Live - Laugh - Love

A little over a week ago I went biking around the lake with a couple of friends and one of them asked if I would do a photoshoot for her and her roommates, who are all just about to move into a new apartment.

They wanted a few photos for a picture frame that they have that has spots for three photos along with the words “Live,” “Laugh” and “Love”

So, this Thursday, we had a chance to go out to the train tracks downtown Bemidji and do this photoshoot.

As a payment for the photos, Jake, who I had taken along as my assistant, and I received homemade blueberry pie!

Katie

Keren

Kristie

Jake had just gotten his 5D Mark II the day before the shoot, so it gave us both a chance to play with our new cameras, and to practice photography.

White Seamless

A couple of weeks ago we had the chance to take over the sanctuary at a local church for a few hours in order to build a white seamless set for this photoshoot.  Read more to see more photos from the shoot…

Two Subjects

Motion

White on White (plenty of detail in the pants)

White to Black

The Infinity Workshop Group

"We look like we were Photoshopped in!"
But they weren't...

Last night we successfully held our second summer workshop, our class size doubled from week one to week two even though two of our new participants just came as models, it was fun to have more people.  We started out last week with three people, and this week we were up to six (even though Ellen and Marie came just as models… we’re still counting them.)

Last nights focus was balancing off-camera flash with twilight, we spent the first hour reviewing the concepts that we had talked about the week before, then we went out and put that knowledge into practice.

The group that we had for our second workshop.

After the shoot, a few of us sat around a bonfire, ate s’mores, and got to know one another a bit better.  It was a fun night.

Next Wednesday, June 23, 2010, we will once again be getting together at 7 p.m. at my house for an hour to look at the technical aspects of white shooting photos on a roll of nine foot white seamless paper.  Around 8 p.m. we will be moving to Mt. Zion Church and set up a studio there to do a white seamless photo shoot.

In order to prep for this, you can go through the following white seamless tutorials:

White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 1 :: Gear & Space
White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 2 :: Setting Lights & Exposure
White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 2b :: Full Length With OneLight
White Seamless Tutorial :: Part 3 :: From White To Black

There are a few other white seamless tutorials on Zack’s site that you can take a look at but the ones listed above will best prep you for Wednesday’s workshop.

I have now created a Facebook group and gave the group name the first thing that popped into my head “Infinity Workshops.”  For more info, check out the group.

A photo that I took last summer exposing for the sky and foregound subject.

We just finished with our summer workshop kickoff.  When we got together the consensus was that we wanted to cover the topic of photography off-camera flash.  So we went through part of the Zack Arias OneLight Workshop.

If you are remotely interested in joining us to learn, we are getting together again on Wednesday and we can fill you in on anything that you missed… don’t feel like you need to come knowing anything, we covered a lot tonight, but will be reviewing what we covered tonight and applying it in a real photo shoot.

You learn better by doing anyway, so here’s the basics of what we looked at tonight and what we’ll be applying Wednesday.

When it comes to off-camera lighting for flash there are five major elements that come into play when exposing your image:

• Shutter Speed - Affects your ambient light exposure.
• Aperture - Affects your subject exposure (or flash exposure)
• Flash Power - Affects your subject exposure (or flash exposure)
• Flash to Subject Distance - Inverse Square Law (The closer your subject is to the flash, the more light fall-off, the further your subject is from the flash, the less light fall-off, and more even the light will be across the subject.)
• ISO - Affects both ambient and subject exposure. (Higher ISO more grain)

Other important things that were touched on:

• The larger your apparent light source, the softer the shadows
• The smaller your apparent light source, the harder the shadows
• Gear covered: Flashes, light stands, umbrella adapters, triggers (cables/IR systems/RF systems), modifiers (umbrellas, softboxes, walls, whatever)

I know it sounds like A LOT and it is, but once you start doing it and seeing how it works in person, it will all make sense.

We also will need models for Wednesday, so even if you just want to check out what we’re doing and want to model for us, we’d love to have you!

As a homework assignment, I’d recommend reading the Lighting 102 - 3.1 Balancing Light: Twilight article from Strobist.com.  Don’t worry about doing the application part of this, as we’ll be doing this together on Wednesday.

If you don’t have your own gear at all, we’ll share (I’ve got a couple of flashes that people can use and we can take turn using the cameras that are there so that everyone gets a chance to try this out.)

Check out CreativeLIVE.com for FREE training.

I have to give a shout-out to CreativeLIVE. Chase Jarvis is an amazing photographer and has helped start some free online live training classes… the content is free if you watch it live, and after that you are able to purchase the courses at a great price!

This weekend they will be hosting a weekend workshop featuring none other than Mr. OneLight… Zack Arias.  I’m really excited about the workshop, and have already pre-purchased the course as I will have to miss the live event because I will be hosting a small workshop myself that is kicking off this Friday evening.

Following up with my last post, I’ve been talking with a few of the people that are in the Bemidji area, we’ve decided to go ahead and start working through some of the workshops that I posted about in my last entry.  These are video workshops that I own and have gone through independently, but feel that it would be beneficial to go through with a group of peers.

As I mentioned, we will be kicking that off this Friday, as in two days from today!  This will not be our regularly scheduled night to meet for the summer, as it is the start to the weekend and as human beings, weekends can be rather unpredictable.  We are still deciding between Monday and Wednesday nights for our weekly workshop nights (or possibly both.) This Friday’s kick off is for us to stop just talking about it, and get the ball rolling.

If you are in the Bemidji area and are interested in joining us, let me know by leaving a comment below.

We are going to start out with Vincent Laforet’s HDDSLR Cinema workshop, mostly because I’m selling my Pentax K10D this Thursday to a co-worker and will be cameraless until the end of the month when I get my Canon 5D Mark II in, and Vincent’s workshop starts out with a lot of hands-off theory, that I won’t need a camera for.  Then, once I do have my camera, I’ll want to play around with the 5D’s video functions.

One of the other guys that’s going to be attending is in the process of getting the Canon 7D, and when we get to the application/hands-on part of the workshop, we’ll have two HDDSLR’s to work with.

The Zack Arias OneLight Workshop

I’ve talked with a few people that are going to be around the Bemidji area for the summer about the possibility of doing a few photography workshops.

Nothing is set in stone as of this point, but I am going to be talking with some of the interested parties tomorrow.

As of right now, we are looking at working through some of the following workshops:

Zack Arias’s OneLight Workshop

Vincent Laforet’s HDDSLR Cinema

Strobist Lighting Seminar

Fundamentals of Digital Photography

I’m sure that we wouldn’t have time to work through all of these, but we are going to pick a day of the week and see how much we can get through.

As a part of working through the DVDs, I’d also like to have hands on exercises to go along with what we are learning.  I have all of the video seminars and have gone through all of them individually, but I think that it would be a much better learning experience working though these with a group of people.

There will be no cost to participants who want to work through these with me, just bring your own equipment, and I’d love to explore the world of photography with you!

The Canon 5D Mark II

I got to go to the NABShow again this year, that is the National Association of Broadcasters trade show which is an annual trade show/convention that happens in Las Vegas each year.

One of the big hypes this year was 3D television, this was no surprise to me as they have been showing this off for the last couple of years, and in the last year there have been quite a few 3D movies that have been coming out.  But this year it seemed like every other exhibitor that I walked past was trying to get me to put on 3D glasses to see their implementation of 3D.  3D is a “cool” thing, but I wasn’t all that excited about it because I don’t see it as something that I’m going to be doing a whole lot with, but there was something else that caught my attention (and the attention of quite a few other people.)

The other thing (which I had heard a bit about, but hadn’t realized that it was as advanced as it is) is the usage of Digital Single Lens Reflex (Digital SLR or DSLR) cameras for capturing video.  I hadn’t realized that there are DSLRs on the market that had very consistent framerates and good enough buffers that they could be used for producing very professional high-definition (HD) video productions.

The Canon 5D is really the cream of the crop at this point. I asked a Canon representative how long he thought it would be before a newer, better model would be produced and his answer was that the technology for capturing images wasn’t yet at the point where a better video DSLR could be produced and that it would probably be two to three years before a much better model would be released by Canon… now I realize that having the word of a company representative doesn’t usually carry a whole lot of weight, especially with the enthusiasm that I saw around video DSLR that I saw at the show, but I did like the video that I saw from the 5D.

I was able to listen to a couple of presentations where directors talked about using the Canon 5D in professional productions and they are using these $2,500 cameras to do some amazing things

Loose Ends (iPhone Photo)

If you know me at all, you know that I’m not the best conversationalist in the world… and I’m not the best at conveying my ideas by talking about them.

I like to surprise people with the things that I do.  Rather than talking about something for a couple of years and slowly making progress toward it and have people get bored with my ideas, I’m more of one to quietly work toward something and then one day say “look what I did,” or “look what I can do.”

This is good in some ways, and not so good in others.  I think it’s less overwhelming do do things this way… I am working on multiple things at once, and rather than having everyone know everything that I’m working on, I’d rather keep things compartmentalized, some people know some things, others know other things, but very few people get the whole picture of what all I’m doing.

This one month at a time thing has been very good for me, however, lately I’ve found myself falling into the same trap that I was in when I started this a year ago (I think it’s time for my one year assessment.)

Even though I haven’t been writing about it as much, I have been trying to focus on one thing a month, but I’m slowly starting to get different projects building… I work on something for a month, and don’t quite finish it, and then I start working on something else the next month, and don’t quite finish it.  And somehow now, I’ve got lots of unfinished projects and commitments.

I was thinking of starting something new for the month of February, but after starting to write this entry, I’ve decided to spend the next couple of months working on finishing projects that I’ve started before starting anything new.  This includes more than just things that I’ve started as monthly focuses… but things that I’ve had going on since before I ever started this.

First, I need to prioritize the projects that I have outstanding (this list may change if I think of something that’s not on here)… Let’s begin:

1. ProAcademy Series: Event Lighting DVD/Website
2. Thesis/Getting my degree
3. Adrienne and AJ’s Wedding Video
4. More Secrets ;)

In order to get this done, I plan on not working on one thing on the list until all of the things before it are completed.

I need to use my free time to do this, which I’m sometimes bad at so I need to lay down some ground rules:

1. No watching television or movies alone, I can watch them with friends, but not alone.  I’m really good at being unmotivated and sitting down and watching a movie… also, the new season of Lost is coming on soon, and I do follow Lost, but this will require me to watch it with friends… this could be hard, because Lost is a television show where you can’t miss an episode… so I’ll have to know a couple of friends watching it.
2. Do not make any new commitments.  This one is huge… I’m really good at making new commitments, which is what holds me back from finishing the commitments that I already have.

I do have a few things that I am currently committed to that I will need to work on in the meantime.

1. Work
2. InterVarsity Volunteer Work
3. Church Worship Team
4. AFP
5. The Victor
6. Day After Valentine’s Day Dinner
7. Horace May Spring Play
8. Sonshine Music Festival - Campsite Infinity Organization (I already own tickets that I will need to sell)

The first three things on my current commitments are ongoing until I leave Bemidji or get married, the fourth thing is a long term project that I am working on, starting out with a documentary (which could be the reason that I leave Bemidji,) and the last few things are once a year events that I have already committed to.

Wow, where does the time go.  Over the summer it was a lot easier to take the time to keep this up to date.

In my free time over the last few months I’ve been working on things like, financial responsibility, guitar (again,) and this month, my free time is going to producing a DVD series called ProAcademy Series.

A local business owner of a sound and lighting company approached me with the idea of producing a DVD on event lighting.  We have since filmed it and I’ve edited it, and just have a few finishing touches to put on it before we can start shipping it as a finished product.

It’s funny how a few “finishing touches” can take longer to do than the rest of the editing process of the entire video.  In total I’ve got over 20 hours of film for this project, and the final video will be about two and a half hours.

My goal is to be done with this before the end of the month.

Jalapeno Cheese Brats from Stittsworth's Nymore Food Mart (iPhone Photo)

On July 2, I decided to stop in to Stittsworth’s Nymore Food Mart, a local meat mart that is just a few blocks from my house.

I have friends that have had high reviews of Stittsworth’s brats, so I decided to try them for myself.

I do enjoy some flavor to my food, so I decided to go for the Jalapeno Cheese Brats.

I grilled them on a medium heat on the grill until they had nice grill marks and were starting to burst (I’d rather have them burst on the grill than in my mouth when I take my first bite.)

I sprinkled a little extra shredded cheese on the top and added a small amount of ketchup.

I enjoyed the fact that there where full slices of jalapeno (the full diameter of the pepper, but in quarter inch thick slices.)

The cost was a little more than I would plan on paying for lots of brats, but for feeding just myself, they were priced fairly.  It was about $10 for six brats.