition focus, depth of field, and exposure, often delegated only to the pricier video cameras, is now within our reach without changing equipment in our daily camera bag.

The only downside I see with this particular camera is the inability to control the levels or adjustments of the audio, and the why o’ why isn’t this here award goes to the lack of a microphone jack to plug in an external mic for better audio gathering. Plus there is no autofocus during video capture (ouch) and you have to prepare your white balance before recording (livable).  Of course I suspect that these features will find their way into future (and dare I say pricier models). Nikon prepared a sample multimedia piece on their USA site using video clips from the camera, and I wasn’t too impressed with the audio quality. It’s a letdown for those who gather audio daily for video and slideshows…if only it had the mic jack I could deal with the manual focus and white balance video issues.

Nevertheless, this camera is dressed to impress. Check out Chase Jarvis’ blog where he was given a few D90s for tryout and the master Nikon D90 site with all the info and a test. There’s Rob Galbraith’s report to fill in the details and the Nikon Press Center for all the public relations goodies.