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My mom and I headed west on the Pike over the weekend to visit my brother and his family, not something we do too often. I figured it would be cool to take a few pics–I know very well that we often don’t appreciate the photographs “in the moment.” Chronos keeps to his schedule and we move along to the beat, uncognizant of the changes in our features. Then one day you look in the mirror and wonder when all those gray hairs came about. You wonder how the kids shot up like redwood trees right in front of your eyes. You pull out the shoe boxes and photo albums and start reminiscing. If you’re anything like me you wonder about the next generation yet to be born and what they will be like. But um, back to my brother. Waiting for mom to pick me up, I searched for my pocket cam. I love that this camera is so compact and can slip right into a shirt pocket. But no dice, I hadn’t seen it for a couple weeks; why did I expect to find it now? “Hmmm, well my iPhone will work just as well” I thought at first until I realized I hadn’t used my pro gear in at least a month. Sometimes it can be such a bother to pack the good stuff. So I gathered up the big, bulky camera, flash, and lens to create snapshots. I gotta say I’m glad I did. The pictures have their flaws but it was all about experiencing and capturing that moment. In all my numerous years I hadn’t ever been in a photo with both my mother and my brother. Weird. My niece and nephew were a contrast in personalities; she is camera-shy while he lives for the camera. Too bad she had to leave early–I’ll definitely have to set up a shoot and include the whole clan. The highlight of these images for me was the proud look on mom’s face. Check her out as she hangs with her boys. We must get some equal time with the girls. Maybe next post.

The kid is becoming a man.

Hanging out with sis. They adore each other.

Let me in on the joke.

He didn't approve me posting this. But he'll live.

Two and a half men

Mom and her boys

One of my favorites

The crown prince clowns around.

I’M BAAACCCCKKKKKK!!!

And yes, I realize how completely underwhelmed you are as a reader of this blog. But I’ve had time away to get rejuvenated and jump back into my photography happenings full swing. I suppose you can thank the thieves who decided to help themselves to my Suzuki GSX-R 600. Here’s wishing that the engine seizes, locks up the rear wheel and causes a serious high-side. The motorcycle folks know what I’m talking about.

But before I even delve into photography I want to send my heartfelt condolences to the family of Peter Lenz, the 13 y/o motorcycle racing phenom who passed on way too early on Sunday August 29. I had heard of him only a few months ago from watching the Keith Code DVD Twist of the Wrist II. Shocked is the only word I can think of to describe my response on learning the news. RIP Peter.

I gotta confess that I’m somewhat of a gear-head. And God knows I’ve read all the photography books and seen the paragraphs that try to separate the true artistes from the technolust folks. It’s not the equipment you use that matters, it’s your vision, blah blah blah… I get it. I really do and I continually strive to improve my skills and expand my photographic vision. It’s just way more fun to do it with the latest and greatest equipment if you can afford it. Got the Canon 5D II that I wanted back in 2008. Also sprung for the 85 f/1.2L II. You know what? No regrets. Well… maybe this isn’t so much a regret as a wry observation — each snap of the shutter on the 5D II eats up 25 MB of disk space when shooting raw. Is it worth it? Absolutely.

I’ve just had to become familiar with the G-RAID disk storage system, that’s all.

Canon 85 mm f/1.2L II

And the 5D mark II DSLR is probably on my mind only because of a recent post (Tuesday August 31, 2010) I saw on Jessica Claire’s website. She lambastes the camera and her observations are quite the opposite of mine. Where I see beautiful files with awesome colors and smooth tonality, she sees files that are “noisy and icky”. Here are some photos I’ve taken with this camera. You decide.

Long Wharf, Boston Harbor

Spectacle Island

Pulley

Granted, these shots were all taken outdoors in copious amounts of sunlight but that is also where Jessica likes to shoot. I won’t go proselytizing for the Canon camp when talk of switching to Nikon comes up. The 5D II’s autofocus could use some improvement but she wasn’t using a 1D series camera to begin with. Just my thoughts on that matter.

To continue the nautical theme (and as an excuse to post more images), here are some more images taken with the 5D.

Spirit of Boston

I'm on a Boat

Look at me

And I’m out.

I can hardly believe it’s been two months since my last post. So of course I had to get in at least one more entry before waving goodbye to 2008. The end of the year is always a time for reflecting and reviewing how well I accomplished my goals and to figure out how to keep improving in the new year. There were some things I did unexpectedly but am glad I did.

One of the major changes I made was the switch from Windows to Mac OS. I am much happier! Windows Vista just didn’t work out very well for me and caused a lot of headaches on my system. The Mac isn’t perfect, mind you, but it is worlds better for my needs and actually stretches the 2 GB of RAM far more efficiently than my PC.

Storage has gotten rather inexpensive. I can now purchase 2 TB (that’s terabytes) of storage for under $500. I suppose the video production guys will find a way to use it all up and keep pushing the envelope, especially with hi-def video and multi-channel sound.

With the decrease in the cost of file storage,  I can now shoot lots more images and I can shoot in the RAW format full-time without getting anxious. The resulting problem though was how to manage all this data. Photoshop Lightroom has become my most-used application. It’s actually fun to use and dramatically increases my efficiency. I’m surpised to find myself hardly using Photoshop these days.

What toys am I looking forward to in 2009? I’ve long been itching to obtain Canon’s EOS 5D mark II and I’ve had my eyes on Canon’s 85 f/1.2 lens. My 1D mark II is perfectly adequate and I own a plethora of lenses so I need to think wisely about my next purchases. And workshops, hmm, I think it would be great to learn from David Beckstead and Cory Ann Ellis. Really though, I probably need to focus more on the business side of things. It’s not as much fun but that’s where the money is.

Plans for 2009

1. Explore landscape and macro photography a bit more
2. Increase number of engagement shoots (and weddings)
3. Get more into the high school senior market

There’s something about the month of October and photography workshops that just seems to go together for me. In October 2007 I was able to make it to Joe McNally’s “Location Lighting” workshop and this past October, I was able to participate in no less than three workshops. The most recent was Neil van Niekerk’s Flash Photography workshop in Boston. If you’re a Canon or Nikon external flash user with lingering questions about your flash, sign up for his workshop immediately! I will note however that there’s nothing new in the workshop itself that Neil doesn’t freely share on his blog. But at only $500 and with the opportunity to photograph models under Neil’s supervision, the workshop is well worth it. I signed up to gain the practical experience of seamlessly blending flash and ambient light indoors and that I did. Our two models Tanja and Melissa were awesome to work with and were very patient with 7 or 8 photographers popping flashes at them all day.

The one difference I had with Neil had to do with his feeling that one should only ever shoot in RAW and never in JPEG. While I agree that we should shoot in RAW primarily, I choose to shoot in RAW plus small JPEG. Let’s say you have a few minutes of downtime at a wedding and you want to wow the guests with a quick and dirty slideshow. If you have the latest and greatest processor that can keep up with the demands of RAW processing, then it may be no big deal to simply export your RAW images to JPEG. Or you could even plunk down $150 for Photo Mechanic in order to “ingest” and convert the images from the memory card really fast. I think it’s just as easy to write the JPEGs to a separate card in-camera so that the slideshow can be put together quickly. But that’s a minor quibble. What do the pictures say?

I was laying on the ground and shooting up at Tanja while trying to get a halo around her head from the sun backlighting her. I think my shooting angle is rather steep but I was working very hard to avoid flare in my lens.

I wanted to push the sky to a deep saturated blue so I underexposed the ambient light and gelled my flash with a CTO gel. White balance was set to tungsten although that can be set after the fact in RAW processing.

Another example with a deep blue background. This is still just one flash on-camera providing the modeling on her face.

Neil’s strobe mounted flag is being put to good use here and the result suggests multiple light sources like one would find in a studio. But nope, it’s just the one on-camera strobe firing into the wall and ceiling to my left. It looks like Rembrandt Lighting, don’t you think? I intentionally left this image a bit warm.

A final headshot of Melissa.

And a useless bit of trivia, Neil pronounces Nikon as “Nee kon”.

Here’s another workshop perspective from another workshop attendee, Jennifer Stone. Check out her wonderful images.

Aaah, the joys of photography. I truly have to love it to invest the amount of time and money that I’ve been putting in lately. Last week I attended ImageX and learned under the tutelage of one of the “top ten photographers in the world” as declared by American Photo magazine. I am of course talking about Jessica Claire although Tamara Lackey was certainly no slouch (Thanks Tamara for checking out my blog!). Such hyperbole has become more common as various entities vie for attention in our media saturated society. And it must be working because yesterday I attended another photography workshop held by a “top ten in the world” photographer, Jose Villa. The workshop was held in a beautiful rustic farmhouse at Riverside Farm in Vermont. Check out their website – it looks like a really cool place to host a wedding.

We spent the morning and a part of the afternoon listening to Jose discuss humble beginnings and how he got to where he is today. He mentioned several resources (websites) and it was good to get his thoughts on marketing and building up a client base. The afternoon was spent photographing a beautiful model outdoors (Renee – with makeup by Britney). After watching Jose shoot and lecture for a few minutes, each of the 10 attendees got 3 minutes to apply our knowledge and photograph Renee. Once we were back indoors, Jose placed her by the window and showed us how to do windowlight portraiture. I came up with the following poses.

The dress was a bit too large for this slender woman. You’ll see the orange clamps and her bra in some of her pics. We had her freezing out in the cold but she was game.

She had such a great smile; very easy to get great photos of her.

I love going to the sexy over-the-shoulder pose. I think it works here. Uh, ignore the superbright orange clamps holding her dress up.

She truly looks like an exhilarated bride.

Perhaps I missed out because I had to leave “early” but I wish we had gotten the chance to look at each others results and receive constructive criticism from Jose. It was a positive experience overall although I will admit that I respond better to a slightly more formal teaching style than Jose’s. Way too often someone would jump in and add meaningless chatter that I felt distracted from MY learning process. But that’s the risk with an open dialog style of teaching. Jose has some beautiful albums and I got to check out some really great work online from my classmates. Aaah, the joys of photography.

It’s funny how the most memorable images aren’t always the most technically perfect ones. Often they are captured with less-than-ideal devices under less-than-ideal lighting and with less-than-ideal subjects. With the explosion of cell phones just about everybody has a camera these days. And a good thing too. I am fortunate enough to have access to excellent photographic technology and I do my best to make great images. But last weekend I was trumped by a teenager with a cell phone. LindZ came up with this awesome image below.

The best images usually tell a story.

I would be remiss though if I didn’t include Chrystel’s cell phone pic. A complaint I often hear is that I’m never in any photos. So here goes…

Last week (Oct 5, 2008) I had the most amazing week! Image X was held in New Orleans and I’m really glad I had the chance to attend. It was a step in the right direction for me not only photographically but also businesswise. Plus I met some of my photography idols. I got to observe Jessica Claire and Tamara Lackey doing live shoots which were inspiring in and of themselves. But beyond that it was also amazing to see the images that Jerry Ghionis has the ability to create out of seemingly nothing. This last thing was probably the biggest challenge I had faced in my assignments.

I was so excited overall and at one point I was alone in the elevator with Joe Photo. That’s right, THE Joe Photo. Like a groupie I started gushing about how much I admired his work and blah, blah, blah. But he was cool as the Rolling Stones are to baby boomers. He reached out his hand and said, “I’m Joe Photo. Nice to meet you.” I responded in kind but in my head I was thinking “way to make yourself look like an idiot Evroy.” Would you believe we ran into each other one-on-one later that night and I decided to be cool and keep my mouth shut. Joe was smooth though. He smiled, pointed at me and said “Don’t tell me… El.. Ev..v…” as he struggled to remember my name. I allowed a triumphant “Evroy!” to escape from my mouth. It was just so cool to be acknowledged by this industry leader. Hopefully I’ll be much more poised the next time I run into someone whose achievements I admire.

Of course, the trip wouldn’t be all it could be without networking with other photographers. I was rather surprised to find so many attendees were either just starting out or had been in business for no more than two years. The demographic also stood out to me. I would estimate 70% were white women in their mid 20′s to mid 40′s. I’m very much looking forward to checking out the blogs of fellow attendees over the next few days and beyond.

But enough talk. In Jessica’s workshop we split into three groups and rotated among three couples. Each rotation had to photograph couple 1 in an action shot, another couple using our own individual style, while the third rotation was to observe Jessica at her craft. My personal favorite shots are the ones I shot to showcase individual style.  Here are a few.

After this experience I’m looking forward to attending more workshops and learning all I can about lighting and posing. I’m off to Vermont tomorrow to attend Jose Villa’s workshop and I’ll have another workshop at the end of the month with Neil van Niekerk. I can’t wait.

I had the opportunity to shoot a fashion show today at Macy’s.  This was the first such experience for these models and they handled it like pros. Technical details:  I started off shooting with a 50 mm f/1.4 lens but the autofocusing was hideous. I got more keepers once I switched to the 24-70 f/2.8 lens. No flash although in retrospect it would have allowed me to lower my ISO (and thus less noise). Most of these were shot between ISO 1000-1600. Here is how it turned out. 

Ludgina and Marck were married on August 10 and they are another fabulous young couple totally in love with each other. Ludgina looked stunning in her Maggie Sottero gown.  Oh yeah… Ludgina is quite ripped.

My good friends Dara and James got hitched recently and I really enjoyed their wedding.  They both looked amazing and were clearly in love with each other.  The look of adoration on James’ face was so endearing.  Since I wasn’t  the main photographer at this particular wedding I didn’t get the best shooting angles but all-in-all, I think it was a pretty good take.  I hope you’ll enjoy viewing the images below as much as I enjoyed creating them.