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Michelle

I was approached by Dawn, who works with one of my clients, about her daughter Kayla who is showing an interest in photography. She wanted to see if Kayla could tag along for a photo shoot to see how things work beyond just clicking the shutter. I said that that would be cool, and it would be even cooler if we got Michelle (who also works for the same client) to be a model for us.

You can see why I chose Michelle, she’s pretty easy on the eyes as they say in the biz (or pretty much anywhere on the planet for that matter).As we were just going to be shooting different lighting scenarios, most of the shots we did were facial portraits.

We did some experimentation with gels and generally played around. She was a trooper!

And then I brought out one of the silly hats from the morning’s birthday party shoot 😉

She’d also make a pretty good country star with this look:

I also did some post processing in CameraBag 2. Nevercenter, the creaters of CameraBag, are running a sweepstakes with a pretty impressive prize, a brand new Canon 5D Mk III! You may recall that I’ve reviewed this software before. Here’s my entry into their sweepstakes:

So here’s a deal for you fine readers – the folks at Neversoft sent me some licenses for Camerabag 2 to give away to help promote the software and their sweepstakes! I’m going to give away 3 of them right here on this blog post. All you have to do is put a comment in this post (Make sure you use your real name and email address so I can send you the license key – don’t worry, your email will not be published anywhere). The first 3 comments get a copy of CameraBag 2 – That’s all there is to it!

Here’s another shot of Michelle using a similar filter as above:

One last shot of Michelle for you for now. I’ve got a bunch that I haven’t posted as well, but these are my favorites so far. I think she thought I was a bit insane when I asked here to do this last shot, but I absolutely love the look:

OK, so make with the comments people! I wanna give some stuff away 🙂

Vacation Wrap-Up

iPhone 4S

I took the family to Orlando, FL for spring break, and I was armed only with my iPhone and my point & shoot Nikon P7000. We were traveling with our neighbors and we had a blast! We spent most of our time at Disney World, with a one day trip to Universal Studios for my son and I to get our inner Harry Potter out.

Nikon P7000

Nikon P7000

Nikon P7000

In the past when we went to the amusement parks for vacations, I’d lug around my DSLR and try to get cool shots. What I wasn’t doing was spending time having fun with my family! The shots we always looked at afterwards weren’t the artsy shots of some ride or topiary or whatever – The shots we went back to were of our loved ones having fun. So, I made lots of use of my iPhone’s crappy front-facing camera and got lots of shots like these:

iPhone 4s (front facing camera)

iPhone 4s (front facing camera)

iPhone 4s (front facing camera)

Since I had my point and shoot P7000 with me, I didn’t hesitate to hand it over to strangers and loved ones to take shots with, such as these:

Nikon P7000 – Photographer – My Wife Amy

Nikon P7000 – Photographer: Our Waiter

Nikon P7000 – Photographer: Some Dude With A Monopod

We also were treated to a marathon version of “The Twist” by the one and only Chubby Checker!

Nikon P7000

The moral of today’s post? Have fun and the good shots will follow! That and I’ve caught some awful bug while I was there. I swear, the contagion that will wipe out the world will start at Disney World. Oh yeah, and my MacBook Pro officially died while I was there. I’m awaiting it’s return from Apple land.

iPhone 4S Front Facing Camera

If you’re brave, you can sift through all of the gory photos here.

Introducing JOEGOESPro.com

About a week ago I started to write my business plan. I got stuck on my mission statement. I need a mission statement. It’s like proposing to marry someone – it seems so permanent. That’s when it occurred to me, if the entrepreneurial world has drastically changed so much, why do I need to do a traditional business plan?

On the way home from the grocery store a few days later an idea came to me. Why not create a new kind of business plan? Why not ask for involvement of my peers, while giving advice about what I already know from my other business? An interactive business plan that changes with the business! I thought of a domain name for my new idea – I hurried home and immediately looked up joegoespro.com to see if it was registered and oh, the photo gods were looking out for me that evening.

So, I kicked off the site this weekend with 3 articles covering the psychology of becoming a professional photographer in today’s climate. These articles are based on not only my experience as an entrepreneur, but from the teachings of current top creatives and business people, books I’ve read on the subject, and my own observations about what’s going on in the artistic community.

The first article talks about branding yourself, the importance of taking care of your health, and defining your style in all aspects of your life. The second article tackles the fear of success and how to identify and work around it. Finally, the third article is about finding your place in the saturated world of photography.

To help kick off this venture, I’m giving away a copy of one of my favorite photographer’s latest books. It’s “Photographically Speaking: A Deeper Look at Creating Stronger Images” by David duChemin. All you have to do is go over to JOEGOESPro.com and comment on one of the first 3 articles linked above. Say something encouraging, something insightful, or just say hi. Make sure to use a real email address when you comment so I can contact you! I’ll pick a winner in two weeks to a random commenter. The only other rule is that you have to live in the United States (sorry, but I don’t know enough about international contest laws).

Building

Isn’t she dramatic? Oh, the trials and tribulations of a pre-teen. Actually, most of the pictures of my daughter I took were of extremely goofy faces and the ridiculous looks she likes to give me when I use her as my test model. I happened to get a couple of in-between shots where she wasn’t ready with a smirk 😉 Here’s one with her grinning:

Of course, my son couldn’t let her take all of the glory…

So the point of these test shots was to try out my new giant softbox from Paul C. Buff, which is being powered by an AlienBees B800 monolight. I’ve been primarily a speedlight kind of guy for a long time, only renting bigger lights for special occasions. I’ve recently decided to expand my photography and some of the things I’m going to start shooting are more in the fashion, portraiture, and editorial style of work. That means proper studio lighting. Now, I’m not going to jump into a Profoto system right off the bat, and since I’ve used AlienBees in the past, I’ve decided to start with a couple of B800’s.

*Warning* Here comes a bunch of technical talk…

Here are the reasons I chose to go with this particular model: The AlienBees line has a 6 full f/stop range on their lights, so the highest power B1600 can only be stopped down to 20 Ws, while the B800 can go down to 10 Ws at 1/32nd power. I’ll rarely (if ever) need to shoot at full power on the B800 for the applications I’m intending them for, but for shooting wide open like I did in the two shots of my daughter above, I need lower power. Even with the B800 I had to lower the ISO to 100 (the native ISO on my Nikon is 200) to shoot at f/2.8. The shot of my son was at f/8, and you can see there is a lot more detail in that shot overall – it’s a totally different look. I like to have options easily available without having to throw light eating filters on my lens or lights. In this beach wedding shot taken in harsh mid-day sunlight, I had rented a B1600 and never went over half-power, so I don’t see myself needing the extra daylight-crushing power just yet.

The best choice of the Paul C. Buff line of lights for versatility is the Einstein, but since I’m trying to gradually build up, I know that the B800 will be versatile enough for almost 1/2 the price. In the future I hope to add an Einstein as my main light and then move the Bees to fill and/or accent lights, but for now I’m very happy with the range of the B800.

I also had one very important and extremely technical choice to make when getting the AlienBees lights. Which color to get? I really like the white since it’s different enough without looking goofy – I saw someone using a pink one lately and it was a bit much for my taste 😉 I didn’t want to go with black since the Einsteins are only available in black and I want to be able to quickly differentiate between the different models in the future. Telling a less knowledgeable assistant to move the white light is easier than calling out a model number!

What’s in the CameraBag 2.0?

Guess what’s on my camera now? The photo of my reflection in my car’s rearview mirror up top was the first shot I took with my new lens in the parking lot of FedEx, where I picked it up. In case you’re wondering, I’m now slinging a Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 lens, and it’s a beast. It’s heavier and longer than my 300mm DX lens (when it’s not extended)! I’m so happy with it, especially since I got such a great deal on it. I bought it from BorrowLenses.com used, and the thing doesn’t have a single scratch on it. The glass is as clean and flawless as the day it was shipped from the factory. It’s simply amazing. But, I’ve yet to use it in a professional setting. I’ve only shot my dogs while trying out various focal lengths and apertures. It’s meant for a full frame DSLR, so on one end it’s not as wide, but on the other it’s longer. No worries though, because I didn’t usually shoot portraits at less than 24mm with my previous lens, so it can only be for the better with the extra length at 70mm. But enough about that for now, lets talk about Nevercenter’s CameraBag 2.0.

This cross-platform desktop editing software is fast and powerful. I’ve been jumping around it’s various features today on my Mac and the program is very polished. It has a very pro look about it with it’s dark gray and black interface, and the layout is extremely intuitive if you’ve used any other photo editing application before.

I love how you can stack different effects and go back and change each setting for each individual effect. It also has an extremely handy feature called “Quicklook”, which lets you see all of the various effects on one screen so you can easily scroll through the different looks visually and choose the one that looks best with your photo.

Another fantastic idea is that you can create your own “recipe” for a photo edit, and not only save it as a preset in the “Favorites” section, but you can drag and drop a photo right on the screen and it will take on the active edits you have in the window. This would be great for editing a group of photos that you want to have the same look. Just drag each photo one by one and export each one as you go. Pretty darn slick.

The programmers are also big fans of curves, which is a good thing. One of my favorite editing elements is “R.G.B. Curves”. As you can see from the screenshot below, it gives you 3 separate curves for red, green, & blue. This is a such a powerful tool by itself because you can easily control color saturation independently. In fact, all of the tools are pretty powerful as most can be tweaked pretty heavily. The presets serve as a starting point, but you can get lost for hours nudging sliders and pulling curves.

So what are my gripes about CameraBag 2.0? Well, the only true gripe I have is that it’s not a plugin for Adobe’s Lightroom, Photoshop, or Apple’s Aperture. It would be nice for it to behave similarly to Nik’s Color FX Pro and allow me to return back to my cataloging software after I’m done with an edit. As it stands now, I have to do my RAW conversion and export the photos before I can edit them with CameraBag 2.0. It’s also the same problem I have with Snapseed. It’s hard to streamline your workflow as a standalone application, but by no means is that a deal breaker.

The most amazing thing about this software is it’s price. You can get it right now in the Apple App Store for only $18.99. Not sure if it’s for you? Download the free trial from their website. Even at $24, this is a steal. Sure you can do some of these edits in iPhoto or Picassa on the cheap, but you can’t do them nearly as extensively. This doesn’t replace apps like Snapseed or Color FX Pro either. It’s similar, yet different enough to stand on it’s own. It’s also very quick and stable. I’m happy to have it in my virtual editing toolbox.

The Day The Internet Broke

This morning I opened up my laptop to my homepage. I have Reddit.com as my home page because I like to smile and “real news” is for the sheeple of the world. Why hear about last night’s debates when I can see cats with burrito hats? I opened up my browser and got this:

Uh oh, there must be a server issue. Let me check WordPress.org to see what’s going on in the blogosphere.

Hmmm, that’s strange. Maybe Firefox is broken. Let me head over to Mozilla.com to download an update.

What the hell? Is the internet broken? Screw it, I’ll just play a little Minecraft to pass the time…

Red background, white text – it must be CHinese hackers!! Let’s look up China on the old Wikipedia and see if there’s any helpful info…

Dammit, let me Google this. Google always has the answer.

What is going on?? What kind of world am I living in where information isn’t freely available? What can I do? Who can I call?

Without free information, how can we be truly free?

Lightroom 4’s Killer New Feature

In case you haven’t heard, this week Adobe has released a public Beta of their upcoming release of their photo cataloging/editing software Lightroom 4. When I read the announcement on Scott Kelby’s blog, I giddily downloaded it to see what they have in store for us Lightroom users. Besides some new modules I may never personally use (Such as Map & Book), the interface looks identical to Lightroom 3.5. But, as I poked around in the one module I spend 99.9% of my time in, the Develop Module, I found gold.

The panel on the left is from Lightroom 3.5’s adjustment brush settings panel, and the one on the right is from Lightroom 4 Beta’s. Do you see those new sliders? Do you know what they mean? You can now selectively paint white balance adjustments as well as selectively control shadows & highlights, as well as noise & moiré. These new adjustments are also available in the graduated filter. This is the one thing I’ve been wishing for since I started using Lightroom! Lets look at what this means with an example:

You might want to open that image in a new tab or window (ctrl + click it on a PC or command + click it on a Mac). The shot on the left is the original jpeg out of my camera, and the one on the right is a quick edit using the new adjustments. Using the new shadows slider, I’m able to only paint the musician’s face to bring out the details from the shadow caused by his hat brim while leaving the background unchanged. Using the highlights adjustment, I’m able to tame the blown out details in his face and also recover a lot of his shirt’s details. I am also able to enhance the backlighting of his hat to further separate it from the background. The localized white balance adjustment comes in handy in adding some warmth to his face, and by using another brush I’m able to remove the blue tint from his shirt. Add a touch of vignetting, and that’s it.

Let me show you what the same photo looks like as I edited it in the old & busted Lightroom 3.5:

Now, take a look at the same photo as I edited it in the new hotness of Lightroom 4 Beta:

I see a huge difference in the ease of getting that kind of result. Sure, I could do it before by exporting it into Photoshop, but now I can do relatively quick edits when I develop my photos and save a bunch of time in the process! Now as soon as Adobe addresses the bugginess of the beta release (I find it to be very kludgy – it stalls and locks up when making adjustments, much like Lightroom 3’s beta did back in the day), I think Lightroom 4 will be one step closer to photo editing nirvana. Good job, Adobe!

Mutts, Music, & More

Today was the 1st 2nd Sunday on King Street for 2012 in Charleston, SC. The weather was perfect for Charleston’s monthly block party. Last time I shot one of these, I decided that I needed to focus on shooting more dogs the next time I go, so today was that next time. Let’s start off with the most interesting dog I saw today, a Toy Australian Shepherd:

Here are some other stand-outs that we saw:

There was also plenty of music courtesy of Shrimp City Slim, Sollie “Puddin” Jenkins, Michael Lindsey, and accordionist Matt Lohan (pictured at the top of this post). Here’s some shots of the musicians on King Street:

Some stores brought their wares out onto the streets…

And restaurants their food…

There were plenty of interesting people from all walks of life enjoying the unseasonably mild weather. It felt more like early fall than early winter.

We had a great Mediterranean lunch at Taziki’s Restaurant, but had to cut our trip a little short with the news that Amy’s cousin gave birth to her daughter over at MUSC. Crystal was the subject of my very first wedding shoot a couple of years ago! Here’s a shot of her with Kegan in the hospital:

Congrats to the proud parents! After we left the hospital, we stopped by my brother-in-law’s house over in James Island to check out his girlfriend’s new chicken coup. While we were there, there was one of those phenomenal Charleston sunsets, and I used my iPhone to capture this shot of the colorful sky through the trees:

Up All Night

My kids tried to wait up for my wife Amy last night. Kegan didn’t quite make it past the floor. Luckily, Lola was there to keep him company. I still had my camera setup from this post, so I cranked up the ISO to 1600 and got down on the floor to shoot this. I did play with the colors and saturation a bit to get that desaturated look.

In unrelated news, I got the email today that every person in their mid-thirties who attended college waits many years to receive. My student loans are all officially paid off. I think I need a drink! It’s a happy Sunday indeed.

Jump Rope For Heart 2012

My boy Kegan has decided to raise money for the American Heart Association by participating in this year’s Jump Rope For Heart.

Make sure to visit his fundraising website and help him reach his $100 goal!

We had a little scare in our family as we rang in the new year as our little Pomeranian Lola was having trouble breathing. Seriously, she started gagging at the stroke of midnight. After a trip to the vet we found out that she’s suffering from a collapsing trachea. Uggghhhhhh. Why make such a happy, loving, and cute dog only to make it suffer from a horrible genetic disorder? Life can be so unfair and it has no bias in who it chooses to pick on. I’m glad that my kids realize that and are motivated enough to participate in fund raisers throughout the year. We try to live our lives by the golden rule over here because that’s what makes life awesome.

So far she’s almost back to normal with the medication she’s on. She had a few stoned days where she was not herself. That iPhone snap above was from the day after the vet visit, and she was just glassy eyed and lethargic. She can stand to loose a couple of pounds too, so she’ll be joining us with our healthy resolution to stick to a good diet this year 😉

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