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My first shots were with a nice family, Brandy, Tye, and Tripp. It was windy and the light was pretty bad, but I found a nice place for them to stand, and things worked out OK.
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I kind of liked the wider view just as a little distraction.
As with all kids this age, the challenge was to get him to look at the camera. I really liked this one because he is actually looking at me (in spite of the hair problem).
On a recent CreativeLive, the speaker said he has all his work done at Costco. He said they do it right there and do it fast, and, for the most part, the work is no different than that done at a custom lab. So, I decided to try Sam’s. I uploaded twelve images. I went to order the prints and immediately saw that I had a problem. The selection of sizes was limited. The only sizes that would allow me to have prints of the full image were 4 x 6 and 20 x 30. There was a selection called “True Digital” but there was no indication of what that was. So, I was stuck with 8×10 or 11×14 and having to crop the image. Well, I ordered one of the “True Digital” prints just to see what it was and one 11×14 of each of the images.
I did not hear back from them notifying me the prints were done. So, I asked in the store, and I was told it takes about an hour. The “True Digital” print was something slightly smaller than a 4×6. The 11×14 enlargements were all well done. They were printed on a semi-gloss paper that was acceptable for the images. I got to manipulate the cropping. So, that was acceptable from the point of view that the images were cropped where I wanted them to be. But, they were still cropped. A couple were somewhat darker than on screen. There is, of course, no ability to calibrate. So, that might be something that needs to be considered.
My next job is to locate appropriate matts for them.
There is a junk yard in Belton that specializes in Classic Cars. The Temple Photography Meetup Group held a group shoot there last Saturday.
To me, these represent the certainty of decay. All of these were once bright, shiny, and new. Now they are in various stages of decay.
There were far too many cars there that brought back memories – cars I owned, cars owned by someone I knew, cars I wanted.
I have converted some of the pictures of the old farm to Black and White.
I really like the atmosphere of these.
I have been intrigued by the idea of fine art prints. A CreativeLive seminar with Doug Landreth explored how he goes about making them. It was interesting, but there was not nearly enough explanation. In Photoshop, he overlays images with layers that he manipulates into patterns that add barely visible elements and textures to the image. The result is quite good.
As a first step in looking at that, I took some of the pictures I took last week on Highway 6, and transformed them into Black and White.
It turns out there are a variety of ways of producing Black and White images. One is simply to reduce the color saturation of the image. There are other “effects” in Aperture. They somehow use selective filters in the operation. For these, the one that I liked the most used a Red filter. I am not sure what that really means, but it had the effect of darkening areas of the sky until they were almost black.
It is almost like using a polarizing filter. The rest seemed to exaggerate the starkness of the image.
Looking at these calls to mind scenes from the old John Ford Westerns.
As we left Galveston this morning, the wind was so calm that the water was still. I took this picture of Galveston Bay from the bridge on 61st St.
I have gone through the over 7000 images from this year and chosen five that I think are the best. I am not going to rank them. Rather, I will present them chronologically.
The first one is from Galveston. Earlier this Spring, Debbie was walking on the beach and saw that someone had started to pile rocks on each other. As other people came along, they created their own piles of rocks to the point where eventually, there were hundreds of piles of rocks. I took this picture of one of the piles. I used a strobe and softbox to help me make the sky a little darker and to help define the surfaces of the rocks.
Earlier this Summer, Pat Jones asked me to serve as a second shooter at a wedding. I enjoyed the process. The wedding was at an interesting outdoor area in Roundrock. As the sun was going down, we got the couple to walk with us. There was a place in the woods where the setting sun was coming through a break in the leaves of a tree. I positioned them in the spot where the sun hit their faces and got this picture.
For the Waco Wild West 100 Bike Ride, last year, I stood at the end of the Washington St, Bridge and tried to get pictures of the cyclists with the suspension bridge and the Hilton in the background. I got some similar shots this year, but noticed that the river was absolutely still. So, I went down along the river and shot up at the cyclists on the bridge, with the reflection in the still water.
Ashley Henager wanted to get some pics at an old house in Speegleville. A couple days before, she contacted me and asked it we could change and shoot with her husband and son. I loved the idea. We shot at Midway Park. Noah was as cute as could be, but he really wanted to get in the water. He kept trying to get away and get in the water, and at one point, the tug between them resulted in this picture.
Finally, the last shoot with a model I did was with Heather Lynn Johnson. I have already discussed the lighting issues, but this shot was really great.
We went to Galveston for New Years. The weather was pretty bad – cold and wet for most of the time. Monday night, we decided to go the The Pleasure Pier for dinner. I took my camera, and got a couple of pretty good night images of the pier.
Both of these images were taken in the early evening. I actually ended up underexposing with exposure compensation because the camera meter wanted to make the pictures brighter than it really was.
After the ceremony, all the guests were made to go out into the foyer while the formal portraits were taken and the chairs removed. There were refreshments and a calypso band. Once the ballroom was ready, everyone was ushered back in. The first event on the agenda was the toasts. I don’t remember what the best man said, but it got a reaction from the others.
The bride did not want pictures of the guests at their tables for dinner, and that was fine with us. There were too many guests, the lighting was terrible, and we got to rest just a little. After dinner, they started the dances. The bride and groom danced, then the groom and his mother. The bride’s father was deceased. So, she decided to do four dances, one with each of her brothers. Her brothers came from Puerto Rico. So, it was a special occasion for them. Cindy said that this meant a lot to the bride. So, we concentrated on getting really good pictures of these dances. Again, the lights were down really low. So, focusing was a serious problem. Even at that, this is a picture of the bride dancing with one of her brothers.
The rest of the evening was spent dancing and visiting, and we got some nice pictures of the rest of the reception.
Cindy finished her editing of the over 5000 pictures we took at the wedding three weeks ago, and the bride and groom have seen them. So, now I can post some of mine.
This was a pretty standard shot of the groom anticipating the day’s events. My assignment was to get the groom pics. The groom and his groomsmen were in a room in the Hilton hotel. Unfortunately, by the time I got there, he was already dressed. So, I only got a couple pics of him dressing. There was pretty good light from this window. So, I closed the drapes to restrain it and good this shot.
I took some more of the groom, his parents, and the groomsmen around the Hilton. One of the shots they wanted was of the groom’s party coming from the Hilton to the Convention Center. There is an open walkway, but the light was terrible. The walkway is covered and kind of dark, but the surrounding area was very light. With bright sunlight, there was really contrasty light that made a good exposure difficult. Much of this shot was saved in processing. The background was blown out in order to get good exposure of the faces.
While we were doing this, the groom commented that it was kind of a “rat pack” thing – a bunch of guys in tuxedos. Someone else commented that it was kind of an “Ocean’s 11” thing. I had a little different slant. I told them it looked more like a “Reservoir Dogs” to me. To each his own, I guess.
I posted the rest of the preparation pics in the Wedding Gallery and will post more tomorrow.