A New City

A new city, a new hotel. Faster Internet too so I was able to put up my iPhone snap of the Spokane Indians ball field. I was planning on going to a game tonight in Missoula, but rain is threatening my plans. Read another David duChemin ebook in the truck while on the journey (my wife drove today) called 10 more. Not as good as his first one but still a compelling read for sure. I haven't pulled out the camera once today so that will have to change.

Baseball Chimping

So I came home briefly then went off again for a quick family vacation out to visit some relatives I haven't seen in a while. We've beed driving and enjoying the trip a lot. I know when I get back I have a busy photography schedule so I intend to relax a little beforehand. Tonight we stopped in Spokane Washington and decided to take in a minor league Spokane Indians game. My wife and daughter only lasted 6 innings before they were tired, the food ran out, the souvenirs were bought and they wanted to go back to the hotel, but still I very much enjoyed going. Of course as much of interest to me as the baseball was the photographer that I knew would be present. I noticed at the beginning of the game that there was a photography company doing fan photos and autographs with players (I'm assuming for sale) over by the first base dugout. Probably a good gig for the local oompany. The official team photographer was then walking around taking photos during the game as well as all the pre-game ceremonies like first pitch, etc. Thing was, he was chimping like crazy. I've never seen anything like it. I've seen photographers crazily check their lcd screens but this guy spent more time scrolling through his images than a monkey ate bananas. And it wasn't just himself he was showing, he walked over to coaches and team officials to show them his photos too. Some looked impressed. I wasn't so much impressed. I mean it isn't show and tell is it? Maybe I'm a jerk, but this guy would have been a pretty bad film photographer. No chimping there. In case you are wondering he was using a D300 with I think the 24-70 lens before the game and what looked like a 400mm lens during the game (I'm not a Nikon user so those are just guesses). He had the battery grip on the D300 so from a distance I thought it was a D3, but he walked by at one point and I saw it closer. Nice rig I think for outdoor sports like baseball.

Just a quick edit and note. This guy is doing this for a living, maybe not at the pro MLB level, but he is doing it. I've photographed plenty of baseball and feel like I am pretty good at it, but given that someone is signing cheques for him to do it I'm willing to assume he is better than I am at that type of photography. I say this just in case he pops by the blog and wants to kick my arse. Really the only thing about his maniacal chimping was that it was bugging me like sitting on an anthill with honey in my underpants. But it might be how most successful sports photographers opertate, I wouldn't know, but it isn't how I operate at weddings. I look, but I don't glue and eyeball to the screen.
And in case you are wondering, the ball park was really a nice one. Probably the nicest I've been in outside of Safeco Field. I'll attach a photo if this hotel internet ever allows the upload from my iPhone. Speaking of which, I can see now why I might need the camera connector kit for my iPad. I have no way of getting my images from my 'real cameras' to the internet without it when I travel with the iPad. I resorted to snapping a photo with my iPhone and (hopefully) uploading directly from that. I guess all my mocking of the Best Camera by Chase Jarvis is coming back in my face now. Right now, it is my only camera that can upload.

Then again, one of the cameras I brought on the trip was the Olympus OM4-t film camera with some Illford ISO 400 black and white film and a 135 f2.8 lens. I also brought my Olympus E3 with three lenses. The 8mm fisheye, 11-22 wide angle zoom and Leica 25mm f1.5 Summilux. I was feeling the wide angle as I'm heading to the priaries, but so far I've only used the Leica glass (I love that lens) on the E3. I think I will throw on the 11-22 tomorrow. The film camera is a blast to use, but I'm not used to the lens yet, it is my first time using it. It won't focus too close, and it is pretty long and skinny, upsetting the balance of the camera a little. It does have a really nifty built in metal lens hood. I'm super curious to see the first roll of film from it. I'm hoping it is awesome, but also dreading it being too good, the last thing I need is a nasty expensive film habit. Oh well, could have worse problems.

We've had two wedding bookings since I left. Well, two pretty certain ones anyway, and one of them was for 2011 which will be our first one for next year. I'm getting pretty excited about how our name is getting out there, but I'm also noticing how being busy is causing me to forget things. I have a couple of files to edit for an April wedding still that the customer requested recently and my partner pointed out to me that we had a request last week from a portrait customer to turn some images sepia that I didn't even notice. I bought Bento for my Mac as an organizing tool for myself, but after setting it up I never used it. I'm going to need something as I'm already seeing that one product of success is the risk of getting behind and having unhappy customers. I was feeling good when I left as I had knocked off my last weekends wedding edits in the shortest time ever. Now, not feeling so good.

Well, just checked my iPhone and the upload failed. Ahh traveling wireless!

Oh, my travel book? The new revised 'Fast Track Photographer' by Dane Sanders. It is in paper version, not iPad version. Enjoying it so far, but I will say I had avoided this book until recently for no better reason than I thought the title was super cheesy.

Oil

Just a short post, I've been pretty busy lately, but if these photos don't make you rethink owning that bloody stupid SUV then I don't know what will.  We really have to rethink what we are doing to ourselves and this planet.  And if you think it is just one unfortunate incident and just off shore oil rigs owned by BP then think again.  I know this is more of an environmental post than a photography one, but you might agree that it points out how powerful our images can be.

I can't stand the protesting at the G20/G8 right now.  I think most of those 'protestors' don't know the issues from a hole in the ground, they are just interested in enjoying anarchy and violence.  As much as I've criticized the police for their rough handed approach to photography I think they have a very challenging and unrewarding job in dealing with these lunatics who can't see that to the general public their burning of police cars does nothing to bring sympathy to their message.  That includes the message about oil I tried to give above without throwing a brick or Molotov cocktail.

OK, that is enough ranting.  We now return you to our regularly scheduled photography blogging!

And speaking of photography, we always scout out our wedding locations before the wedding if we have never photographed in a certain area or venue before.  Adam drove out to our next location and reported back that there were slim pickings for photo rich environments, meaning he wasn't terribly inspired.  I have two thoughts about this, one is "oh crap that makes it hard" and the other is "this should be a really fun challenge which I'm looking forward too."  I know the bride and groom are disappointed as they had wanted photos at a local school but were denied permission so now they are somewhat worried about where to get photos done in this fairly isolated location.  We will make it work, and make them very happy they hired us, this I know for sure.  I actually can't wait to see it myself!

Traveling with the iPad

Traveling with the iPad
Originally uploaded by neil_gaudet

I don't know if I'm just bored, or if I'm bordering on insanity, but I'm sitting here in my hotel room and in between typing I'm staring at this painting on the wall. It is of trees and is a landscape print maybe 36 by 14 inches. I'm loving it, I'm really loving the way it is framed with a white matte that is about double the size on the bottom as on the top. What does it mean about your artistic sense when you start enjoying the artwork in a hotel chain?

I'm travelling for work and decided to take my iPad with me on the trip. My first journey with it. It packed up so nice and small and I even threw in the keyboard stand in my suitcase. I checked into my room and decided it was a good time to tackle a couple of projects. I have Pages, Apple's word processor installed in the iPad and thought I'd try and get some use out of it. Before we photograph a wedding I often spend time with a couple and answer all the same questions about timelines, our style of photographing, and generally what to expect from us. I thought it would be nice to have a pdf to send them about a month before their wedding to sort of answer some of those frequently asked questions. Not to stop them from calling me, on the contrary I enjoy talking with them before the wedding, but more to just give them the comfort of having some tips and a list of things that need doing in writing. Maybe most wedding photographers do this and I've been missing the boat, but anyway....

So the iPad. It works brilliantly for this type of thing. I sat it on the hotel room desk with my cup of coffee and typed it out in about an hour or so, and it looks mighty pretty too! I also surfed the web and answered some emails. This device really does a nice job as a laptop replacement for me. Of course it isn't suitable for photo editing, but that isn't why I bought it. I have a big shiny iMac for that and I don't really feel the need to edit on the go. Anyway, I took a photo of the iPad with my really bad iPhone camera to share.

Speaking of iPhone's. I love mine. I keeps me organized, has fun games on it, some cool photography apps (My favorite is PhotoBuddy) and is a pretty good phone too. But the camera is bad. Most cell phone cameras are bad aren't they? I've been hearing people talk about the new iPhone 4 and how the camera is so awesome. I hear Chase Jarvis talk about the 'Best Camera,' but for me the biggest use of the iPhone camera is to take snaps of something at Costco to then send to my wife as an instant message to see if it is the thing she wants me to buy. I also use it to help my failing memory, for example I took a photo of my home printer model number so that when I go to buy replacement ink I can remember what printer I have at home. But if I want to take photos, even just snapshots, then the iPhone pretty much stays in my pocket. Am I just a photo snob? Am I just a crappy iPhone photographer? Dunno. But I do believe that cell phones are absolutely going to replace the tiny point and shoot cameras for most people, and why not, most of those are overmegapixeled pieces of junk anyway. An endangered species if I ever saw one.

Well, one of the perks of sitting alone in a hotel room without my family is the ability to surf the TV, read a book and sleep diagonally on the bed without making my wife mad. So off I go.

Car Shows

My daughter with one of the cars she decided was cool.

My wife and daughter took me out to a car show in Qualicum on Father's Day which was really nice.  Neither of them are into cars, but they treated me to a non-rushed look at several hundred classic cars and a hot dog and ice cream as well!  I took my Olympus E3 with me and the Leica 25mm f1.4 lens.  As I always do I took a quick mental survey of the other DSLR cameras I saw, and there were lots of them.  Most were Nikon it seemed, but I also saw a couple of different people carrying Sony DSLR cameras.  Mine was the only Olympus.  I did notice one Canon, but the guy with it had a 70-200 lens on it and was carrying it around like a bazooka.  Honestly I don't know what I'm missing here, but in a dense (and I mean really dense) crowded car show how is it you choose to bring your big white 70-200 lens?  Whatever.

I'm really loving Lightroom 3.  I just finished editing my photos from last Saturdays wedding.  That is record time for me and Lightroom really sped things up.  The new watermarking feature is a huge time saver too as I export both a full sized and a small web-sized and watermarked version of each image.  Being able to watermark all the photos from a wedding in one batch export is a massive time saver for me.  Thank-you for that new feature!

I've always wanted an old Datsun.  This was a 1972 240z which is perfect, but I like them in orange.  Also like the 1980's Nissan 300z.  

I was cruising the internet today and noticed that Lens Lenders has a new site and that they have lowered their prices!  Not sure if it is just a temporary promotion, but if you want a Nikon, Canon or Olympus lens to rent check it out (Canada only).

David Bailey

I just finished reading and gazing through the book "David Bailey: Look" by Jackie Higgins.  It came in my last impulse Amazon order.  Normally I don't read the text in these photo books, but Jackie Higgins does a good job of dissecting and giving opinion on the images by the late David Bailey.  This was interesting and helpful to me as I formed my own thoughts and opinions on the work.  Bailey's photographs are stunning of course, but also have a flavour of controversy about them.  I've said it before that I get tremendous inspiration from photo books like this and again I was really jazzed about soaking up some of these images.  I truly believe that all photographers need to also be photography consumers that buy and invest in the art.  We can't just sell it, we have to surround ourselves in it to excel.  Or at least I do.  An excellent book, and you can't beat the price.

Meanwhile, the University of California Police have been ordered by a judge to return photos they seized from a journalist after the judge ruled that their seizure of the photos was illegal.  Score one point for common sense.  Unfortunately it isn't wide spread.  For the first time ever I had close second hand experience with a photographer being asked to delete photos by the police.  At our wedding last Saturday in Courtenay, one of the guests was a friend of ours that is also an amateur photographer.  He was in the parking lot with his new baby taking a break from the festivities when he saw a rather dramatic police event unfold right in front of him on the street.  Having his Pentax K20D with him he quickly took a few shots of the goings on.  An officer approached him and asked, politely, for him to delete the photos.  They stated that the incident involved one of their own so privacy was important.  I'm not sure if that meant it was an undercover cop, or whether a police officer was being arrested or exactly what that meant but the photographer didn't argue and deleted the images.  I'm not sure I would have.  I certainly would have, hopefully, talked more about it.  I have no desire to put the safety of an undercover officer at risk so if that was explained to me I would have happily deleted the images.  But if that wasn't the case, if it was just officers not wanting to be photographed I would have probably declined.  Police officers on duty in public should have no expectation of privacy.  Their actions should be above reproach.  Then again, if I was on the job shooting a wedding I probably would have deleted them as I couldn't afford the time to argue with an officer when I am supposed to be focused on the client.  It is a tough call, but it definitely feels prevalent that police officers feel they have the right to force people to delete video and photographic images and that (with all due respect to police officers that have a tough and dangerous job), to me at least, is the first step that leads to a police state.

Scott Kelby recently posted on his blog about the ins and outs of photographing a major sports event.  He uses his recent job photographing a baseball game between the Tampy Bay Rays and Toronto Blue Jays as an example of what to expect for a photographer doing this kind of work.  Now, I don't condone Scott's cheering on of the Rays being as I'm a big Toronto Blue Jays fan, but the post is excellent and a really interesting read for anyone interested in sports photography.

The Olympus rumour chatter continues around the next pro camera to replace the E3.  They range from Olympus using Kodak sensors (they currently use Panasonic ones) to having a modular camera, to making a strictly micro-four thirds pro caliber camera.  There are rumours about Pentax jumping into Micro-Four Thirds as well and bringing with them a series of primes that they have patented.  Now I'm a big gear rumour nut.  I usually love it, but lately I've just been getting tired of all the nonsense.  We've been hearing about the E5 for about a year or so now and it is getting a bit long in the tooth.  Hopefully if Olympus doesn't bring out anything by Photokina in September we can all just move on with our lives.  Then again I know that is naive.

Wedding Photography in a Parking Garage

So I mentioned in my last post that at our last wedding we had ducked into a parking garage for some photos.  My partner and I like to scout out a location before the wedding.  In this particular case we hadn't found the time before the wedding day itself so we arrived an hour early to walk the area together and get a plan developed.  There is nothing worse for you as a photographer, or your clients, than indecisive "where shall we shoot next" moments.  

Anyway, full credit to Adam for stopping me and suggesting we put them in the car park under the resort hotel for some photos.  We walked in and I saw a cement wall I liked and then we noticed these strong tungsten lights down the centre of the interior roadway.  It was actually a pretty dark garage otherwise.  We formulated a plan to use the tungsten lights for a pose or two with the bride and moved on to scout the rest of the grounds.

We saw the groom first and mentioned our photo plan for the formals.  When we told him we wanted some photos to be taken in the underground parking he cringed and looked like we'd offered him raw eggs to eat.  Anyway, this couple wanted their photos done before the actual ceremony which is actually getting pretty popular.  I went off and photographed the bride preparations and Adam did the groom which is our usual routine.  We met up later and started off on our planned route.  It was a hot sunny day and things were going well, but after about 45 minutes we hit the garage and the couple were happy (as were we) for a quick break from the sun.  

So first up I put the bride in a pose under the bare tungsten light.  Cars were parked on either side of her, but I exposed properly for the light hitting her upturned face and the rest of the environment went dark.  Beautiful.  Adam did a couple of shots then and I was turning things over in my head when it hit me that I wanted to use some backlighting with an off camera flash.  And that flash had to be blue.  So I gelled a flash blue (I always have an assortment of gels with me), put a pocket wizard on it, set it to manual and 1/4 power which is where I usually start.  Then I laid the flash on the ground resting on the pocket wizard so it was actually pointing up at the subjects shoulders or midsection.  Then I shot away with the couple having a kiss or cuddle and the blue rim lighting got me all excited.  It really made the image sing.  I was pumped. 

Well Adam was standing back watching.  We feed off each other this way and he saw an image in his head.  So he took the bride and posed her as you see on the top of this post and grabbed my pocket wizard, dialled in my camera settings and fired away.  The image just amazed us all right on the camera. I know he had to spend a lot of time on the final one in Photoshop to perfect it, but the moral of the story is that sometimes you have to push yourself to be creative.  You have to get unconventional and not just make every image on the beach or in the garden.  Your clients will love you for it and your creative juices will flow.  It will keep you a happy photographer, not just a camera operator.  

Adam and I are pretty competitive and we feed off each other.  This is all friendly and helpful to us.  We love it when the other creates something beautiful, and it pushes us to do the same or to do better.  That has helped me get much better at my craft in a shorter time than if this had been a solo venture from the start.  Bad thing is though that I was so jazzed about his image that we all moved on and I forgot to use my cement wall in the garage.  Oh well.

By the way, Olympus just received an award for their innovation on their dust removal system they patented a couple years back.  Now of course that system is in a lot of DSLR cameras by different companies.  That is one thing that Olympus had really done well over the years, been a pioneer.  Hopefully they can do the same with the replacement for the E3.  And speaking of my E3, after I mentioned in this blog post about how good it has been but that maybe the lcd screen that rotates was a logical weak point, my lcd screen started to separate during the wedding on Saturday.  It hasn't affected its performance but I need to get it in for a warranty repair as I'm sure it will compromise the rain sealing.  Thing is that I'm very busy right now and I'm going to have to make some tough choices about what weddings I can live without it.  I still will have my 5D mk II, but maybe now is the time to pick up a 7D. I can't live without having two cameras at a wedding.  

Uncle Bob

We had a great wedding on Saturday.  One of our easiest ones in terms of time required on the job (only about nine hours) and the couple was great about letting us go for it with images we wanted to try.  At one point we talked them into taking some photos in the parking garage under the resort.  It was worth it, the shots were pretty amazing.

The ceremony was outside which was a nice change from a long string of indoor weddings recently.  I used my E3 pretty much exclusively during the ceremony.  I was shooting from the back while my partner was up near the front giving two views of the event.  The Canon saw most of its duty during the bride preparations, for the formal shots and the reception.  It was a very bright sunny day out so we used flash outdoors a lot as well as a reflector.  I don't think we ever used the diffuser to block the sun which surprises me.  Anyway, a very successful day for us.

One thing that always perplexes me about photographing a wedding is guests that run around like maniacs taking photos.  They can see that someone has been hired to take photos, yet the cell phones, point and shoots and Canon Rebels are out in full force.  Some guys (it's usually men isn't it?) will go to great lengths to stand up on chairs, lay on the ground, shoot over my shoulder and run themselves into a sweat.  I often see the guests photos later on Facebook or something and frankly I'm not sure it is worth all that effort.  I don't mind guest photographers usually though and  I even don't mind talking shop with them if I'm having a lull in photography (I'm not busy).  It's usually guys, but sometimes women will want to talk shop.  It often goes something like "Yeah I do a lot of photography, it's just a hobby but I've thought of going pro." I've learned to me non-committal about my comments or I'll invariably get asked detailed questions I don't have time for or be asked if I can have them tag along sometime on a session.  Normally I just say, "well that is great, photography is a fantastic hobby."

I've nothing against amateur photographers.  In fact I truly believe that a lot of amateurs are better photographers than a lot of pros out there.  But being a professional takes more than the ability to make the occasional pretty photo.  It takes an ability to do it again and again on a consistent reliable basis.  It takes people and business skills.  It takes money to buy reliable gear and replace it when it breaks or gets worn out.  It means buying insurance, having contracts, and delivering quality products on time and as expected, no excuses.  Having the name 'amateur' doesn't have to be a bad thing, I just wish that those that take up the craft as a hobby would realize that and not validate themselves by saying "I could have gone pro."  It isn't like hobby carpenters that fiddle on making beautiful hand crafted furniture go up to working carpenters building houses and say "yeah I could have been a pro carpenter, but you know life got in the way."  It's all a bunch of crap.

Anyway, that leads me back to the Uncle Bob's.  The 'photographers' at weddings that pretty much miss the event because they are looking at it through the viewfinder of their D90.  Honestly, one or two pro photographers is distracting enough and we try and keep ourselves quiet and respectful during a wedding ceremony.  The 25 amateurs with their on camera flashes and cell phones are just the paparazzi.  In my humble and admittedly biased opinion they are just detracting from what should be a loving, happy and cherished event.  During the wedding on Saturday there was only seating for about 10 guests.  The rest stood in back.  As soon as the bride walked down the aisle guests crowded in.  I had a guy with a camera in the middle of the aisle in front of me, a guy with a Rebel shooting over my right shoulder and worst of all, the husband of the marriage commissioner (seen above) walking all over the place getting in shots.  He told me before the ceremony that he likes to make a small photo book for all the brides and grooms that his wife marries.  He said he left his big camera at home, but had recently learned not to shoot in auto mode and to always have a flash.  I'm not sure what he is bouncing his flash off of in the photo above, there was nothing but big bright blue sky.  Meanwhile he walked in front of me and my partner several times.  Of course, as you can also see in that photo, we had to photograph through several cell phones being held up.  Photos of which will be deleted and forgotten once people buy their next cell phone. 

All this might sound like bitching and moaning, and I admit in part it is.  Believe me I completely support and admire amateur photography.  I think though that men in particular feel the need to be the 'dude in the know' and just can't help themselves but fancy they are able to produce pro images.  After all they bought a Pentax K7 and it has a hell of a good kit lens.  I hear the on-camera flash works good too.  Put that sucker in auto mode and boom, you are a pro.  

I'm just going to say this.  If you fancy yourself a photographer, definitely take it up as a hobby.  Take photos of family for free if you want.  Go photograph birds and deer and lakes and mountains.  If you get invited to a wedding and the couple has no budget for photography definitely take your camera and help them out.  If they have hired someone, relax, sit back and enjoy watching them exchange their vows.  Give them the gift of a relaxed non-paparazzi wedding.  These people that invited you are probably special to you, so you won't be able to soak the magnitude of the event in through your viewfinder.  You should give them the respect of your full attention.  For my part, the next wedding I go to as a guest, I will leave my camera at home.  I will sit, enjoy the ceremony, I will dance at the reception and eat the food and I will go home afterwards with no photos to edit.  If the professional photographer made good images of the day, I will probably buy a few.  

Wedding Prep and Photographing my Own Kid

My daughter plays on a softball team called the Penguins.  Her year end tournament is this Saturday but my wife and her will be there without me as I'm photographing a wedding.  I have gone the whole season without taking any photos of her playing which is really unlike me, so last Wednesday I made sure to bring a camera.  I decided that the Olympus E3 and 50-200 SWD lens would suit the event.  Of course I had the battery grip on the camera so with that large lens it was a pretty obvious and frankly obnoxious camera.  Hard to be subtle.  I do like the battery grip though, it isn't just for looks.  I find the buttons helpful when I quickly flip the camera to portrait orientation.  The sun was shining in from right field pretty strongly so I decided to go and sit out past second base and photograph the kids batting and then when they were in the field I sat by the first base line.  This kept the sun either behind me or to my side.  The big camera drew one "now that is a serious camera" from one dad and of course several requests for photos of other people's kids.  I was only too happy to oblige.

The E3's continuous autofocus is really bad.  I've learned a long time ago that it is just better to use single autofocus and feather the button with sports.  Thankfully these kids aren't exactly fast.  In fact my kid spends most of her time on the infield diligently trying to eat her baseball glove (seen above).  Aside from that rather annoying flaw in the camera, it performed beautifully and the lens is really a great one for outdoor sports.  It blurs out the background nicely when fully zoomed and is a fast focuser.

Why my kid swings the bat with her eyes closed is a mystery to me.  We had gone out and bought a bat and ball to practice, but to be completely honest we haven't found the time which I regret.  To my surprise, despite swinging eyes closed she hits most of the pitches.  I took photos of most of the kids at bat and most of them on the infield as well.  About half the kids swing with their eyes closed.  Never noticed until I looked at the photos.  After the game I went home, imported all the photos into Lightroom 3 and made my selections of the best photos by flagging the good ones.  I then cropped the keepers to 4x6 size as I knew that I was going to print them all that way (you can't trust the local lab here to auto crop anything well and I didn't feel like cropping forever at the kiosk).  Then I exported them and put them on a CF card before running to the lab.  Complete editing time of about 75 photos?  About 20 minutes.  Wish I could do a wedding that fast.  My wife will be giving out the prints to the moms and dads tomorrow while I'm with my wedding.  All the parents know I'm a photographer by trade and to me little goodwill things like this are not only nice to do, but help people to recommend you to their family and friends.  "Hey, isn't he the guy that gave us those photos of little Joey at baseball??"  A 40 cent print is a great business card.  Not that I'm doing it for that sole purpose, I don't make a habit of turning friends into clients, but I am aware that the goodwill of your peers is helpful in a small community.

My daughter is also in ballet and jazz dancing, something she excels at somewhat more than baseball.  I'm pretty sure she is in baseball to please me (I'm a big big Toronto Blue Jays fan) and to socialize with some of her friends, but dancing is really her thing.  I took a couple of photos last weekend of her in our backyard just before going off to watch her year end dance show.  About two months ago the dance studio called asking if I'd be interested in doing the photography for the year end show as they were parting ways with last years guy as his photos weren't that great (dark theatre, challenging environment to photograph in for either poor gear or poor technique).  It was either going to be me or another dad that was a photographer.  Now I have never heard of the other dad or seen his work.  It might be great.  For me though the first thing I thought of was "I don't want to work during the biggest event of my kid's year.  I want to watch her and enjoy it."  So I told them that if the other dad was keen that I'd be a very happy spectator.  The show as great, I enjoyed just being a witness to my daughters special night and if the other dad's photos are any good I'll certainly buy some of them.

But before or during these events I always like to take some of my own photos for my own family memories.  Frankly, a lot of the time the professional photos are really bad.   I know for our official baseball photos the main photographer, a very successful one that does most sports locally, just pretty much fires off everything mechanically and with full on flash.  They are fine, but not remarkable.  Then again, he is good at what he does.  Several hundred kids in one afternoon.  We did the photos for a local swim club last weekend.  It was the first time we were to do that type of thing, mass photography.  I've said this in an earlier post, we took the time to do it right, and I'm glad we did.  I received the prints by courier today, packaged them up and delivered them before I even had dinner.  The club was thrilled to get them so quickly and after looking at the prints I was proud of the open loop lighting on each kid from our umbrella and the time we took to deliver high quality prints.  The team photo was pretty so-so in my opinion.  Going to improve on that next time.  Ultimately though it only took me one hour to package and deliver the prints.  Pays to be organized.  I dropped a business card and a thank-you note in each envelope as well.  Never know, might turn into a couple of portrait referrals.  Never hurts to be hopeful right?

So we have another wedding tomorrow.  I'm all packed up, traveling a little lighter than I did last wedding.  I also picked up some little LED flashlights at Costco today that I put in my bag.  I think I'm going to try and use them to light details like rings and possibly for a cool portrait idea I got from watching a David Ziser video today on Kelby Training.  I have a subscription to Kelby Training that has been OK for me.  I find it mostly useful for videos on Photoshop and Lightroom.  I watched the videos on Lightroom 3 today to help me get up to speed on it.  Still no answer to my problem with losing my photo ratings when I export to an external editor, but I'm working on fixing that.  I also plan on watching the Photoshop CS5 videos this weekend if I can find the time as I've yet to try most of the new features.  I find Kelby Training and their website to be good and useful, but it hasn't blown my mind.  I'm pretty sure I won't renew my subscription when it expires.  Most of the videos weren't of interest to me and the photography related ones were good, but not jaw dropping.  For software I've learned that I prefer to have a book in front of me and for that the Kelby books are excellent.  For photography learning I prefer hands on workshops to videos.  We do have a subscription as well to Jerry Ghionis' site The Ice Society.  I do find that incredibly inspiring and helpful.  Jerry is one of our photography idols along with Yervant for wedding photography.  Must be something in the Australian water.

Anyway, wish me luck on the wedding tomorrow.  Now that this one is here we are pretty much booked crazy with weddings until the end of August.

So What is with Sony?

Just a quick post.  Actually more of a question.  What is with Sony?  They just released the A390 and A290 DSLR's.  Not a big deal I suppose, but if my math is right that makes 10 different DSLR cameras in their lineup, 8 of which are APSC sensor cameras.  This doesn't include their new NEX series cameras of course. 

A count by other manufacturers:

• Pentax: 2
• Olympus: 5
• Sigma: 1
• Fuji: 1 
• Canon: 9 
• Nikon: 7

Now Canon and Nikon are a close second and third by model number, but here is the thing, do they really need that many different cameras that are pretty much clones of each other?  I've seen this with point and shoots over the years.  Ten different varieties of pretty much the same camera just to flood the store shelves with your brand name, but is this really necessary with DSLR cameras?  Maybe I'm missing something.  And don't forget, Sony will probably replace the missing A700 soon, which should make a nice round number of eleven different cameras.  Weird.  

Swimming and Horsey Photos all in One Weekend

Photo by Adam Collishaw

Have you ever shown up for a photography session at a new location and been totally jazzed just because of where you were at and the wonderful people you were photographing?  On Saturday we did a portrait session for some good friends of mine.  The husband/dad just took a summer job in Manitoba which is about 2500 kilometres away and is missing his family.  We thought it would be great to send him some photos and were invited out to a local horse ranch for the session.  It was a great location and we were jazzed to be there, plus these are really nice people so that makes it even better.  There was a lot of harsh sunlight to deal with which is always a challenge, but we rolled with it.  When we arrived we just took 10 minutes to have a stroll around without our cameras and find some great locations with open shade then we just went for it and had a really good session.  You can see me in the photo above working.

Before we left I asked if I could hang out for a while and photograph some of the horses.  They obliged, but I didn't stay long as the light where the horses were was really harsh and I wasn't getting what I wanted.  I'd like to say that I can always produce my best work no matter the light, but that just isn't true. I need to find the good light to really make images that sing.  Of course I bring diffuser panels and such, but when you are photographing a horse, a 52 inch diffuser panel isn't going to do much.  I admit I'm kinda nervous around big animals, but these horses were pretty gentle. I was trying to act relaxed too as one of the people we came to photograph is about 21 years old and is a super horse person so I didn't want to look like a putz.  Anyway I have huge admiration for work by Chris Friel who I found on Flickr and if you look though his images he does some amazing things with horses.  I had in my mind to capture something in a similar mood/method to him, but it wasn't happening for me.  Some other time hopefully.

I used the 5D mk II exclusively this weekend, giving the Olympus E3 a much needed break after photographing in what has been about 3 weeks of solid rain here on the west coast.  The Canon worked well and I'm really appreciating the 24-70 f2.8 Canon L lens I bought as my first lens for the system.  It is a really ideal 'jack of all trades' lens.  I find it quite nice on the 70mm end for portraits and the 24mm on a full frame sensor is quite wide.  To me it is plenty sharp wide open and it doesn't seem to distort too badly either.  I did throw on my 50mm f1.4 lens as well just for giggles while I was photographing the horses and it was nice, but I find that shooting f1.4 on a full frame is quite often too shallow of a depth of field.  I'm not sure if I'm used to the lens yet.

We did team and individual photos for a local swim club today.  It was our first kick at the can at that type of 'factory photography' where you have a bunch of kids lined up to have their portrait done one after the other.  We had bid on doing a hockey league's photos last year but lost out to a large company in town.  My accountant referred us to the swim club and we were pretty excited about doing something new.  The total time commitment was only about 90 minutes, but we were getting ready two and a half hours before it started because we didn't want to come across as a bunch of newbies.  The system we created worked well.  We had preprinted envelopes for the kids where they could fill out their order, then the kid put the money in the envelope and walked up to us for the photo.  I took the photos and read off the file name from the camera to my partner and he wrote it on the envelope.  Then later in Lightroom I just made sure when importing the photos to not rename the files, I left them as the camera assigned number.  I didn't need to do any editing on the images, they were exposed perfectly as we had set up our lighting in advance, so all I did was export them to a folder as jpg's and then upload them directly to Smugmug, our online gallery provider.  From there I just took each kids envelope, and found their image in the Smugmug gallery and ordered the print from the file number which shows up in the gallery.  Easy stuff and I had my photos imported, exported and ordered for delivery in about an hour.  The club seemed happy with us and asked us back for next year already.  

As for how we shot the photos, well it was a bright sunny day again and we were to shoot outside on the lawn by the local pool.  We could have just put our flash on our hot shoe and fired away in program mode as I've seen every photographer of this type do when I bring my kid for baseball photos etc, but instead we took the time to find some shade under a big tree, set up an umbrella with off camera flash fired by a Pocket Wizard and did a few test shots until our light was dialled in perfectly.  Then I put my camera on manual with the exposure set right and each kid came through with everything ready.  The photos are probably only better to my eye and most of the parents wouldn't notice, but now I know that I don't get that ugly little highlight in the eyes from on-camera flash and I get a bit of a shadow from the umbrella being at a 45 degree angle and a softer light.  Plus given that last years photographer gave photos that were point and shoot quality at best, us just setting up one light stand and umbrella gave us that little bit more legitimacy to parents.  I'm glad we take our time to think things through and do a good job rather than just operate the camera.  Hopefully we can translate that into being known for quality images in our community.

I dropped in my local camera stored today just for a quick browse as I like to do.  I played again with the Olympus EPL-1 and the new Panasonic G2.  I liked the Panasonic quite a bit, but in the end I don't really want a tiny DSLR body, I want a tiny body styled like the Olympus PEN camera or the Panasonic GF-1.  The Olympus really isn't for me though as I really don't like not having a scroll wheel for changing my aperture and such.  I know I will buy a camera like this soon, but the one I want (the EP-2) isn't really affordable yet, plus the Panasonic prime lenses are more attractive to me than the Olympus ones.  What was really interesting about the trip was the discussion with the store clerk.  We talked about sales trends and I told here how I thought point and shoots were getting replaced by cell phone cameras and we talked about people buying things like the EPL-1 instead of say a Canon G11.  The Olympus is the same size and the image quality is miles better.  I'd suspect that the cameras like the micro four thirds and Sony NEX are going to eat into both the good quality point and shoot and the low budget dslr sales quite a bit here over the next year.  Meanwhile she was telling us that a lot of her DSLR customers where buying the cameras strictly for video.  The photo curmudgeon in me was ready to scoff, but I know what she is saying is true.  Convergence is here to stay, and the side impact is that dedicated camcorder sales are plunging as well.  Interesting times.  It seems like the need for so many different types of devices is really dropping off.  A person can buy an Olympus EPL-1 and it can be their camcorder, their small point and shoot and produce excellent high quality DSLR images at the same time.  

Before I end this post, just a couple of words about Lightroom 3.  I imported all my portrait and swimming photos with it this weekend and so far I'm really liking it.  There have been a couple of quirks so far.  I notice that when I am editing a file in the develop module that if I touch a slider at all, like the vibrance for example, the photo gets blurry until I click back on the photo with the mouse.  Strange.  Also I have a system where I star my photos (rate them) before I begin edits.  Then I just edit the picks or highly stared ones.  Well in Lightroom 2 it would automatically assign the rating to a duplicate that was created as a tiff if I had exported to Photoshop or my Nik software.  That doesn't happen in Lightroom 3 and I when I return to Lightroom I have to go and find my photo.  I'm sure I've forgotten to set something up, but it is annoying.  It doesn't seem any faster or slower than Lightroom 2, but it does seem to render the files a little better right away which I like.  I just renewed my DWF membership and with it came some new presets for Lightroom which I like quite a bit so that made me happy.  Anyway, so far so good, but definitely a few glitches.  

More Books

My daughter has ballet today so I'm pulling ballet dad duties.  We had some time to kill before her practice so we stopped at Chapters for a quick break and browse.  She bought another chapter book (she devours books like her dad does, insatiable) and I bought the latest edition of B&W magazine and a bargain photography book from the clearance section called 'Athlete' by Walter Iooss.  It is a large Sports Illustrated book and wow.  Jaw dropping images displayed in huge print.  Wow.  It was $15.  If you happen to be popping by a Chapters or Coles I suggest you look for it in the clearance section.


 Just in case you were wondering if the incidents where police have decided people with cameras are criminals had abated, then rest assured law enforcement around photography remains absurd.  Seems a motorcyclist in Maryland recorded an officer giving him a ticket.  The officer stopped him while plain clothed and holding his pistol.  The motorcyclist, a member of the National Guard and a family man with children recorded the interaction with the police officer.  When the police found out about the recording after it was posted on YouTube the motorcylist was arrested and charged with unlawful wiretapping.  He is facing up to five years in prison.  I guess the police there seem to feel that their public interactions with citizens while citing them for a traffic violation should be totally private and free from public scrutiny.  At some point this all has to stop right?  At what point do we all realize we are pretty much setting ourselves up to live in a police state?  Just imagine the guy who videotaped the Rodney King beatings getting arrested.  Silliness, and it keeps getting worse.

Photographing People We Like

Photo by Adam Collishaw

One last photo of me carrying my camera gear in front and pack in back on my hiking trip.  If I look tired, I was.  This was while hiking out on day four.  I'm pretty sure that at this point I would have paid good money for a Sherpa dude.

Yesterday I dropped into a coffee shop to read a book and enjoy some quiet time as I mentioned in my last blog post.  Well when I walked in I was confronted by someone that I had known in my past.  This person isn't a nice person, but is well known and liked in our community.  If only people knew what I knew.  As soon as I saw this person I remembered all the horrible things they had done to others, and I remembered once again that there are truly bad people in the world.  Strangely enough though, I was pretty detached from the encounter and was able to sit and enjoy my reading despite their lingering booming, antagonizing voice in the coffee shop.  I'm past this person and have little interest or investment in them.

So what does this have to do with photography?  Well as some of you know I spend most of my photographic time making images of people.  Most people I really like, some that I never really get to know and some people that I instantly don't much care for.  The encounter yesterday had me thinking about how I deal with photographing people that are rude, mean, or just plain bad folks.  I remember a time when we were doing a wedding and I was photographing the bride and my partner returned to where I was working and looked really unsettled.  His encounter with the groom while he was getting ready had not gone well.  The groom was rude, his groomsmen were rude and not just to him, to everyone.  This poor beautiful bride had no idea the things that were being said in the privacy of the grooms quarters.  It was a rough start to the day, but we pulled off amazing coverage of the wedding.  

We have seen moms and dads that struggle to maintain their tempers because the kids don't paint plastic smiles on their faces for photos.  We have met men that don't want to be in photos but are just appeasing their significant others.  We have met brides that were happy one second, crying the next and pretty angry seconds later.  We have had aunts, bridesmaids and strangers tell us what they think we should be photographing and we have dealt with demanding corporate people.  All of these things don't bother us because 99% of the people we photograph are fantastic.  They really are.  They've paid to have us there and we get along great with them and look forward to their reaction to the images we give them.  But how to keep going in this work when you run into the other 1%?  The 1% that range from just generally unhappy people to downright bad folks that you'd rather avoid at all costs.  That is what is on my mind today, and for no other reason than I ran into the one person I know well that is truly a bad person.

We did turn down one job last year from a customer we knew was just an unpleasant person to deal with.  I admit it, we told them we were booked and took the day off to spend with our families.  I wanted the pay and the work, but I didn't want the heartache and hassle.  While most people gush and love their images, some will never be happy.  We put ourselves out there as artists and photographers and it can be pretty hard to accept defeat.  I recently had a customer unhappy that a fence was in their family photo.  They asked to be photographed in that location, not me.  Yet, despite the strange turn of events where the customer was unhappy with their own choice and was pinning it on me unfairly (I liked the fence by the way), I was left feeling bad that I was a hack and a bad photographer.  Thinking back, I wonder if they were just a generally unsatisfied person that liked to be unhappy.

On Saturday I get to photograph a family I know very well.  They are good friends actually with two grown kids that I've seen grow up since they were about 8 years old.  The father was recently hired to work about 2500 km from here so he is away from home and we are going to make a portrait to send him to have of his family.  These are great people and I'm happy to give them my time (good friends are free, acquaintances pay full price).  On Sunday we have been hired to photograph a local swim club's team and individual photos.  We love working with a bunch of kids and this is a new kind of event for us, mass photography, so we are pretty pumped about it.  The referral for the work came from my friend/accountant so it has paid to play nice in the world with nice people.  

But I know its coming.  This summer we are booked nearly solid with weddings and I know we are going to meet some difficult people. So what is my plan?  Collect the paycheque.  Make great photos, smile and be nice, even when they are not.  It isn't my place behind the camera to pass judgement on those in front of it.  I hope I like everyone I meet and photograph but that isn't the real world reality.  Nothing about my art or the commerce of my product has to be entirely in tune with my personal beliefs and morals.  At least that is what I tell myself.   

Thanks for reading through my thoughts.  I'll finish by saying that I have had this incredible itch lately to start some of my own 'just for me' photography.  I want to take a series of black and white portraits that I have had juggling around in my head for the past 6 months or so.  I recently joined a Facebook group of models and photographers on Vancouver Island and I think I'll finally join Model Mayhem in search of some people to collaborate with.  My ideas are definitely not off the shelf commercial images, more grainy, dark, black and white arty type stuff.  But they are just for me and for those I work with on the project so I won't have to worry about satisfying anyone.  I'm thinking, hoping it is just the thing I need to feel inspired, happy and invigorated about continuing to develop my craft.

Comments welcome as always.

Photography While Hiking, E-books, Lightroom 3 and CS5

Photo by Adam Collishaw

So I've been away for a few days hiking the Juan de Fuca Trail on southern Vancouver Island.  The photo above was taken of me lying on the beach trying to get some photos I think of my buddy taking a nap on the rocks.  It was taken with a Pentax K20D carried by my photographer friend Adam.  Hiking is something I used to do a lot about 10 years ago, but children and marriage (responsibility) had it take a back seat until now.  So three friends and I decided to leave the wives and kids at home and get back in touch with nature and I took it as an opportunity to take my Olympus E3 on a walk, something I hadn't done since I took a Pentax film slr on a hike on the West Coast Trail in the 1990's.  I don't intend this blog post to be about my hike so much as what I learned about photography while hiking and the challenges I came across.  I spend most of my photographic days making portraits and photographing weddings so this is something I'm not an expert at.

So it is amazing what you forget when you stop doing something.  As it turned out I packed too much weight (non camera weight) and I brought leaky boots.  I had bought some really good boots about 15 years ago and I didn't bother to check them before the hike, just did a quick waterproofing.  Turns out the soles were deteriorating and let water in.  Of course the trails were exceptionally wet and muddy after two weeks of continuous rain.  Add that to the fact that in my last minute packing I couldn't find my gators (waterproof fabric that extends up your leg to stop high water from getting into the tops of your boots) and I can say that I spent four days walking on wet feet creating some interesting foot problems.  I mention this because my foot pain was so bad that it pretty much stopped my photography by day 3.  I ended up with under one hundred photos from the trip, most of which I captured near the beginning.  What I did capture though was really fun and a great memory of the trip, and of course I had my buddy Adam (seen above) with his Pentax complementing what I was doing.

                      Photo by Adam Collishaw

So for photographic gear I brought my Olympus E3 and my weather sealed 11-22mm and 50-200mm Olympus lenses.  I also brought an ND filter, a polarizing filter and a split ND filter and holder.  I packed it all in a Lowepro Slingshot 100AW backpack where I also threw in a lens pen, cloth and spare battery.  I put a 16GB CF card in the E3 as well as a 2GB XD card so I didn't need to bring extra cards.  I took the battery grip off my E3 to save weight.  I also put a clear filter on each of my lenses before the trip and left them on as I knew things would get dirty.  I don't usually do this, but in this instance I figured the risk of damaged lenses was fairly high.

The Olympus E3 performed as expected.  It stood up to rain and dirt/mud without so much as a complaint.  Compared to Adam's Pentax it just seemed to be absolutely bulletproof, where his lcd screens showed signs of moisture getting in by the end of the trip (it dried out fine though).  The image stabilization in the camera helped me out a great deal as I often took photos on very shaky tired hands while still having my pack on my back and was able to get tack sharp images.  This is a very good reliable hiking camera.

To do it again I would have only packed one lens.  Probably my wide angle lens, the 11-22.  I was really glad I had the 50-200, especially when I came across an eagle or wanted shots of my friends climbing on rocks on the beach, but reducing weight trumps convenience and switching lenses in wet environments is always dicey.  The 11-22 is a great lens for landscapes and is small and light.  I used it on wet rocks on the ocean and in wet forests and it didn't seem to care one bit, giving me very nice images without fail.  The same goes for the 50-200 which gives really nice bokeh behind subjects when you rack it all the way out to 200mm wide open.  

Turns out I didn't need the spare battery, the one was more than enough.  I did need the lens pen and all the filters came in handy.  On the first night I took my E3 with 11-22 mm lens and walked out to the surf to take a long exposure shot.  I put on the polarizer and ND filter to help get long shutter times and turned off image stabilization.  The E3 went onto a damp rock that would allow for a level(ish) shot to be taken and I racked it out to f22 and ISO 100 and managed exposures from 15 to 60 seconds as the light fell.  Unfortunately for me I had had an entire flask of wine while eating steak and potatoes over the camp fire so I was a little weak on judgement (nothing like a steak over a campfire).  So while I did manage to get some great shots I also nearly lost my camera to the ocean.  After one exposure I heard my name being yelled from behind me and turned to see my friends pointing at a big rogue wave coming in. I snatched my E3 up in time to save it the salt water bath, but my lens hood and cap were dunked.  I was able to rescue them and dry them off fine, but narrowly missing losing my camera sure sobered me up.  The E3 is weather sealed, but I'm not sure it is meant for swimming in salt water.  Lesson learned.  Don't drink and attempt long exposure beach shots.

The Lowepro bag faired well in that it was the right size for the equipment I brought and was rugged enough to handle the climate.  It has a rain cover that comes out of the bottom that I used regularly. I did get condensation inside the bag though when I used it, which caused my camera to have water on it for hours at a time.  No problem for the E3, but I'm sure that is what put the condensation into the Pentax which was being carried in an identical bag.  I took the slingshot and swung it around to sit in front of my chest so I wouldn't have to attach it to my pack.  This worked well for getting gear out of the unique zipper of the bag which opens from the side to allow easy access.  Unfortunately for me though the strap of the camera bag running under my large pack really irritated my right shoulder and after four days was a source of painful irritation.  There is a buckle in the middle of the camera back strap that is meant to attach to a secondary strap that you can hide in a pocket.  I never use that secondary strap so to save the irritation of the buckle being pressed against my back by my heavy gear backpack I cut it off (as well as the secondary strap).  I didn't notice the weight of the camera back on my front as it was very secondary to the weight of my real backpack, but in the end I'm not sure the bag was the best choice for this type of journey.  What I would like is something that attached to the shoulder straps or waist strap of my regular pack.  If anyone has suggestions I'd love to hear them in the comments.

The Juan de Fuca is a beautiful trail and if you are into hiking I highly recommend it.  It needs some maintenance as the trail is in rough condition from years of wet mud, but the scenery can't be beat.  I'd rate is as equally beautiful to the West Coast Trail I did years ago, and while shorter, more challenging.  It is a total cliche of course, but the enjoyment and relaxation you get from spending that much time away from cell phones, televisions and the internet is really wonderful.  Nature is the ultimate healer, even if your feet hurt.  

So when I returned home I caught up with my family, slept and recuperated.  My wife did some amazing first aid on my feet and they are nearly back to normal now except for a persistent wound on my right heel.  When I finally got around to checking all my emails and catching up on my web news I noticed Lightroom 3 had been released.  So I pulled out my credit card and decided to update both my Lightroom and Photoshop programs as CS5 was also out.  $300 later for the upgrades I was running with a new learning curve.  I had been ignoring the demo version of Lightroom, but listening with interest to the reviews.  The install of Lightroom 3 was simple and magically it brought over all my old libraries organized as I had them and also my presets and external editing programs like my Nik software that I love so much.  I noticed that my old photos from Lightroom 2 had a little exclamation point beside them that you had to click on to render over to the new version if you wanted to use some features like the new noise reduction.  I tried it on a few noisy images from my hike shot at ISO 1600 as I wanted to see what all the fuss was about with the apparently awesome noise removal of the new program.  Once I clicked on it though I noticed an immediate change in my file.  It was somehow better rendered without touching anything else.  I'm not sure what is going on here, but it seems that Lightroom 3 is doing a nicer job of looking at my original raw files than its predecessor did.  Hard to explain.  And as for the noise reduction.  Wow.  It is as advertised.  I like Nik Softwares Dfine program, but I can quickly see that there is now little need for me to own it.  I can save time doing noise reduction right in Lightroom, and if I do a series of photos at high ISO like a hockey game for example I suspect I'll be able to batch process them which will be a huge time saver.  

So Lightroom 3 gets a very positive initial review from me.  I have only processed my hiking images in it so I can't say too much, but so far so good.  As for CS5, well I haven't used it yet.  The installation wasn't as smooth.  I managed to move most of my plugins over and my actions after some difficulty, but still have two plugins (Portrait Professional and Photomatix) that I am struggling with.  I'm eager to play with some of the new features so I'll let you know at some point my impression of it.  

I had this morning free so I decided to go out to a coffee shop and enjoy reading an e-book on my iPad after dropping my daughter at school.  I was looking forward to trying this as I had downloaded several e-books from an author I had enjoyed in printed form named David duChemin.  Unfortunately I found that I don't like reading on my iMac, it just isn't soothing to sit in a desk chair and read a book while staring at a monitor.  I put the books on my iPhone and tried that during downtimes while waiting for my wife in a store or my daughter taking ballet lessons, but I didn't enjoy reading on that small screen either so I had pretty much written off the idea of reading those e-books.  Well the iPad changes all that.  It is a pleasure to read on, about the size of a proper book and it can sit on your lap or lay on a table while you sip your morning cup of Joe.  So off to the coffee shop I went and I read the first e-book of his I bought called '10 Ways to Improve your Craft.  None of Them Involve Buying Gear.'  The book is basically ten technique tips on improving your photography.   David is an excellent writer and photographer.  He uses language that is easy to understand and informal.  His photos are inspiring and beautiful.  After each tip in the book he gives a short exercise that you can try (I didn't) to help drive the technique home with you.  This would be a great book for a new photographer, but I found it really helpful as well to remind me to focus on images, not gear, and mostly to photograph in a way that creates the image I see in my head not in a way that is based on the technique I use most often or am comfortable with.  This book is a great rut buster.  Meaning if you find you are in a rut of creating the same images over and over again, this book should be able to give you a reminder of techniques that you have forgotten you should be using.  I really enjoyed it and I really enjoyed reading on my iPad over a cup of coffee.  These books are short and easy reads and I'm looking forward to the other 4 books I purchased from David.

Speaking of e-books.  Before we left on our hike we took out a guide book on the Juan de Fuca trail from the library.  It is about 15 years old and while helpful was getting kind of dated.  We thought it would be fun to make a Blurb book as an updated guide book people could buy from the online bookstore.  Well my lack of consistent documentary photography of the trail as my feet deteriorated has probably derailed that, but also I've thought that a printed book will get out of date very fast.  So now I'm considering the idea of an e-book.  We plan on doing the trail again next year so we could update it at that point and the book could be downloaded and read by anyone on any device they choose for less money than a paper book.  We will be doing a printed photo memory book for each of us four hikers, but that is for us as a keepsake, an e-book however seems to make lots of sense.  

By the way, duct tape works great on sore feet while hiking!  I know this is a very long record breaking blog post, but I hope you'll bear with me as I've been away a while.  I'm sure some people are wondering if I can compare the Pentax K20D performance to the Olympus E3 performance on the hike.  I'll say they both performed very well.  I find the Pentax tends to give more saturated colour and darker images right out of the camera than the Olympus but that doesn't matter much as we can adjust those things in post.  The resolution of the Pentax and the ability to yank the RAW files around in Lightroom is superior to the Olympus.  The Olympus has slightly better build quality and weather sealing.  Both cameras are excellent choices for photographers that enjoy using their gear in environments that are less than friendly like wet, muddy, humid hiking trails on the coast.  We enjoy both cameras very much.  As for my Canon 5D mk II, I didn't even consider bringing it.  Mostly because if it were damaged I'd be very upset as it has become my main work camera, but also because it simply isn't designed for use like this.  We did meet a fellow using a Canon 5D mk II and 50mm f1.8 lens on the trail, but this was a young guy hiking the trail in sneakers so I don't think he was the best planner out there.  I imagine (hope) his camera was fine, but I guess I'll never know.  A small light weather sealed micro four thirds camera would be perfect for an adventure like this, but they don't exist yet.  Thanks for sticking with me in this long post.  Comments welcome as usual.  

Website Habits

I'm sure most of us have our routines and habits that to others in our life define what they expect from us.  My wife often tells me that I'm a total creature of habit and that she can tell what time it is by where I am in my daily routine, particularly in the morning.  She has a point.  I admit that when my brain is still clearing the nightly haze that clouds it over I rely on a very ritualized first couple of hours to set me straight.  Shower, eat and read the paper, have coffee and read my email and visit the same websites every morning. Now I've just parted somewhat from that routine by cancelling my paper copy of the local newspaper in favour of the digital one on my iPad, but I guess that isn't so much of a change, more of a slight shift.

I won't bore you all with the baseball sites I visit each morning, but I love finding new interesting corners of the internet so I thought I'd share my favourite photography related sites and encourage you to share some of yours in the comments.  These are sites I visit every day, they are updated often and are a great source of information for me.  This post, by the way was inspired by the new feature on 1001 Noisy Cameras site where they feature one site per day which I thought was a pretty cool idea.  I'm hoping to get some great sites from them.  Anyway, here are mine:

1001 Noisy Cameras:  A general news site for photography gear, I find it very good for the latest photography gossip. Not so much rumours mind you, more just the late breaking news.  It is sort of the CNN for photography.  Yes the site often has links to rumours, but I'm the kind that enjoys that.  They also talk about sales trends and link to gear reviews, both of which I find really interesting and helpful.  I probably go to this site twice a day.

4/3 Photo:  I started visiting this site when I bought my original L1 dslr.  It is a forum where there is talk around the four thirds standard.  It is mostly populated by amateurs, but there are excellent photos to look at and for the most part friendly conversation.  It is a great place to buy and sell used four thirds photography gear and is a very active forum.  The owner of the site often writes interesting articles about four thirds gear and seems to have some sort of relationship with Olympus.

Flickr:   When I started in photography in a serious way back when I owned my Panasonic FZ50 superzoom camera I used Flickr as a place to show my images and get critiques on them so I could learn.  I learned a lot from fellow members and spent a lot of time reading threads in the various groups.  Nowadays I pretty much use Flickr to host blog images, not so much my photography work.  I also rarely visit the groups or read threads of conversation in them.  The biggest value of Flickr for me now is inspiration.  I have 201 contacts that keep me inspired as I look at their images every day.  They range from professionals to amateurs and all make work that inspires me and generates ideas.  I also look at images in the various groups I have joined that are related to my interests and use the same gear I use.  Every time I think I'm the bees knees of photography I see someone out there daily making better images than I do with the exact same gear and it humbles me.  I also motivates me because it brings out my competitive nature.

4/3 Rumors:  I admit it I like gossip and photography rumours.  I visit this site every day for the newest of Olympus and Panasonic gossip.  It isn't always accurate, but it is juicy.  If you hate rumours, avoid this site.  I used to go to a similar general photo rumour site and a Canon one, but both weren't as active as this one so I lost interest.

DWF:  I'm a paid member of the Digital Wedding Forum.  I find it really helpful and useful in getting the information I need for my profession directly from my peers.  The photographers that participate in this forum are very skilled and they all give me something to aspire too.  The subjects in the forums range from business topics, marketing, image sharing, gear, vendors and seminars, and it caters to photographers that specialize in weddings, portraits and boudoir.  In my opinion it is an indispensable tool for anyone who makes money in at least one of those areas.

Lightroom Killer Tips: This blog hasn't been terribly active lately, which is understandable as Lightroom is sort of in transition from version 2 to 3.  The author Matt Kloskowski has a thorough knowledge of the software and gives great tips on its use.  He also posts up some great presets and brushes for free download.

Scott Kelby's Blog:  Mostly a Photoshop related blog, I love the weekly guest posts on Wednesdays by guest photographers.  Scott is definitely an icon in the photography universe right now but he still comes off as super approachable and easy to read.

Strobist:  I don't spend much time on this blog anymore, but it is a staple in most photographers online reading.  David Hobby will likely go down in history as the single person that helped us all get our flashes off that darn hot shoe.  It is a fantastic resource, none better.

Ned Bunnell's Blog:  Ned is the president of Pentax USA.  I don't own a Pentax and his blog isn't updated much more than about once a week, but I think it's pretty cool that someone in his position has a blog.  He will reply to you if you leave a comment and he has a deep love of tomato photography.  :)

Visual Science Lab:  Kirk Tuck is a photographer and author that lives in Texas.  He uses Olympus and Canon equipment and his blog is a very approachable and honest reflection of working photography.  He updates it very regularly and his love of photography keeps me coming back again and again.

The Online Photographer:  Not one of the most visually appealing websites, I just started getting into this blog, but it is a very established one that is updated daily.  As I type this it is down (go figure), but I've enjoyed the daily articles on it.  

Marketing Essentials International:  Again, not a very visually appealing website, but if you are a working photographer you will find this site very helpful and interesting.  It is a frank and comprehensive source of information on marketing your work no matter what type of photography you sell.

The Random Photographer:  This site is run by an amateur in the UK named Tony Blatcher.  He doesn't update often, but I like his style so I drop in regularly to see if he has added anything.

And that is it.  Those are my haunts on the internet.  If you have a site that you love and that I've missed please let me know in the comments.  I'm always ready for another good read.  I have tried other sites and dropped them, but I won't talk about them here as I'm sure others enjoy them.  In general if they are bitter, have a lot of infighting amongst forum members or are pretty much just a rolling advertisement for a superstar photographer I take a pass.

I've typed this post while I am experiencing a head cold or some other funny bug or virus.  I'm pretty hard to be around when I'm sick as I turn into this really hard core whiner that is convinced he is going to die a slow painful death.  I mention it in case the cold medicine I took made this post illegible.  :)

Before I go, I photographed a fencing class last night for Parks and Recreation.  It was full of young teenagers in their full gear swatting at each other while hooked up to these electronic devices that beeped and lit up every time they scored a hit.  It was one of those things that looked so fun I wanted to put down my camera and suit up to try it.   The 5D mk II worked well.  It is a brightly lit gym in a new building so my E3 has worked there for me in the past, but with ISO 1600 I was able to get fairly fast shutter speeds to stop the sword in mid air.  The tracking focus on the 5D isn't amazing, but it was certainly adequate for this and I made several action shots that were usable keepers.  I mostly give the Parks department colour images of happy or active participants to use in advertisements, but I also occasionally shoot some interesting images for myself while there.  It is one of the great things about this job and particular project, you get to photograph things you normally wouldn't have access too.  So to please my own photographic curiosity I placed some of the kids in front of a large cement wall for some photographs.  Kind of gritty and I liked it.  I used one flash off camera on a light stand on the right hand side of the camera pointed through an umbrella and fired by Pocket Wizards.  The Canon 580 EXII flash goes to sleep if you aren't using it, and since it is new to me I hadn't turned that feature off.  I will for next time as there is nothing more irritating than a flash that doesn't fire when you leave it idol for 10 minutes.  I also tried my 50mm f1.4 lens from Canon without a flash which I haven't used much since buying.  It seems pretty good to me, not as soft as I thought it would be, though I was using it at f2.0, not wide open.

I'll be photographing a lot of nature and landscapes over the next four days which isn't my regular thing so expect something new soon as I'm working on a book.  I'll be taking the Olympus for the project as I'll be dealing with a lot of secluded outdoor locations and it has been raining here a lot over the past couple of weeks.  Wish me luck!