Photography on Purpose

Photo -shooot-in

A local model, Melissa (aka Red) organized a shoot-in at her place last night. Originally there were to be 4 photographers and 5 models. We ended up with 2 photographers (including yours truly) and 5 models. Actually 2 models didn't show but we had a couple of subs. I went in with the hopes that there would be a model willing to do implied nudity for an artistic shot that I have been wanting to do for quite some time.
A little background. I play the guitar and love stringed instruments. Legend has it that the guitar was created by a lonely Spanish fisherman who lost his wife and missed her. So he created the guitar so that he could be reminded of her while playing the blues I guess. ;-) Anyway - thus the shape. The title of this photo I had already determined would be "The Player" - intended as a visual play on the shape of a woman's body and a double entendre on the way some men treat women. Not being the type of guy who frequents adult stores I made the prop myself out of a leather belt kit and lots of chain (which was a bugger to find!).
I hope you enjoy this photo - comments welcome. Model credits: Jeremy Ware and Morgan Clayton.

The Player

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Slow to roll

Finally getting the web site whipped into shape. Seems like there's just never enough time to do everything. I have been busy shooting a few engagement and model sessions as well as my landscape and other work. Time to slow down and finish some of the best and post them here and on my website.

Saturday shoot - Melissa

*whew* It has been a zoo at my real job so I was glad I had a photo shoot setup with a local model, Melissa, this Saturday.

Melissa

We were supposed to shoot down by the skate park...

]]> *whew* It has been a zoo at my real job so I was glad I had a photo shoot setup with a local model, Melissa, this Saturday.

Melissa

We were supposed to shoot down by the skate park... but I had forgotten that the 4 Bridges Art Festival was this weekend. So I opted to shoot at a bus stop (yes, a bus stop) because it had a nifty wall. This was also the maiden voyage for my golf cart which has been converted to pack around equipment for location shoots.
I used my Alien Bees ABR800 ring flash for this shot while she reclined on the bus stop bench.
We caused quite a flurry with passing motorists and bikers with catcalls and hoots coming fast and furious. Good thing neither of us was self-conscious.
Hopefully in every photo shoot there is one *wow* shot. In my opinion this is the one. It really stood out from the crowd and I immediately did minor touch-up in Photoshop.

Southern Short Course in Photojournalism

Whew! Taxes finally done I can breath again.
Spent the past Friday through Sunday at the Southern Short Course in Photojournalism seminar. Why?

]]> Whew! Taxes finally done I can breath again.
Spent the past Friday through Sunday at the Southern Short Course in Photojournalism seminar. Why? Well, even though I am not a journalist I am interested in taking photographs that tell a story. That makes us kindred spirits in my mind and I figured I could pick up a thing or two from the pros.
It was interesting and I met some really nice interns, working pros, and instructors. It is always a pleasure to meet up with Billy Weeks, Photo Editor for the Chattanooga Times Free Press newspaper. One of the students was kind enough to give me a guided tour of his MacBook Pro. I'm still waffling as a veteran Windows user but I hear Photoshop and Lightroom run fantastic on these machines. I'll tell you - with Parallels running on the MacBook Pro, Mac users have no cause for being envious of any other machine. Nice nice nice! So many toys so few bucks!
I can think of several other things I could put the money to use - I lust after Canon's new 16-35L f2.8. Awesome lens - the Canon reps at the seminar had one I could play with. I'd have to retire my 17-40 if I got one of those.
Anyway - most of the breakout sessions were pretty educational if not entertaining. The only one I was disappointed in was the one titled "Careers in PhotoJournalism - alternate careers". It was anything but. Essentially a bunch of newspaper folks sat at high counsel telling the interns their shall and shall nots to get a job. I was hoping for them to address the impact of blogging and online independent journalism on the news industry in general and alternate sources to market your photos. But noooooo. I gotta say it was an eye-opener to see the interns and students. I can think of no other word than "whipped". I hate to sound negative but these people are in a job field that seems to be ruled by fear and desperation. All I heard was the plaintive wail of students worrying about getting an internship at a paper.
I did manage to have a great conversation with a Korean/American student about that subject - we digressed into whether the online independents had the same "rights" and privileges of an established paper. We have this notion that papers have a right to access news and a press card will get you into a scene where ordinary citizens cannot go. So where do the papers get these special privileges? How does one qualify if not a member of the media establishment?
I think they are interesting questions that deserve an answer. I will grant that these folks have training to do their job and have ethics to ensure they are a trustworthy source of information. Of course that doesn't necessarily address the well known leanings of certain news and media establishments, but it does point out that the media has standards to which they strive to meet or beat. How would an online blogger guarantee those ethical standards? Who will regulate and oversee them?

Easter Event

Every year Unum puts on events for the kids of employees at Easter and Christmas. Normally my friend and co-worker Kevin Riggs does the photo sessions of the kids with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. This year however Kevin begged off as he and his wife just had a new addition to the family... ]]> Every year Unum puts on events for the kids of employees at Easter and Christmas. Normally my friend and co-worker Kevin Riggs does the photo sessions of the kids with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. This year however Kevin begged off as he and his wife just had a new addition to the family and he was swamped with getting prepared. So he suggested to the committee that oversees the events that I might be interested in doing it this year. I've never really done an event like this before and his briefing was rife with advice which let me know in no uncertain terms this was going to be quite a learning experience in handling a LOT of people in a big hurry. Like over a hundred kids with variations in a scheduled 3 hours - and that includes printing the selected shots. It doesn't take a math whiz to cipher I only had a few minutes with each kid. I spent several days evaluating different lighting at home using my son for a test dummy thinking I could maybe get by with using my new Alien Bees ring flash. While it is a nice flash for that "edgy" look I decided that for kids it was little much and opted for a more traditional portrait lighting setup. Imagine that - tried and true turns out to be the best. So I settled on using a JTL D1000 with 42" Wescott softbox for the main, a JTL D1000 strobe with Amvona 54" strip softbox for fill and an Alien Bees B800 with snoot for the hairlight on a boom. The main was at about 40 degrees to subject about 4 feet away and at a height of 10 feet. The fill was placed at 70 degrees to the subjects right dead even to provide soft side fill from about 4 feet. The main I adjusted for f6.3, the fill for f4.0 and the hairlight for f2.8 at the subject position. I used my radio triggers on all strobes. The JTL's have a remote which made adjusting the power levels easy since I could enable the strobes individually to adjust power and confirm the levels with my Sekonics L558 flash meter triggering the strobes. Worked like a champ and lighting setup took only a few minutes. I wondered if the folks assigned to help me wondered about the amount of stuff I hauled in, but I used almost all of it. I'm the type that believes I'd rather have it and not need it that need it and not have it. I really did my homework on this one and I think it paid off in the little things. I had invested in a Gretag Macbeth Color Checker card and took my first test shot of the bunny so I could establish a basis for color correction and general exposure.

Bunny with Color Checker

The software I opted to use was a new Adobe product, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom . It was a trial by fire which it handled admirably with few glitches. Lightroom is designed for working photographers and focuses completely on getting the picture in, organized, "developed" and output to web or print. One of the features that I liked was the ability to watch a folder, automatically import the photo and apply default "develop" settings. My setup therefore depended on the using the Canon capture software to grab the photo from the camera the moment it was shot and transfer to a capture folder from which Lightroom would import the shot and apply the default settings. I obtained the default settings using the bunny with color checker photo to set the white balance, exposure levels, contrast - all the myriad details to make a good print. This was saved under a setting which Lightroom applied to every picture captured. Worked great! The general plan was to take 2 or 3 shots of each kid and have my assistant, Gina, show them in a comparison window built into Lightroom. This would allow the parents to select the pictures they preferred less and the one remaining would be the one which she would drag down into the "To Print" queue. That part didn't work as planned because of two things - Lightroom automatically gave focus to a new incoming shot and parents wanted more than their allotted 1 photograph. So she winged it and did a tremendous job working with the parents. Speaking of assistants - the committee assigned Paul Dockery to help me out. Quite frankly I wasn't expecting much but was I ever - so very ever - wrong. He was invaluable in setting up (I'm height challenged compared to this fella!) and he was absolutely wonderful working with the parents and kids lining them up, getting them setup, getting their attention, giving me bunny ears to get a smile. Only a very few shots did I have to step in and arrange the kids. Hats off to a dedicated and motivated volunteer.

Paul and Bunny

I validated many items of theory and learned a few things during this trial - I won't go into the circumstances, I'll just mention them:

Make a checklist of necessary items and only check them off when they're actually packed and ready to roll
Pack backups of critical gear
Check out the location prior. Take measurements and plan your layout ahead of time.
Meter your lights
Forget the tripod when shooting a variable number of kids. Shoot moving.
Always - ALWAYS be aware of where the tether cable is when moving around. Nothing like dumping camera equipment worth $$$ on a hard floor. Lucky for me Canon builds their cameras like tanks.
Do not use a backdrop with lines. When moving camera viewpoint it can appear tilted.
Make sure the printer settings are saved as a default so they don't revert to some crappy plain paper setting (sorry folks)
Don't forget items to gain the attention of small children. I forgot my Squeeky toy in spite of my checklist

I'll close with a couple of actual photos taken. Questions and comments are always welcome!

Bunny and Twins

I also took a few of folks without the woolly bunny.

Bens Family

Crack of dawn

Was going up to Ocoee this morning but just too durned cold. So instead I packed up the dog and the boy and went downtown to shoot the waterfront. I've been wanting to do this and it seemed like the weather would be right for a nice sunrise.

]]> Was going up to Ocoee this morning but just too durned cold. So instead I packed up the dog and the boy and went downtown to shoot the waterfront. I've been wanting to do this and it seemed like the weather would be right for a nice sunrise. Now I packed up the dog and the boy at the crack of dawn because my son has said he'd like to do more stuff with me. He might have regretted that statement this morning as I dragged him out of bed at 5:30 AM. See - you need to get where you plan on going about an hour before. There are distinct phases of sunrise and you want to be there way before so you can evaluate the light and be ready for it. Sunrise happens quickly.

My son and my dog, Merlin waiting patiently

So there we are on the metal pier with the glowing red candle thingies while it's o'dark thirty and cold enough to make the proverbial brass monkey stay home. The boy is huddled on the bench and the dog can't figure out why we're just sitting in one spot. *sigh* so much for company. I figure that I can still talk to him and some of it is bound to stick - right? I was pretty happy with the water - very smooth and reflective. So much so that I decided to wander back and forth from the middle to the end trying to figure where I really wanted to be when the actual sunrise occurred.

Pre-Crack-of-Dawn

I decided to stay in the middle as I felt that was the better composition and the best water reflection. You gotta love those neon lights on the old aquarium top. Wonder why they didn't put them on the new addition? There was a soft almost alpenglow on the horizon. Snap snap.

The reward for 1 1/2 hrs of waiting

Eh.... could have been better but I'm happy for the color. The clouds were on angle reinforcing the composition I had chosen with the angles heading for the opposite third. Speaking of - I always marvel that the sky can appear perfectly clear before the dawn, then the sun comes peeks over the edge of the world and lights clouds you can't even see from the side providing the magnificent light show we call dawn. Amazing. I know I was truly froze from lack of movement. So after I had snapped my fill we took a limber up walk around the back by the steamboat and over to the Market Street bridge. Man I hate looking at that thing now and sincerely hope they finish on time and preserve the "feel" of that fine old bridge. I almost feel hindered taking shots at the waterfront while it is undressed so rudely. For the curious - it is almost impossible to get the bright sky and the foreground exposed decently. I used a technique whereby I "develop" the same RAW image twice, with different exposures and combine with masks in PhotoShop. So one was developed for the foreground - the sky is fried, the other for the sky which plunged the foreground into deep shadow. Combined they look pretty good.

Welcome

Greetings to all on the maiden voyage of my photography blog. I have to admit that it probably wouldn't be here if not for the ceaseless nagging of my friend David Gidcumb - aka "The Gid."
I'll tell you the story behind it. My friends and family send me more junk through the email (a topic for another day when I'm in a curmudgeon-y mood). Being a photographer, I couldn't help but pass along the photos that I found amusing and/or amazing. Poor Gid - he become an unwitting extended family member. Soon I sank into depravity - my discrimination became tarnished and now resembles the old cars seen rusting in the fields. In short, I started passing along all those lame jokes pawned off on me via email.

Now Gid is a decent sort of guy and a fine Christian but I can't help but wonder if he doesn't have a mean streak in him somewhere. He started another blog to throw up my email indiscretions to the world in the form of OfficeSpam. It has now become the wall of shame for all the folks committing email spamming sins. But... the joke backfired. OfficeSpam. is a rousing success and has brought him much fame and fortune. Well - fame of a sort - and - the fortune is coming Real Soon, David - honest. ;-)

So you ask - what raises this site above the general noise level of a zillion blogs? That remains to be seen and depends somewhat on the folks stumbling in. I always seem to have questions and opinions which I tend to be liberal in my efforts to share. Please feel free to comment on the opinions and provide answers to the questions. Providing the former will gratify me and providing the latter will chip away at my vast ignorance. Thanks neighbor!

My first "real" blog entry will probably be a mini-review. I recently purchased an Alien Bees ABR800 Ringflash. I gotta tell you - this thing is too cool! Soon as I can pry myself away from experimenting I'll write something up with a few sample pics. My goal is to add at least one entry here per week. So please, drop by and visit periodically.