Mark E. Johnson [ • ] Photojournalist

Can you tell I park next to a line of abandoned railroad cars?

Okay, they’re not really abandoned. There’s a lightly used rail line at one edge of the parking lot and beyond it is a student apartment complex. The students have a bad habit of cutting across the tracks, into the parking lot and off to campus. So a year or two ago the railroad company decided old, rusting boxcars would stop them from trespassing.

It did, for a few days. Then the students opened up the boxcars and built steps on both sides. Honest. Wish I had that photo …

Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi, Tamron 28-75 mm f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/80, f/5.0

I know, I know … but, you see, classes started … and then the committee meetings started … and then the disease epidemic at home started … and, really, I have been making frames. They just haven’t made it through the FireWire or USB connections.

Until now … so, um, here’s sort of what my life has felt like for the last few weeks.

I redid the syllabus for my intro course and am teaching a new course that’s half photo/half design, but the first two weeks overlap a bit. So they both got a new assignment – Nouns and Verbs. And since one class is using a new camera that I haven’t shot with, I decided I should shoot this assignment. Twice. Similar subject, two different cameras, same lens model (one brand new, one five years old), 24 hours apart. Color saturation in the newer camera is pretty intense, but I think the auto white balance was playing games … should really shoot them in raw and process equally, see what happens.

Anyway – twisted chain link with a railroad backdrop for you …

Canon EOS Digital Rebel, Tamron 28-75 mm f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/640, f/2.8

Canon EOS Digital Rebel, Tamron 28-75 mm f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/320, f/4.0

Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi, Tamron 28-75 mm f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/60, f/8.0

Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi, Tamron 28-75 mm f/2.8, ISO 400, 1/60, f/8.0

And, I have to say … that bokeh, for an inexpensive lens, ain’t that bad.

Yes, it seems to be … thank you to Andrew Jaswa for making this work.

We took a weekend trip out to Stone Mountain, primarily to see the laser show and also as an end-of-summer camping trip. (All through the show, I kept wondering if Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis ever thought they’d be memorialized by laser cartoons dancing to Little Richard and Ray Charles …)

Made for some eerie scenes as there was a lot of humidity hanging in the air, so the laser showed up nicely. Brutal to make a photo of if you don’t bring the right gear …

Canon G10, 15.7 mm, ISO 200, 1/50, f/3.5