A fortnight to remember – yes, I used fortnight

The move is just about over with, so I can start posting on a little bit more regular basis.

I’m going to recap what I’ve shot in the past two weeks. First, I shot a senior photo session about two weeks ago. I was pretty pleased with the way everything turned out. There are a few minor details that I could’ve changed and there was one pose in particular that I wish I would have taken a much better angle of, but everything went great. It always helps when you have a patient client who is easy going and willing to listen to your ideas.

As I mentioned, I also shot two weddings a couple of weeks ago. I have all the photos loaded onto the galleries on my site, but haven’t posted any to flickr to share yet. I’ll post one or two of my favorites as soon as I get the chance to do that.

I didn’t get a lot of sports shooting in the next week because there wasn’t a whole lot to shoot. Most sports are ending their seasons right about now. However, I did get to shoot some Hubs football action last Friday. I actually had a lot of fun shooting that game.

I don’t think I captured a lot of good peak action, but I certainly caught the dramatic after shots. Here’s one in particular that I loved.

I also shot state tennis last week. I was up in Palatine already, so I got a few shots in for the Herald & Review and possibly one into the News-Gazette. I’m not sure if the Gazette ran mine or not.

Karli Loewecke started the day off good for Rochelle, but an abdominal strain returned to nag her during the second round of the tournament and she dropped that game and the next one to be eliminated.

This was another day where I struggled for story-telling images. I have one that shows her disappointment, but just not really what I’d have liked to get. I’m not sure if it was coincidence or on purpose, but she would usually turn her back during her frustration. I hope it was just a coincidence because otherwise that means she was aware of my presence, something every journalist should try to avoid, unless your name was Hunter S. Thompson.

We went to another wedding that same weekend in Indiana. I made a little bit of an effort to just enjoy the wedding vs. shooting it since it was for friends of ours. Of course I didn’t completely give it up, but I did a pretty good job for the most part. I only shot photos during their first dance.

I posted one to Flickr, but I’m not happy with the way the web handled the blacks and grays. I’m going to reedit in the next few days and repost, but here it is for now.

Last, but not least, I did a series of couple photos for some friends here in town that turned out excellent. After I add a watermark or some of them get ordered I will post my favorite.

I was very pleased with the way those photos turned out. I’m definitely adding a few of them to my Web site and will update when I do.

Speaking of which, I need to take one day and do nothing but work on the site. I have so much to add to the site, but hardly any time to do it.

This weekend I have family portraits galore, baby/belly photos and a conference. Plus we’re holding a Halloween party tomorrow night at our new duplex, so likely to say it’s going to be one crazy weekend, but I kind of thrive on being busy like that.

Hopefully I’ll have much more to update later on.

Ben Schwartz is God

Starting running back Ben Schwartz had another phenomenal game to lead the Hubs past the Dekalb Barbs and straight into the playoff season once again.

The Hubs’ 5-4 record was just enough with the help of a Dixon and Chicago Corliss wins.

The Hubs were assisted mostly by Schwartz’s three touchdowns and easily shutdown the Barbs 44-8.

The Hubs will face off against Chicago (Robeson) on Saturday. Date and time will be announced later tomorrow. Check back to see specific details.

Lovely day for tennis

I got the fantastic chance to go shoot girls’ state tennis finals in the suburbs today. The Decatur Herald and Review hired me as a freelancer to get shots from several teams, Rochelle’s Karli Loewecke played today and the News-Gazette may use one or two from an Urbana girl that played.

I felt incredibly envious of the few photographers I saw there. I didn’t get a chance to talk to any of them, but they were all holding at least 300 f/2.8 glass.

I think one of them might have even had a 400 with a converter. I was just drooling all over the place.

I really feel tennis is one sport that you’re disadvantaged if you don’t have anything longer than 200.

In any other sport you can at least move down the field. You’re pretty confined with tennis. Either the post, or the corner. Well when your backgrounds are terrible and you don’t have long enough glass to move behind the court, what do you do?

I made due with what I had and stopped thinking about the photos I could wished I could get and concentrated on ones I could make today.

I didn’t have much luck with a lot of expression shots so I concentrated harder on action.

I have a feature that I’ll upload later, but I haven’t downloaded that card yet.

Here’s one of the cleaner backgrounds I was able to shoot with.

Both sites I had to shoot at had a ton of football lights high in the sky, so no luck getting low.

Buy stuff from MPEX

Moishe, owner of Midwest Photo Exchange in Ohio, is one solid dude.  A couple of weeks ago the light stand I bought from them lost one of the screws that holds the tighteners on. I couldn’t find it to save my life. I went to the hardware store to get a replacement, but unfortunately the screw that threads into the tightener is at a very wierd pitch. So wierd that two old veteran hardware guys had never seen anything like.

So I started looking for the manufacture.

Unfortunately, the manufacture is from Canada and they don’t have a good working Web site that I could find. Couldn’t find the email for them either.

So I emaild MPEX. Moishe responded personally and said they had plenty of parts around the store, so they just sent me one free of charge. What an awesome guy and a fantastic company. I wish all stores had this good of customer service.

If you get a chance, buy something from them. They’re affordable and they’re huge promoters of Strobist products.

Busy bee

It’s been a few days, but in fairness, I’ve been busy. Really busy! Last weekend I shot two weddings, one Friday night, one Saturday night. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but they were about 200 miles apart from each other.

When your night doesn’t end until almost 11 p.m. and your next day of shooting begins at  9:30 a.m., that doesn’t leave a huge time frame for driving, sleeping and decompressing.

To make it worse, we had to be back on Sunday for a birthday party by 2 p.m. We had a good weekend though. Had a blast at both weddings and will post photos from them soon. I’m about half through Sarah Galey’s wedding photos and Sarah Finn’s are done.

To see the 200+ I edited, go the the Web site, click Client Galleries and enter the password: FINN.

I’ll talk more indepth about each wedding, my trials and tribulations with each and my highlights when they’re all officially online.

Client updates

I updated the Client Galleries and think I’ve figured out how to offer photos online for parents and athletes. I’ve created a gallery for each player on the team through my host company. Each time I get a photo of that player that I like, I’ll upload it into a folder. Toward the middle or end of the season I’ll upload each folder and keep the photos online for up to one month following the sports season.

This works best in two ways for me.

First being I don’t have to put up every shot and make parents sift through hundreds of photos. Secondly, I won’t have to pay for the web space for more than two months cutting down on costs.

The host I use costs per photo, per month. It’s not a huge fee, but lots of photos over several months can add up. So much that it can actually cost me money to be hosting photos vs. making some.

It also gives me a little time to get photos of most the players. I probably won’t get all the players each season. Unfortunately not all players get a lot of playing time. When they are on the court or field I will do my best to get photos, but I’m still concentrating on story-telling photos.

I have a specific style I’m shooting for and want to maintain that. The password for each section will be easy enough. It’s the athlete’s first initial and last name. If there is a conflict in names, I’ll deal with that at the time. Each team member will also get a letter telling them how to access their personal gallery too.

I’m kind of excited about it. Parents have shown quite a bit of enthusiasm toward it.

So far, some volleyball photos are up. I have two weddings this weekend, but then I’ll add football, tennis and the rest of volleyball next week.

Spiked

I’ve been trying to update much more regularly now that I’ve had a consistent readership on here. Thank you to all who have been looking and please feel free to leave comments while on here. I thrive on feedback. Plus I just like to see who’s looking. Don’t worry, I don’t byte! (Wow, what a lame computer reference.)

Usually this blog lingers somewhere around the 10 – 20 mark for hits a day. I got quite a surprise when I looked at Sunday’s results and saw 60+ hits. I couldn’t figure out why so many people decided to look. I usually expect a few more looks on Sundays because the paper comes out, but not that many. Then I looked at the incoming search references and noticed that it was overwhelmingly from the terms “cheer leaders” and “cheerleaders.”

Just kind of made me crack up. I imagine some poor individuals trying to find different kinds of cheerleader photos passed through the blog only to become sorely disappointed.

Maybe in the tags I should start putting all kinds of inappropriate words to draw people in. It’s like a boobie trap. My journalism teacher always taught me not to do that though. It’s misleading and false advertisement. Would still be funny to see how many hits I’d get though.

Thanks again for looking and look back for a volleyball photo or two later tonight.

Lighting Metal Pt. 1

I’m back to learning lighting a little bit. I’m mostly learning about lighting metal in the chapter that I’m in now. Most photographer’s cringe at the thought, but as the book points out, you really shouldn’t. Metal is one of the few items that never strays from the rules.

It either gives off direct reflection or it doesn’t. Simple enough, huh? Not really, but close. I chose a black background for two reasons. I first wanted to challenge myself to get the direct reflection and it was the closest thing near me. If I had chosen a white background, I could’ve moved the lights out of the family of angles and made the metal appear “black” and been done with it. I wanted to challenge myself to fill the entire family of angles with my little flash. I did so through my beauty dish.

I used the method outlined in the book first to test the family of angles. A quick breakdown of it is to take a piece of white board and a flash light. Aim the light at the subject from where your camera is sitting. Estimate where you think your light will reflect and put the white card. If you’re pretty close, you should see the reflection from your item. This is your family of angles. Any light inside this area will cause direct reflection on the metal. Any light not in it will not. I tried this first. Then ran into a slight problem.

Though I’m using a fairly flat subject, the knife, it still have some contours not receiving light. So now I figured out there are two family of angles. Instead of using another flash, I just grabbed my white 4-in-1 reflector and placed it inside the second family of angles. This was actually a much better effect than the first light. As you can see, the light in flatter parter of the knife is much smoother than the harsh light on the handle. I realized then why the book usually has diffusion material in front of whatever light they’re using. It makes it so much smoother. And gives you exactly what kind of look most photographers are looking for.

I’m going to shoot some more tomorrow with a white background because that creates even more challenges.

I also used this to shoot photos of my SB-24 that I’m selling on Ebay. If you know anyone looking for one, tell them about this one for sale.

1, 2, 3…

I finally got the results of the Illinois Press Association’s 2008 contest. I knew that I had won multiple awards, but I wasn’t sure on the placing of any. Turns out I took first, second and third in the small weekly division in three different categories.

My third place photo was for a portrait personality photo I took of former 2007 Miss Tuscola Ann Knight. Ann was a pretty good sport about letting me photograph her in the church hall with a bucket and a mop while in her business suit and tiara. I shot this photo because I found out she was a maintenance worker at the 40 Martyrs Catholic Church. The thought of her cleaning while wearing her tiara just struck me as interesting. I also earned an award from the SIEA for this photo as well.

I took second place in the photo series category for my coverage of Biker Sunday at the Eagle Mountain Assembly of God church. This photo series was a winner at the SIEA awards too. I did better in this contest than I did in the SIEA though. I’d really like to see the comments and compare each. Hopefully I can get the fine people at the Tuscola Review to send me those when they come in. SIEA said my design was the least pleasing thing about it. I tend to believe your design shouldn’t have as much merit for a photo series, but I wasn’t asked for my opinion.

Most importantly, I took first place for a feature photo during the 2008 Miss Tuscola Pageant. During the assignment I got so bored that I had to really find something interesting to keep me going. I happen to catch this photo from the side. I really like the way you can see one person looking up at her. This isn’t officially the one I turned in. I took more time to edit this one that I like much better.

I would say not a bad showing. I’d also like to congratulate Lucas Deal on third place for sports news and sports section and to Meg Thilmony for second place in education story for their work at the Review while I was there.

Stephen Haas of the Decatur Herald and Review also took third place for a spot news and R.K. O’Daniel of the News-Gazette took honorable mention for Portrait Personality. Congratulations to all.

Cheerleader Pictures

I added cheerleading photos to the client galleries section of the Web site yesterday. The girls asked me how to access them at the game the other night so I gave them a password and told them to check the site on Monday.

If you want, you can access them already today. I didn’t want to tell them they could look too early because I wasn’t sure if I’d have the time to add them last night or not. Anyway, if you’re interested in ordering any, the password is: rthscheerleaders

Just click client galleries on the main page, enter the password from above and the photos should be there. There’s only about 20 photos there right now, but I’ll get a lot from the last game I have to shoot in two weeks. Unfortunately I’ll be gone for next week’s game because I have a wedding to shoot. Thanks for looking. Oh, and one last thing. I’ll be adding other galleries throughout the day and week from various sports, so check back to see what galleries have been added and the passwords to access them.