Going Through the Motions

i’ve been back from europe for five days now, and i can’t shake this feeling of disconnect. like i had a flow going before leaving on the trip and now that i’m back, i’m totally out of sync. i don’t feel the drive to keep doing all of the things i was doing. i look at social media and have no desire to engage. i look through my photos and video content and have no desire to share it. i go to work and have no motivation to get on the phone. vacation is a motherfucker.

to be honest i feel myself coming out of the haze little by little each day, and i’m sure by the end of the week i’ll be back up to speed. but i feel so weird right now. like i don’t know which direction to take moving forward. luckily i have plenty of work on my plate so i don’t really need to think too much about what to do. i have photos to edit from sunday, and even more to sort through from the trip - not to mention i still have a decent chunk of photos to run through for shanima from our photo sessions last month. and video - hell i have a crap ton of video to edit and publish. then of course there is distant future. i haven’t looked at that blog or thought about it at all since the day before we left for europe.

and probably the biggest issue i have to address is that of my employment. i need to tell my boss about my upcoming trip to asia this summer and i’m not looking forward to that conversation. he’s been super busy all week so i haven’t bugged him about sitting down for a meeting yet, but i’ll need to do it soon. i want to give myself plenty of time to find a new job if i need to. but also i really hope i don’t need to, because there is already enough on my agenda right now without adding that into the mix.

outside of all the tangibles, i’ve been feeling this urge to make a self-correction this week. while we were traveling, my wife’s parents fought a lot over little things, and while we have a good rapport at the moment, i could see how my own snippiness and attempts at humor could get under her skin and cause us problems in the long run. i also have noticed myself being short and testy with strangers this week and it feels all wrong. like the other day i ordered delivery at work and the guy at the front desk for my building wouldn’t let the delivery person come upstairs so i was rude to him. and then the cab driver who came to drive me home was trying to get me to walk to the corner and i was like naw man come to the address i have and i’ll meet you here. when he showed up he said that he was just trying to save us both time and i was kind of an ass about telling him that he wasted more time than it would’ve taken for him to just drive to me. i mean to be fair he was being a bit of a dick about it, but that doesn’t excuse my own reaction. long story short, i’ve got a case of post-vacay blues and i need to bring it into check. i’ve obviously got a lot on my mind that is causing my anxiety and it’s bleeding into my interactions with people in a way i don’t like.

solution? keep going through the motions, don’t get caught up on anything and remember to stay positive because honestly why waste the little energy i have this week getting mad about stupid stuff?

so for a spirit booster, i can think about this. i just went to three new countries during a five-country trek. i saw amazing things and took amazing photos of those things that i’m very happy with and proud to have taken. i have a beautiful wife who is so much fun to travel with and despite their quirks, i have a really good pair of in-laws who were pretty entertaining on the trip, too. i have a full line-up of photo work and an amazing journey ahead of me next month. what the heck do i have to complain about?

Acts of Balancing

yesterday was an insanely packed day, with an engagement shoot at brooklyn botanic garden in the morning and a six-outfit editorial shoot in the evening. all in all, i was taking photos for about six hours yesterday and in transit for three and a half. my back is killing me because i brought a super full kit to make sure i was ready for anything at both shoots, and i am glad i did but also not glad i did because damn. back pain is real. on the other hand, it was good training for the many weeks of backpack travel ahead this summer. so i guess it’s a win from that perspective.

the photos from both the morning and evening came out awesome and the clients were super happy. but yesterday proved to me that i have a long row to hoe when it comes to building up my ability to manage simultaneous execution of photo and video while i’m out working. in the morning, thankfully i had nigel with me, so he handled a lot of the filming for me. going through that footage will definitely be interesting. in the evening, i intended to shoot a lot more content than o did. actually, let me walk that back a bit. there are a few key segments i didn’t record that i wish i would have. i needed to record us meeting, us talking about the clothes she wanted to shoot. and then a little bit of material of her prepping for b roll.

what i did was set up the gopro on a tripod and recorded the process of shooting a couple of the outfits. there were a couple of time lapses that will definitely look cool and be fun to share individually, but they’re not really inspired or engaging content. i am taking this as a learning experience. my execution was way off, and the reason was that i didn’t go in with a solid plan; i didn’t contemplate in advance what my specific plan of attack would be, and while i had a vague idea of what i’d like to produce, that isn’t good enough. if my entire focus was on video, i might be able to pull that off. but since my primary creative drive needs to be focused on photo, i have to make sure i have a clear vision of exactly what video and audio i will need to bring my video to life.

Ep 002

yesterday i used every spare hour in my day to put together a video for my new youtube channel, and all in all i am mostly happy with the results. i’ll link it to this post.

i wanted to keep it super short, like short enough to post on my insta feed - 60 seconds or less - but i would’ve had to cut out a lot of little details that i thought were fun. so i decided to just slap the whole thing together start to finish and see how long the video ended up being, for science. the good news is that even including everything i wanted to include, it came in under six minutes. i feel like five to ten minutes is a good video length - as long as there is plenty i’d shot variety and interesting dialogue/ story happening.

mom also glad that i shot very little footage that i didn’t use, so i wasn’t wasting time during the photo shoot taking worthless video. that fits into my goal of creating interesting video content to share the experience of being a photographer in nyc without wasting my clients’ time.

from start to finish, i probably spent about four hours editing this video, and a lot of that time was spent fiddling with premiere pro since the program is still new to me and it’s been a while since i did any video work. hopefully the lessons learned yesterday will translate into faster edits going forward. i still have a lot to learn and hone down, though. like for instance, i forgot to include my social media links in the video, and i didn’t show swana’s insta handle when i introduced her. i also want to find some good sound effects to play when i show a photo, when text is displayed on screen, and during transitions. but all of that will come with time.

there were a couple of quirks that i need to work out moving forward. first off, my video doesn’t display correctly on my tv screen. it’s like the tv is slightly zoomed in and the edges of the video are not fitting into the monitor. i’ll have to figure out how to fix that. and then there was this weird animation that happened with some of my text that i didn’t mean to include and don’t like. i’ll have to figure out how to fix that and control it. but even though those two weird quirks made it into the published video, i ain’t mad.

the important thing for me yesterday was to publish a video. it had been a week since my first video and i don’t want to lose momentum. we head to europe for nine days on wednesday evening, and i want to put out one video a week. now is the time to establish best practices, to experiment and adapt, to make mistakes and learn from them. because almost no one is watching, and the only people who are watching will give me honest feedback about my content that will help me grow into a content producer worthy of attention. at least that is my hope.

Sunny Sunday

yesterday was amazing in all the ways that a day can be. nima and i got an early start, her to get herself ready for a photo shoot, and me to get my gear ready. originally stock and i were planning to run through our first session of the church of accountability (i just made that name up but i think i like it), but he slept in and we both had to get moving on our days so we postponed the launch for now. nima and i left home at around 8:30am and made it to the brooklyn botanical garden at around 10:30am.

i am shooting engagement photos next sunday for a couple from ohio and our photo permit is only good for an hour, so the visit was mostly business. i need to go in ready to tactically move from place to place, spending the least amount of time setting up and the most amount of time taking photos and creating an enjoyable experience for the couple.

the weather was absolutely beautiful, warm enough that a sweater was plenty to fend off the chill breeze, and the light was crisp and sharp. after some confusion at the front gate, we were able to walk through the garden and find several locations for the photo shoot next week that are going to be beautiful. essentially, when shanima and i showed up, me carrying all of my photo gear and her dressed and made up for a photo shoot, the security made it very clear that the permit was only for next week, and that if it appeared we were doing a photo shoot this week, there would be problems. given that i did not want to cause any problems for my clients next week, i kept my camera in the bag and just used my cell phone and the map of the grounds to pick out my chosen locations.

after we took a loop of the garden, we headed down flatbush ave to grab some lunch and found a nice little mexican hole in the wall restaurant with decent tacos, pupusas and asada. once we were fed, i broke out the eos rp and we got some great photos in front of some beautiful graffiti walls along the avenue. i mostly shot natural light, but i did break out the softbox for one particular location where the sun became my rim light and the softbox was my key. the photos turned out great, and to be honest i will barely have to do any work on them in lightroom. all the fun will be in photoshop, where i’ll work on the skin texture and eye color a bit and do some light dodging and burning.

after two photo shoots with the rp, i can say that without a doubt it was a huge step up experientially for me. the workflow is such an update, and the autofocus system works phenomenally, meaning that i am spending a whole lot less time checking the back of my camera to make sure i got a sharp shot and a whole lot more time just guiding the model and working the scene. being able to review the photos on my iphone or ipad after the shoot is a sweet bonus. i didn’t have time to edit the photos yesterday, but we did review them and pick our favorites on the bus ride home, so that when i do edit them, i can only import and upload the starred images and get straight to work. that will save me a good ten to fifteen minutes of time at home sorting through pictures. image quality is roughly the same as my 5d mark iii, maybe a little better, but the workflow is miles ahead.

Early Call

woke up at 5:20am with intent to leave home by 5:40am but ended up having a little time to drink coffee and have one of nima’s amazing homemade greek yogurt/protein-rich cinnamon rolls. my model for today’s shoot slept past her alarm, which is honestly not a bad thing because the forecast said it would be sunny this morning but it’s heavily overcast and drizzling at the moment. i see sunny skies still on the agenda for the morning around 9am and at this rate, we should be just in time to catch the cloud break. so basically, perfect timing.

i’ll definitely need to take some shut eye at some point this afternoon, but we’ll worth it for a photo shoot.

i’m actually super excited for this shoot because it will be my first using the eos rp. i can’t wait to see how the camera performs - especially in the context of autofocus - and how the images turn out. from my test shooting over the past few days i’m confident that it’s going to get the job done. but this is definitely a proof of concept and i’m a little nervous to have left my 5d mark iii at home.

so to ease my mind, here is a list of things i’m looking forward to:

• touch and drag auto focus,

• continuous object tracking in servo,

• leveling and histogram info in the electronic viewfinder,

• touchscreen zooming for image review during the shoot, and,

• the ability to instantly review photos through the canon connect app on my ipad after the shoot so we can pick our faves.

that last item is especially great to me. it’s really hard to judge a photo from the back of the camera. there is an added bonus to the canon connect app, too. i can download the keepers directly to my ipad and potentially even edit them using lightroom cc while i’m on the train ride home i’m not 100% on that last part since i may need to have internet access for the app to work, but now is as good a time as any to give it a try.

once i’m done with the photo shoot, i’m going to make a video about it. i think this is a camera that is in need of a real world review, because if i were to have listened to the reviews, i never would have bought it, and that would’ve been a mistake. or, at least, that is my hypothesis.

Rainy Day Thoughts

after spending a good chunk of time conceptualizing and planning a photo shoot for tonight and tomorrow morning, it’s all gone out the window because the weather is not cooperating. yesterday was beautiful and sunny, and even this morning’s overcast glow was pretty great. but tonight it’s absolutely going to rain, and in the morning it’s going to be cloudy at best. we need a sunrise for the morning photo to look the way i’ve planned it, and even though we will be shooting in a dry location tonight, getting our model to the location dry and unaffected by the weather is not going to be possible given that there will be some climbing and shimmying involved.

in a way, this isn’t such a bad thing since it will let me get caught up on some editing tonight and tomorrow morning. but at the same time, i really need to be earning income from my work to cover the cost of my new camera and hopefully to earn enough to get into the zone where i can afford to buy a drone. not to mention i still need a neutral density filter and a polarizing filter for the landscape work i’m planning during our upcoming travel, as well as the extra batteries i’ll need for the gopro and the eos rp, and the hydrophobic lens cover for the gopro so i don’t have my water videos ruined by water droplets on the lens.

so basically we are talking about $250 worth of accessories still left to buy and another $700 or so for the drone kit with extra batteries, and i’m about $1200 in the hole with this eos rp purchase. there is no way i’m going to make $2,000 between now and june at this rate, unless a couple of big jobs come my way. i do have about $900 worth of work on the horizon, and a decent amount of time to do other work, but all of my outreaches on thumbtack and craigslist over the past few weeks have gone unanswered, so i can’t count on those platforms to bring in more work. on top of that, while instagram brought in one great client that resulted in a few hundred of revenue, the platform hasn’t been generating as much attention as i would like and i’m honestly getting tired of spending so much time combing through pictures that all tend to look the same. that isn’t to say that the photographers in encountering aren’t talented and producing amazing work, but the truth is, there are just so many people using the same cameras, the same lighting, the same editing programs and techniques and getting the same results. it seems like so much work on instagram these days is proof of concept and has no meaning or purpose beyond just being aesthetically pleasing.

this rainy day delay has my inner cynic coming out, i suppose. but i won’t ignore the thoughts that are occurring to me, because truth be told, i need to think about what i want to do with photography that will make my work different and unique from the work of so many others. how can i establish myself as a unique voice worthy of attention?

Ambitions v. Reality

i always want to do more than i have time for. my perfect day would include a photo session, time for full edits, making a vlog, writing a scene in distant future, writing a song, going to the gym, taking a nap, hanging with friends, and traveling to an obscure new country with shanima with enough time to spare to get eight hours of sleep.

as it is, i usually have time for two of those things max, and it’s tough to put them against one another to decide what to do. today i got a haircut and took about 500 photos with shanima on the 7 train platform, in woodside, in a few spots in manhattan, and inside the LIRR station at madison square garden. in the midst of all that we stopped at five senses to get some korean food for lunch. we were supposed to meet some old friends who came to the city for a day, but while we were heading to meet them they told us that they went to the west village - about a half hour from bryant park one way. we were super hungry and didn’t want to add another hour to the commute. it sucks to miss seeing them but there is only so much we could do. at the end of the day we got some dope photos so i am happy we stuck it out instead of packing it in and being social. i do miss my friends, but i am on a vision quest and the visions i saw today were well worth questing after.

RP = Really Pleased

today is a momentous day, in that i’ve cleared my entire photography backlog. prior to the last couple of months, that wouldn’t have been a huge accomplishment, because i was only editing in lightroom, but since i’ve stepped up my game and dedicated myself to a higher level of quality through a more refined photoshop editing process, my workflow has bogged down drastically. i talked through some of this in a post a couple of days ago, so i won’t dive into it again, but essentially i am able to fully edit between three and six photos per hour in photoshop, as opposed to hundreds per hour in lightroom.

so today i celebrate the achievement, and i honor it. part of that celebration involves making a purchase that i’ve been contemplating for a couple of months and have been on the fence about. today i saw that one of my favorite youtubers, brendan van son picked up one of these particular items and i saw thebwork he’s done with it and i knew it was time to pull the trigger. today, i bought a canon eos rp from adorama. as i prepare for my upcoming travels, three things stand clear in my mind. first, it’s super small, and packs a big punch for its size. second, it’s by no means the best camera on the market, but it’s a jack of all trades and that is what i need because that is what i am. i do portraits, events, studio and events, day light, low light, sunrise and sunset. i shoot in high light and low light, stills and, soon, video. this camera can do all of that. and in the right hands, it does it all at a professional level. and third, through the end of this month, canon is offering a promotion that includes a free extension grip and ef to rf mount adapter that will allow me to attach all of my current lenses to this body seamlessly. my tamron lenses have received firmware update for compatibility with the eos r and by extension, the eos rp.

using the adorama credit card, i bought the camera on a no-interest payment plan and will only pay $118 per month for the next twelve months. so i literally only need to do one portrait session per month for the next year to cover the cost of the purchase. and if it turns out i don’t like the camera and it’s not for me after all, then i can return it and use the in-store credit to buy something else. but for now, i have no remorse.

Getting Clocked

it hit me this morning that i really need to start accounting for my time spent working on photography more comprehensively. as i’ve begun to spend more time working in photoshop learning and working on more complex editing processes, the amount of time i spend editing has drastically increased, and as a result, it’s forced me to reevaluate my approach to finishing.

consider this example. on saturday, i joined stock for some event photography, and in four hours onsite, i shot roughly 800 photos (it was really. closer to 900 but let’s round it to keep it simple). that’s 200 photos per hour. this morning, i edited the photos. first, i sorted the images and ended up with just over 120 keeper photos. from there, i applied edits, including color corrections, lighting adjustments, crops and geometric alignments. from roughly 7:40am to 9:10am, so 90 minutes of concentrated effort. keeping in mind that i still need to upload the photos, and may need to do custom retouches on a small percentage, let’s call it two hours of editing time for four hours of onsite work. i’ve recently decided that i need to set my rate at $75 per hour, so essentially my price for this gig should be $450. this price doesn’t include travel time or time for coordination and logistics, so it’s incomplete, but at least it sets a rate that is within the market range of what people are charging and what people might be able to afford.

all of this came tumbling out of my brain this morning because i was voicing with stock about how long he should spend editing his own photos from the event on saturday, and i realized that my estimate was shy of the mark. this also comes after last week, stock and swana set out a schedule for his video and editing work, something that really got me thinking. i don’t naturally like to plot out my time, but i need to get over that if i’m going to get ahead of my workflow. i can’t be committing myself to more than i can handle, and the only way to know what i can handle is to map out what i’m actually committing to when i take a job. i’ve known this for a while and it’s loosely guided me effectively until now, but my workflow is increasing and i need to professionalize my approach to the process if i want to keep up.

Compass

my whole life, i’ve struggled with finding a balance between my strong work ethic, which tends to turn my into a bit of a bull head, and having the patience to work effectively toward a result that is worth achieving. i aspire to achieve this balance in all aspects of my life, but as with most things, the evidence that i still have some work to do is particularly apparent when i review my photography portfolio.

occasionally when i’m running edits, i will find that i’ve almost achieved perfection, only to have missed it by a breath because i didnt take that extra fraction of a second to make sure my focus was perfect, my composition was well-framed or my trigger pull was in line with my breath. or maybe all of those elements were correct, but i didnt maintain them long enough to catch the subject of my photo at the moment when they were finally ready for me.

this makes me wonder how often i’ve missed out on a good thing because i haven’t been patient enough to recognize when it’s right in front of me. how many times have i been a single breathe out of sync with the universe? and how many times have i allowed myself to believe that some external influence was the reason i missed out on something i could’ve achieved with a touch more focus or patience?

i am beginning to understand that photography has become about more than photography for me; it has morphed into a sort of compass on my personal quest for self-mastery. through photography, all of my flaws and strengths are laid bare, and i can examine the results of my state of mind, my adherence to my own principals, and my ability to mix control with acceptance pixel by pixel. i’m grateful for this realization, and for the gift of learning and progress that i’ve been given as a result.

Vlog Life

with gopro in hand, yesterday, i started vlogging. and today i kept the momentum going. i have to say, i really enjoy it so far. i thought i was going to feel self-conscious walking down the street talking into a camera, but honestly it wasn’t even an issue. i am really looking forward to sharing the footage, and once i get an intro video posted i’ll ship them out, too.

the vlogs will be one of several initiatives that are being launched in the coming weeks, and will be used as a tool to grow awareness for my work as a photographer and for my love of travel. i am not certain that i’ll plan any sort of consistency around publication in these early stages, but eventually that will be something i want to nail down.

i can’t wait to share these with all of you!!

Action

as we inch closer to our travels this year, the list of photo gear i want to acquire for my travel work is growing ever shorter. this morning i pulled the trigger on a gopro hero 7 purchase, and with a couple of accessories, that is going to be my main vlogging camera while we travel.

the big reason we need the gopro is because our first stop on our big asia trip this summer is cairns, australia, where we’ll be heading out for a couple of days in the great barrier reef. there is no way in hell i’m not bringing the best of the best for that trip, and with the new in-camera stabilization i’m sure we’ll get some beautiful, usable footage from that excursion.

beyond that, i really want to vlog the trip, and i don’t want to have to haul around a gimbal that has to be set up every time i want to shoot something. that’s a sure way to miss the moment. i also don’t want something conspicuous that will get in the way of the fun. i have the peak design capture system and the action camera mount, and i can probably get really decent footage by just latching the gopro on there for my walk around motion time lapses.

with this purchase, i’ve made a promise to myself: that i will absolutely follow through on vlogging. and that means i have to action some items in the bin. this weekend, i cleared out most of my backlog, working through all of the final edits on several photo shoots, with only a handful of images left to retouch from a mid-february engagement shoot. the retouches aren’t that intense, but they do take time. this morning i made some moves to speed up the workflow by creating some actions for dodging and burning so that i don’t have to manually create layers for those processes every time i edit a photo.

once these edits are done, i’m going to turn my attention more fully to my iceland video and to working on the distant future fiction project. of course i still have plenty of photo work ahead of me, with at least two more outfits to photograph for suswana, as well as seven more images for a separate series. i’m also still working on setting up a grouped headshot session and will be working with shanima - and potentially a few others - to build a lookbook for her modeling work and for my website. and of course, right now i’m in transit to the annual yp festival, where i’ll be photographing the program this evening, and i have two more events this month on the calendar. plus one more photo shoot next weekend for another client and friend. then next month i have an engagement photo shoot scheduled at brooklyn botanical gardens, and in june i’ll be shooting an intimate central park wedding. so by slowing down, of course i mean that i’ll be as busy as ever.

the key to accomplishing all of this will be action. actioning the items as they come without delay or hesitancy, not allowing a backlog to build. i also need to clearly communicate that i can only provide a limited number full edits, because they take a long time to complete. this is my plan. now it’s time for action.

All Day

i’m late for saturday, but it was a sacrifice i had to make. i helped a bit in the kitchen today, and we hit the gym for an hour and a half, but outside of that and eating, i was in front of the computer planning for our big asia trip and editing photos from a fashion series i shot for suswana. now i finally realize why photographers limit the number of edits that they provide to their clients. 26 photos took me several hours to edit. i’m happy with the results, though and it was really good practice. my technique is becoming refined and i’m happy about that.

i’ve not been sharing photos quite as frequently the past couple of weeks, and part of the reason is that i really want to start posting more refined images. the crazy thing is that there is a series of edits that i still need to do to these images to make them pop on instagram, including resizing and sharpening them so that they aren’t compressed by the insta algorithm.

for now, i’m just happy that the full-res edits are done. that’s accomplishment enough for one day.

Whittling

in the world of photo, it seems like there is a constant stream of gadgets and accessories bombarding us. no matter how much we acquire, there is always some new thing that will take our photo game to the next level. the words “take your photo game to the next level” are used so frequently i think they’ve lost some of their value. but behind that, there is some truth to the fact that cameras and lenses aren’t always enough to produce images of the highest caliber.

there is no doubt that photography is an expensive habit. so my approach has been to whittle away at my list of required accessories one month at a time, keeping an eye on the used equipment inventories at adorama and bhphotovideo for good deals. so far, that approach has paid off big time. all of my light stands are used, and i just scooped up a deal for a 13x13’ backdrop stand kit for less than half price, saving myself about $70 for an excellent-quality item that was in all likelihood used once and returned. add to that the roughly $50 of savings i’ve accumulated through buying used light stands, and about $200 worth of savings on used lenses and this thrifty method starts to show its value. the $320 or so that i’ve saves on other purchases basically amounts to a battery-powered monolight that is one of the final items on my mobile portrait studio requirements list. the final items would be an extra-large diffuser, a snoot, and a pair of light wands, the latter of which are more ‘wants’ than they are ‘needs.’ if i was only shooting portraits, i would be within $500 of spend for my needs and within $600 of acquiring my full list of desired items.

but then, i’m not only s portrait photographer, so that isn’t where it ends for me. for landscapes, i still need nd and polarizer filters at s minimum, and gradient filters would be great to have in the bag as well. i still need a drone, and i could really use some of the same filters for that. and that’s not even getting into the fact that i should really be prepping to get my hands on a 40-megapixel plus mirrorless camera body. sigh.

this right here is exactly why i have to take the approach that i do. wait for a sale or a deal on a used item, and get it when i can. it requires discipline, though, because it’s easy to see a deal on something not on my list and think, “hey, i could use one of those!” the key is knowing what you need, getting only those things, and being extremely discerning about what gets added to that list.

Every Day Photo

it’s pretty wild to think about the fact that just a few months ago, like as in september last year, i was only thinking about getting back into photo in a real way so i could start hooking up some new gear. and the only reason that was happening was because shanima essentially told me that if i wanted photo gear i was going to have to pay for it with photo work. six months later, i’m essentially doing something related to photo every day of the week.

last night i finished the edits of the movie poster i shot with jcut a few weeks ago. it wasn’t too major, but this was a case where i needed time with the images to really get into what i wanted the final product to feel like. there were two photos that i was tossing around in my mind, the first a tighter crop at a higher iso setting (6400) and the second at a lower iso (2000). in the end, jcut and his crew decided they liked the right crop better, and i agreed with them. it had a better overall feel to it. i put the photo from below with a softbox, giving it a dramatic effect, and the final product ended up having a sort of film quality to it that i think fits the feel that this image needs. i delivered three different edits for him to choose from, and he chose the third, which was color graded with a vintage feel that i also thought was the best of the bunch for this particular image. i was inspired by footage of the twin towers from movies made pre-9/11, before the digital age took over.

the challenge now is that he wants to print the poster in 16x20, which is a 4x5 aspect ratio, whereas the photo is currently in 2:3 aspect ratio. i may need to shrink the image somewhat in photoshop to make it useable. my options are to either make micro squishes to the top section of the photo to smush it down into the proper frame or to add width by stretching out the side of the image. it will probably require a combination of both. i just hope the edits don’t look fine on screen and then not so fine in print. i guess we’ll find out soon enough. of course the third option is to convince him that 11x17 is the preferred format for this poster…then i would only have to make the slightest of adjustments to make it fit the page.

Under My Umber-ella

sometimes my vanity can get the best of me. for so long i’ve dismissed umbrellas as a diffuser for my photography because they remind me of school picture day. gross. i never wanted to take photos that remotely resemble the photos i suffered through my whole life, and i was convinced that softboxes and beauty dishes are the only tools worthy of my kit. i was a fool.

yesterday i went to adorama convinced that i was about to bring home a 60” collapsible beauty dish because i was under the impression that with that and my speedlights i could take full-body portraits with my subjects lit evenly and beautifully head to toe. wrong. so glad i went to the store instead of just buying online blindly because i would’ve made an expensive mistake.

as it turns out, speedlights have a 50 watt-second power rating. in order to fill a diffuser of that size, the lighting expert there (i can’t remember her name but she’s awesome and not afraid to be completely honest). so she told me that look, if you want to use a 42” or 60” beauty dish or softbox, you’re going to need a mono light. they have one that runs for $325 and there is an equivalent unit on amazon for $300. so if i wanted that beauty dish, it was going to cost me minimum about $425 including tax. nope. i’m not ready to drop that kind of money on one light.

then she told me that if i really needed a good light spread, then i should probably just get an umbrella. i cringed a bit until i saw that they had a 40” for $15, and that for another $25 i could get a heavy-duty umbrella mount for my light stand. they had a cheaper one made of plastic, but some things are worth upgrading, so for $40 or $1/inch, i walked out with a new toy.

today i used it for the first time, and got to test it on two different photo shoots. for both, it was exactly what i needed and the quality of light was really fantastic. sure i will be doing some tweaks in lightroom but even out of camera it was really killing it.

the best part is that it is small enough to slide into my light stand carrying bag, so now i can roll with an even smaller two-light setup. with my lowepro bp30 (which is ridiculously small and was super cheap at bhphotovideo) and my flashpoint air-cushioned 9’ light stand, i’m fully loaded. even though my neweer 24x24” softbox packs up super small, it’s still too big to fit in my compact bag, and i really don’t enjoy rolling through to the city with that one because it’s very conspicuous. for that reason? i’ve avoided bringing it for my lunchtime photo sessions even though there were times a nice flash setup would’ve done me good.

the lesson is this: don’t be vain. don’t get tricked into buying the most expensive thing just because it will look cooler to use because no one will see your fancy softbox in your photos.

Case in Point

yesterday’s daily post could be summed up in seven words: don’t knock it until you try it. stock linked me to a chris hau video the other day that is premised around the idea that as a photographer you can quickly and easily make $500 in a single day by sending out a facebook post inviting people to meet you at a given time and location for headshots. i told stock that this seems like the type of thing that maybe someone else could do, but not me. who would care if i put out a post about headshots on facebook? what if no one books and i look like an ass? i didn’t want to try it.

so after a voice note slap back from stock reminding me that i don’t know how well it will work if i don’t try, and that someone like chris hau probably knows a lot more what he’s talking about than i do. the funny thing is, even before he sent that message, i had realized there was an opportunity for me to do something like this, and i even have a location to do it from.

i reached out to a friend that i met while working as a local news editor in brooklyn who owns a dance studio in greenpoint. a few months ago, she invited me to join a private group on facebook for creatives and business owners in her network. out of that group, she created an event that ended up being a success. it dawned on me that i hadn’t really contributed to this group at all, and that chris hau’s idea could be a great way for me to engage. so i did what i had told myself wouldn’t work for me a few hours before this realization: i sent a facebook message.

today, she got back to me positively and asked if i want to grab coffee on sunday. badabing.

even as i’m writing this i realize that there is a huge group of creatives who are always in need of headshots that i’m connected to through my event photography work, and that once i get the kinks worked out with this group, they will be my next target market.

with these two groups, even if only 10 people sign up for headshots, i can earn almost $1,000. in two days. of course all of this is hypothetical but three days like this and i already bought my next camera. which despite my canon fanboyism will probably be a sony a7r ii with a sigma mc-11 ef lens adapter. small, light, and 47.2 megapixels, so perfect for landscapes and portraits. that should tide me over until canon finally releases a truly pro-level mirrorless with in-body image stabilization.

the point is, if i want to afford the new toys i have on my wish list, this is what i need to do. this and a whole lot more. i think it’s time to reassess, because now i’m starting to wonder: what possibilities am i not pursuing because they didn’t seem plausible?

The Engagement Shoot

it’s been a while since i’ve written about photo, and that isn’t because i haven’t been working, but rather because i just haven’t had time. so today i’m going to feed two birds with one post. i’m on the train right now heading to liberty state park in new jersey where i’m going to take some engagement photos for a couple of great friends. it’s my first engagement shoot ever, and i’m pretty excited for it, since i’ve only work with couples a couple of times and it will add some variety to my workload.

there are so many great locations for photos at liberty state park that i can’t help but wonder if the whole place wasn’t designed with engagement photos in mind. you have the manhattan skyline as a backdrop along the waterfront, viewfinders, a brick pathway, the iconic and unbelievably photogenic 9/11 memorial, an old brick depot, an out-of-service train car, train tracks, a beautiful train platform, and some rugged wooden bridge works to experiment with. you literally don’t need to go anywhere else for a photo shoot.

its a bit crisp today, but we were blessed with blue skies, and if all goes well, we will have a killer sunset to work with. i couldn’t ask for better conditions, other than a bit more warmth, but i feel like kind of a dick wishing it was warmer in february what with climate change and all.

it will be interesting working with this couple since they don’t spend much time in front of the camera. so really my only job will be to stay relaxed, keep it lighthearted, and keep hem comfortable so we can get just a few images that show the real magic of their connection.

i have a few mental exercises that i can help them go through and we’ll see how those work. fingers crossed, here we go!

The Camera Adds Ten Pounds

last week, i made an executive decision. i have been doing a lot of portrait photography lately, and i’ve taken on a new high-profile client for event photography. i already have a tamron 17-35mm f/2.8-4 zoom that works on the wide end of my range, and i have a canon 50mm f/1.8 stm lens that works for my mid-range. now, i also have a tamron 70-210mm f/4 lens, which is awesome for some of my portrait work, but when it comes to low-light photography, it’s dang near useless.

i’ve been contacted about some photo work in recent weeks that requires me to have full coverage of the 18mm through 85mm range, and while it’s ridiculous to think that a lack of 35mm to 49mm or 51mm to 69mm would be consequential in the least since that difference can be handled by taking a single step toward the subject of the photograph. regardless of the ignorance behind that requirement, i thought it would be good to shoot two birds with one lens. i found a used tamron af 28-75mm f/2.8 xr di ld aspherical (if) lens from b&h photo that seemed to fit the bill. after a lot of research on youtube, i decided to go for it, and i picked the lens up last week on my day off. but after a couple of uses, i realized that it was not going to work. the images that the lens produced were too soft to be useful in most cases, and it produced significant chromatic aberration when wide open, and when combined with even moderate iso in the 3200 range, images became too soft to be usable.

now, it’s not fair to completely trash this lens. it actually produced one of my favorite street portraits so far, and the softness of the lens was actually pleasing under the right circumstances - on an overcast day, lit by high-quality lighting designed by the experts at one of fifth avenue’s most affluent retailers. i’ll include one of the images below.

so, realizing that my search wasn’t over, i started doing more research, and came to the conclusion that i would be better served with a fast telephoto prime lens. so i decided to shoot two different birds. i realized that as much as i love my nifty fifty lens, it’s not really all that well-suited to portraiture, and that a lens of the 85mm, 105mm or 135mm focal length would be much better. part of the reason is that lenses wider than 85mm tend to cause subjects to look wider than they are in real life - and when you think about the fact that 35mm cameras were the most popular consumer focal length for a very long time, the old adage that the camera adds ten pounds actually makes sense. i would love to pick up a canon 135mm f/2 lens, because it’s known for it’s amazing sharpness and it would really add a majorly different focal length to my arsenal. but the problem is that the 135mm i want is too expensive for me to just buy off the cuff at around $800. in the 105mm focal length, the best available is the sigma 105mm f/1.4 art lens, and i may eventually get it, but that one is even more expensive, at around $1,300. so both of those lenses are out, and there’s no point in getting a lens that i am not absolutely in love with.

so that brings me to the 85mm focal length. there are three canon 85mm prime lenses, the f/1.8, the f/1.4 is, and the f/1.2. the best lens in this length is the f/1.4 is since it has image stabilization, but it’s too expensive. and the f/1.2 would be great to really open up my low-light abilities. but that one is way too much for me, too. so that left me with the canon f/1.8 usm lens, which runs for $400 including tax brand new. considering that the tamron 28-75mm af f/2.8 ended up costing $360 with tax.

so after putting a lot of thought into it, i bought the canon 85mm f/1.8 usm. that same day, i ended up having a portrait session with one of my regulars, and so i slapped on the new glass, and hit the streets.

it was a pretty bright day, and we met in the mid-afternoon, so for the most part, there was a good amount of ambient light around without it being overly bright. but something came to my attention as a result of the light conditions. in areas of some of my photos where there was extremely bright sky, my lens picked up a huge amount of chromatic aberration in the bokeh blur sections of the photos when wide open at f/1.8. so that is something i need to watch out for. honestly it’s not that debilitating because in instances where there’s that much light available, i don’t need to keep the lens wide open, and by the time i stopped down to f/2.8 in a later test, the aberration was completely gone.

the thing is, when i’m shooting in low light, i don’t need to worry about chromatic aberration, and in case it does rear its ugly head from time to time, i can always shoot some safety shots at f/2.8, underexpose them, and bring up the exposure in post. so for now, i’m pretty sure i solved my problems. but if for some reason this new lens doesn’t do the trick, i’m going to have to return it and come up with another solution.

Photoshop School

as i mentioned in yesterday’s daily post, i am going to start running through at least one photoshop lesson per week to step up my editing game. i’m going to be using only free tools like youtube and google to source my lesson plans, and i’m going to be treating this like it’s a real class.

i’ve already picked out a few lessons that i want to focus on right off the bat, and i’ll be picking one of these each week to run through. for this week, i am going to be working on color grading. there are two different techniques that i want to master, both of which are similar but useful in different scenarios. the first is the orange and teal look that is popular these days, and the second is the brendan woelfel look, which is more of an aqua and pink color grading.

i already finished watching one tutorial video and took specific notes on the process, but after trying that out on some of my own photos, it didn’t translate well, so i’m going to have to watch at least two more videos on each of these two styles and find the technique that fits my general shooting profile.

another lesson i want to integrate is eye work. i see so many photographers doing amazing things with eyes in their photos, and it’s all about the photoshop on this. eyes are going to be next week’s lesson.

other techniques i want to master are mostly tied to compositing, or putting together elements from different photos into a seamless image. packed into that are so many micro lessons, and i’ll have to unpack this and dole out those tasks across the next several weeks. i also need to make sure that i’m getting up to speed on landscape photography tutorials and techniques so that when i travel to europe, australia and asia later this year, i don’t fuck up my photos by shooting them all wrong. not like i’m going to get to go back to most of these places - maybe ever. so i need to get that shit right the first time around.

for now, color grading is, i think, the most important thing i need to get comfortable with, because i really want to develop my own style, and to understand which techniques are best for certain color and lighting scenarios.