Navy Chief selectees have a holiday field day… at the Salvation Army Veterans and Family Center

First class petty officers and chiefs from Navy Operational Support Center Portland participate in a field day at a Salvation Army Veterans and Family Center as part of a CPO 365 event. CPO 365 is a year-round training initiative that Chiefs Messes throughout the Navy take on to prepare first class petty officers to become chiefs.

Photo by Michael D. Winter

 

Some of you may or may not know that I spent a number of years right out of high school serving in the Navy. It was an experience I’ll never forget and always cherish. My official job title was “Photographers Mate” which was to basically document daily life in the Navy. There were plenty of times where I’d go down into an engineering space, deep into the pits of the USS Kitty Hawk CV-63 and take some photos of the guys working, checking valves and dials and whatnot. They always looked so tired and haggard, like an extra in The Walking Dead! It was times like that when I’d think to myself, “thank GOD I didn’t pick THAT job!”

During the recent holiday season I got wind that some new Navy Chief selectees were organizing a trip to the Salvation Army Veterans and Family Center to give it a good old fashioned FIELD DAY cleaning! A lot of these centers are run by older volunteers and it really is hard for the minimal staff to keep up on a lot of the daily cleaning and maintenance issues. This was a perfect opportunity for the Chief selectees to give back to their community.

I was requested to tag along and document the event to provide some news worthy images.

Now for some technical talk.

My style is photojournalistic. I always strive to produce imagery that would look like it was going into a National Geographic article. That means telling a story with images, and you need to have a beginning, middle, and end.

I used 2 lenses – a kit lens 17-35, and a 50mm 1.8 on an old Nikon D50 crop sensor camera. This is not a very desirable kit, but I learned from the Navy to make due with what I got. It’s not good enough to print but it’s good enough for web output, and that was the goal: social media.

I tried to capture some establishing shots with the group gathering around making a game plan, then handing out the cleaning supplies, gettin’ down n dirty, then wrapping up and heading out. It’s not perfect and I could’ve grabbed some different type of shots to tell the story easier but it works. And that’s the goal.

My favorite Portland band: MACHINE

 

I’ve known Eric for years now, ever since the days of wrenching on our air-cooled Volkswagens together in Anacortes, Washington… Ahhh, bloody knuckles and whiskey gingers. Anyway…

They were luck enough to hop a ride down to SXSW this year, but before they left I was able to catch them during an in-studio performance at KBOO, and as always, I brought my camera.

Machine is Portland duo Madeline Mahrie & Eric Stopke. Their blend of heavy rhythms and fuzzed out piano create a sound that grabs your attention until the last notes ring out from her Marshall stack. This Machine kills eardrums… Wear earplugs.

If you’re a fan of doom-folk songstress Chelsea Wolfe, or garage punk rock legend-in-the-making Teri Gender Bender, you WILL LOVE THIS BAND.

http://www.facebook.com/Iammachine

(If you look closely you’ll see Hopeless Jack & the Handsome Devil hangin’ out…  They’re another AMAZING Portland band!)

Vivian Maier – Her Discovered Work

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It’s funny how inspiration takes form… People, places, sounds, and in this case, a youtube video I stumbled across.

Check out this awesome story. It inspired me to go out and shoot medium format film, of people and places, and stick the undeveloped rolls of film in a shoebox under my bed for a few years until I can afford to get them developed… 🙂

But seriously, this is a great story. Click the image above to jump to the link.

“Vivian Maier was a nanny and a street photographer from the 1950s – 1990s. Vivian’s work was discovered at an auction here in Chicago where she resided most of her life. Her discovered work includes over 100,000 mostly medium format negatives (90% of her work), thousands of prints, and countless undeveloped rolls of film.”

The Buckles

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The Buckles are (l-r) Pete Wolfe, Willard Bethje, Rusty Blake, and Harley James.

Portland, Oregon band The Buckles brand their music as Bakersfield-Liverpool, performing hard-core twang right out of the playbooks of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.

I was asked by my friend and steel player of The Buckles, Mr. Harley James (yes, that’s his real name…) to take some band photos. I had been to his house before and fell in love with his music room! Stepping into that room is like going through a time-warp… A mid-century modern lovers dream!

Basically I took shots of 3 different setups, working the subjects to get expressions, good composition and pose. No fancy lighting either. Just a strobe bounced off the ceiling and adjusting the throw accordingly.

The Buckles

The Buckles

The Buckles

The Buckles

Going on tour? Bring your camera.

Josh Roberts and the Hinges

The thing that makes me nervous about bringing my camera on tour is the obvious: “What if?” What if someone breaks into our van and steals it? What if I get too drunk, set it down somewhere, forget about it, and lose it? The truth of it is: These are all SERIOUS reasons and will likely happen, so be mindful of your sh!t!

On tour I carry a Nikon D50 with a kit lens and a 50mm 1.8 lens. It’s not a full frame and the higher ISO settings SUCK. I work around this problem by using a mono pod. Best investment EVER. It’s super handy for minimizing camera shake, and I use it a lot to get different perspective. Example: Get your exposure setting where you want it, set the swivel (if your mono pod is equipped) to the approximate angle to get the coverage you need, set the timer, hit the shutter, stick that puppy up in the air and hold it steady till it clicks. Then take a look…  Might take some trial and error, but you will get some really cool perspective shots that you wouldn’t get otherwise.