Each of these deserve a blog post on their own. This is what I’ve been doing this week.
Promo shoot for a new salsa band, Lo’ Rumbero’. These are the vocalists.
Vernon Hairston @ Creekside Blues & Jazz Festival
Long Tall Deb & The Drifter Kings @ Creekside Blues & Jazz Festival
The horn section of Capital Sound @ Creekside Blues & Jazz Festival
The lead singer for Capital Sound @ Creekside Blues & Jazz Festival
More on each of these later.
This past weekend we had a party for my 40th birthday. Weeks ahead of the party, we started thinking about how to celebrate the milestone. I started thinking about how to have someone as the “designated” photographer and even contacted a few folks about the potential for hiring them. This was a bit of a conundrum for me–he or she had to be someone who was a reasonably skilled photographer, but was not immediate family or friend who would have been invited as a guest. Oh, and my budget for this role was pretty scant. I could think of three people who fit this bill and I contacted two of them–both declined because they had conflicts. I’m not really sure why I never contacted the third.
When the day of the party arrived, I decided to relinquish control of the camera to the rest of the party-goers. Most of the guests are well aware of my photography habit, and I figured would not touch our camera without explicit permission. So I attached a piece of tape to the neck strap with the words “Please use me” written on both sides. There, permission granted. I set the camera on auto, put the 18-55mm kit lens on it, left it on a table with lens cap off, and trusted it to family and friends.
Now that’s not to say that I didn’t take any pictures. I took a few, especially of details that I was pretty sure others wouldn’t think to capture, such as the dragon cake that a neighbor made for me.
Interestingly, I don’t really care for this picture, and I think I’ll blame it on the fact that I had the camera in auto mode, and I made that a constraint of my own picture taking. I might have been able to compose this picture more effectively and left the camera in auto, but I was in a “snapshot” mentality and let that effect the quality of the shot.
I also took a picture that was completely unique to my perspective at the party–cakes in front of me and most of the assembled crowd ready to sing happy birthday to me.
I just could not resist taking this picture–most birthday pictures are from the crowd’s perspective as the celebrant blows out the candles. I wanted to capture the moment from the other side of the cake (no candles–too many for fire code).
There were some interesting technical problems for some folks who weren’t accustomed to using a dSLR. The most noticeable was that several people expected to compose the shot on the LCD like on most P&S cameras, rather than looking through the viewfinder. Related to this problem–a couple of people had difficulty looking through the viewfinder completely, and as such saw only about 1/3 of the scene. This caused them to compose the shot very awkwardly with the subjects at the side of the photo. Finally, my dad tried to take some pictures inside and the bill of his hat kept the flash from fully popping up, which meant it didn’t fire, though the camera was expecting it to, resulting in blurry under-exposed pictures.
But despite the minor technical problems, there were a number of fun pictures thanks to the camera handling abilities of friends and family. And it was a nice opportunity for me to relax and not be the one always behind the camera.
Thanks to everyone who took pictures, and everyone who helped celebrate my birthday. It was a lot of fun.
I’m still working on my “workflow” as its known in the photography biz–those series of steps you take to move from RAW file to finished product that the “client” sees. My workflow typically goes something like this:
I tend to move through phase 1 very quickly. Picking the “one out of a group” in phase two can take a bit of time as I weigh the shots. But I can move quickly if a) the pics have a timeliness, and/or b) have low monetary value. But after that is done, I whip through phase three.
This was all brought to my mind a couple of weeks ago at the city middle school track finals. My lovely wife had asked if I wanted to take the camera. Nope, not really. Our daughter was going to cheer on the team–not because she had made it to the finals, and I was a little photo-fatigued.
While we were at the track meet, I saw another parent from my daughter’s school with his dSLR. I told him that I was glad he was there to take pictures of the kids at the meet. I knew that the coach had really appreciated my pics, and had even printed 8x10s of two different sets for the kids. When I expressed appreciation for his photographing the event, he confided that he hadn’t processed any of the pictures he’d taken during the season. He complained that he knew he had to crop and adjust and processes (blah blah) but he just hadn’t gotten around to it. I know I’ve seen him shooting at a couple of meets weeks prior.
I left the conversation feeling just a bit superior. He might have a better camera, with better glass, but my pictures were actually in the hands of the kids. His pictures, at the end of the season, were still sitting on his computer. This, to me, demonstrated the importance of workflow. I made some decent pictures and I got them processed, even if it was just a little bit. The important part for me was that I got them into the hands of the kids and parents. And the parents liked the shots.
I sincerely hope he’s able to get them processed, and sent to parents directly. I want the kids to see his work. A couple of weeks later, I haven’t personally seen his work. But I’m glad I was able to get my stuff processed in a timely manner and sent to the coach so the kids could appreciate them quickly.
A couple of days ago, a vicious line of storms came through town. OK, maybe vicious is a bit strong, but it was an impressive line of storms-the lightning was everywhere and a lot of it was cloud to cloud, seeming to spread over the whole sky.
After the rain subsided, and the clouds started to clear, we got great view of a rainbow from our back yard. I grabbed the camera and rushed out to take a picture. I didn’t even change lenses–the Jive Thirty Five was on the camera, but I knew a wider angle would have been better. However, I also knew that rainbows were fleeting and figured I’d get an emergency shot before worrying about lenses.
Shortly thereafter I noticed that from my location I could see the whole rainbow. I had to try to capture this with the 18mm lens, so I ran back inside, told the kids about the whole rainbow, changed lenses and headed back outside.
(different camera settings, different lens, different post proccessing–don’t just the relative darkness of the second image against the first).
The first picture was taken at 8:46PM. The second was taken 2.5 minutes later, but the rainbow had faded significantly, and was no longer worth trying to capture in full. But I still like this one because of the kids looking in different directions at opposite ends of the rainbow.
Walking back toward our house, I spied the setting sun, and really liked the silhouette of the tree and the reflections in the water on the parking lot.
I’m amazed that picture is even close to crisp–that was 1/3s hand-held. OK, I was leaning on a fence, but still, I expected nasty blurriness.
Despite the clearing rain and the rainbow, there was still quite a bit of lightning in the air. I tried to capture some of the lightning, but was unsuccessful. I only tried for about 5 minutes because when there was lightning covering the sky, it felt like it could strike one of the nearby trees any time. I decided to not risk the camera to that kind of electric jolt and headed inside without a good lightning exposure. Oh, and I suppose I was a little concerned for my own safety. So although there was a lot of gorgeous cloud-to-cloud activity, I never captured any.
