We went to the pool. Behind the rock waterfall is a Bird of Paradise plant. I have looked at it for quite a while, and thought it would be interesting to take some shots of it. This time, the blossoms were perfect. I used my 90mm Tamron macro. I like that lens, but it was a little difficult under these circumstances. The plants were between the rocks by the pool and an iron fence. So, I had to get the picture by shooting between the bars of the fence. But, it still came out nicely.
Things have not gone altogether is envisioned. I was kind of hoping that this year, I might start getting some actual paying clients, but so far it is not working. Debbie and I had a little chat about things and decided there must be some way of getting the word out and marketing. But, what that is eludes me.
I have visited a few internet sites and they provide a fair amount of information on the business aspects and getting those going. I have completed a form to register the name and do business in the county. I have gone on line and looked into insurance, but it seems like that is not really necessary unless I have clients. So, that is kind of on the back burner. Everyone says I need a business plan. So, I will be giving that a lot of thought as I proceed. But, there is very little in the way of advice on how to find clients.
It is July 4th, and I will be giving this topic a great deal of thought over the holiday.
Saturday, I watched a video of Peter Hurley doing head shots of various people. He took some amazing shots, but the video was really about his “process.” Debbie was doing a bunch of things and heard it more than watched it. She hated Hurley. He was loud and abrasive and even somewhat abusive with these people. He would say things like “You’re eyes aren’t the same size. Turn your head so the beady one is closer to the camera.” but, he did do something quite interesting.
He had a chart called “How Does Your Inner Child Feel Today?”. It is a bunch of faces that correspond to emotions. He would look at it and randomly choose one of the emotions. He would say, “Show me innocent.” He explained that the expression he got might or might not be something interesting that he could photograph, but he said that the person would always realize they made a silly face and break out with a huge smile.
OK so, today I decided to try some beauty lighting. I powered my beauty dish with the Polaroid PL135 as the key light with a reflector underneath in a clam shell orientation. I added a Qflash T4d as a hair light. I had to power both down as low as they would go to shoot at iso 100 and 1/100, f/2.8 with my 85mm lens.
So, I told Helen to give me Joy.
Then I told her to show me pain.
Then, I asked for wistful
OK. Rather plastic. So, I sat down.
Serious.
Apprehensive
Anticipation
Relief that this is over.
I am not sure where I found out about ViewBug, but it is a site that has photo contests. You can join for free, but that limits you to 10 uploads per week. Some of the contests are free to enter. Others cost. You can also have a paid membership. With that, you can upload as many photos as you want, and you do not have to pay for any of the contests.
I was looking at their contests, and one was a free contest for landscapes. It was sponsored by a weekly photography news web site. So, I entered two of my HDR photos. The idea is that anyone on the site can view the pictures and vote on them, and after the submission deadline, judges will decide the winner.
This is kind of like American Idol. I could have gone on Facebook and told everyone to go to the site and vote for my picture, but then it is no longer about photographic quality, it is about how many people you can get to vote for you.
The deadline for the contest was June 1. I was just notified that this picture was “ranked in the top 20 most voted percentile.” I am not exactly sure what that means. There were 8900 pictures entered in the contest. If mine received enough votes to be in the top 20%, then it was one of the 1800 best. So, it is kind of hard to get all that worked up, but all in all, I still think that was pretty good.
I have been doing quite a bit of HDR imagery using Galveston locations. We were down there the weekend of the 8th. I didn’t really feel in the mood on Saturday morning but then remembered we joined the Galveston Historical Society. That meant we could get into The Elissa for free. So, I decided to go down to the harbor and shoot a little and go on The Elissa and shoot.
In looking at one of the magazines, I saw a picture take roughly in the same place as this. Only, it was a night photograph, and all the winds glowed brightly. It was an effective picture, and I would like to try a similar thing at some point, but this was just take from behind Willie G’s looking back at it.
While we were in the harbor, this fishing boat came in. It made an interesting subject for an HDR image. Then I noticed that a woman on the boat was quite busy dealing with the catch and got a nice picture of her.
We then went over to The Elissa and walked around the ship.
For a very long time, I have been wanting a longer focal length true macro lens. I finally ordered a Tamron 180mm 1:1 macro. I was somewhat concerned because a friend said he had a similar lens and rarely used it because the long focal length meant too much movement to handhold it. I did some shots holding it by hand, and it worked fine.
Although not super close, this one is certainly sharp for a hand held photo. I noticed a ladybug on what was left of my dill plant and took some shots of it. When looking at them, I could see the reason it was there – aphids.
A post in a Facebook group asked for a photographer for a wedding. It was from another photographer who was in the wedding party and was going to do the miscellaneous shots before the ceremony and at the reception, but just needed someone to photograph the ceremony. We settled on a price and met and discussed it. The bride was her sister. The wedding was to be outside at Whitehall Park in Woodway. Their family was mainly biker types, and the wedding was to have that atmosphere. The night before, it rained fairly heavily. I got to the location early to scout things out, and the ground wasn’t too bad. Given the logistics, I decided on three lenses – 10 – 20 f/3.5, 24-70 f/2.8, and 70 – 200 f/2.8.
I got a new Macro lens, and wanted to test it. So, I went over to the arboretum for a couple flower and insect shots.
I had a free afternoon, and I had been told that there were lots of really interesting places in Hico. Hico is a small town on Hwy 6. It is apparently the home of Billy the Kid because there is a statue of him in the middle of town, and apparently a museum as well. I drove around the town and saw lots of interesting locations.
There were alleys behind buildings that had back doors like this. It was really cool.
I can imagine these as great places for a bridal shoot.
This shell of an old building had tons of character.
When I had a free afternoon, I wanted to take Highway 6 North. I had heard that the town of Hico had some really interesting locations. Along the way, I stopped a couple places for some pictures.
This was an old tractor with two flags. I tried to increase the exposure on the flags to brighten them up, but it started looking too manipulated.
