Category: Photography

Work Upon Work

2012-01-08 23:30:26

It’s Saturday and our class is over for the day, but I’m still at the office. Why, you ask? Well, it’s like this: I’d like to do some work on our photo backlog [which is still very large, especially since we got our scans back from ScanCafe] and post some pictures to the site. However, doing that from the hotel room is very slow since their link is weak.

it’s much faster here at the office, so here is where I sit and upload pictures.

Of course, I don’t want to leave the building while they’re grading my exam. I’m pretty sure I passed, but I don’t want to leave in case I hear the good news!

So, I upload pictures and bite my nails while I wait…

10,000 Clicks

Last week, unbeknownst to me, my camera surpassed the 10,000 pictures taken mark. This is a milestone – and a lot of clicks. The shutter is supposed to be good for 100,000 or so clicks before it needs service, so I’m good for a while. However, this milestone answers the ongoing question for me – what will the in-camera file numbering system actually do? I know what it’s supposed to – it’s supposed to go from 100-9999 [folder 100, image 9999] to 101-0001. I have been anxious to see if it would actually work the way it’s supposed to since I’ve seen some discussion around this not working as advertised.

Now, the question has been answered. I started my numbering at 200- so, my images went from 200-9999 to 201-0001 – just like it’s supposed to. Nice, eh?

Long Time No Blog

I’ve been a bit busy, what with my new project [which is way fun, by the way] and the increased commute time needed to drive all the way from here to the other side of DC. That leaves me with less free time than before, so between that and the extra work generated by the wedding we have not had time for much else – not even blogging!

That being said, we’ve just last night delivered the proof prints to the clients and so the first [most dificult] part is finished, and we should have some more free time in the upcoming weeks. Laura might have more work to do, though, with the creation of a photo album.

And speaking of Laura, we were not very impressed with how her camera performed under a few conditions at the wedding. She was using the Rebel XTi, which in most circumstances has been a wonderful camera. But, with special flash conditions, it didn’t do what we wanted it to. So, we sold it. We got $499 cash for it, which I used to trade her up for an early birthday present – a brand new Canon EOS 40D. It’s quite nice and has some features that make me a bit jealous… 😦 But, she deserves the best – and even if this does not have as many megapixels as mine, it is certainly as good as or even better in many respects. It’s a little heavier than the XTi, but still lighter than my 5D, which is good for her. I’m also releived that the menuing system works almost like mine and will be easier to translate between the two models when we try to set them up the same. The performance of the 40D at high ISO is also just as good as the 5D – which is quite impressive.

Of course, we have yet to test it under the same conditions that made the XTi underexpose horribly. So, I made her open her present early – so that when our friends come over tomorrow [Christmas Eve] she can experiment with it on the kids.

Fong Is The Man

On our way to the wedding rehearsal yesterday, we stopped in to the camera store and bought the Light Sphere II by Gary Fong. Skeptical at first, we only bought one. We tried it out for a few shots last night and decided to try it for the wedding.

I have to say that it totally rocks. It really brought out some nice soft light for portraits and group shots when the available light wasn’t good. I used the “fong” up until the reception when the low, white ceiling provided a good bounce light.

After many hours of shooting, though, we are done for the evening. We’re presently downloading the many hundreds of pictures to the server for processing. That’s the tedious part.

Wedding Day

After much preparation and stress, today we will embark on the begining of our true professional career in the photographic world. We will be photographing a wedding, having planned from the beginning and today we execute the shoot. This is the fun part, as well as seeing what we took and finding some great pictures in the pile.

The few weddings we’ve done so far have been pro bono, or as sub-contractors. This time, though, it’s us from start to finish. It’s a little stressful, knowing that our clients’ memories are in our hands. We hope and expect to capture the best we can.

We were concerned about the weather at first [since it has been unseasonally cold and snow and ice are still on the ground], but it seems that we have been given a small break. It’s now sunny outside and more mild than yesterday. It’s above freezing, so we are seeing some melting, too.

All told, even with the stress building up to the event, I think today will go wonderfully.

Cabo Dive Pictures

These are mostly diving pictures so far, but more will come later. It takes quite a bit of time to post them from here. Not the fastest of Internet uplinks.

Anyhow: we are now packing up and heading for the airport to go back to Virginia tonight. Then, tomorrow, we will be leaving our house yet again and going down to Richmond to visit friends for Thanksgiving. Lots of travel, but the next time will be much easier – no wet dive gear to deal with…

Finally: A New Camera RAW

While down here in Cabo, I have been using my new Canon PowerShot G9. And if you read my previous posts, you’ll remember that I had a heck of a time getting it to play nice-nice with Lightroom. I got an meail that notified me of some updates to both Lightroom and Photoshop CS3 surrounding a new version of Camera RAW – version 4.3.

This makes all life great. Really. Well, for those of us using a new camera released since version 4.2 came out it certainly helps. I dropped all the calibration settings that I did and imported the pictures with the default settings that came with Lightroom 1.3 [the updated version which has the new ACR 4.3 included] and lo-and-behold. Magic. Sure, Lightroom does its usual thing of optimizing [which I may re-do the calibrations with the new ACR], but all in all, it’s a wonderfull difference.

Now that it works as it should, processing the underwater pictures should be much easier. Oh – and I’ll let you know when some get posted…

Membership Has It’s Rewards

Certainly it does when it comes with an insurance package…

I just joined PPA – Professional Photographers of America. It’s an opportunity to get me more exposure to the business side of the business… as well as some good networking, education, and other discounts and such. Since the business is just begining to grow [after all, we’ve only done a couple of weddings and some church events so far] I felt it was time to make it official. Of course, I joined at the associate level which doesn’t put me in the referral database. I’m not sure I’m ready for that yet. I want to get through the rest of the year and all of the vacations/holidays coming up and then maybe we’ll start marketing and promoting the business.

I guess I’ll have to hire an accountant then… maybe even get some legal advice.

More Photo Backlog

Having finally found the “correct” camera calibration, I’ve now reimported my entire library back into Lightroom and have begun processing again. I’ve now posted some of the remaining pictures from Curaçao which have been waiting since last year. Maybe, by the time it’s time to leave for this year’s dive trip, I’ll have last year’s pictures posted. I have one more directory to finish, and I’m goinig to try to do it in the next hour or so. Those will be the pictures of the town of Willemstad, which is quite colorful.

Now that I feel I’m not fighting Lightroom, maybe I can process the remaining 3000 pictures sitting in my “working” documents.