The Web site of photographer Michael Robinson Chavez -- note the lack of any navigation without having to scroll down.

Michael Robinson Chavez currently works for the Los Angeles Times, but I first became familiar with his work several years when he was a staff photographer for The Washington Post. He is probably best known for his international photojournalism and conflict coverage. Chavez was also awarded a POYi Award of Excellence for Newspaper Photographer of the Year in 2008.

His personal website is cleanly designed, with a very simple layout. The homepage contains a brief “news” section, and one image, which changes upon a refresh.

The Web site’s navigation scheme is organized rather unusually, at least for a newspaper photojournalist. It is set up for sections pertaining to geographic locations, rather than by categories describing the types of photos. The Web site is entirely built around stories and location-specific galleries — there are no single, standalone images, and no single “portfolio” section. This is obviously a personal choice, as Chavez has a large body of work from around the world to display, and he clearly wants to portray/market himself as a global documentarian, but I’d still like to be able to glance at a “best of” section. Lastly, other than a (very) brief overview of each story or gallery, there are no captions with any photos. I have a pretty big issue with this, as I’d really like to know what’s going on in some  of these photos when it’s not really clear who’s shooting at who or why someone is crying, yelling, or bloodied. For a documentary photojournalist, it just seems kind of lazy to not have any context.

I like how each gallery can be viewed from a thumbnail perspective, or with large, individual images. However, it took a while to find “Next” and “Previous” buttons to navigate back and forth. Even on a 1440×900-pixel screen with a fully expanded window, I had to scroll down to navigate. This drawback could be solved by making individual pictures links that would direct backward and forward. Additionally, I don’t like the transition/wipe effect when flipping through photos; it takes too long and is distracting.

One final critique is that I wish the page titles visible in the URL address bar were actually informative and content-specific, rather than a jumbled mess of alphanumerics and punctuation. I realize this is usually a product of using a CMS as a backbone, but there are still ways to customize it, and steps should be taken to do so. A pet peeve? Probably, but I notice it nonetheless.

Missouri forwards Keith Ramsey and Laurence Bowers walk off the court following the Tigers' 63-53 loss to the Wildcats at Bramlage Coliseum in Manhattan, Kan., on Feb. 27.

I think a lot of people were hoping the rematch of Missouri and Kansas State wouldn’t turn out to be as ugly as the game in Columbia on Jan. 9. If you were one of those people, you were probably pulling your hair out last night. If you want to get technical, last night’s 43 fouls were less than the 56 whistled in Columbia, but does it honestly even matter at that point? K-State had nearly three times as many free-throw attempts (34) to the Tigers’ 13. Both teams’ shooting percentages were in the toilet at under 33% for the entire game – in fact, the Wildcats managed to open the game by making 2 of 22 field goal attempts and STILL managed to be tied at the half.

Most frustrating for Missouri, despite all their mistakes and defensive lapses, this game was probably entirely winnable up until about a minute to play, when they were down only  five but had a few bad breaks and unlucky turnovers. Did they deserve to win? Absolutely not, but it would have been a great feeling to escape the Octagon of Doom with a win, no matter how cheap.

Speaking of the Octagon (officially known as Bramlage Coliseum), a point of discussion during my trip to Manhattan with Chris and Missourian basketball beat writers Alex Ruppenthal and Brian Nordli was the atmosphere and dynamic at other college basketball arenas in the Big 12 compared to Mizzou Arena. Having experienced games at Kansas and Kansas State, and watched televised games from every other arena, I have to agree with their verdict that Mizzou Arena frankly sucks as a basketball venue when put up against the likes of Allen Fieldhouse, Bramlage, Gallagher-Iba, and I’m sure everywhere else, too. There is absolutely nothing unique or special about Mizzou Arena. Sure, it’s big, new, and shiny and can get a little loud. But intimidating? Awe-inducing? Heck no. Missouri has proven to be a very difficult to beat at home over the last couple seasons, but I really think that has more to do with the teams on the court than the crowds or arena itself.

Now, for the positives:

• I finally had complete 100% success with my remotes! New cord worked great, and I got more usable remote shots than ever before.
• We should beat Iowa State on Wednesday.

Columbia resident Justin Butts smokes a cigar prior to the True/False Film Festival's annual March March parade.

It’s not every day a clown will tap you on the shoulder and ask for help buttoning his collar, but that’s what this guy did. I gladly helped, chatted for a minute, then snapped a couple photos.

I wanted to shoot something today, so I planned my evening to make sure I’d be able to catch part of the annual parade/street romp/bizzarro-fest that happens every year during Columbia’s True/False Film Festival. Film Festivals aren’t exactly my thing, and in three years I’ve never made it to a show or ventured to check out the parade. I’m glad I finally did. Clowns, dancing gorillas, brass bands, Teletubbies, and general weirdness are the perfect recipe for awesome photos. It’s almost cheating.It seemed like almost every photographer friend I know was there as well, and I can’t wait to see everyone else’s pictures too. Chris has some on her blog, and Will’s are in a Missourian slideshow.

MU photojournalism student Paul Mossine.

I enjoyed being in the studio, but didnʼt quite come away with the results I had planned for. I didnʼt have much of a problem with using the power packs, I understood the ratios and knew which lights I wanted to have more or less power. My biggest problems came with the actual positioning of the lights themselves, and getting interesting poses. My partner, Paul, seems like a really laid-back guy, so I tried to catch him in his natural state, sometimes taking photos just during conversation and when heʼd pause or glance away. He also had a harmonica and sunglasses in his backpack, which we played with as props. Heʼs really into music, but doesnʼt really know much harmonica — still, it was fun to use as a prop, and I really wish I could have gotten better lighting on some of those photos.

In my multiple light setup, I used a soft box and the beauty dish, placed above my model. I was having a hard time aiming and focusing the beauty dish light, and getting enough light onto my subjectʼs face. I ran into the “raccoon eye” problem — and countered that by having him turn up slightly towards the light, as in my select.

In my multiple light select, I have the soft box positioned to the left and slightly behind my subject, but in other outtakes, I had the soft box to the left and slightly in front of my subject. Even in these cases, I still had a hard time getting acceptable catchlights in the eyes, I think because I had the soft box aimed too high, and not level with the subject.

I controlled the background (grey drop) by having my subject move away from it towards the camera. I experimented with a blue-gelled background light in some shots.

For my single light setup, I used a soft box positioned camera left, and a gold reflector on the right.

Overall, I felt kind of rushed and only had about 30 minutes for both setups and shoots, and I wish we would have had a chance to reshoot, but my subject couldnʼt fit a time into his schedule. I feel I learned about what not to do, and certainly know how to correct and rectify the problems I encountered.

Great game tonight — everything that needed to happen did, with the exception of Justin Safford landing hard on his knee and barely being able to walk. Hope todays MRI isn’t as bad as the fall looked in person.

I’m still having some problems with my remote setup, and I finally figured out why. Looks like a broken pre-trigger cable, but thanks to the awesome customer service at Flash Zebra, I’ll have a replacement in just a couple days, well in advance of next Saturday’s HUGE season finale against Kansas.

Finally, it was probably the last time this year we’ll see Steve Moore, Tyler Stone, John Underwood, and Jarrett Sutton on the court at the same time. Definitely a feel-good highlight.

Kim English led Missouri in scoring with 18 points to help the Tigers beat the No. 15 Longhorns.

Chocolate covered strawberries: easy to make, delicious to eat.

After Chris and I made angel food cake for the Super Bowl last week, we had five strawberries left over. I made a chocolate sauce and dipped them and they were wonderful. The only problem was that there were only five. Solution? Buy a fresh package of strawberries and dip them all.

Wanna do it yourself? Combine and melt over very low heat:

• two or three one-ounce semi-sweet baking chocolate squares (or chocolate chips)
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon butter

Stir constantly until the chocolate is completely melted and smooth. Take off the heat, and wait until the chocolate is cool enough to touch, but still melted enough to drip freely off a spoon or spatula. Dip strawberries, place onto a flat surface, and chill. Wait 15 or minutes, then eat.

And yes, Alex, yours look better!

Missouri swimmer Jordan Hawley competes in the 50-meter freestyle preliminary on Saturday at the Missouri Grand Prix. Hawley did not qualify for a finals heat.

U.S. National Team member Eric Shanteau comes up for a breath in the 200-meter breaststroke. Shanteau won two gold medals Saturday, in the 200-meter breaststroke, and 200-meter individual medley.

Photographing swimming has a tendency to get a little repetitive and monotonous when you’re doing it for six hours a day. If you aren’t really aware of what you’re doing, every photo you take will pretty much look like a head bobbing in and out of water. With that in mind, I took my time today to try and get something different. Now, I’m sure both of these photos have been shot before, but they aren’t something you’ll get everyday.

Now that I’ve gotten clean stock photos of pretty much every major swimmer competing, I hope to spend my final day at the pool tomorrow looking more for features and even more unique compositions.

The Boston Globe’s photo section is probably one of the best examples of excellent use of photography on the Web. The layout is well-organized, with a main Flash slider to choose from eight featured galleries, and a column layout of other photo galleries and blogs. Content is clearly labeled as being photographed by staff photographers, or from wire services. There are also links to archives of all photo galleries and multimedia stories.Content is current, and appears to be updated frequently. At this point, I’d probably be downplaying or no longer featuring “Best of 2009” features – hopefully these will be replaced by something else soon.

I experienced no navigation issues or dead links. The site is intuitively designed to maximize screen space, and fits naturally into the overall look of the Boston Globe Web site.

One thing the Boston Globe does better than most anyone is show photos big. REALLY big. It started with the “Big Picture” blog, but almost every photo gallery and video can be viewed full screen. With today’s technology (faster Internet speeds, larger resolution monitors) this is much more feasible than even a couple years ago, and the experience is incredible.

There are even links to biographies and portfolios of individual photographers–a feature that I’d personally like to see implemented by more newspapers to help readers get to know the staff better.

The design elements on this page, while well-suited for a newspaper, would not be ideal for a personal or portfolio site. There is so much content that a lot of vertical scrolling is required. Also, there are so many thumbnail links to galleries and features that it’s hard for them to stand out individually. For a portfolio site, navigation and clarity of content (which usually entails editing down to feature only the highest quality material) would definitely take precedent over the “show it all” approach of the Boston Globe.

Missouri swimmer Rachel Ripley, right, waits on the pool deck behind Trojan Swim Club member Keri Hehn prior to the 100-meter breaststroke championship final of the Missouri Grand Prix. Ripley placed fourth, with a time of 1:11.5.

Back to sports…for a couple days. This weekend is the fourth-annual Missouri Grand Prix, and my third year shooting the competitive meet. For the second year in a row, Michael Phelps is absent from the pool at the MU Student Recreation Complex, this time due to a snowstorm which kept him in Baltimore. Despite some spectators turning around at the door upon finding out of Phelps’ situation, attendance this year (in my entirely unofficial estimation) seems generally higher so far than last, but nowhere near what it was in 2008 – being an Olympic year, almost the entire U.S. National Team was competing along with other international stars.

I didn’t get much of a chance to shoot today because of other obligations, but expect a full photo gallery sometime later this weekend!