I signed up for SmugMug Apr 2nd 2008 – And this is my review
(200K+ pictures and 1000Gbs later)
Read the FULL long and Intensive review after the jump
Archive for October, 2009
There is a Food Photography Clinic being put on by my good friends Rich Legg and Nicole Young
It’s Thursday at the SLC library 6:30 – 8pm
Here’s the post with more info
I was looking through some pictures to perhaps add to their discussion.
I know my style of food pictures is probably going to be different. Less diliberate more consequential of where I am at. Less product orientated and more to catch memories.
But I thought I’d share some favorites over the years.
Though most of my stuff comes from wedding gigs. This one was taken as I was sitting down for a meal in Italy.
Just kinda took a picture of what was happening
Wedding pictures are mainly done to preserve memories. Remember that awesome cheesecake we had at our wedding?
Well now this is perhaps the only real memory left… my picture.
Let’s start with the ending. Those are always lots of fun
They got married at the Draper temple.
The reception was at Thanksgiving Point
When we all figured out after like 20 minutes of shooting that they didn’t want to be told what to do, like it seems everyone else expects of me.
We started to really have fun and just do some crazy and fun stuff and I was just there to document it and tell them when something wasn’t working.
For instance on the last two they just posed differently after every shot. Believe it or not they had no idea of what the other was doing.
I do seem to fill up all my free days don’t I?
Well I’ve done it all over again… to your benefit.
2 Lightroom Classes next week. (Beginner and Intermediate)
A weekend photography workshop (Friday and Saturday – 2 day event for about 5-7 people)
>>>>>>>>>>>>
“Editing at the Speed of LIGHT(room)”
(D300s with a 14-24 on – taking pictures every 20 seconds for about 3hrs – don’t ask me if that’s normal i just kinda made it up as I went)
I’m gonna make this short or I’ll get overwhelmed and you won’t see many more of these.
I just wanted to take a minute to say I loved having the Joby Gorillapod while in Mexico for a week.
It was small and easy to cary around, weighing next to nothing and attaching to the outside of my bag.
I love pictureline and all and me them are all friends, but I must say the pictures on their site are less than astounding as you can tell from their lack of photo of the product on the website. Tisk Tisk!
But nevertheless here’s the link
GorillaPods aren’t perfect you have to fiddle with the legs for sometimes TOO LONG and the screw in base isn’t that great, but I was too lazy to screw in my kirby tripod head into the gorillapod and have a better option.
So I dealt with it.
But overall it came in way handy as I photographed pictures.
I did 2 sets of time lapse projects.
Both of a group of humanitarian workers working on a cement floor for someone less fortunate.
I probably won’t get to compiling them for a while but it was fun doing it and at least I have the raw footage.
having an extra battery made that all possible. Also getting an umbrella over the camer on one of the non-cloudy days was comforting.
While those pictures were being taken with the interval timing function (found on most mid to high level D-SLRs) I was able to use my other camera to do other pics.
The GorillaPod did seem like a little too expensive at first. But I was viewing it’s small size and comparing against the other gorillapods that are for the smaller cameras and cost a lot less.
But i’m very happy I bought it. I used it much more than my nice fancy pantsy carbon fiber tripod. As it just wasn’t practical to lug around to these humanitarian jobs anyway.
For now I’ll keep you in suspense until I complete the time lapse videos. Keep checking back… haha… someday it’ll pop up.
More on my trip to mexico to come.
Including a few more words on
photographing while river rafting
photography in a foreign country
photographing from a car (my speciality)
photographing with a GPS device connected (I realized that after almost a year of ownership I still haven’t written a proper review on the GP-1)
UNDERWATER CAMERA
I bought a small camera (A Canon G10) and the corresponding Underwater Housing.
I’m in Mexico at the moment at a nice resort.
It’s on the beach and has a nice pool.
I’m whitewater rafting on friday, I couldn’t think of a safe way to bring along a DSLR on this event… So i tested out the camera today.
A DSLR underwater housing would be cool but it costs well over 1000 and wasn’t readily available and certainly not in time for the trip.
I bought my camera and housing from pictureline the day I left for Mexico.
Plus some other considerations were that I wasn’t going to have many opportunities to use it and I tend to upgrade cameras so which camera do i buy it for? (D700? well it’s already hit over 150K clicks and is ready to be replaced just as soon as there is an upgrade)
OTHER GOOD POINTS ABOUT A SMALL CAMERA
Might I add having the small camera has been nice for certain situations.
It doesn’t make any noises making it even more sneaky for times when you didn’t want people to know.
It’s more acceptable in certain situations such as malls or airports or other places they look down on my big cameras.
And the obvious is that it can fit in my pockets (bigger guy pockets)
MY TESTING
It’s fun!
I can see how a Snorkler or Diver would have a ton more fun!
Small cameras are frustrating sometimes. The lag from when you hit the button.
Frames per second…. yeah right. I can take fast shots for nothing!
I wanted to take pictures of the waves rolling in and it was frustratingly slow.
Timing means so much in photography, difference from a good shot to a great shot!
The biggest test was passed… no water got in!
I couldn’t hardly tell i was shooting through an underwater casing, until I was out of the water and the beads of water were on the glass rolling down. Kind of a pain…. maybe there’s a trick.
This is our huge Gulf of Mexico waves, i think this one topped out at 6
6 inches!!
I thought it was fun to see what I accomplished in one week for the charity shoots… so I compiled some statistics which I’ll share.
Let me know if there would be another interesting stat to compile… I’m a geeky number kind of guy.
Basic numbers
- 8089 – pictures (by me)
- 48 – sessions
- 132 – Separate people
- 2 – dogs
- 15 – sessions w/ Amateur or Pro photographers (and their families)
- 19 – Cute Single Girls (most important stat of course)
- 7 – assistants and other photographers helping
- 6 – past bride and grooms taking advantage of free family pictures
- 150 – Adjusted average of pics per session
- 44 – Lowest number of shots (By me)
- 309 – Most number of shots (By me)
- 160 – typical number of shots
- 10 – canceled sessions, including couldn’t find us, sickness and roommates failed them.
- 1 – wedding, done during the same week
- 1 – reception done during the same week
- 6 – blog post recaps done during the same week
- 13,176 – pictures I’ve taken so far in October as of the 12th
Break down of the shoots
- 15 small families (3 or less)
- 11 Larger families (4 or more)
- 13 Individuals
- 9 Groups of friends or Roommates
- 7 Studio shoots
- 41 outdoor shoots
Shoots per day
- 9 monday
- 8 tuesday
- 7 wednesday
- 12 thursday
- 2 friday
- 10 Saturday
By the $$
Hard to really judge since I don’t usually put time limits on my shoots, but if we didn’t take into account the time limits:
- $18,000 - I figure I donated that much worth of photography to my friends in one weeks time.
- $1000 is how much in turn was donated to the charity Family to Family Humanitarian Expeditions.
- 20-25% was what we were able to cover on the costs of actually putting on the event.
- But that can be considered either my really large donation from me to the charity or an investment in more stuff for my photo business, since I’ll probably have use for at least some of the equipment.
- 1 week – is what I’ll now be donating to the charity in Mexico shooting for their next project to help promote future expeditions.
- 20% is the discount on the print prices I’ll be doing for the galleries that will go up. (Which goes towards the expedition and costs)
The last day of the charity shoot went very well.
I was pushing myself to take new and unique pictures in a location I had done 10 shoots in 2 days previous.
I did a few more family shoots which isn’t something I specialize in… but I’m learning to like it, and at the same time conform them to what I do like, which is the Family Lifestyle Photography format.
And of course I totally enjoyed getting the aspiring models to come take pictures. (As seen above)
Thanks to dad for coming up with this laugh! As the photographer you don’t know what will get the kids to errupt in laughter… or tears for that matter.
The whole family was crazy photogenic and that helped. Look at these two models!
No need to put a lot of effort into posing these kids up… they’ll do their thing and I hope to get them as they Are, and make them good pictures while i’m at it.
Nice big landscapes don’t mean the group has to be tiny, but sometimes a bit smaller in the frame can help show off why we drove all that way and make it not only a portrait, but a work of art.
Tender moments with mom and dad.
I had a wedding reception to photograph friday night so I only did studio stuff for the charity shoot on friday.
In fact I only took pictures of 3 people.
That is in stark contrast to the 10 sessions I did yesterday (saturday) and I’ll be recapping later today.
As you can tell I experimented even more with the background lighting.
I tried mixing colors… and worked harder to make sure the light didn’t bleed onto the subject.
I was using speedlights an SB-900 on each side of the background and since they don’t recharge super fast if I shot fast enough I could get several different lighting situations.
One with both background lights going off… one with one, one with the other and then one with neither. I thought that was pretty fun.
It was also matching tones to what they were wearing… or letting the model pick their own colors.
Jumping pictures or wide width shots were hard on a small little background… but we made it work.
I also played more on the white seamless, but I need to work a bit harder on the lighting.
And I also need to use the Black seamless one of these days.
This girl is a BYU swimmer and has wanted to model some… glad to help out. She was lots of fun and did well.
And this was her roommate along for the ride… who obviously gets pictures too!
It was a busy busy day.
Day 4 of the charity shoot had me in the Studio for only one shoot and outside for 11.
It’s a really amazing experience to take 11 shoots in the same location. seeing 4 hours of changing lighting affect one area.
I was doing really short shoots so I couldn’t go far so that incoming groups could find me. Therefore I didn’t wander around as much as I usually do.
It really stretches the photographic ability to keep shooting in the changing lighting situations and keep shooting in a small radius and keep things fresh and now just go with what you did on the last one.
Of course I focused on the highlights of the area such as the mountain backdrop and the sections of trees that were still changing color.
The Location
This location is awesome because the mountains start blocking the sun about 3 hours before sunset (on average) which means it was perfect lighting starting around 4pm
The above picture was about half way through the shoot and already the mountain was providing a great backdrop with only a little bit of light compensation on the subject.
(More examples when fully edited)
Below is the last shoot of the night when it was pretty dark and sun had already been set for a bit… we were working on twilight light by then with a bunch of external lighting.
STUDIO
But I did start experimenting even more with how to make studio interesting and new.
Since I’m not a studio photog and have never even read a book or watched a blog on studio setups I was just winging it.
I guess that’s how I did my whole photo existence just coming up with random ideas.
But I must admit I’ve heard of the idea of lighting the backgrounds and even seen a good friend David Terry setting up a studio setup at Suzanne’s house shooting through something colorful to get some background color.
So I had these filter strips perfect for my SB-900’s which I got from Pictureline for pennies (well worth a stop at the Draper pictureline to grab, even if you never use them… like me up until this point, at least you bought a photo thing for a couple dollars when everything else is too expensive)
So anyway I’m playing around and having people pick random pictures and shooting the backgrounds. I’ll continue to experiment of course.
The Seasoned Charity Shoot PRO
Ashley is the only one to have been to all 3 of my charity shoots… at the first one I didn’t even know her.
She’s a way awesome model when she’s sure of herself and not worried she’s acting to vain in front of Angie who acts it up even more than Ashley.
So having been to all 3 Charity shoot either she’s super duper smart and/or cheap… haha.
But in any case it has always been a fun shoot with Ashley and Angie around!
I was excited to do this shoot because I was offered to do baby shoots a while back but never could get the time or whatever, and I was happy to be doing pictures for a good friend, and even though this little girl is now a bit older I’m glad we could at least get some.
Model Photographers
Many might think Angela looks familiar and that’s because she’s featured in several parts on my blog ever since I did her wedding in California.
We refer to her as the “Beach Bride”
But angela is also a photographer and so is Liz the girl in the blue, and for that matter so is adrienne and Monica who came for shoots as well.
In fact yesterday 2 of my interns came with their families to get pictures taken. (We missed you Heidi and family)
In fact many people that took advantage of the charity shoot were photogs.
I think it’s an amazing learning experience for a photographer to have pictures taken of themselves, I think it helps to be in the shoes of the future clients.
Now you know the feedback you should be giving when you’re the photographer.
You can tell Liz and Angela know what a good expression looks like and are able to capture it in the pictures.
I’ve always enjoyed shooting angela because she’s so creative and I think that will make her a great photographer one day.
And Liz was a joy to take pictures of because she had so many looks and was so fun to be around. The Camera loves you all… (as the saying goes)
I did the first few Studio shoots of the week.
I did a few other shoots later in the day, but I wanted to show the studio stuff off first.
It’s been a while since I’ve said this… but, studio isn’t my thing.
But because studio isn’t my thing I’m trying to do it a bunch more.
I believe that people should try to learn to do and enjoy those things they aren’t good at or don’t enjoy.
Thus I’m doing studio.
Last year the charity shoot was All studio… this year mostly outdoors… but I’m doing some studio stuff.
I have a nice basement and got a few more items for the studio… if desired i can do a video post about my setup and what I did.
Let me know if you’d like to see me do such a video.
I’ll add some info on what i did for the following pictures later… for now I need to drive to the location for day 4
His name is Walter
I lovingly refer to him as “Walter the Horse”
I think he was the highlight of the second day of shooting for the 3rd annual charity shoot.
Walter deserves his own blog post
(I’ll even throw in some pics of his chauffeurs)
This is a quick recap of the pictures taken yesterday afternoon in Little Cottonwood Canyon
While the rest of the days of the Charity Shoot plan to be very sunny it was cloudy and had just finished snowing up at little cottonwood
All the colors were covered in white… but I was surprised that everyone seemed ok with it and many were very pleased… I guess it worked because they were going to be used for Christmas cards anyway.
There were several families and several groups of roommates and even a group of 3 sisters.
I had a lot of fun and was actually able to stay pretty warm considering.
This little guy got scared for some reason (maybe it was my face) and had a hard time, but I was still able to catch a couple happy faces.
Today’s shoot will be up in American Fork Canyon … it’ll be a sunny day but I expect there might still be some white on the ground. (I hope)
Jody was right at home in the snow being from Alaska
Amalia was a beautiful model… easy to get good pictures.
And she brought her roommate too
This girl came for some glamour shots
And she was even nice enough to bring her Mom and Dad
I shot these in the studio on some seamless paper… haha … ok Snow
Sisters
People bring their friends and family for moral support, we all know jessica just wanted pictures of herself. haha
Nicole brought her roomates and hit the last bits of light in the canyon
Apparently I like to see how far I can stretch myself.
Previous instances of going big.
- Doing long wedding day shoots … up to 14hrs once.
- Doing shoots I’ve never done before is always a fun challenge and stretch.
- Going to a new location is a fun stretch I’ve done so many times it’s not that stretchy anymore.
- Like when I shot 60,000 pictures in 3 months and drove 12,000 miles while I was in europe.
- Or when I had like 8 weddings in a couple weeks in several different states and drove almost 5k miles with several plane flights all during the Christmas season equaling an insane amount of pictures.
- Or when I did 2 weddings in one day at 2 different locations
- Or when I did 3 weddings in one day (only one reception)
- Or when i did 32 shoots for the 2nd annual charity shoot
- And at the same time bought and used for the first time studio equipment the day before all these shoots.
Another fun challenge.
This week I’ll be shooting 50+ photo shoots.
