Wedding recap

The wedding was so. much. fun. Ali is an AMAZING photographer and an even cooler person. She used to be a teacher so she was all about helping me out and showing me all the things she does. It was great to get to see another wedding and another photographer's take on how to shoot to compare how people interact with clients. I'm picking up on styles. During the "getting ready," Ali let me use her macro lens (so cool!) to snap some of the details. Later when we were doing just the couple, I was using her wide angled lens. And for the reception she let me use her big flash so I could bounce it off walls and the ceiling to give toast pictures and the first dance pictures better lighting. I even lasted all 8 hours... once you get through the ceremony, it's no big deal. I'm loving this more and more every day!

I've also got to give a quick shout out to my cousin Kris of KristinaPerkinsCreates! She does some wicked sweet stuff so you should check out her blog and see what it's all about! Hopefully I'll get the chance to shoot with her sometime soon too :)

Today I've got potentially my first client - Tortor! I'll be bringing my camera along with me to Meghan & Stephen's grad party and snapping some candids of the afternoon! As if I wouldn't have been taking pictures anyway!

Work, work, work

Good morning! Here is an update of what I've been doing over the past few days: working on pictures. The hardest part isn't always taking a picture (although that has its set of challenges) but often later in the selecting and editing process. All of a sudden an hour will go by of me sitting on my computer looking over pictures and trying to decide which ones I'm going to use. Then once I've selected a good batch (via "flagging" them), I go through and touch them up to make sure skin tone quality is right and turn some black and white when I think it's appropriate. Then out of that batch I select another group (via 5 stars to mark my favorites) and those are the ones I end up putting on my blog. From the 5 star photos I open templates in Photoshop where I drag and drop photos into the templates and force them to fit. Then I insert my logo so people won't steal my work, flatten all the layers, save it to my desktop and insert it into blogger. So as you can see, time escapes me while I work on photos.

Today I am priveleged enough to go to another wedding!! Tasha is second shooting again (returning the favor) for Ali for a wedding out in Oak Grove. Last week, I went to the getting ready pictures, the couple and family shots, the ceremony, and then I left. That was only about four hours and after that I was exhausted. Today, my plan is to stay for the whole thing, a.k.a. all the way through dinner, the grand march, the first dance until about 9:15. I'm leaving my house at 12:30. It's going to be a looong day. But I love it and I can't wait!

Have a great memorial weekend, everyone!

I have beautiful friends

Kara and Meghan "posed" (I wouldn't really call it posed... more like talked and gossiped as I snapped some shots of them) for me the other night. It was right around sunset so the lighting for the first few were amazing but then it actually went below the horizon and all was lost. Enjoy, you two!

Fun with my sissy

Siri was a doll and posed with me for a few shots. It's the little things I'm going to miss so much next year! :(

Ps - I'm obsessed with her eyes (if you couldn't already tell!)

Technology

"It's crazy how much technology has changed our world today." I'm sure you've heard a variation on those words recently, but especially in the photography business - it's just CRAZY! People are booking sessions via text message, facebook inbox, blogger, signing contracts online, using paypal to send money, the list goes on. Other than the actual shoot itself, most of the photography business is done on a laptop. Today Tasha is working on setting up her blog with ShootQ. ShootQ can save a photographer a ton of time - it's essentially a studio manager. When someone uses the "contact" page on her blog, instead of it going to her e-mail, now it will go to her shootq where they can use paypal or authorize.net. It will automatically develop a calendar, so once someone books a wedding, for example, reminders pop up that the photographer needs to get the pictures back to them four weeks later. Also with ShootQ, she can link her blog to Twitter and Facebook so that all mediums are connected and she only needs to check one. Cool stuff!

Today we're doing a commercial shoot. Tasha is shooting the outdoor furniture for By The Yard. What's really cool about this company is that all their furniture is made out of recycled plastic milk jugs. Commercial shoots are either half day and full day shoots (1-4 hours or 4 hours+) and today Tasha thinks it will take only about 2. I'll be bringing along my camera as well so I'll probably post them in a couple days! Can't wait!

Angie & Bret :)

Angie and Bret got hitched this weekend! All credit for this session is due to Amy! I took all of the pictures shown below. If you click on the thumbnails you can see larger versions!

Consult

Day 5 begins with a recap of day 4. The wedding! I assisted Tasha who assisted Amy of Bella Vita Studios. We had a marvelous time once the weather cleared up! I realized for the first time of many to come that my Canon Rebel XSi just doesn't measure up to all the powers I wish it would. Light was my nemesis. First we were inside shooting the getting-ready pictures, then we went outside but there was a ton of cloud cover, and then the ceremony inside was dimly lit as well. The lowest my aperture would go was 3.5, so I was shooting at f-stop 1/60 but most of them were still really dark. And of course, I have the crappy straight-on flash which was of no use for me. I tried setting my camera down on any surface I could so that I could go to a slower f-stop but obviously that's not always conventional. I don't have the products of the shoot yet but they'll be coming soon! Here's what I learned: weddings are a TON of work. I was only there for four hours (half the amount of time of the session) and by the end I was exhausted. But if it means documenting the most important day in a girl's life, it's worth it. :) 


Today, I tagged along with Tasha to a consult for a woman who's interested in Red Bird Hills for an engagement session and potential wedding session. It was interesting - super laid back and casual. We met at Dunn Bros and it literally felt like two friends just catching up over coffee. But I guess that's what it's all about - just seeing if the client and the photographer match and that their personalities are good together. So that was great fun. Tomorrow, I will be editing and doing lots of other shenanigans. Lovin' the may term life!

Day 4: wedding!!!

Hereby my crazy day of blending being a high school senior and a photographer's assistant begins. I'm assisting Tasha who's assisting another photographer for a wedding shoot this afternoon at Northwestern College. As if that weren't exciting enough, I will also be attending the St. Thomas Academy military ball this evening immediately following the wedding. It's going to be a good day! I will post updates later. :)

Eye One

Today I headed over to Tasha's after a brutal 6:30 am wake-up for a scholarship banquet. The first thing we did was to color calibrate my monitor. We hooked up this mouse-like looking thing to the front and it picked up how much light was in the room (which was too warm and too bright, but there's nothing we could do about that) and how much light is in the computer. I had to turn the brightness down a couple notches and then it got to work calibrating the colors on my screen. The eye-one display essentially gives the colors on my screen accuracy between viewing and printing. Here's what it looks like:

After lunch, Tasha sent me some of her own photo templates that she uploads to her blog. She showed me how to format them in Photoshop and upload them to blogger. I realized I take many more horizontal shots than vertical shots so it would be up to me to make my own templates that fit my style. She also showed me how to stamp your photos.  If you have any good ideas for a logo/name that could go in the corner of my photos, let me know! For now it just says grace.veker.photos. I also removed the photos from my first post and inserted a template with three so you can check that one out too! Here is one example: it's a lot harder than it looks!

Editing

Today I'm playing around more on lightroom and figuring out how to format pictures on my Mac. These are a few shots I took last night with some friends that I edited today. Some of the features on Lightroom include: basic color. On the photo of Nora (girl in sunglasses) I liked adding more yellows and greens to add that summery/antique-ish look. Then there is a "recovery" tool that adds a tad more shadows to pictures that were perhaps over exposed. My favorite tool in the tone department is the adding to the blacks. Especially in black and whites, the blacks tool is extremely useful. Then there is vibrance, clarity, and saturation. These tone the overall color of the photo. I've delt with saturation before on programs such as Picasa and iPhoto but Vibrance is a really cool tool on Lightroom that picks out bright colors and keeps their saturation while draining others. Finally, the Vignette was definitely a personal favorite. Unlike iPhoto where the "matte" or "vignette" are super defined and give the photo a surreal border, this vignette tool can be extremely subtle and really just focus the subject better. For an example, I really like the Vignette look on the last photo of the volley ball net. Here are a few samples from today:

Day 1: aperture

Today was my first day on May Term! Such a relief to not be in the classroom anymore. My project is an internship with the lovely Tasha Herrgott of Red Bird Hills photography. She works out of her home so I went over  there today for a tutorial on camera features and how to play around on Lightroom and Photoshop. Although I took Photo I first semester, it was a good refresher to revisit topics on my own camera such as ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. I took some shots in her backyard bouncing back and forth between too much exposure to not enough light until I finally got the shot I was attempting. But the process was not nearly over yet - editing. I see why photographers charge so much for a session - the amount of work that goes into pictures after the fact is incredible! Although I feel like I have a good grasp on composition, I think lighting and coloring is going to be my big challenges over the next few weeks. Here are the products of a few random shots today.