Trip-toe-van

Just some shots from my Thanksgiving. As I write this, my girlfriend is asleep on my bed, my sister is curled up under the covers of her bed watching episodes of Friends, and my parents are slowing passing out while watching a movie in their room..... Success I think, no?

The 'Rents

My sister

And yes, what is a Millbrook Thanksgiving without Millbrook wine??

Photos © Jason Lenhart

Final Project - The Wild Canid Center

My final project story for staff class at the Missourian is on the Wild Canid Center, in Eureka, MO. They are a canine conservation and rehabilitation center and house 5 species of endangered canines. Two species are currently being bred for reintroduction programs across the country. I spent a day photographing the wolves on Wednesday, and just got done with some video footage today. Thought I'd share some shots. Look for the final product in the coming week.

Mexican Grey Wolf

African Wild Dogs

Mexican Grey Wolf

Photos © Jason Lenhart

Fire Training

This has been my favorite assignment this semester so far. It got to attend a joint "man down" training exercise with Boone County and City of Columbia fire departments. They worked through several different scenarios and I got to be there with them for each one. A reporter was there to gather audio and it went up as a soundslides online. I've posted my favorites.

It was definitely the most challenging assignment as well. The building was pitch black so everything is lit with a strobe as well as blending with the ambient rays of light. I was nervous that I wouldn't be getting stuff cause my strobe skills are still in the works, but everything seemed to work out great and I had a blast doing it.

Photos © Jason Lenhart

Kansas City Zoo

As part of my Intro to Captive Wild Animal Management class, we had to take part in a "field experience". With the way my schedule worked, I signed up for the Kansas City Zoo trip. We got a little bit of the behind-the-scenes tour, but were mostly just ushered through the zoo rather quickly. Not a lot of time to sit and watch the animals, but oh well. I finally got to take some big glass (Nikon 300mm F/2.8) and, besides waking up really really early, had a pretty good day. I'm posting my 3 favorite.

Nature playing "hide-and-go-seek"

Photos © Jason Lenhart

Race and the Police - Published

My Race and the Police photo illustration was published today. We had a big conversation about it in my critique class. If you check my previous post, I posted the photo the way I envisioned it. An editor pitched the idea of cuffing together a black arm and white arm - I took that into the studio, added color for the "police" part, and got the image you saw before. However, when it came out today in print, the arms had been pulled off the background and put on a Black&White split backdrop. At first, I was upset to see my photo chopped up and my color completely left out, but after talking with my Director Of Photography, I understand why they did it.

Photo © Jason Lenhart for the Columbia Missourian

The reasoning was, that, with a black and white split backdrop like that, it made a more complete package. The way it came out on the front page, was a large, vertical spot, with opposite inverted text. It worked well as a package deal, whereas, if my color photo ran, not only would it have looked little off (color printing can be tricky - the blue may have come out a little purple), but it just would have been Headline - Photo - Text. I was upset about the whole ordeal for maybe about 5 minutes, then I got over it. Welcome to the world of Photo Illustrations.

Veteran's Day Parade

My latest assignment was the local Veteran's Day Parade in Columbia. The Missourian pulled 13 images that were put into a slide show. I've also attached another photo that I like that didn't make the cut.

Photo © Jason Lenhart

Also, this week I found out that I was chosen to participate in the News21 Fellowship. I was awarded $7500 to participate in a program that seeks to explore new and innovative ways of storytelling and presenting journalism to the public. I will find out my host school in the coming weeks, but have my hopes set on Maryland where I will partake in multimedia and environmental reporting in the Chesapeake Bay area.

Sun Dog

My father recently photographed, with his cell phone, the atmospheric phenomena called a Sun Dog, or more formally, a Parhelion. It is caused by the refraction of light high up in the atmosphere by hexagonal shaped ice crystals, usually in Cirrus clouds. You can read the wikipedia page for more and check out the google images for some really amazing images.

Photo © Jason Lenhart with permission from Scott Lenhart

Radiation Spill

I'll be honest. I was looking for spiders... and hoping one would bite me. But no such luck. I did however get to see my first Geiger counter in action. It was a minor spill of Phosphorous 32, but a cleanup was still required. You can read the story for more.

Race and Police

This is a photo illustration I did for a piece on "Race and the Police" in Columbia. Special thanks to Jarrad Henderson, Joel Kowsky, and Vivian Esparza for all their help. Special thanks to Josh Bickel who did some color retouching.

Photo Illustration © Jason Lenhart

Pink Hijab Day

Thanks to two of my good photo friends, I now have the ability to post photos MUCH larger than before. I blew up my last post to make sure it works, and it looks so much better. On that note, I'd thought I'd blog some photos from a recent assignment. It was Pink Hijab Day on Wednesday. The MU Muslim Student's Organization had a table outside Memorial Union promoting breast cancer awareness. They donned pink Hijabs in support, but it was also to help break down the stereotypes surrounding Muslim women. A representative from the group told me that they wore them to make people feel more comfortable and therefore more likely to approach them. You can check out a soundslides that ran in the Missourian here. I'm posting a few here to take advantage of my new larger format.