The Nothing

Next week or so is going to be a lot of fun.  I’m in the process of closing down my pBase account and moving everything over to Flickr.  As much as I love everything about pBase, it’s just not cutting it.  Flickr has a million more users, and it’s much easier to find people with similar interests.  Tagging system is much better, not to mention the involvement with groups.  pBase is my prefered way to present photos, but Flickr has it beat with communication and connections.

Today I was supposed to be doing a photo shoot.  The organizer, unfortunately, was called to work and the rest of us have no idea where we were supposed to be going.  At this point it seems I’ll be doing something other than shooting photos.

I’ve found myself shopping for new glass.  Shop as I my, of course, the money isn’t there.  Some of the recent wants are: Nifty-50/Plastic Fantastic/50mm f/1.8,  17-40mm F/4L (equates to 28×64 on the 1.6 crop sensor 20d), 60mm macro, and a few others. [Read more →]

Finished up the production work on the wedding last night.  Finally.  No more worries about that.  Now have to hunt down the newlyweds, show them the proofs, and get a check.  I won’t do any more work till that happens at this point.

In other news, I also shot a car show last weekend. Just out with my parents, enjoying the sun while it lasted (it started raining the moment they dropped me off at home and started their drive back to seattle).

I’m having FUN with the production work now.  I think this is a sign…

i’m STILL going through some post processing on last weekend’s wedding.  I’m close to done though… only a hundred-some-odd shots to go.  I suppose I should really call it pre-processing.  I’m only cropping and doing some color/exposure correction.  Nothing major.  Then we’ll sit down, go through some images, pick some out for prints, then i’ll go crazy on the post and sent out for print.

I knew I’d have a TON of hours in on post production work.  I had planned on over 1000 shutter clicks, and we did that.

Weddings, I found the other day shooting my first, are fun.

Weddings, I found yesterday the other day shooting my first, are stressful awful reminders of how crazy people can really be.

Some of the things I learned:
1 - if you’re going to rent gear, don’t thinks “its going to be there.” Make a freaking reservation. PPS was pretty much rented out. Only options were a 17mm L, 200mm L, and 800mm L. I went ahead with the 200 (pretty much useless) and a EFS 10-22mm (FUN!). The 28-105mm I have should have been OK, but it apparently has some, um, issues.
1.5 - i should never again consider 3 party glass
2 - all the time in the world is not enough. Two hours shooting time sounds good on paper. But no one is ever on time. There’s bound to be at least 1 person out of earshot.
2.5 - outdoor weddings can make shooting easier, but also make it harder to round people up
3 - an assistant is handy, even if they have no idea what they’re doing
4 - when shooting for friends, weddings really are a lot of fun.
5 - get the check before the wedding….

just finished shooting my first wedding.  It was fun.  I’ll probably never do it again.  Certainly doubt I’d do it for someone I didn’t know…

I impressed the wedding co-ord and the DJ though.  Both had no idea that it was my first wedding.  Said I was handling thing very well and getting what should be some good shots - course, they didn’t see any…
I had planned on renting the 24-70mm f/2.8L and the 70-200 f/2.8L… however, ProPhoto was pretty much out of glass by the time my lovely wife got there.  She had 3 options on L glass… 17mm, 200mm, and 800mm.  I went ahead and had her get the 200, though it went mostly unused.  Good glass but not usable for me.

Did manage to get the 10-22mm for the 20D.  I love this lens.  I’d recommend a ringflash though, or off camera light only.  Onboard flash, and even the 580exII couldn’t get light down at the minimum focal distance…

I do also love the 5D.

Time for me to call it a night… i’ll have more to say tomorrow!

First song I heard this morning, and ironically enough it’s very suitable.

This weekend is the  first wedding I’ve been hired to shoot.  I have a Canon 5D rental that arrived on Tuesday, and tonight my lovely wife is renting me some glass.  24-70mm f/2.8L and 70-200 f/2.8L to be specific.  Also grabbing the EFS 10-22 to use on the 20D.

So far I LOVE the 5D.  Its too awesome, and has quite a few features that the 20D lacks - besides the full frame sensor and all the lovely megapixels…

Took some time last weekend to get some shutter actions.  Walked all over PDX, and avoided the Red Bull Flutag event as much as possible.  It was a nice day out, so I knew a good percentage of Portland’s population was down on the waterfront watching people jump into the river.

The image attached is one of my favorites.

I up and fell off the frame of the photograph back in May.

I got frustrated, and, well, scared.

I was almost fired because of my photography.

The rundown of what happened:
As you may know, I like photography - I’m particularly fond of reptiles. I’m not going to call myself a good photographer, but I’m learning and am rather proud of some of the images I’ve produced. To help myself learn and grow I created this photo-blog. Its a place for me to talk about the pictures I’ve taken that I’m most proud of. Talk about the equipment I used. That type of thing. On there I also have some photos that I had made available as prints.

Sounds fine right? [Read more →]

You’ve heard it all before - back up your images.

Yes, do it. Right now.

DVD burner? can get a lot images on a DVD… CDR? not as many images, but works just the same. Multimedia server (ie networked harddrive array) think thats the route I’m about to go.

Over the weekend I lost my C: drive. Also lost video and my power supply, so I ended up building a new PC. The one I was using was about 7 years old, so it was time for some catastrophic failure. [Read more →]

it’s not too often I post something without a picture, and this is one of those times…

Yesterday while doing some research on Mangrove Snakes (Boiga dendrophila) ended up digging through a large box of old magazines.  An online search revealed a Boiga article in the Nov/Dec 1995 issue of Reptiles and Amphibians magazine.  While seeking out this issue, I found another issue with an article about Herp Photography by Michael Havelin published sometime in 1993.  Michael has LONG been a great photographer and I recognized his name from a variety of resources.  So I made sure to put that issue aside while I continued my search. [Read more →]