Categories
Personal Photography

The Reason I Raced Home From Work Today…

I will be sleeping with this beside me on my pillow tonight

…the FedEx man brought me a present 🙂

Categories
Photography Portrait A Day

#31: Quinlin

Quinny02
Canon 10D, 85mm, f1.8, 1/45, ISO 400

This is Erik and Marci’s eldest daughter. Her name is Quinlin and she is such a beautiful, fun little girl. She is a wonderful big sister and I am so happy I got to spend some time with her. She uses a lot of sign language to communicate as she has a condition called Cri Du Chat which makes it difficult for her to communicate vocally. I took these photos in the evening, just as the sun was going down. Quinnlin was sitting in her mum’s lap and they were reading together. The light from the window as the sun set was like a spotlight on Quinlin’s face.

QuinnyBW03
Canon 10D, 85mm, f1.8, 1/750, ISO 400

QuinnyBW02
Canon 10D, 85mm, f1.8, 1/500, ISO 400

Quinlin and her Mommy
Canon 10D, 85mm, f1.8, 1/125, ISO 400

Click here to see the rest

Categories
Blogging

All Clear

Sorry if you happened to visit earlier this evening and saw strange things happening. I was updating WordPress (scary stuff!) and managed to have my account suspended along the way. Joy, joy. It seems to be working OK now…let me know if you find any gremlins still lurking.

Categories
Personal Photography

Zoey And Max

Zoey07
Canon 10D, 85mm, f2.8, 1/500, ISO 800

Max
Canon 10D, 85mm, f2.5, 1/500, ISO 200

One of the greatest and most exciting parts of my trip came right at the end when I got to fly up to Seattle and have a little impromptu reunion with some of the people I spent 2 years in Mexico with. It had been about 13 years since we’d all seen each other and, even though we’re all married with kids, we got to pretend we were 21 again for a little while. Good times. I did take the opportunity to take a few photos of Marci and Erik‘s children. The photos in this post are of their two youngest, Zoey and Max. Zoey tagged along with us all weekend and was so quiet and laid back that you’d barely know she was there. Max is a little ball of energy who sings and dances wherever he goes. I had to crank up the shutter speed and even then I only caught a few that weren’t a blurred streak across the frame.

Categories
Photography

Wedding Photography, Vegas Style

Kiss
Canon 10D 40mm, f8, 1/180, ISO 100

We did have models in the Boneyard on that last day and the poor things were surrounded by about 40 photographers all clicking away. They’re an actual married couple who are clients of AltF, although they might as well have been pros they were so good. This was our big chance to see how Chenin, Doug and John each approach a shoot in their own style. Chenin and John using available light and Doug using a lighting set up. One of the things that was stressed at the workshop that stood out to me was to find light and use it in ways that might not be typical. Such as using direct sunlight or shooting into the sun, things you’re not “supposed” to do but which can have a very dramatic effect.

Boneyard Couple
Canon 10D 85mm, f8, 1/180, ISO 100

Some of the other ideas was to have the subject do something, whether it be as simple as walking or playing with a necklace…or jumping of course:

Jump
Canon 10D 28mm, f11, 1/250, ISO 100

Here’s a few behind the scenes ones…Doug and Chenin:

Boutwells

Lighting

John and the paparrazzi:

John Michael Cooper

Paps

I feel like I’ve only scraped the iceberg in telling you guys about the anti-workshop, but I also don’t want to be like the annoying person showing you their hundreds of holiday slides! The workshop was everything I was hoping it would be and then some more besides. I was so inspired and humbled by what I learned from everyone…not just the Coopers and the Boutwells, but also all of the other attendees. I was the newbie photographer of the group in comparison to everyone else but nobody made me feel bad for it. I spent the whole time wanting to just slow it all down because there was so much good stuff happening and I kept feeling like it was flying by too fast. I’ve never furiously taken so many notes in my life. Just a few random lessons that I learned off the top of my head:

– Don’t separate photography from other artforms, inspiration can be found everywhere and anywhere
– Become an avid hunter and collector of ideas
– “You don’t take a photo, you make it.”
– Don’t sterilise the scene, isolating things kills the story
– Light is the first priority…not setting
– Sunlight is not the enemy
– Be yourself

…and so much more to do with business and branding and Photoshop that I have a notebook full of it…now I just have to figure out how to apply it all!