Articles from June, 2009

Create or Capture

Written on June 22, 2009 Posted in Tips For Photographers


001_7S42150

NOT ME

I admire those who create an idea in their mind, lay it out and make it happen.

This being said… That’s not me.

I show up to a shoot, hang out, try to make the subjects happy and in a good mood and figure out what is going to work for them.

I think a major part of this is that 99% of my subjects are not models… they are who they are and they come to me to get pictures of who they are.

Working with the light as it happens

Also it seems to work for me because I usually try brand new spots and random times of the day and have no idea what the lighting is going to be. So If i see the lighting is bad I avoid that shot and if it is awesome I do a shot I might not have tried before.

I might as well stick to what I’m good at… and in most cases that means bringing out the best of who people are. At least that’s the compliment I usually enjoy the most when people say it.

Wouldn’t mind, at all

On the other side, I’d love to have the ability to set things up and create like many other photographers out there… if nothing else just to have that as another weapon in my arsenal.

How I roll

Click to continue reading “Create or Capture”

Continue reading about Create or Capture

  • 4 Comments
  1. becky posted the following on July 8, 2009 at 10:48 pm.

    You are good at bringing out the fun in people. I have loved your photos recently you are so good at finding nice light. I can’t wait to see more of your family lifestyle photography.

  2. mickelle posted the following on July 22, 2009 at 6:17 pm.

    I think this is one of the most important reasons I want to shadow you at the workshop. I feel like my technical understanding is sufficient — or close — but there’s a gap between the picture I know how to take, technically speaking, and the picture I do take. That gap is totally a result of not knowing how to feel comfortable in the role of photographer, and how to make my clients feel comfortable and open. You rock at this. And it shows.

  3. scott posted the following on July 22, 2009 at 7:13 pm.

    You show great insight Mickelle… sounds like you know what you need to do. Double points for such a thoughtful response

  4. Kimbrey posted the following on August 3, 2009 at 12:27 pm.

    I totally admire your shooting style. By nature I am the kind of person that has to have things all laid out in my head to calm my nerves. I usually find that I do end up “flying by the seat of my pants” for some of it though. I totally agree with Mickelle above that experience helps feeling comfortable with not having a plan. I am not a professional photographer, but do some shoots for family and friends and I find my comfort level increases with time and knowledge.


Tags: , , , , , ,

Red Butte Canyon Engagement Shoot

Written on June 18, 2009 Posted in ! Favorite Posts, Engagement Pictures


Beautiful engagement photography taken at Red Butte canyon in Utah. Lots of green

Click to continue reading “Red Butte Canyon Engagement Shoot”

Continue reading about Red Butte Canyon Engagement Shoot

  • 8 Comments
  1. Melissa Papaj posted the following on June 18, 2009 at 4:43 pm.

    Awesome shots! I love the green backgrounds!

  2. Thomas posted the following on June 18, 2009 at 7:23 pm.

    Lots of different shades of green in there; super cool!

  3. becky posted the following on July 8, 2009 at 10:50 pm.

    I don’t know if I already told you but I loved this shoot.

  4. Sawyer posted the following on July 21, 2009 at 9:42 am.

    Wow, I was just reading your blog and realized I know the guy in this shot! What an awesome bunch of shots of Jeff and his soon-to-be wife.

  5. Tara posted the following on July 23, 2009 at 7:45 pm.

    That place looks gorgeous! And a way cute coupel to boot! Awesome job!

  6. mickelle posted the following on July 25, 2009 at 9:13 pm.

    Dang! I can see why you have this tagged as one of your favorite posts. It’s definitely one of mine. Their affection and personality are vividly captured. They’ll treasure these.

    (JaG)

  7. Mary Ann posted the following on July 31, 2009 at 9:25 pm.

    I really like these engagements! I love the greenery and how the couple stands out so well.

  8. Kimbrey posted the following on August 3, 2009 at 12:29 pm.

    These are beautiful. I love the creativity of the one with flowers in focus in front and the couple behind out of focus. JaG


Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Accomplishing my goals… 40!!

Written on June 16, 2009 Posted in news


Achieving my goals of 40 wedding gigs in a year.

Click to continue reading “Accomplishing my goals… 40!!”

Continue reading about Accomplishing my goals… 40!!

  • 5 Comments
  1. Melissa Kelsey posted the following on June 16, 2009 at 8:53 pm.

    Congratulations! That’s a great accomplishment.

  2. Tyra posted the following on June 16, 2009 at 10:16 pm.

    very cool, congrats! I do agree on the crazyness of trying to do this with a family or another job!This is my first year shooting weddings and My goal is 15, I am at 12 right now…we’ll see if I hit it~

  3. sara posted the following on June 17, 2009 at 12:07 pm.

    Congrats!!

  4. Tara posted the following on July 24, 2009 at 9:57 pm.

    Congrats on 40 weddings! That is AWESOME!

  5. Kimbrey posted the following on August 3, 2009 at 12:31 pm.

    Congratulations- what a great accomplishment! JaG


Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Salty Shoot – Pt 1 “The Dancers”

Written on June 15, 2009 Posted in ! Favorite Posts, individual portraits


_7S46094

This is the landscape… after having got to the location 3 hours late because of a fiery fatal accident on I-80

Be sure to catch Dave Terry’s Pictures on his blog

004_7S46166

Introducing our main model/dancer for the night.

010_7S46113

023_7S46215

I didn’t know how cool this would turn out or I would have spent more time on it instead of just like 2 shots.

_7S46089

Taken by my friend Kate while driving as we arrived at the shoot

_7S46148

100_7S46256

It barely rained at all… but I continued on through the rain.

_7S46164

Click to continue reading “Salty Shoot – Pt 1 “The Dancers””

Continue reading about Salty Shoot – Pt 1 “The Dancers”

  • 7 Comments
  1. Annika posted the following on June 15, 2009 at 1:35 pm.

    I absolutely love these shots! Beautiful!!

  2. Thomas posted the following on June 15, 2009 at 4:11 pm.

    Some very cool shots Scott, especially those first ones!

  3. Parker Grimes posted the following on June 16, 2009 at 8:04 am.

    Very cool photos. Looks like a really fun photo shoot. Was it the 14-24 2.8 lens you used for the close up distorted pictures?

  4. Kaitlyn Janis posted the following on July 25, 2009 at 3:20 pm.

    I have to say this is the coolest idea ever.

  5. Melissa posted the following on July 31, 2009 at 4:17 pm.

    The third image is one of my favorites. Amazing to get the color in the sunset, the reflections and the leap nice and sharp.

  6. Kimbrey posted the following on August 3, 2009 at 12:32 pm.

    These are beautiful! What an incredible sky you caught. JaG

  7. Tara Winsor posted the following on August 4, 2009 at 11:02 pm.

    WOW! Love those ones. The lighting is very dramatic. One of them, the girl is extending her leg and the sunset in the background looks like a leg also. Made me look closer at it!


Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Photography: Life on line

Written on June 11, 2009 Posted in Engagement Pictures


Putting all on the line for a photoshoot

Click to continue reading “Photography: Life on line”

Continue reading about Photography: Life on line

  • 14 Comments
  1. Laurel posted the following on June 11, 2009 at 2:34 pm.

    I love how green it is! Such an incredible shot. One of the best ideas. Even if you were out on a limb for a bit!

  2. Shawna posted the following on June 11, 2009 at 2:47 pm.

    Love it! When you tweeted about putting your life and equipment on the line I didn’t realize it was for Adele and Stephen’s engagements. Can’t wait to see the rest. :)

  3. Melissa posted the following on June 11, 2009 at 2:56 pm.

    Yikes! The shots were totally worth it… well now that all are safe and sound back on dry ground.

  4. Jeremy posted the following on June 11, 2009 at 2:56 pm.

    Crazy – so are their announcements going to say “Taking the plunge!”?

  5. Kristina posted the following on June 11, 2009 at 3:24 pm.

    Been a while since I’ve commented, but those are -cool- shots!!

  6. Katie posted the following on June 11, 2009 at 3:47 pm.

    WOW! RAD!

  7. Jill posted the following on June 11, 2009 at 4:45 pm.

    Great shots. Beautiful scenery! the risk was worth it.

  8. Kjirstin posted the following on June 11, 2009 at 6:52 pm.

    So, if anything had happened…do you have your couples sign something first, so they can’t sue? Bet your attorney will be all over that, suggesting a waiver after seeing this on your FB wall and Twitter pages…and I can hear the “Jacoby & Meyers” ad now: “As I saw my fiancee’s head slip below the foam for the last time…sniff…”

  9. Suzanne posted the following on June 12, 2009 at 9:32 am.

    You are crazy!!! At least you got amazing pictures that you can be sure no one else will get! Great job.

  10. Zig posted the following on June 16, 2009 at 2:24 pm.

    Yeah those rocks can be real slick. I’m used to fly-fishing on those suckers! Good job with the photos!

  11. Tara posted the following on July 24, 2009 at 9:58 pm.

    Dang! That’s brave of them to get out on that limb like that! Way to go out of the way to get awesome pictures!

  12. Kaitlyn Janis posted the following on July 25, 2009 at 3:26 pm.

    These turned out so well! I don’t know if I would be so willing to risk my camera or life. It’s even more amazing that the couple were willing to participate. Kudos to you and the couple!

  13. Melissa posted the following on July 31, 2009 at 12:33 am.

    You know come to think of it, this was a shoot that was conspicuously missing from your website choices…. JaG

  14. Kimbrey posted the following on August 3, 2009 at 12:34 pm.

    Incredible- that’s a dedicated photographer to sacrifice like that!


Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Best photo editing computer

Written on June 10, 2009 Posted in lightroom, reviews


Best photography editing computer = Fastest, most powerful machine to run Lightroom or Photoshop.

Click to continue reading “Best photo editing computer”

Continue reading about Best photo editing computer

  • 10 Comments
  1. Scott Smith posted the following on June 10, 2009 at 8:48 am.

    Do you secretly work for Microsoft? I think you should start these rants with “Hi I’m a PC”. :-)

  2. Mike posted the following on June 10, 2009 at 8:59 am.

    Yeah that’s the weakness of Mac– they don’t have midrange towers. I sourced the price of the processor used in the quad-core 2.66ghz Mac Pro a couple months ago and the processor alone was $1600! (we’re talking server class Xeon processors here.) This is why your PC is so much cheaper, and certainly that i7 is a lot better performance / value ratio by comparison, though technically the processors in the Mac Pro are more powerful.

    (Does photoshop really max out all 8 cores?)

    Alas. I used to be like you building my own screaming PC for half the cost of the closest comparable Mac. Built PCs for years. I have to admit that I miss the flexibility of building your own machine– there really is nothing in the middle range for Mac. iMacs and MacBook Pros are underpowered, as you mentioned, and frankly I don’t need a Xeon class processor. Something for about $1k-1.5k with an iCore7 would be perfect for my needs.

  3. scott posted the following on June 10, 2009 at 9:21 am.

    @ Scott Smith – Except I’d be a bad rep, because my last computer rant about laptops ended with me owning a Mac.

    So I like mac laptops but I wouldn’t really consider editing prolonged time with a laptop.
    And like mike said… mac has nothing midrange. (worthy discussing, unless you’re not doing tons of editing in which case those bigscreen all in one thingies could be nice)

    I love the freedom and flexibility of building a PC.

    Because this setup like mike mentioned isn’t even the most extreme… it’s just the newest tech at the best bang for buck.

    And yes Lightroom uses all 8cores and it’s not just every blue moon… it uses it all the time and it comes in handy and it saves time.

  4. Jake Spurlock posted the following on June 10, 2009 at 11:14 am.

    What about a good monitor? I love the Dell ones, and the Apple ones are smashing too, but what would you say is the best monitor out there? Looking for opinions…

  5. Melissa posted the following on June 10, 2009 at 11:29 am.

    You have me convinced… When I change computers I will be having one built.

  6. Zig posted the following on June 16, 2009 at 2:32 pm.

    So Scott – when is the review of video cards coming out? :)

  7. Eric Hamilton posted the following on July 7, 2009 at 12:19 pm.

    Hey Scott,

    I built a PC desktop. I’ve always built my own desktop systems. I’m that techie friend that everybody hired to build their PC’s. However, Abode Lightroom’s import and export actions DID NOT take advantage of extra cores under Windows XP – and the overhead of the Windows XP OS bogged down the Lightroom UI, tremendously. And Vista is 20% slower than XP for photo processing! 3GB of RAM, 2.6 Ghz dual core CPU, and it absolutely crawled.

    And then I edited on a 1.6 Ghz iBook with 2GB RAM, and Lightroom was snappy, responsive – dare I say it? FAST by comparison. On paper, those Windows boxes just toast the hell out of the Macs, but in real life, the Macs are clobbering the PCs in actual performance.

    I was sold. Lightroom is even faster on my new Core2 Duo MacBook. Oh, and the beast of a computer cost twice as much as my Apple certified refurb MacBook. And I couldn’t take it ANYWHERE. It just had no sense of style whatsoever. How embarrassing!

    I take my MacBook everywhere, and everybody is always telling me how pretty it looks.

    PC’s suck.

    - Eric

  8. scott posted the following on July 7, 2009 at 12:42 pm.

    Hey Eric that’s cool. But maybe you just weren’t good at building comptuers ;) haha

    I’m kidding… Kinda…

    I have both and the new macbook is slow in performance compared to my quadcore. I think there are several things that are important.
    You need a good quadcore to really crunch those previews and exports… you have to have more than 4GB of ram to handle large catalogs of pictures and the speed really comes into play with a fast HD.
    So perhaps that’s my downfall having a macbookpro with a slower HDD

    On the other hand I have the fastest rated HDD in the world on my desktop PC.

    Yes… guess which computer looks better. You’re right the macbook.
    Guess which one I take on trips… yep the macbook.

    Guess which one edits better and faster… and cost half the cost? Sorry… but it’s the truth.

    I bet a macpro 4-8core machine could perform on the same level. (Granted it doesn’t have an option to use the fusio IO drive… but with a good SSD drive it could be right there and perhaps better… for 2-3 times the cost though… that’s what I’m saying)

    And my hopes are to sell off this machine and get a new i7 machine.

  9. Eric Hamilton posted the following on July 7, 2009 at 4:24 pm.

    Jarvie,

    Next time you import or export, hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE and check out your CPU core usage. You’ll get a graphical percent usage chart for each core. On my Pentium D machine (admittedly, a couple years old, which is why it needed replacing), it only ever used one core for batch processing. Luckily, it was a fast core, even by today’s standards.

    Also, I had less RAM, and frequently had Lightroom open for several hours. There was a known memory leak on the Windows build of Lightroom through version 2.something-or-other, which bogged things down on the PC considerably – not so on the Mac. I have frequently left it crunching and come back hours later to find it still snappy as ever.

    In short, the Mac version still managed to do a lot more with a lot fewer resources – and my PC was running a hardware RAID 5 system that did 110MB/sec read / 100MB/sec writes (no single drive at the time could come anywhere close to that performance), compared to the Mac system with about half that HD throughput.

    Maybe that was all due to a Lightroom bug that has since been squashed, but whether that’s true or not, I’m still very happy to be free of Windows. Long live OS X!

    - Eric

  10. Kimbrey posted the following on August 3, 2009 at 12:35 pm.

    Thanks for the info. and equipment once again. I doesn’t really help with my big dreaming! :) JaG


Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,



WEB SITE DEVELOPMENT, DESIGN and CUSTOMIZATION BY jR Customization BLOG THEME BY Tofurious | IMAGES HOSTED BY Smugmug