More Guts Than Glory

I nailed this wedding and it was difficult.  A middle aged couple getting married on a boat. YIKES. Why did this make me such a wreck?  When I was a baby photographer just starting out, I took two wedding assignments.  Was I competent? NO. Did I know what I Was doing? NO!  Did I do it anyway? YES.  Did I spend months sitting at my computer, crying, because I'd botched somebody's wedding, frantically trying to fix mistakes that should never have happened in the first place.You better believe it.  And to make matters worse, I did not understand the power of photoshop. Did Ratty have to fix my god awful mistakes at the second wedding. Unfortunately, yes.  So, weddings, no matter how much I love them, and I do, make me crazy.  There is nothing like the happiness of a wedding and the type of shots you can get to make you thrilled.   But I keep wondering what am I forgeting? What am I doing wrong.  What simple thing have I ignored.  Neurotic are us.  Maybe, someday down the line this won't happen.

Now, why as a professional photographer with gigs in the pipe am I nuts about maybe being laid off?  It's because of my horse, Kitt.  Tommy is willing to float us, but he is not willing to float Kitt.  She is my responsibility.  She is also my best friend.  It's hard for me to talk about what she means to me.  That has to happen in a separate post.  All I can say is this.  When she was so sick with lymes, I had my identity stolen.  I'd arrive at the barn half crazy from what was going on and she would limp out to meet me. She would wrap her neck around me and stay with me until I was calm.  She wouldn't leave me.  She would just love me and she will always be taken care of, even if that means I have to say "would you like fries, with that order."

Why I've Been Skitzy and Not Around

Sometime around February, we heard that at the hospital where I work, they were going to lay off thirty or so people.  In March that 30 or so, morphed into 1/10th  of the workforce, but they weren't saying when.  Then in April, we learned that the 1/10th was going to happen, but they refused to say who and all they said was sometime in May.  Then we found out is was going to be Monday, but they still weren't saying who.  The whole hospital is a wreck.  Each day the stress gets worse. Much worse.  I figure I'll be alright, because the CMO has requested my attendance at a meeting to meet our new Director.  I figure if they're going to be canning everyone on Monday, and I'm expected at lunch meeting on Friday, I made it through.  But you never know.  Either way, I'll be back blogging on Monday.  The next lesson is "For every rule there is an exception."

Oh yes, in the middle of all of this fun, I have to shoot a wedding tomorrow.  YIKES

The Power of F4 and lower

If you'll take a look at the following picture, you'll see what I mean about the subject in focus and the background soft:

Do you see how the subjects "pop" when the background is blurred? This is the setting you should use when you want to take a still portrait of a woman, girl, baby, horse (standing horizontally to you), dog, or a single flower or a flat group of flowers.  It creates a romantic feel.  Now I've upped that soft dreaminess with an action for Photoshop called "Glamour Blur," but this is basically what it looked like.

PS:  You can duplicate Glamour Blur in Picnik by using the softness tool.

800 Pictures Down to 150 or Baby Get Your Glow On

This is the down side.  Remember how thrilled I was when I looked all of my shots. Well I still am, sort of kind of.  I have just gone through 800 pictures, coverted 300 from  raw to TIFFS, gone through them again and singled out 150 that will go to the bride.  Mind you that this bride was a little heavy and so in every picture of her, she had to be cut down. Then I had to put the glow on the pictures and now I'm going to sharpen them, convert them to a jpeg for printing and then convert them to a view only jpeg for the slide show. It gets a bit daunting,  Then there's my problem person.  In every wedding there is one.  That's usually the child that won't stop making faces or the relative that looks like he or she was weaned on a pickle, or in one instance the bride who drank so much at the reception, you could have stood her out on Charles Street and used her face for a stop light. In this wedding it was the overweight bridesmaid, without shapewear, in the slinky dress.  Hello, if you weigh 300 pounds and they've put you in clingy chiffon, invest in Spanx. I can cut you down, I can't erase the quivering bulges.  And if you are that size and find yourself in this situation, make the best of it, by trying to look pleasant.  Don't make the poor wedding photographer spend over two hours looking at pictures of you, trying to find one where you don't look like you could spit nails.  Ahh, the joys of the artistic life.  But, I do get paid to do this and most of the pictures make me extremely happy and some make me more than happy.

I hope some of you are trying the can exercise and will be ready for the next lesson on how to use fstops.

PS:  I watched my horse, Kitt, ovulate.  The vet was giving her an ultrasound and it was just at the right time.  Way cool.

PPS:  The does are driving away last year's fawns in anticipation of the new babies to come. I've got a shell shocked group of almost yearlings at the all you can eat cafe.

Bringing Up Baby 1 - Facing The Truth

I looked at my sweet girl Kitt's paperwork today.  I had to fax it to the breeding station. She is the descendant of four AQHA grand champions.  I never looked at it.  I didn't know.  The stallion is the descendant of seven AQHA champions. I picked him because I knew the owners and he had a great disposition.  Who knew he was this good. What do I do with this?  All of a sudden I've got a million dollar baby. I'm at a loss. 

My grandfather was a dairy farmer. He told my mother, who told me how to selectively breed for mares. I can't have a little boy. I'd have to leave him a stallion and there's no place to put him. I'm going to have to talk to the vet tomorrow about breeding a girl. Please guys help me here. I've raised cats and dogs but never horses. And I've never had a million dollar baby. And here's my dilemma.  I know what happens to horses who go to spoiled thirteen year olds.  How they are passed around until they are old and end up in the feed lots. I want this little girl to end up a brood mare for someone who will appreciate her until she's retired. I'm going to hand raise her and show her.  Hopefully, you'll instruct me in how to do that.

Please, please help me.

Demystifying the Almighty Fstop

If you want to take truely great shots, you are going to have to become familiar and comfortable with both aperture priority and shutter priority shooting.  Today we're going to deal with aperature priority and the fstop.

On almost every camera I've owned, aperature priority is indicated by an A or an AV on the shooting mode dial.  I could give you a long song and dance about why it works the way it does, which is confusing in the extreme.  So, I'm not going to do that.  Instead, I want you to think about the F in Fstop as meaning focus, as in what do I want to be in focus in my picture.  The smaller the f number, the shallower the depth of field, or, your subject will be in focus, but the background won't. The higher the fnumber, the more of your background will be in focus.

To see for yourselves, how this works, I'd like you to try this exercise.  You'll need a fence and three bottles or cans.  Place your cans/bottles approximately ten feet apart on the fence posts.   Position yourself about four feet from the first can.  Turn your shooting mode dial to A or AV and select the lowest fstop your camera offers, focus on the first can and shoot.  Once your in A or AV mode turning the wheel will select the fstops.  Next I want you to select the fstop in the middle somewhere around 5 or 6 focus and shoot.  Fineally select the largest number your camera offers, focus and shoot.  When you look at your shots on the computer, you will understand what the fstops do.  Next week, we'll go into what fstop for what situation.

PS:  Those of you with the Nikon P80 who have been taking pictures where the subject is so dark you can't tell who or what it is.  In your playback menu, select D lighting and see what happens.

The Payoff

I'm sitting here feeling rode hard and put away wet, every muscle in my body hurts, but I wouldn't change it for anything.  You see I'm sorting through the eight hundred shots I took at the wedding  I photographed on Saturday.  I'm listening to the wedding music and planning how pictures will fade into each other in the slide show.  I'm reliving the joy and the love and every beautiful thing that happens when you're invited in to chronicle people's joy.  The way the bride and groom looked at each other when they took their vows.  The groom's parent's joy. The precious baby girl taking her first steps in her fancy dress.  The teenagers flirting with each other.  How the bride's older brother cried when he danced with her.  The photos of the bride's deceased parents on their table.  It was just wonderful.  Don't get me wrong, the check that's earmarked for Kitt's stud fee and vet visits is nice, but that's not the main reason I do it. The joy and the ability to create beauty is.  It made those years, when I was struggling to learn, and felt like I was the slowest learner on the planet, seem like a small, very small price to pay.

This is my wish for you, that someday soon you will be sitting where I am, and say to yourself, the joy that I get from creating beauty made all the pain and frustration of learning how to do it worthwhile.