15 posts tagged “photography”
First, my sweet, adorable, beautiful nephew, B-Man. He really can't look anymore like my brother, honestly. But I do see quite a bit of his beautiful mama in him, too, so no doubt this kiddo is going to break many a heart...sigh...what I wouldn't give to see this sweet thing and smooch on him, but he's all the way out in Missurah :(
Then, some shots from today of my two knuckleheads...I was practicing shooting on a white background...the goal being to actually get it WHITE straight out of the camera. This is no small feat with a budget lighting setup. Basically, to get the white background white (without lighting it its a putrid shade of gray...), you have to aim at least one (two is better) strobes at it and blow it out (overexpose it). So I aimed my two portable flash units at the white background and used my regular strobe as my main, and by george, I think I got it!!! Could you accomplish this without the lights on the background? Yes, but you'd be spending several hours in Photoshop afterwards...so better to get it right SOOC (straight-out-of-camera). I'll be upgrading my lighting equipment very soon, so in the future this won't be so cantankerous.
So here we have The Boy, currently a.k.a. Hee-Haw or Ozark, because (a) the missing teeth, crazy cowlicks, and numerous freckles bemoan such a moniker, and (b) you have to strap him down and sit on him to put his shoes on most of the time. The Child hates to wear shoes outside, and rips them off the minute he walks in the door. But he is darn cute if I do say so myself...course I'm a bit biased....
And then we have our little diva-in-training, doing her best Hannah Montana poses...
Or so sayeth the Girl yesterday when she was riding her bike without her rear affixed to her seat. She was quite proud of herself, especially since she's only recently begun riding her larger, big-girl bike that her Grandpa got her for Christmas. She's been a bit daunted by the size of the bike (although it fits her quite well) and all the braking options available; two hand brakes and a coaster brake; yet she still prefers to utilize the toes of her sneakers to slow herself down. Lovely.
Yes, such an event should have been cause for a photo op, but I was hanging at the neighbors and didn't have my camera tied around my neck as per usual (I know, shocker!!!). But, frankly, I need a break from the lens. I did a pre-wedding gig for a friend of mine at work whose daughter was wed on Saturday, and then had a newborn shoot with Shawn's cousin's little boy on Tuesday. I've been editing pictures nearly every waking hour. I usually love editing a shoot, but I'd prefer to do it in smaller spurts rather than spending days at a time editing.
I got some awesome images from both opportunities, and I had a lot of fun during both shoots. It would really suck to be in business doing something you didn't love to do, right? Each time I learn so much and gain more confidence and comfort with my abilities. It's very satisfying. I promise I'll post some pics at some point after my eyesight has returned.
In other news, the Boy graduates from preschool tomorrow. Yes, he's only 3, but apparently even if you aren't really leaving the preschool, you still get to graduate and come back. He's really excited about it, and he told me all about their trip to the college gym to rehearse and all the things they would be doing for their graduation. He's at the age where his memory growing, and he's able to recall events that happened the previous night and tell me all about them. It's really nice to be able to ask him "so what did you do today at school" and get more than the perfunctory "I play in the sandbox." (which is his reply regardless if he played in the sandbox that day or not).
So, if I am able to extricate myself from Lightroom/Photoshop hell this weekend, I'll get some pics up of the Party (which was a hit!) and Little Man's "gradjiashun from pweeskool."
I overhauled my ghetto-fabulous, hand-coded website over the last several weeks and months, and have finally rolled it out this weekend!!! Woohoo!! Checkit-checkit-checkitout!! I even got myself a new logo and everything.
Special thanks to Flash Palette Web Design for their pimp-tight, exceptionally affordable and insanely easy to modify flash website template. Two very very big thumbs up for Flash Palette!!
This ... this starting a business thing...this is hard. Much harder than I thought. Of course isn't that how it always goes, right? Nothing worth having in life is ever easy to ascertain. This is the one true certainty of life, or so I've come to learn in my 34.5 years on this earth.
The decisions alone are enough to make me vomit. The money I've invested (and have nothing yet to show for it) also makes me nauseous. I read. I research. I calculate. I read some more. I plan. I set short term goals and long-term goals. And when goals are met, I make more goals. I make lists. And more lists. And lists of lists. And then I get overwhelmed and scared and want to crawl into a hole and forget about the whole thing. It's so very daunting. Now I understand why businesses fail or never really ever get off the ground, and why people who run their own businesses (like my husband) say that it isn't always sunshine and puppies. It really does suck at times. It sucks A LOT in the beginning.
What keeps me from stopping? I'm not sure. I think it's mostly because I love it so much. I love working with people, especially kids and babies, capturing the light in their eyes and their sweet smiles and expressions. It's almost like a high. And the challenge of harboring good light, nailing the exposure, getting a good crop of well-exposed images with no color casts. It's challenging and rewarding. And then when a creative vision you have in your head somehow works out just right, and perhaps gives you something a bit more than what you expected. That's gravy. It really makes you proud. Like these images -- which, I might add, made this baby's momma cry:
Yup, they made her cry. Course it helps tons that he's soooo damn cute! Seriously, though, I can't think of any greater indication of job satisfaction than that. It inspires me to keep pushing on. Push past the fear, the uncertainty and the unknowns. "Do what you love and the money will follow." I'm living my life by that principle, and while it remains to be seen how much money will follow, I know for certain I am doing what I love.
When the Big Brown Truck brings boxes, it means Jonathan gets to be the guinea pig. For this experiment, Mommy is testing out her new 60" Photek Softliter brolly box. Which is veddy nice. Mama like! But Jon -- not so much. And he's not at all shy about letting me know exactly what he thinks of Mommy, her camera, and her new diffuser.
Well, it's official. My children are fully afflicted with "photographer's child syndrome." Where most kids break out their cheesiest grins and are happy to stop and pause for a picture, my children will cut and run the minute they hear the lens cap come off. They hide their faces, refuse to smile, refuse to sit still. Or, worse yet, when asked to smile, they throw up the most goofy, cheesiest grins imaginable, ones that cause their eyes to become slits and making it impossible to garner the all-important catchlights that we so desperately hope to achieve in our images.
I used to think that my kids were just being, well, my kids. Bull-headed, stubborn, uncooperative and obstinant. Through research, I've come to learn that this is a very common phenonmenon amongst aspiring and established photographers and their kiddos. Worse yet, for those of us just starting out, our children are our most readily-available practice subjects. Problem is, you usually get less than 5 minutes of their cooperation (and that's if your damn lucky and if you have bribes available). With that limited amount of cooperation, it is almost next to impossible to get a decent image out of the shoot.
Take for instance Exhibit A below. It is a slideshow of the final images of my pathetic attempt to capture The Boy's 3-year-old portraits. What you see in these final 10 images is what I culled from over 40+ images that I shot (in less than half an hour). As you can clearly see, over half of thoses images would be considered outtakes, leaving perhaps three or four decent poses to use as the official portrait. 40+ images in less than 30 minutes. I think it took me LONGER to set up my gear, get my lighting and exposure figured out than it did to shoot that turkey.
When I first suggested to him that we "play with mommy's camera and lights and he can be the superstar" he was all for it, and eagerly cooperated in getting dressed, hair combed, etc. I got everything all set up and he was in it for about three minutes. In that time I got the first shot you see (the one of him sitting with pretzel-legs, barefoot), but from then on it was catch-as-catch-can. Then we got him goofing off (see the one of him making faces). Then we have the "impending apocalypse" shot: Jonathan in full meltdown because mommy shut off the TV (it was stealing his eyes from the lens). Then, following that, you see him eating fruit snacks; my last-ditch effort to sustain his attention for just a few more minutes, hoping beyond hope I could get just one more goodie out of the bunch. And then you have the capstone shot: the one where he is sticking his tounge out at me. That is classic "Jonathan at Age 3." It just screams "I've had enough. Bite me, Mom."
I know I know, I've been slacking on the blog this last week. It's been a crazy week.
The day before Thanksgiving, we received word that our good friends lost their twin boys prematurely. She went into labor at 21 weeks and, after several days in the hospital trying to stop the labor, the babies were born and did not make it. We are all heartbroken for the loss of those two precious angel boys. I know there are no words that can be said to ease their pain; only time and faith can heal that wound.
In other news, our entire household has been battling head colds for the last week. It hasn't been fun. Last night Jon started running a fever. He came into our bed about 3 a.m. and coughed his poor little head off until about 5 a.m. Diametapp cough seemed to help along with a good rubdown of Vicks, but no sooner had I settled back to sleep, Katie woke up crying and wanting to crawl into bed with us. I ended up laying with her in Jon's bed and we both slept for those last few hours until it was time to get her up and ready for school. Jon seems to be doing okay this morning. Cough has subsided and his fever hasn't returned, so I'm hoping we're on the mend.
Betwixt the medicine doses and nose wipings, I spent last week scouring eBay auctions for studio equipment. I've managed to put together a budget studio setup for a couple hundred bucks and am anxious to get all the equipment so that I can practice practice practice. I've got my website pretty much done (www.carleyschaffer.com) minus a few little tweaks I need to make here and there, and ordered some business cards today free from Vistaprint. (I heart them!) So I guess I'm now officially running my own business. Wahooooo! I don't have any pay clients yet, but I will. I've been working on my pricing structure, online ordering system, and signed up for an account with Miller's Professional lab. I've been a long-time customer of Miller's consumer service, Mpix.com, so it was a natural thing to go with them when the time came. I still need to work on marketing the business, of course, but have some ideas on how I can achieve that.
It's been a bit scary making all this happen. I vascillate between being excited and charging ahead, to being scared and unsure. Right now, my greatest detriment to myself is confidence. Am I good enough? That's the question that I ask myself 4,000 times a day. I think I just need to shove that fear aside and keep pushing forward. I'm certain that is the same question everyone who has ever ventured out into business for themselves has had to struggle with.
Who knows what will come. I can't remember where I heard or read this, but someone said "do what you love, and the money will follow." No doubt, photography is my passion. It is the one thing I never get sick of, the one thing that always challenges me. There is nothing like the thrill of going on a shoot and getting that one awesome shot, either through mastery of the elements or pure accident. You can't wait to get home and upload the images, tweaking them just so to make them pop. There's a little bit of a rush. A little high. It's awesome.
You just shoot and shoot, keeping at it, trying new things, absorbing everything you can get your hands on about the craft, and learning from your mistakes. Kinda sounds a lot like life...
I attempted to do the Griswold Family Christmas photo shoot today. That being said, I now understand perfectly why people go to Sears Portrait Studio or Picture People and pay exorbitant amounts of money for crappy photos: because your kids will actually listen to someone other than their own parent. Or is it just that my kids refuse to LOOK. AT. THE. CAMERA. when I take their picture???
In any event, we did manage to pull off a handful of keepers, but I present the whole shebang for your enjoyment...
Whew. Exhausting day! First we had Jon and his hour long parade/trick or treat at his school from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. He ended up with a huge bag of candy from that extravaganza. Then after a brief stop home for lunch, it was time to head to Katie's school for her parade and party. When it was time for me to go to work, I was looking forward to being able to sit down! The kids had a ball and got a ton of candy. Not good for a sugar fiend like me, but hey, that's what Halloween is all about.
Enjoy the slideshow below...
