Maxwell Kruger Photography

This year, I covered THON in a unique way: from the catwalks. Last year, I got some really cool shots from going high up in the stands of the Bryce Jordan Center arena, but this year, I worked with some folks at the BJC to get some cameras up into the catwalks above. I’ve been placing remote cameras up there for basketball games, so this was not much different, other than the amount of cameras I used.

(Nikon D2Hs, 10.5 mm, 1/50, f/2.8, ISO 640)

In total, I covered THON with a total of 6 cameras, all doing totally different things. I had two cameras hooked up in the catwalks as straight remotes; one with a fisheye to cover the entire arena, and one with a 70-200 pointed directly down to get a tight overhead shot. I also had two handheld cameras that I used when I walked around the floor. The next two cameras are the cool ones.

The final sit down at the end of the 46 hours, shot with my overhead remote at 70mm.

(Canon EOS 40D, 70mm, 1/160, f/4, ISO 800)

On the Thursday before THON, I set up a camera connected to a borrowed friend’s laptop to record a timelapse of the entire thing, starting at the end of the basketball game that Thursday night to load out on Sunday evening. The computer was scheduled to take a photo every 30 seconds for the entire period to be later strung into a movie. The next day after the basketball game, on Friday before THON started, we were able to lower the scoreboard and attach a camera to the bottom with my 17mm lens. Since the scoreboard is directly centered in the arena, I figured it would get really cool shots from above with a wide angle lens. I couldn’t attach a laptop to the camera, so I used an intervalometer (TC-80N3) to record a photo every minute.

Both timelapse captures turned out extremely well and produced very entertaining videos. I am still working on the final cuts of the videos and will hopefully release them sometime this or next week.

I also photographed my friend Dan‘s band, Lowjack, who were lucky enough to play the opening set of the weekend.

(Nikon D300, 10mm, 1/125, f/4, ISO 1600)

Hit the jump for more images.

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I finally was able to set up some cool overhead remotes for Men’s Basketball yesterday for the game against Wisconsin. I set the camera up on Friday with the help of Ed. We woke up early and climbed up into the catwalk of the BJC, hauling up a bunch of mounts, cameras, and lenses. I wasn’t sure what focal length or camera would be good to use, so I brought an assortment of lenses and cameras to try. What worked best was my 40D with the 70-200 2.8 at around 175mm.

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 17mm, 1/100, f/4, ISO 3200)

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 50mm, 1/30, f/2, ISO 3200)

I attached the camera to a Bogen Magic Arm and Super Clamp and clamped it to a pipe in the rafters. After pointing it down and framing the shot, I had Ed get on a ladder right by the basket and I focused it using Live View. Shots came out pretty good. It really provides a totally different view of the game from above.

(Canon EOS 40D, 168mm, 1/800, f/2.8, ISO 1600)

The game was pretty bad, we ended up losing after playing really badly in front of 14,000 fans. Catch more photos of the game after the break.

(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 17mm, 1/125, f/4, ISO 1600)

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It took me a lot of time, but I finally finished the majority of my photo stuff from Peru. I still have a lot of panoramas to stitch together, but I’ll do that when I’m bored – probably over the summer.

(Canon EOS 40D, 17mm, 1/40, f/4, ISO 800)

I carried a GPS receiver with me throughout the trip which logged everywhere we went (usually, depending on if it could get reception).

Similar to my European trip this summer, I combined the photos and GPS data into a Google Maps application. This time, it is enhanced with photos, GPS, my trip journal, and a new interface. Sorry, no Internet Explorer – it just doesn’t work in that browser.

home.maxwellkruger.com/Peru08

My photos are accessible in a gallery: http://photos.maxwellkruger.com/Travel/Peru/

Peru

(Canon EOS 40D, 17mm, 1/160, f/4, ISO 400)

People of Peru

(Canon EOS 40D, 135mm, 1/800, f/2.8, ISO 200)

Inca Trail

(Canon EOS 40D, 17mm, 13, f/5, ISO 800)

Inca Trail: The Porters

(Canon EOS 40D, 50mm, 1/50, f/1.8, ISO 800)

Lake Titicaca and Jungle

(Canon EOS 40D, 135mm, 1/160, f/2, ISO 1600)

So I was playing around with this software called SPi-V. It’s a web-based, video-accelerated engine for viewing panoramic images. I loaded in one of the panoramic images I shot this past spring in Arizona, from Monument Valley. After some Photoshop work to get the edges to line up, I was able to create a cool little page to display the huge image (over 19 megapixels after resizing to a workable resolution) in an interactive manner. You can see Dan shooting pictures of The Thumb if you look close enough. Check it out.

(It requires Adobe Shockwave which can be downloaded for free here: http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/)

I got back from Europe about a month ago…it’s been a long time coming with the photos but I’m finally done. Below the jump are some photos and the full album from the trip is at photos.maxwellkruger.com/Travel/European-Delivery-2008/.

We started in Munich, went east to Freiburg, to visit Chris and Berni at the university there, then went down through eastern Switzerland and also hit up Austria and Italy. Then we got news that we could visit Chateau Miraval, the Chateau that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are renting out and going to buy for $70M, if we could make it down to the south of France by the next morning. We drove through the night, got a few hours of sleep, and visited the next day. Did wine tasting and also got a tour of the studio there that such albums as Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Rammstein’s Mutter were recorded. Got to listen to the albums in the same space they were originally recorded! Then we headed down to Cannes and Nice and spend two days there, each. On the last day, we took 3 hours before we had to turn the car in and drove the Col de Turini. Amazing road, wish that we had spent more time on it!

I carried a small GPS receiver with me which recorded the route. I’ve downloaded the trip files and wrote a little web app to see the route that we took. Check it out here – home.maxwellkruger.com/europeandelivery/. If you turn on high detail, you can actually zoom in and see to the foot exactly where we were at most stages of the trip. If it’s running too slow for you, try to turn down the detail. Also, this means that most of the photos are geotagged so if you open them up in the gallery, you can view them on a map.

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