Who’s teaching who?

Where’s the wedding?
I don’t go to many weddings these days. I’m not sure if it’s because people don’t get married anymore or if it’s because they just don’t invite me but one thing's for sure, “Here comes the bride” played on the organ is a rare sound.

But when I finally get invited to a wedding, photographing the reception is always a challenge. By the time the Bride and Groom makes it back to the reception the people at the bar know me by name. And to make matters worse, there’s always one girl wearing a dress her boyfriend wishes she wouldn’t have bought which ends up distracting me.

Free Help
That’s why I decided to get an assistant to help out with the reception photography and who better than my 10 year old son. He was bored so I setup my camera for him and gave him a 2 minute lesson on operating the flash head for bounce lighting and off to the races he went. There he was lugging my D300 c/w MB-D10, lens, flash held by my faithful BlackRapid strap around his neck. He fired away and I didn’t see him most of the night. All I could see was the room light up every minute or so as if we were in a lightning storm.

Job well done
After filtering his 200 or so images he shot, surprisingly 130 were keepers. The composition or horizon was off on some and crop off center on others. But out of the 130 images there were many that were simply perfect in that he had captured the moments of the evening. (Luckily for me he didn’t capture all of them!) The image on this post is his. I simply cropped it and processed it.

Learning
Kids learn so much by observing and trying things out themselves. My son is well on his way of becoming an outstanding photographer and my daughter too for that matter. She has her own camera and manages to produce some very creative work. I don’t know what it is with her(and her friends) but she's stuck in this continuous self-portrait mode. Once she figures out that she can turn the camera around, she’ll discover a whole new world of photography.

My kids are not the only ones learning. After filtering my son’s images and being pleasantly surprised by his work, I realized that he too had taught me something. His tenacity, POV and spontaneity delivered the goods while I was busy checking the blueness of the Coors Lite mountain’s or on the dance floor trying to imitate a guy that can’t dance (which that I did very well!). So what did I learn? I learned I should have got him to shoot the reception too!

Now I can’t wait for him to learn Photoshop. When that happens I’ll be able to sit back and just be the director.

From the brighter side of the darkroom,

Pierre

Trigger happy!

I’ve had my Nikon D300 for about 10 months or 300 days now and I’ve shot 20400 images with it so far. Being awake for an average of 16 hours a day for the last 300 days, that makes an average of 4.25 images per hour!! That's basically pressing the shutter button every 14 minutes for the last 10 months!

Why I don't shoot weddings

Let me start by saying that I have the utmost respect for wedding photographers, good ones that is. 20 years ago I shot weddings, motivated by my passion for photography and my hopes to make money to pay off my equipment and then buy more!

A couple of years into it, the motivation came to a sudden halt when the realities of shooting wedding came to light.

I don't shoot weddings anymore because:
1 - I'm meticulous (some would say perfectionist) and like to do things well. I'll redo it until I like it. Bride's aren't to crazy of getting married a second time if you screwed up!
2 - Way too much pressure - You are shooting non stop and you need to perform.
3 - Time - time is always limited and you are rushed. Unfortunately my creativity takes time, something you don't have(time) when you shoot weddings.
4 - Money - Time is money and I don't think you can pay me enough to lose a Saturday and then the countless hours to process the images. But if you think you can then maybe I can be convinced!

From the lighter side of the darkroom,

Pierre

Photographing Art

My sister asked me to photograph some of her paintings as she's having a tough time getting quality images of her work.

I told her I'd do it as this is really easy. Heck you could train a donkey to do this.

I setup my nifty Manfrotto tripod and set my camera at f/16 with 50 mm lens and began to shoot the art work.

I processed them all in PS using my usual action and I was really pleased with the result. My pleasure came to a sudden halt when I decided to check the color match between my images and the painted canvas. That is when I realized that my colors and contast were totally off. I had tweaked the saturation, levels and curves like I do on all my images. Something you can't do when you try to replicate something because the end result was images that didn't resemble the art work!

I had to redo them all and try to color balance the images to match the paintings. Tough job and although I managed to get my images to look closer to the paintings, I just couldn't get them bang on. Maybe a donkey can't be trained to do this!

From the brighter side of the darkroom,

Pierre

Missed Opportunity

After some persuasion, the girls graduating this year managed to convince me to shoot their Prom. I had previously managed to hold my position and didn’t shoot their formal gown shots as this repetitive photography just doesn’t appeal to me. After retiring from shooting this type of event 20 years ago, I finally said yes to the big day.

Why did I say yes?
Well part of me wanted to relive the pressure and adrenaline rush of shooting an event but I really wanted the opportunity to confirm or refute my reasons for not doing these events in the first place. Shooting weddings 20 years ago was more pressure than fun. Trying to make an ugly bride look good and getting paid peanuts to do so just wasn’t my cup of tea. But there was a part of I liked when shooting wedding and I felt this would be a great opportunity to clear that up so that I can know when to say yes and when to say no in the future.

The assignment
The grads were to give me one hour of their time between the graduation and reception. I was to take individual portraits as well as group shots. I was also asked to shoot the diploma ceremony and the reception dinner and speech coverage as well.

The big surprise
At the end of the ceremony, one hour before the portrait shoot, I learn that my 1 hour shoot had shrunk to 15 minutes and all they really wanted now was a group shot. What a change in plans! I was bewildered. This group finally gets me to say yes and they have one hour of my photography time to create memorable images of this day but now they only want 15 minutes? I may not be renowned for my people pictures but heck, give me a bit of time and I’m sure I can produce some stunning images. At that point I realized that they either had no clue of what I was capable of producing or that they didn’t really care. Neither did I in fact as I was doing this for free. Yup! Free. And they didn’t take advantage of this opportunity.

The Shoot
I showed up at our meeting place for the shoot and got ready. The grads slowly showed up and I started shooting portraits of those that arrived, waiting for the entire class for the one shot they really wanted. As time progressed, some of them got impatient of waiting and the questionable weather (thunder) made them return to the reception. For a period of 30 minutes they came and went and I managed to get some portraits and some smaller group shots but not of the whole group as they wanted. The light was perfect and they could have all gotten some great images.

Will I do this again?
I’ve come to realize that I feel most rewarded when I create photographic art. Anyone can take photographs but few can make it into art. But producing art takes inspiration, talent and time, not 15 minutes and a camera. So to answer the question, if someone asks me to take pictures again, I'll say no, I have no time. But if someone wants to buy my art, then I'll say yes but you will have to give me time.

From the brighter side of the darkroom

Pierre.

Loose Screws?

I've got a case full of lighting accessory goodies including a small smorgasbord of e-bay triggers. They work pretty good but anyone would rather own PocketWizards or Radio Poppers instead.

I recently came across Cybersync's from AlienBees and I'm pretty excited by the price. (As you can see it doesn't take much to excite me. Show me a price tag and I'm out of control!) They are half the cost of PocketWizards.

I purchased a White Lighting Flash Unit from a Paul C. Buff (owner of AlienBees) about 20 years ago and the thing still works so I'm confident that these Cybersync's will last a long time.

I decided to do a bit of testing of my e-bay triggers tonight to sort of convince myself that somewhere in AlienBees warehouse in Tennessee there were a few Cybersyncs with my name written all over them.

The test did prove that the e-bay triggers aren't too consistent and that misfires are frequent.

Now what about the loose screws?

After shooting 150 test images of myself (yeah with my clothes) I actually got an idea and shot the above image. Heck if I got that idea before I started I wouldn't of wasted an hour popping the flashes in my face.

The image is three different shots layered together and then some fancy post processing.

When I was done I showed it to my wife who looked a me as if I had some screws loose. I explained to her that I was performing a highly technical and controlled test of my 'junk' accessories yet that didn't seem to impress her. To her, I was just wasting my time!

It was also obvious that mentioning the fact that there were two Cybersyncs with my name on them in a Tennessee warehouse wasn't going to make things any better so I just shut up!

From the brighter side of the dark room,


Pierre