Team In Training

Hey everyone. I know this isn’t exactly what I have been using this blog for but I wanted to make sure everyone knows the huge undertaking I have embarked upon. I am training to run a half-marathon in Myrtle Beach Feb. 13th. I am running on behalf on the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

After everything my family has been through this summer I needed something to focus on. I needed to feel like I was making a difference and that I had some control over at least my own life a little bit. Losing my brother Andrew this summer was the worst thing that has ever happen to my family and now I am trying to help others eventually never have to lose a loved one to blood cancer too soon.

I know that Andrew didn’t leave us because of cancer but losing someone just the same hurts just as much. Please check out my fund raising Web site at www.tinyurl.com/katiemckay to make a donation or to just see how I am doing in my fund raising. Or follow my training blog at www.katiemckaytnt.wordpress.com
Thanks everyone!!

It’s all I’ve ever done, all I’ve ever know, I just wanna play one more show and make some music with my friends

So this is what I have started working on.  I have a bunch of cool pictures I took out at an old Junk Yard in Elgin South Carolina.  I have been playing with them I’m gonna try to put together a couple of print to stretch over some canvas.  I have two kinda “themes” goin on here these are the only ones I have played with yet.

Last Semester of Classes!!

Hey there everyone, sorry for the long delay in updating this.  I am back on track to keep this photo/portfolio blog up to date now so no worries you can check back every once in a while to see what I have been to up with my work.  In August I started my last semester of taught classes to receive my Masters in Mass Communication.  Now I will be on the hunt for a job.  My degree is basically the equivalent of an MBA but in the field of Communications instead of business.  And to be completely honest, I think (not being biased at all…) the Masters in Mass Communication is better because you get the best of both worlds.  I have had to do complete financial work ups for a company, we’ve learned about managing in just about every field, the management of resources, human and capital, I’ve had to put together complete campaigns for real clients, completed the research to be able to back up decisions made for those campaigns.  it is not just the administrative stuff that I have been trained, it’s the entire gamut of the business realm from the aspect of managing in that realm.  It’s really a great degree and if I were advising or mentoring someone about a Masters degree and they were leaning towards getting an MBA I would most certainly tell them to give a Masters in Mass Communications a serious look, it just doesn’t have the immediate recognition an MBA does, which is the problem.  It should and the better those of us who have M.M.C. degrees do the more easily recognised the degree will become.

~Katie

Final Video

I Finally finished my final photo series for my photovisual communications class.  Check it out on YouTube (search Holy Trinity Columbia, SC) while I work on getting it up on here. I don’t have a file form that I can get up on here right now but… look for it to come.

Check it out here: Holy Trinity  

My Big Fat Final Project

I have been shooting at the Greek Orthodox church for the last few weeks and it has been interesting.  The more I hung around the more open everyone became with me being around (duh!).  I was able to get shots of them practicing very intimate rituals of their faith, I was able to walk around in the church (a very small, not much extra room church) and shoot while the people (often in a packed house) went on about their business.  They seemed to take the practice of their faith very seriously.  many of them out whisper to me as I was shooting, “Do you know what’s going on?” and then they would tell me all about the service and what Father Michael was doing and what the significants of it was.  Everyone in the congregation was very accepting of me and really nice, great people and very open about talking to me and letting me document the traditions and practices of their faith.  Also, I wanted to get a little ‘taste’ of the  way Greeks celebrate their religious with each other and how Greek families celebrate together.

Here are some more pictures from the last few weeks…

The Final lap…comin’ ’round the bend

 

So there are only a few short weeks left in the semester and my first year in graduate school will thankfully be over and I will still be walking around with my head at least partially attached.  I thought that it would be fitting, since I didn’t last week, to post what I have been working on for my final presentation.  

These are only the first shots I took, I have been back three other times to shoot and I’ve gotten some really good shots, I just haven’t had a chance to sit down and go through them yet.

I took these are the Greek orthodox Church in Columbia, SC during a Sunday service.  I was looking to shoot the religion these people practice, the culture of being Greek.  There is a saying (of course created and perpetuated by Greeks and then made famous by the movie), ‘There are two kinds of people, Greeks, and those who want to be Greek.’  As a member of that group, I know this is true and I was looking to show things that are particular to these people and to this religious, its ancient background, tradition and practice.

Anywho… these are just a few of them.

Anyway, you get the ‘picture’ 

Let me know what you think.

Notes on the wild and wonderful things

I was looking through my fellow classmates blogs and came across lots of cool stuff and a bunch of interesting posts.  But a fav. of mine was Tyler’s post about the up coming maurice Sendak book turned movie, Where the Wild Things Are.  I love this book and really didn’t even realize that it was being turned into a movie.  Tyler linked to the apple site where a trailer and information about the movie is

and here is a link to his post where my comment is posted:  here

morphthing.com

So, I was working on a presentation for another class… does this sound familiar?

I was working on this project and I have been looking at the most crazy pictures in some of the scariest places on the internet (that contain clothed people) and i came across something that I don’t know if most people know about (as I am usually behind the curve on trendy new fun websites to waste your time on)…

it’s called morphthing.com

and its not only scary, its pretty hilarious…

Basically it takes two pictures celebrities or just about anything and anyone, even the Mona Lisa and Yoda and ‘morphs’ them into one picture to see what it would look like.  It’s scary because in most of them you can clearly and distinctly see both faces in the new picture. 

here is David Beckham and Elvis Pressley…

check it out… it’s pretty hilarious what you’ll find.

Of all the gin joints in all the world…

While doing research for another class presentation and project.  I came across this video.  It is about these two photographers who were charged with shooting the Presidential Inauguration on Jan. 20th.  They were shooting for a photo competition hosted by a group called Hasted Hunt, which is two photographers (Michael Bocchieri, senior photo editor at Getty images and Patrick G. Ryan a photojournalist) who every month host a, contest of sorts, for photographers to find a different point of view for different things, places, events and it is aptly named, “viewpoints’.

This is interesting because they showed a good number of both photographers images from that day and I got to look at them and hear their thought process behind how and why they shot what they did.  I gained a lot of insight, just from this short video, into exactly how I look when I am trying to decide one photo to choose and that thought of an outsider looking in who goes, “no choose the other one, the one you picked wasn’t nearly as good as the other.”  Much like in the Price is Right when everyone is shouting out which door to pick or what number to choose.  I thought that the photo the woman choose as her select was definately not her strongest.  it was also very insightful to be able to see and hear the judging process.  To hear what they had to say about each photographers body of work in general and their selected photo in particular was interesting.  To hear what they criticed and commented on.  What I agreed with them on and what I did not.  It was very interesting and impactful for such a short video.

A place in heaven is waiting for you…

…if you have the will power to not say anything to a couple who just stiffed you on $198 tab.

 

I shot these pictures for an assignment.  They are long exposure pictures during different times of day.  I wanted to work on capturing movement in my shots and to see what the different types of light did to those long exposures.  Soft light in the morning; harsh, really bright light during mid-day; then night time with only available light: street lights and head/tail lights.

The first two were taken on the campus of the University of South Carolina in the early morning.  Student were hurrying to get to their classes.

The second set were taken at Marion Square Park in Charleston, SC during the noon hour.  These two men were practicing a break dancing routine while a crowd people watched and took pictures.

The third set was taken in the Vista in downtown Columbia, SC during the late evening.