My wifes spring hobby

After our 6 month long record 100 inches of snowfall here in Wisconsin, it no surprise to see that growing things make us happy. My wife, Sarah, in particular goes a little crazy about this time of year and sometimes she needs a Saturday morning to go to Home Depot, buy some dirt, and proceed to fill several flower pots with soil. I stand back and try not to get in the way, knowing full well this is her time...and besides, I get to take some fun pics when the results bloom.

At least Chicago is warm and sunny

I am once again out on a shoot, 3 states and 8 planes in the last 3 weeks. I love this job.

This time I am in Chicago at Northwester University. Diana and I are shooting a story for the Multi Ethnic Department about diversity, evangelism, and justice. Why not, you can’t get one without the others right? Anyway… we, a two man team are taking a ton of gear and trying to run around a campus that is physically spread out and technically challenging (since it is private we need a lot of permissions) while trying to capture the story that is here.

It is not like we are the movie crew on campus though, there is a feature length film being shot as well, our two man team disappears compared to their 50+ team, several trailers and catered meals...I mean they have a trailer just for their light stands, I just have half a bag.

1st wedding of the season

Last weekend was spent on a small town in New York State known as Wellsville…for a couple interesting stories take a look at the family blog here, here, and here. But I was there for a wedding. I had a blast and I think I am really looking forward to this season of weddings.

It is hard doing what I do...

We (Nate and I) are on a shoot here in Charleston SC for twentyonehundred productions, so I had to take a look at the Atlantic and touch warm sea water for the first time. The hard part was waking up at 5:00am, but the reward was worth it.

And the wedding season officially started

Even though I have been booking weddings for several months, today the wedding season officially started with my first pre-wedding portrait session (standard in all wedding packages.) And what a day to start on, one of the warmest days in a long time, a break in the rain, perfect sunlight and a great couple. Joe and Jen were supper easy and obviously happy to be getting married.

Tech: I used a full gamut of lenses as well as off camera flash, all images but the last walking shot I used an off camera strobe fired manually from my on camera strobe. It was good to have Finn there to help out with the lightstand, made it easy. I tried to shoot all poses/locations with at least two focal lengths, which worked really well and gives variety to the couple.

A Stranger to Complete Strangers

Every month I take part in a tutorial and a photo challenge with the Black Hawk Church Photo Group. (Although I do not attend this particular church, they still let me go…how nice of them) This months tutorial focused on using different focal lengths to achieve different photographic results (another blog maybe) and therefore the challenge mirrored the tutorial. We were challenged to take 2 pictures of the same subject with different focal lengths and try and tell a different story…oh yah, we also decided to hold the event on a really cool street in town, full of “character.” To challenge myself even more (cuz I am a sucker for punishment) I told myself that the subjects had to be complete strangers instead of bits of trash, a fence, or an interesting building or something. This is hard for me because it requires talking to people I don’t know and explaining to them that I wanted to take their picture…no I am not crazy, no I will not sell it online, no I am not stalking you…etc. Plenty of those fears went through my mind but you know what, really it was supper easy. Yes, people asked what I was doing and so I told them, but they seamed ok, in fact maybe a little happy to help out and get their 1/250^th of a second of fame. It was also a lot of fun to talk to strangers, hear what they are doing, where they are from, why they are out here this early, and so on. I took far less pictures than I ever have at a challenge, but I also had a different kind of fun.

Tech: I needed two focal lengths so just used a wide zoom for the top pictures and a telephoto prime for the bottom. I started with the wide so I could talk to them, get a feel for what I wanted to say with the image, work the subject … and then I backed up a bit, switched lenses and tried it from afar. I actually felt more comfortable taking peoples pictures close to them with their permission then farther away…felt less paparazzi-ish

cute kid + great window light = Good Photo

Christiana is a really cute baby, celebrating her first year too!

Technical: One of the key lessons I have been learning this year is that light really matters. Yes, you can purchase really neat gear to take photos in the dark but good quality light can't be beat. Here the sunlight from outside was being let in through a window, basically creating a 3 foot by 6 foot soft box behind and sometimes to the left of camera. I just metered to that light and had a blast with Christiana. I have photographed her in this same place a couple times but without the great light and have never gotten as good of images as I did here.