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.

I’ve really been thinking seriously about going Prime only.  I know they can be limiting when you’re trying to shoot on the run, but they do have serious advantages when it comes to quality.  I can’t afford L-glass to get super quality zooms, but I know I can get near the same quality with non-L primes.  I’m thinking 20mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, and 100mm for now.

I also found this AWESOME article on Flickr’s Poor Mans Macro group called How 2 Make A Ghetto Fabulous Reversal Ring. Its a great idea and I think I might have an extra body cap.  Should go ahead and hit up the LPS and pick up a couple more body caps.  One can be a pinhole camera.  This Flickr group article also gives me a great use for the old FD mount lenses I have sitting next to me.  Most also have filters that I never ever use that wouldn’t have a problem with destruction…

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!

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 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?

Well, a good majority of those pictures where taken at the store with store animals. I had permission to take these pictures. They were used by the store, and I also used them to create a new T-Shirt design for the store.

My boss felt that this was exploitive and took it very seriously and personally. I’m not going to say whether this is right or wrong. This was how he felt and there is nothing that I can say or do to change that. He says he spoke with a few “professional photographers” and an attorney to see if what I had done was legal. Personally I felt that was a bit of a blow as well, but in the end they all claimed that it was a “grey area.”

Instead of being fired, I was give a week of leave with the caveat that if I thought I could go back with better values for the store I could keep my job. If I couldn’t ‘t then I shouldn’t go back.

Needless to say I went home that day and removed all the images.

I pretty much hung up my camera after that. I might have snapped 20 shots in the last few months.

Thanks to Daron for stopping by to check in on me. It meant a lot and sorry I wasn’t able to really talk. I’m sure you could understand why I was kinda secretive that day.

Now I’m hoping to get the camera rolling again. Actually, I HAVE to. I have friends getting married in a couple weeks and they’ve asked me to be their photographer.

They know I’m pretty green, I was upfront with that. I also made sure they knew I’ve never done a wedding before. They’re cool with all of it. They don’t want all the crazy albums and thing like that. Just a few pics that they could pull some prints from for family.

I’m looking forward to renting a 5D and a couple lenses for that day.

Now I’ve gotta get the camera back out, batteries charged, and get some practice in.

And I have to find a new car - totaled mine on friday

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.

Fortunately my C: drive only held applications, copies of every website i’ve ever built, and some random pictures, emails and other documents from 1995-2002. I have two other drives that contain everything else, including backups of many of the various applications I had installed. My loss was not so severe.

This time….

Next time it could easily be one of my other drives.

I’m planning on a massive drive backup this week. I’m also thinking of a Network Storage Server. These days you can get 1-2TB (yes, terabyte - 1000 gigs) storage servers for 300-600 bucks. If you already have a home network setup, it’ll plug right in. How cool is that? Check out this Western Digital 2TB setup.

So, what else did this event cost me? Well, a new macro lens. Spent as much on the new PC build as I would have on the Canon 60mm EFS macro. Fortunately that is all it cost me. Not years worth of images on top of that.

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.

I picked up that Herp Photography issue and flipped it open.  Now, keep in mind, back in the mid-90s it was still all about film.  All that means is that I don’t have to remember what ISO I’m using because I can change it whenever I want, and I don’t have to wait on a lab to check out my results.

Other than that, it was a decent article.  One of the sidebars wasn’t explained, but since I’ve dabbled in photography enough, I understood what was going on.  I was also surprised to see a lil mini-environment setup in a kiddie pool being used for a Turtle shoot.  Another interesting thing about that shoot - Off Camera Lighting - ala Strobist!  Some Nikon flash on a stand shooting into an umbrella.  Awesome.

As soon as I was done with the read, I hopped online to see if there is still a Michael Havelin out there.  Indeed he’s still out there, taking photos (though much isn’t shown), writing, and oh so much more.  I had no idea he was a man of many disciplines.  Anyways, while on his site, I learned he had written a second article on Herp Photography.  This time it was more focused on Macrophotography (a bit) and was published in Reptiles magazin, dec. 1994.

Interesting

It was more or less the same article.  Probably a bit more info, and definitely a call to practice, practice, practice.  The sidebars were similar, and the picture of the Turtle shoot with the kiddie pool was even used again.

I also learned he has a few books on the subject that I’m going to have to find.