peace,
Brad Vest
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
2009_02_27_
2009_02_27_
Airplanes rarely venture near this place, just jet streams on the horizon.
Best,
Brad Vest
Airplanes rarely venture near this place, just jet streams on the horizon.
Best,
Brad Vest
Thursday, February 26, 2009
2009_02_26_mining preview
2009_02_26_mining preview
As you know I headed down into the Hutchinson Salt Mine this past Tuesday. I spent the entire day shift down in the mine with the workers. The Ad Astra photo page isn't inked until this Sunday so I can't share any of the actual photos. But here are just a few behind the scenes shots.
I had to tag up before heading down into the mine like every other miner. You leave one tag at the surface and keep one tag on you. This is in case of emergencies they know who is down in the mine. As I was going through the safety training the manager joked... 'for some reason they make them out of brass, so when you're stuck in the mine and burn up it's easy to identify you by the melted drop of metal seeing as brass melts at 200 degrees.' Haha, not very funny.
The self rescuer that turns poisonous CO into CO2. Granted it doesn't add any oxygen so if you're using this thing you better be moving quickly to the exit.
Sparkly salt ceiling.
I was shooting the powder man who's in charge of setting the explosives in each and just as we finished up the first wall it was time to move on to the next wall a few hundred yards away. The truck he uses the get around only has one seat in the front so I saddled up with my legs hanging over the side of the flatbed. Just as he was getting in the front he called back, 'you can sit on the explosives if you want'. Why not. Riding around with the powder man on top of around 1000 lbs of ammonium nitrate explosives, it was ironically comfortable.
ESCAPE WAY!
I turned a 5 dollar camera rain jacket into pretty much a completely sealed jacket to keep the abundant salt particles off my gear.
Since the camera was completely sealed with the bag and close to a full roll of electrical tape this made controlling the camera difficult. I do know how to control everything in the dark by touch, but the bag made the controls much more sluggish and slippery. It was tough when adjusting from a iso3200 @ 1/15th shot to an iso 640 shot @ 1/50th.
Best,
Brad Vest
Listening to: Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa, Vampire Weekend
As you know I headed down into the Hutchinson Salt Mine this past Tuesday. I spent the entire day shift down in the mine with the workers. The Ad Astra photo page isn't inked until this Sunday so I can't share any of the actual photos. But here are just a few behind the scenes shots.
I had to tag up before heading down into the mine like every other miner. You leave one tag at the surface and keep one tag on you. This is in case of emergencies they know who is down in the mine. As I was going through the safety training the manager joked... 'for some reason they make them out of brass, so when you're stuck in the mine and burn up it's easy to identify you by the melted drop of metal seeing as brass melts at 200 degrees.' Haha, not very funny.
The self rescuer that turns poisonous CO into CO2. Granted it doesn't add any oxygen so if you're using this thing you better be moving quickly to the exit.
Sparkly salt ceiling.
I was shooting the powder man who's in charge of setting the explosives in each and just as we finished up the first wall it was time to move on to the next wall a few hundred yards away. The truck he uses the get around only has one seat in the front so I saddled up with my legs hanging over the side of the flatbed. Just as he was getting in the front he called back, 'you can sit on the explosives if you want'. Why not. Riding around with the powder man on top of around 1000 lbs of ammonium nitrate explosives, it was ironically comfortable.
ESCAPE WAY!
I turned a 5 dollar camera rain jacket into pretty much a completely sealed jacket to keep the abundant salt particles off my gear.
Since the camera was completely sealed with the bag and close to a full roll of electrical tape this made controlling the camera difficult. I do know how to control everything in the dark by touch, but the bag made the controls much more sluggish and slippery. It was tough when adjusting from a iso3200 @ 1/15th shot to an iso 640 shot @ 1/50th.
Best,
Brad Vest
Listening to: Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa, Vampire Weekend
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
2009_02_25_Don Quixote for a day
2009_02_25_Don Quixote for a day
I felt like the obsessive fictional hero as I somewhat frantically drove around the four square miles or so of roads that surrounded the thirty-three newly constructed windmills outside the small Kansas town of Marienthal. However, instead of battling the windmills in a more chivalrous endeavor, I was dealing with something much more fleeting and obscure, the light.
After driving over four hours straight west into the vast, barren, brown land known as western Kansas and only being a few handfuls of miles from the Colorado border I was banking deeply on the fact that the sky would open up and give me one of her more fantastic sunsets to work with. After all, the sole reason I came all this way was to make a pictorial type photo, beautiful in its nature, of the windmills for the upcoming cover for one of the four sections of The Hutchinson News' yearly progress section.
When the light started to fade I knew it would either be a great sunset or there wouldn't be one at all. Clouds had started to roll in which is actually a great thing since clouds make the sky more dynamic and actually enhance the colors of the sunset. But, with those benefits also comes a huge downside, clouds can completely kill a sunset by blocking out the light. At the beginning it was great, the sun was parting the clouds and creating beautiful shades of color on the clouds and reflecting off the large reflective bases of the windmills.
I became worried though just as the sun was starting to get into it's peak position it was matted out by the clouds. I waited and waited but nothing changed the sun just stuck to the back of a huge set of clouds concealing all the light except for a few shades of not so fantastic grey. Just as I was about to call it a day she broke through right at the horizon line and lit up the entire cloud mass that used to be blocking here.
It worked out for some wonderful pictures and a great trip.
Thanks for looking.
-Brad Vest
After about 20 minutes of nothing but grey, the sun appeared again and gave a wonderful show of color for about ten minutes before continuing on to other parts of the western hemisphere.
This is the photo we chose to run for the cover of the wind progress section. It was so great to see the way we used the photos for the covers of each section. We went big! Each section front was just a photo, no text, no graphics, just a giant photo welcoming readers into the section.
Thanks for looking,
Brad Vest
Listening to: Stork and Owl, Tv on the Radio
I felt like the obsessive fictional hero as I somewhat frantically drove around the four square miles or so of roads that surrounded the thirty-three newly constructed windmills outside the small Kansas town of Marienthal. However, instead of battling the windmills in a more chivalrous endeavor, I was dealing with something much more fleeting and obscure, the light.
After driving over four hours straight west into the vast, barren, brown land known as western Kansas and only being a few handfuls of miles from the Colorado border I was banking deeply on the fact that the sky would open up and give me one of her more fantastic sunsets to work with. After all, the sole reason I came all this way was to make a pictorial type photo, beautiful in its nature, of the windmills for the upcoming cover for one of the four sections of The Hutchinson News' yearly progress section.
When the light started to fade I knew it would either be a great sunset or there wouldn't be one at all. Clouds had started to roll in which is actually a great thing since clouds make the sky more dynamic and actually enhance the colors of the sunset. But, with those benefits also comes a huge downside, clouds can completely kill a sunset by blocking out the light. At the beginning it was great, the sun was parting the clouds and creating beautiful shades of color on the clouds and reflecting off the large reflective bases of the windmills.
I became worried though just as the sun was starting to get into it's peak position it was matted out by the clouds. I waited and waited but nothing changed the sun just stuck to the back of a huge set of clouds concealing all the light except for a few shades of not so fantastic grey. Just as I was about to call it a day she broke through right at the horizon line and lit up the entire cloud mass that used to be blocking here.
It worked out for some wonderful pictures and a great trip.
Thanks for looking.
-Brad Vest
After about 20 minutes of nothing but grey, the sun appeared again and gave a wonderful show of color for about ten minutes before continuing on to other parts of the western hemisphere.
This is the photo we chose to run for the cover of the wind progress section. It was so great to see the way we used the photos for the covers of each section. We went big! Each section front was just a photo, no text, no graphics, just a giant photo welcoming readers into the section.
Thanks for looking,
Brad Vest
Listening to: Stork and Owl, Tv on the Radio
2009_02_25_hear that sound
2009_02_25_hear that sound
I miss the Puget Sound and that city that sits off her eastern side.
Best,
Brad Vest
I miss the Puget Sound and that city that sits off her eastern side.
Best,
Brad Vest
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
2009_02_24_Working in a sodium chloride mine going down down down
2009_02_24_Working in a sodium chloride mine going down down down
Right about now I'll be stepping onto an elevator and descending about seventy stories below the surface of the earth into a strange, dark, and dusty place, the Hutchinson Salt Mine. I'll be spending the day with the workers documenting their underground lives. I'm not quite sure what to expect except for really challenging lighting and a nice dry 65 degree day without the sun.
I lightened everything out of my bag except for the essentials and a lunch consisting of a couple pb and j sandwiches, a banana, a granny smith apple, and a bottle of water. That way it will be much easier to get around all day.
Lightened load, only the essentials.
Fully charged batteries for a full day of shooting. I marked them a while back so that I know which are spent and which still have a charge when I am sifting through my bag.
Other than that all I have to carry, among other things, is a certified breather that's about the size of mango, but in rectangle form. The breather only weighs about 3 pounds and in case of emergency it turns poisonous carbon monoxide into harmless carbon dioxide to allow for greater time to run out of the mine. Knock on wood, don't worry though, salt mining is actually very safe, especially when compared to coal mining.
Waiver and releases let you know what you'll be doing is exciting.
I also sorta enhanced the seals on my camera with some electrical tape and rubber bands to keep the salt dust from getting in where it shouldn't. If the mine is worse than I am anticipating as far as particles in the air and getting all over my camera I'm also bringing down two weather bags that fit around my cameras and lenses. I really don't want to use those though, they are a real pain in the butt.
Super seal, patent pending.
Other than that I guess there isn't much. I'm really excited to get down there and start making pictures. I'm leaving my apartment at 5am or so to get to the mine before the workers start to arrive to capture the whole process of one of their full work days.
So, if you need to get in touch with me tomorrow, good luck, my phone won't have much signal due to the interference of 700 feet of rock, sand, dirt, and salt.
See you topside,
Brad Vest
Listening to: Your rocky spine, Great Lake Swimmers
Right about now I'll be stepping onto an elevator and descending about seventy stories below the surface of the earth into a strange, dark, and dusty place, the Hutchinson Salt Mine. I'll be spending the day with the workers documenting their underground lives. I'm not quite sure what to expect except for really challenging lighting and a nice dry 65 degree day without the sun.
I lightened everything out of my bag except for the essentials and a lunch consisting of a couple pb and j sandwiches, a banana, a granny smith apple, and a bottle of water. That way it will be much easier to get around all day.
Lightened load, only the essentials.
Fully charged batteries for a full day of shooting. I marked them a while back so that I know which are spent and which still have a charge when I am sifting through my bag.
Other than that all I have to carry, among other things, is a certified breather that's about the size of mango, but in rectangle form. The breather only weighs about 3 pounds and in case of emergency it turns poisonous carbon monoxide into harmless carbon dioxide to allow for greater time to run out of the mine. Knock on wood, don't worry though, salt mining is actually very safe, especially when compared to coal mining.
Waiver and releases let you know what you'll be doing is exciting.
I also sorta enhanced the seals on my camera with some electrical tape and rubber bands to keep the salt dust from getting in where it shouldn't. If the mine is worse than I am anticipating as far as particles in the air and getting all over my camera I'm also bringing down two weather bags that fit around my cameras and lenses. I really don't want to use those though, they are a real pain in the butt.
Super seal, patent pending.
Other than that I guess there isn't much. I'm really excited to get down there and start making pictures. I'm leaving my apartment at 5am or so to get to the mine before the workers start to arrive to capture the whole process of one of their full work days.
So, if you need to get in touch with me tomorrow, good luck, my phone won't have much signal due to the interference of 700 feet of rock, sand, dirt, and salt.
See you topside,
Brad Vest
Listening to: Your rocky spine, Great Lake Swimmers
Monday, February 23, 2009
2009_02_23_partly organic
2009_02_23_partly organic
Thanks for looking,
Brad Vest
Listening to: I've got it all (most), Modest Mouse
Thanks for looking,
Brad Vest
Listening to: I've got it all (most), Modest Mouse
2009_02_23_Youth rodeo
2009_02_23_Youth Rodeo
As always, thanks for taking a look.
Best,
Brad Vest
Listening to: upon this tidal wave of young blood, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
As always, thanks for taking a look.
Best,
Brad Vest
Listening to: upon this tidal wave of young blood, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
Sunday, February 22, 2009
2009_02_22_Ignoring generics
2009_02_22_Ignoring generics
Thanks for looking,
Brad Vest
Listening to: Once Around the Block, Badly Drawn Boy
Thanks for looking,
Brad Vest
Listening to: Once Around the Block, Badly Drawn Boy
2009_02_21_Five angry bulls and a puppy
2009_02_21_Five angry bulls and a puppy
Yesterday I had the chance to shoot a rodeo for the first time. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I definitely knew it would have its fair share of excitement. Turns out it was a little more exciting than I bargained for.
When I first got to the small rodeo I wandered around the outside took pictures and grabbed a coffee. I knew the best pictures would be in with the bull riding competitors that stay inside a fenced in area at one side of the large rodeo ring. The competitors enter the confined ring where they are safe from the large bulls, get dressed and prepared to mount the bulls. The bulls come in on the right side and follow a path around to the front into their holders before being released into the ring with a rider on top. After the ride, the bull is guided out on the left side of the small fenced in ring where the riders wait and out into the pen behind the building.... At least that is the plan.
He's a Blue Healer and he was awesome.
Young cowboy getting his gear ready for his upcoming ride.
I entered the confined ring and started making pictures as the riders prepared to start riding the bulls. There was a tiny puppy in the ring and that took up most my attention for a little while. Either way, I was shooting pictures of one of the younger riders getting his rope ready and all the sudden people were yelling and jumping all over the place. Apparently someone forgot to make sure the gates were chained together which allowed five angry bulls to bust through into the 'safe' area where the riders were getting prepared. As I looked left I saw three bulls running right at me. I ran across the area and leaped onto a large metal grate that riders climb up onto before lowering themselves down onto the bulls. I tried to make a few photos as soon as I was safe from the 5 pairs of horns that continually raced around the small area butting at anything that came near them.
The shutter was triggered as I ran across with the giant bulls chasing me down.
After I thought I was in a relatively safe position I turned and tried to make a few images of the bulls reeking havoc in the small 'safe' zone.
Bull runs full steam into the fence where guys scramble to the other side.
It was a very exciting experience and my heart was racing a little when it was all done. Luckily no one was injured, and who knows how, but the little puppy made it out unscathed also.
The little guy didn't even seem to mind after the whole ordeal was over.
What a great little kick to get the day going.
Thanks for looking,
Brad Vest
One cowboy was scared out of his boot.
Listening to: Chicago, Sufjan Stevens
Yesterday I had the chance to shoot a rodeo for the first time. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I definitely knew it would have its fair share of excitement. Turns out it was a little more exciting than I bargained for.
When I first got to the small rodeo I wandered around the outside took pictures and grabbed a coffee. I knew the best pictures would be in with the bull riding competitors that stay inside a fenced in area at one side of the large rodeo ring. The competitors enter the confined ring where they are safe from the large bulls, get dressed and prepared to mount the bulls. The bulls come in on the right side and follow a path around to the front into their holders before being released into the ring with a rider on top. After the ride, the bull is guided out on the left side of the small fenced in ring where the riders wait and out into the pen behind the building.... At least that is the plan.
He's a Blue Healer and he was awesome.
Young cowboy getting his gear ready for his upcoming ride.
I entered the confined ring and started making pictures as the riders prepared to start riding the bulls. There was a tiny puppy in the ring and that took up most my attention for a little while. Either way, I was shooting pictures of one of the younger riders getting his rope ready and all the sudden people were yelling and jumping all over the place. Apparently someone forgot to make sure the gates were chained together which allowed five angry bulls to bust through into the 'safe' area where the riders were getting prepared. As I looked left I saw three bulls running right at me. I ran across the area and leaped onto a large metal grate that riders climb up onto before lowering themselves down onto the bulls. I tried to make a few photos as soon as I was safe from the 5 pairs of horns that continually raced around the small area butting at anything that came near them.
The shutter was triggered as I ran across with the giant bulls chasing me down.
After I thought I was in a relatively safe position I turned and tried to make a few images of the bulls reeking havoc in the small 'safe' zone.
Bull runs full steam into the fence where guys scramble to the other side.
It was a very exciting experience and my heart was racing a little when it was all done. Luckily no one was injured, and who knows how, but the little puppy made it out unscathed also.
The little guy didn't even seem to mind after the whole ordeal was over.
What a great little kick to get the day going.
Thanks for looking,
Brad Vest
One cowboy was scared out of his boot.
Listening to: Chicago, Sufjan Stevens
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