Workshop and Print Review

Hi again,

Well, I did the swimwear workshop yesterday. It was great. Beautiful models, beautiful weather, good instructors and good food. Here's my favorite image so far out of a few hundred shots. It's Carly with off-camera on-location pocket flash and tightly cropped. Had a great lighting guy, Brendan. We'll be seeing more of Carly and the others later.

Carly Jane

Later today and tomorrow, I'll be working more on the swimwear pictures, make a slide show and get the pictures off to the models.

And here's a few of the pictures I submitted last night for review. They were reviewed by a team of 3 master photographer judges from fStop International (Jackie Hicks, Gil Jackson, & Tony Marill). The prints did ok with a few constructive critiques.

I See You

Stacey

Maid with a Strap

Another Busy Day

Today, I prepared all the photos from the swimwear photo shoot and downloaded them for the models and enhanced and printed a few pictures for an upcoming preview for a Professional Print competition. I also started modifying my blog layout by removing the blog navigation bar from the top and adding my website menu at the bottom of the blog page. I have a lot more to do with layout so the blog look is more like my main website.

Here are a few of the titles of the images I will be submitting for review on Thursday. I decided not to show the images until after the review.

"Maid with a Camera Case Strap", "I See You" and "Summer Cool"

Tomorrow, I have a swim suit modeling workshop class on the docks in Havre de Gras with Nor' Easter Boating magazine photographer Leo Heppner. Looking forward to learning another way to photograph swimsuit models.

Pictures from Saturday's photo shoot

Hi Everybody,

Well, yesterday's swimwear and glamour photo shoot was a success. Three models (Melanie, Rachael, and Ray) and about 10 other photographers showed up in the sweltering heat. We all sweated, but it was worth it. The river was cool and I walked around in the water up to my ankles to get better pictures. We were grateful that Racheal, one of the models got her feet, legs, and behind wet so she could be in the water for pictures - she's a doll. Melanie was a little uncomfortable getting directly in the water; but so what - she looked fantastic anyway. Yesterday evening and this morning I worked on a few of the pictures for posting. I still have a lot of images to prepare for the models since it was a TFCD (Time For CD images) shoot.

I experimented with a hand-held off camera flash fired by wireless remote for doing the shots. Tarik, one of the other photographers assisted me by holding the flash so I could better manipulate my camera. The flash was a Sigma 580Super and the wireless remote was from Hong Kong from eBay. The Sigma had to be put into slave mode which caused a slight problem - other people's flashes would set it off, making it less stable for me. I'm going to try to cover up the slave sensor and see if that works better. I also have a Viitar 583HV i'm going to try. I still have a lot of experimenting to do with off-camera flash and with setting the right camera exposures. I love the way the off-camera light models the subjects.

Later this afternoon, Kristie (my better half) and I going to my son and daughter-in-law's for dinner.

Here are a few more pictures from yesterday's photo shoot.

First Blog

Earlier this morning I was looking at Dan Heller's website who is a photographer that writes a lot about the business end of photography - in his opinion the larger part of the "photography business". I connected to his blog website and was impressed with the look. In fact, so impressed, I used the same template for this blog. The template was designed by Todd Dominey, an author, programmer and designer whose work I also respect.

I always thought blogs were neat but too time consuming to maintain. I am a writer, web designer, and photographer and have a few websites that are for self promotion; but this blog is my first one. I'll try to keep it current and share a small part of my photography life with you.

Later this afternoon, I have a swimwear and glamour photo shoot in Patapsco river under a bridge in Patapsco State Park with the local Meetup group. Have to go now and start getting my equipment ready. Just for reference, the temperature is suppose to be 101 today with a heat index of 110. I'm sure we'll all be sweating. I'll have pictures up in a few days.