Mike Hoff Photo

My Canon 85mm f/1.8 lens is one of my favorite lenses; it is sharp, fast, and the focal length is perfect for many applications. I bought it to shoot basketball with and it performed above and beyond my expectations with that, but now that I graduated from college I haven’t used it much, which is a shame for such a great lens. I essentially slapped on my Sigma 17-70 walk around lens and never looked back. Yeah I employed my 70-200 every now and then but, I did change lenses much.

The other day I realized just how underused the 85mm had become, I couldn’t remember the last time that I had taken a picture with it. I made a pledge to myself that I would use it for my 365 picture that day and that I would utilize it more often, maybe for some portrait work down the line.

As soon as I put the lens on my 40DI felt more inspired, something had changed and I had to adapt my shooting to it. I had fallen into a rut and my photos had suffered because of it. I hope to never reach that point again and to always try something new, be it a different lens, a different camera, or a new way of shooting. Art requires experimentation.

A few weeks ago my Photography professor informed the class that our admissions office was looking for photographs of the campus to display in their office. Three images would be selected, framed, and displayed. About two weeks before he told us about this I had taken a photo that I thought would work for the contest, so I submitted it and waited to see what would happen.

Last week sometime my professor informed me that my photo had been selected and printed rather large, 20×30 inches. The photos were hung late last week and I went to see it today. I can now say that I have art on display somewhere and that I actually contributed something to my campus during my four years. I think it is really cool, and I’m probably tooting my own horn but this is a first for me.

Took some pictures of some friend’s cars today. HDR done to the max, but you gotta give the people what they want.

For my Photo 100 class one of our assignments is to matte and frame a picture that we used for a previous assignment. A 4×6 is required but bonus points are awarded for 5×7 and 8×10 images. I decided to use my HDR picture of the Reading Pagoda and print it out at 8×10 (after cropping). I picked up a nice matte and frame at Michael’s (50%off too!). This is my first nicely matted and framed picture, going to have to do more. I love the way it looks and I like the idea of having my pictures hanging in my apartment.