Sutter Wedding - First Ever!

So I decided to try my hand at wedding photography. I was pretty lucky, in that my brother booked this wedding, and asked me to be a second shooter. This was a less traditional wedding...small, intimate, and "less stress" than many other weddings. But was I less stressed about this? Good God no.

The more I thought about it (and this may already be obvious to many), the photographic documentation of this day is the first photo album for this new family. And if it sucks...well, they'll remember that forever, and THAT will be essentially their memory of their wedding. Crappy photos. So...holy crap, was I nervous. I was essentially the 2nd shooter, taking photos of a lot of the details of the wedding; flowers, table settings, and also different angles of primary events.










After taking and processing this picture below for display (even though it may not be that good), I realized that I really enjoy the transformation of the bride from a "regular person." The details of makeup, hair, dress, shoes, etc. was something I often find myself documenting.





The ring picture below is still, to date, one of my favorite ring pictures I've ever taken.











I love it when a venue has balconies from which to get higher angled shots. Coupled with shots from the primary shooter, these combinations really add a photojournalistic feel to the album as a whole.

Meet Trisha!

Another try at this whole modeling thing. My buddy Paul actually set this shoot up for the both of us, as Trish is one of his friends. She's a professional salon artist, hence her hair was outstanding. At this point in my evolving photography, I had just purchased a 42" silver/gold reflector. We shot early in the morning at the IMA Gardens in Indianapolis. It is an incredible (and very VERY popular) place to shoot. I think for the few hours we were there, we saw about 4 senior shoots, 5 engagement shoots, and a wedding shoot happening. Insane.

A big learning point from this shoot was manipulating light and how it changes the photo. The reflector definitely helped fill in a lot of shadows, and gave a lot of life and energy to the photos. Not to mention the sun was a GREAT hairlight. Paul was a great help, and I also assisted him with his shots as well. All in all, Trish was a joy to shoot, and she really enjoyed the photos we produced for her. And of course, this was another one of those "for the hell of it" shoots.

Caveat: In previous posts, I called myself a photographer I think. I don't really like that term for myself at this point, as I'm more of just a "GWC," or "guy with camera." I just take photos...

Textures/Speculars

I'm intrigued by specular highlights. I'm not sure why this is, but when done well, I'm drawn to them like a moth to a flame. I'm not really sure what the point of this little session was, other than to test out a new lens I had recently obtained, the 50mm/f1.4. This was my first "fast prime" ever, and even though I haven't realized its utility until only recently, this lens wowed me nonetheless. It's bokeh is amazing, and stopped down, this lens gets quite sharp.

These shots were taken at the Greenwood Park Mall in Greenwood, Indiana, and about 30 minutes in, a "security guard" not much older than what looked like the age of 15 stopped us and told us it was illegal for us to take pictures at this venue. There's a big rift between law enforcement/security services and photographers, in that it is actually NOT illegal to take pictures of public places. At all. There are lawyers who specialize in this field, and have won many a litigation. There are horror stories of policemen confiscating memory cards and camera equipment, and even going so far as to arrest citizens simply walking around taking photographs of architecture, buildings, etc. all in public places. One photographer was even taken to the ground when he refused to give up his nearly $7,000 camera/lens combo, and then arrested for "resisting law enforcement." Don't get me wrong, I very much appreciate what law enforcement implements and does for the general public, but sometimes it can go way too far. Of course, just by the very nature of the interaction, it's always just better to bite your tongue, be polite, and comply, simply to avoid any further problems, regardless of the fact that (in general) law enforcement and security have no right to tell us to stop photographing publicly accessible areas.

ANYWAY, sorry about that little tangent. Just something that has always bothered me....

Another modeling shoot...my wife

Another attempt from me at modeling, this time with my most willing and beautiful model...my wife. Of course, when I first obtained my camera, she no longer saw my face, but rather my face with a camera attached to it. I would not put it down, and always had it pointing at her, adjusting settings, seeing how that would affect the picture, and do it again. Things that normally took her an hour to do suddenly tripled because I would constantly interrupt her with, "hey honey, look at me. Don't move. Ok." Wash, rinse, repeat.

Lucky for me, she was (for the most part) very patient with my learning my new toy. Pretty soon, these impromptu "hold still" photosessions turned into "hey let's go to the park and do a short photoshoot" and "hey let's set up a makeshift studio and do a short photoshoot." These few (of thousands) were some of the better results from these impromptu sessions. A few with natural light, and a few with a 2-speedlight setup with Elinchrom triggers.





These next few were attempts at half-profile headshots. I had seen this done many times before, and had always loved the way the photo gave a mild sense of tension and mystery, as the subject's face was half obscured, either by shadow or by the frame of the photo.

It's ELECTRIC!

So back in June of 2008, we had a pretty large system of storms run through Indianapolis while I was still living there. From my apartment window, I had a nice view of the western sky, and this is what I saw. You could feel the electricity in the air, that sort of tense stillness that makes your skin tingle. As the clouds rolled in, I saw in the distance a multitude of cloud to ground, and ground to cloud return strikes. Apparently having nothing better to do, I ventured out into our open parking lot with a metal tripod and an electrified piece of photographic hardware. Maybe I shouldn't have become a doctor...

Luck must have been on my side that evening, as there was so much electricity in the air and virtually NO RAIN, that, other than the occasional thought of being the 1 in 700,000 people struck by lightning that year, this would be a great thing to add to the portfolio. These were the best of the best...









This last one was the one that sent me inside. Not because of immediacy of danger as the storm drew near, but more so because I crapped my pants and was no longer comfortable standing in plain view of the public.

Meet Angela

So I decided to try my hand at what at the time I called "model photography." This is Angela, a good friend and classmate of mine who was gracious enough to let me and another good friend (and classmate) Paul photograph her. And boy was it weird asking someone, "hey, can we photograph you just for the hell of it?" I can't even remember how it all came up. We were all on a radiology rotation together, and Paul and I started talking about photography (he's been shooting for years, film first, now digital, and now augmenting with hard-to-find rangefinders). I, on the other hand, was just getting into it. I think Angela overheard us, and one of us just sort of blurted out (half-jokingly, half-serious), "can we photograph you?" THAT felt strange.

She was a joy to work with, and was extremely patient with the both of us. This was definitely the first time for me photographing someone this way, and probably the third or fourth for Paul. And as far as I know, Angela's first time being photographed just for the fun of it. I had also just purchased the Elinchrom Skyport off-camera triggering system for my speedlight, and was just learning how to use it at the time. Incidentally, none of the "keepers" from this session utilized the off-camera lighting, since I was so new to it, and subsequently overexposed EVERYTHING I used it with. For the most part, all of the keepers from this session were sheer luck...

Angela was great to work with, and had a ton of energy. She has this infectious kind of laugh that, when it comes out, you can't help but start laughing yourself. THAT really helped a lot in terms of helping me relax and just think about shooting. Even though I know Angela pretty well, things change once you get behind that camera and photograph someone merely for the sake of photographing them. I had no idea how to pose people, I had no idea what to say when she was doing well, or what to say when she didn't do what I wanted her to do.

My buddy Paul, getting the shot. Sidenote - a lot of vision now, where I want to go with my photography, what interests me, concepts, etc. have very much been influenced by this guy. His style of photography has always been something I've wanted to incorporate into my own. So Paul, if you're reading this, you're an inspiration to the type of photographer I would like to become. Thank you.













































This last shot was my first enlightenment with backlighting. Granted, the backlight was a huge floodlight used to light the Indiana War Memorial, but as I was processing the shots, I noticed how the rim of light created when a subject is backlit really helps it stand out from the background, and gave the photo a lot more depth. I loved it. So what did I do? I went out and bought another speedlight. This can't end well...