6A / NEWS / WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2010 / THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN / KANSAN.COM
Amateur photographer has professional-looking work
BY NICOLAS ROESLER
nroesler@kansan.com
The bright gumballs of yellow, red, green and blue in mid-free fall will never land.
The reflections off these vivid candies were captured by a photo lens of marketing major Alan Ginsberg and now hang in a photo gallery in the Kansas Union.
Student Union Activities gave Ginsberg, a senior from Great Neck, N.Y., the opportunity to showcase his photography for the first time in his photographic career two weeks ago.
Yesterday he spoke about his collection, called "The Power of Light," in the Union gallery.
"What you can do with light is just so amazing." Ginsberg said.
Ginsberg bought a new digital single lens camera 18 months ago, and now, the photos he has taken on that camera are in a public gallery. He was interested in film prior to his experiments with photography, but found that his camera provided an easy transition into still photos.
He said there are two sides to his photography. The vision, passion and inspiration provide for some of his photos. But some were just taken because they look cool, according to Ginsberg.
"Sometimes there's just not much
CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
beeyond that," Ginsberg said.
He has not been professionally taught, and said he wouldn't really know what to say if a critic threw out a technical term about a lightning mistake he had made. He does, however, have professional photographic lights and a more than able camera. SUA cultural arts coordinator, Sara Milla, said they gave Ginsberg the gallery because of the professional appearance of his photographs.
"The fact that he has no training blows my mind," said Miller, a senior from St. Francis.
Leah Levy, a senior from Chicago, has worked with Ginsberg for a year on his photography. She said although they really do not have a process for lighting, Ginsberg usually has a vision in his head and somehow they achieve it.
With the falling gumballs, Ginsberg set up two lights on each side of a white bowl full of bright round candies. He then began dropping the gumballs, and somehow everything fell into place -- that photo has become one of the most popular in his gallery, he said.
"We set up one or two lights and see how that looks," Levy said. "We just experiment from there."
Four portraits of Kansas football player Rod Harris, Jr., wide receiver from Ryan, Texas, hang in one corner of the gallery. Ginsberg has
worked with Harris several times. Harris is an aspiring hip-hop artist who said that Ginsberg was enjoyable to work with and could have a future in photography if he chose.
"He knows what he wants," Harris said of Ginsberg. "You give him an idea and he can create it."
Ginsberg wants to pursue a career on the creative side of marketing. He said he was not sure if he would have another photo gallery, but he would continue his passion for photography. He said he keeps it fun by having a flighty ritual at each of his photo shoots in which he captures each of his subject mid-leap.
As if he wished that everyone he took pictures of were gumballs
"THE POWER OF LIGHT"
BY: Allen Ginsberg
WHEN: On display through
Friday, Oct. 1
WHERE: Gallery open 9
a.m. to 5 p.m.
Edited by Kelsey Nill
frozen in the air, he tells everyone after they've nailed the planned shot that there is only one thing left to do — "Now jump."
Alan Ginsberg, senior from Great Neck, New York, has an exhibit open at the Kansas Union. Ginsberg's exhibit, "The Power of Light," will be open for viewing until October 1st.
Sarah Hockel/KANSAN
Getting 'Gigue' with it
Justin Davidson, a senior from Tonganese, performs "Sarabande and digue" with an alto saxophone at a student rehearsal at Swarthout Recital Hall in Murray Hill. Davidson performed alongside fellow alto saxophone player, Zachary Bachary, a senior from Lawrence. Sunday night.
Chris Bronson/KANSAN
Gunman opens fire at UT
ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUSTIN, Texas — A student wearing a dark suit and a ski mask opened fire Tuesday with an assault rifle on the University of Texas campus before fleeing into a library and fatally shooting himself. No one else was hurt.
The shooting began near a fountain in front of the UT Tower — the site of one of the nation's deadliest shooting rampages more than four decades ago, when a gunman ascended the clock tower and fired down on dozens of people.
Within hours of Tuesday's gunfire, the school issued an all-clear notice, but the university remained closed, and the area around the library was still considered a crime scene.
"Our campus is safe." school President Bill Powers said.
Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo
expected the school to be "completely open and back to normal" by Wednesday morning.
Authorities identified the gunman as 19-year-old Colton Tooley, a sophomore
Before reaching the library, the gunman apparently walked for several blocks wearing a mask and dark clothing and carrying an automatic weapon, witnesses said.
about three hours after the campus shooting.
After the gunfire, authorities searched for a possible second shooter, but they eventually concluded the gunman acted alone. Confusion about the number of suspects arose because shots were fired in multiple locations, and officers received varying descriptions from witnesses, campus police Chief Robert Dahlstrom said.
The 50,000-student university had been on lockdown while officers with bomb-sniffing dogs carried out a building-by-building manhunt.
Construction worker Ruben Cordoba said he was installing a fence on the roof of a three-story
"I saw in his eyes he didn't care."
RUBEN CORDOBA Witness
building near the library when he looked down and made eye contact with the suspect.
math major. Police declined to speculate on his motive. Tooley's parents did not immediately respond to a message left by The Associated Press.
At his family's home in Austin, police investigators went in and out Tuesday afternoon carrying bags and boxes. There was no immediate word on what was in the containers. A neighbor said police arrived at the home
"I saw in his eyes he didn't care," Cordoba said. The gun.
man continued down the street, firing three shots toward a campus church, then changed direction and fired three more times into the air. Cordoba said.
A garbage truck driver leaped out of his vehicle and ran away, as did a woman carrying two babies, the construction worker said.
"I'm not scared, but I was scared for the people around me," Cordoba said.
Randall Wilhite, an adjunct law professor, said he was driving to class when he saw "students start scrambling behind wastebaskets, trees and monuments," and then a young man carrying an assault rifle sprinting along the street.
"He was running right in front of me ... and he shot what I thought were three more shots ... not at me. In my direction, but not at me." Wilhite said.
The professor said the gunman had the opportunity to shoot several people, but he did not.
Police said it was unclear whether the gunman was targeting anyone with the AK-47.
Oscar Trevino, whose daughter works on campus, said she told him she was walking to work near the library when she heard two shots behind her. She started to run and fell down. She said she later heard another shot.
"She's freaking out. I'm trying to calm her down. I've just been telling her I love her and relax, everything's fine," Trevino said.
Acevedo said officers were able to track the gunman's movements with the help of students who "kept pointing in the right direction."
The police chief said he believes the gunman ran into the library as officers closed in on him, then shot himself in the head on the sixth floor.
Police did not fire any shots,
Acevedo said.
In the middle-class Austin neighborhood where the Tooley family lives, the street was blocked off by yellow crime-scene tape Tuesday afternoon. Investigators were gathered in front of the home and could be seen coming out of a neighbor's house.
Powers credited the school's crisis-management plan and social networking for quickly warning students, faculty and staff. The university's text messaging system reaches more than 43,000 people, he said.
Laura Leskoven, a graduate student from Waco, said she was in a media management class when she received a text message from the university saying there was an armed person near the library. For the next 3½ hours, Leskoven and about 30 of her classmates sat in a locked conference room trying to keep tab on events through Twitter, blogs and text messages.
"We were kind of shocked." Leskoven said. "Our professor said, 'Well, we need to get upstairs' because we were on the first floor of the building."
Student Joshua Barajas said he usually is in the library in the mornings but was delayed Tuesday when he made a rare stop for coffee.