While working in my archive, I felt like these two images went well together. So, I did a quick diptych in Adobe Lightroom.

On the left, 5,000 revelers take to San Diego’s Mission Bay during Floatopia. On the right, a fundraising dinner at a home on Country Club Drive in La Jolla.

I’ve kept up taking photos and tweeting up a storm about the #OccupyWallStreet protest down in the Financial District for class in my graduate journalism program. The protests have been going on since September 17th and as far as I can tell this sustained overnight occupation is first of its kind in Lower Manhattan.

The good folks (hiii Bokeen and Miz Chartreuse) of Consumption Junction got in touch and interviewed me for their show about the protests to get a reporters take on it. Check out the podcast.

It was a pain, writing out an attack plan and then another essay analyzing “my approach to photography.” As hard as the writing turned out to be, the winnowing of photos was even harder.

Last year when I took classes at ICP, I did a small business project on my friend Annie’s farm. The farm is the first of its kind, a green roof where the soil is on the actual roof, not planters. Annie and her farm (and chickens) with its view of the Manhattan skyline have gotten a lot of attention. They are all one shots, though, and usually the same photo again and again. For this urban agriculture grant, I would be doing a very careful case study of the 3rd growing season (at least through December). I’ve already started shooting and I’ll do it whether I get the grant or not, but some extra dough and encouragement couldn’t hurt.

I use to go to the farm to clear my mind and refused to take photos at the beginning of the 2nd growing season. Now I curse the time lost. I had to cut my 300 starred photos to 7, so I sent 15 of my favorites to Will. He graciously cut it down to nine, leaving me to only kill two of my babies. Here is Will’s selection (the rabbit and planting photos are what got the ax from me).

Different images are there for different reasons. Some I simply admire, some I am inspired by, others I like but want to improve upon. These images are a mix of all three. I don’t know the photographer of these, as not all tumblrs care so much about photo credits.

I have a tumblr, too, but its all my stuff so hopefully attribution happens.

Despite the load and the sickness, I enjoyed shooting fashion week…unless their was a celebrity front row. I’m not even talking Madonna level A-list types. It could be sex tape stars and I’m bemoaning what humiliation I know I’m about to go through to get a shot that may or may not sell to some glossy rag for some piddling sum that I don’t see any of at all. While I am not the only woman photographer out and about, there are quite a few more 250-pound ruthless men to contend with over these celebrities. There is one gorilla in particular from Just Jared who I made my nemesis (in my own head at least), giving me a foil to bring up the entertainment during the lulls.

Most interestingly to me, i noticed that street style photographers are becoming a force onto themselves. Of course the mainstays like The Satorialist and Bill Cunningham were creeping around inside and outside the shows; but outside there was a gauntlet of photographers to walk through when either coming or going. They eagerly looked over attendees to see if any style was worthy of their respective blogs. Sometimes they were just interested in shoes, sometimes the whole look, sometimes they got names and what designer the subject was wearing.

So, not only do I have to contend with being one of the shortest, heaviest and least dressed up females backstage, I started to get a complex when no one stopped me for a photo. I ended up dressing up a bit, but as its February and as a child of the subtropic winters, I just couldn’t manage anything spectacular. September’s fashion week I’m making it a goal for one of the Japanese photo bloggers to stop me. I’ll also do a better job at documenting this 2nd economy that has sprung up outside the main fashion week events. It will be warmer.

Currently my New York Fashion Week photo essay on my site looks like this. I’ve shuffled a few in from this past fashion week, but here are a few more.

This fishing derby came a day after these photos of the Little Balkans Festival. It took place at Lakeside Park, and though the “lake” is quite scenic it is really just an artificial pond.

Sophie Allison Chapman competes in the Little Balkans Days fishing derby, Sep. 5, 2010.

See any themes? HMMMMM? HMMM?

Apparently, I’m big into obscuring faces and hands. I bring these images to class and get great feedback, things that tweak how I look at my work and style. Like the black and white photo of Hugh holding his head in his hands. While the lighting was very interesting on the chair when it was empty, it’s totally messy after adding him. Alison held up some jury-rigged frames, cropping it much closer and cleaning up the shot.

This last assignment is particularly close to my heart. I roused my usually slumbering roommate at 9 a.m., disheartened by the overcast skies. I had imagined the photo with crispy, fluffy clouds, putting my sleepwalker character totally out of place. The light, however, turned out to be perfectly iridescent and wonderful. Greg was a total trooper, standing out in the cold, doing my bidding. We typically shoot with a magazine layout already designed, an additional level of “visual thinking for magazines” or, as I like to call it, how I need to hold my camera vertical more often. I didn’t have time to print this second photo for class critique, but maybe it will make it out for the last class as I do like it an awful lot.

Developed (and still used) for dental photography, it is light that surrounds the lens and typically used for macro photography (hence, the toothy origins). Ring lights produce a distinct light with minimal shadows except for a halo-like one that fashion photographers like to use.

You can see it here in all its round glory when the subject is a little off-centered.

I considered renting this little ring light, but it wouldn’t have fit over the lens I wanted to use so I was stuck with this beast:

Thankfully, the power pack was battery-charged, allowing me to take it around my Ithaca adventures. My hosts, fellow photographers, Celia Talbot Tobin and Danny Ghitis, we’re the perfect hosts for a photographer needing to get out of the city for a bit and get some shots. We shoved it in a backpack and I tricked friends into carrying the not-particularly-light battery pack, creating an umbilical cord between friends. Taking it on outdoor adventures is not the particularly best use for this type of flash, but I already know from working on set what it can do in staged settings.

The light is quite powerful and needed to be dialed down to its minimum in many occasions.

It cut short a few hikes and missed a few others, but I think I got the hang of it. Eventually.

Side note, I always thought the phrase “Ithaca is Gorges” was ripping on a regional accent. I get it now.

I think next up is the Q flash.