Tallassee Homecoming 2013

Tallassee High School's Homecoming was last week, and that meant there was a homecoming parade last Friday. I was going to be there in support of the students in my youth group, so I figured I'd take some pictures while I was at it.

I posted the pictures to Facebook in two separate albums, and prints are available for purchase through my SmugMug.com site (it's a trial membership which I may not keep, but I figured it couldn't hurt).

Here are a few of my favorite pics from the day:

My camera's for the task were my Nikon D70 with a 170-500mm lens attached for close-ups and an 8MP Sony Cybershot for wider shots. (Yes, I know I'm in need of an update to my personal equipment. It wasn't worth the trip to borrow a couple D90s from Village Photographers. I do have a newer/better point-and-shoot, but I can't find the battery charger for it. I digress.)

I got swarmed by kudzu bugs, and most people assumed I was with the newspaper, but it was a good learning experience. I should have bumped my ISO up another notch and gone with a tighter aperture for a greater depth of field; there are a few pics where the float rolled quick enough to bring part of the subject(s) out of focus. That's just part of the trick to using a long lens on approaching subjects, I guess. A headband would have also been nice too keep the sunscreen and sweat from running into my eyes. A sign reading "Smile and Wave!" would also have been helpful.

Good times. I'm looking forward to the Christmas Parade already. Tallassee, AL is a fun little town to take pictures in.

Troy University Sorority Bid Day Kappa Delta Group Pics

August 10 was sorority Bid Day at the main campus of Troy University in Troy, AL; and I was happy to be on the scene shooting with Village Photographers. Bid Day shoots involve both candid and group photographers. Early in my days with Village, I shot the candids. I graduated to shooting the groups a few years ago. Thankfully we had enough photogs on the scene that I didn't have to pull double duty. Also thankfully it was a beautiful day and easily ten degrees cooler than last year.

Below are some shots I took on my iPhone 3GS during some down time. Again, these are random iPhone pics I took to document the day, they are NOT pictures taken for Village Photographers on a professional camera.

Grad Season in the Rearview and Ahead

From late April to early June, I was in varying degrees of grad season mode. I shot 22 ceremonies with Village Photographers during that time. For 9 of those ceremonies I got the wonderful pleasure of NOT being the lead photographer. (That's a pleasure as a veteran photographer because you get the opportunity to shoot public relations photos and have fewer things to worry about other than your pictures.) I took pictures of Alabama Governor Robert Bentley, President of the Alabama Public Service Commission Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh, and many other less notable notables. I lived most of May fueled by coffee, fast food, and Emergen-C. I suffered through a pretty intense sinus infection during a week of back to back grads. And, most significantly, I made a heap of money. :P 

Before grad season got into full swing, Village sent me to Clayton State University to shoot two days of cap and gown portraits at their Grad Finale in the Loch Shop campus bookstore. Here's a little sample of what that was like (as I played around with the driver mode on my multipurpose, waterproof, point-and-shoot Pentax Optio W60).

The first grad of the season for me was Jacksonville State University. Jax State has an outdoor ceremony, and we couldn't have asked for better weather this year. I got to shoot PRs on this one, and I got to shoot them with a 55-300mm lens attached to a Nikon D90 (D90s are standard equipment for Village events, but glass like that is not). It was sweet, and I got some of the best PRs I've ever taken. Here's a sampling I was emailed by the photo manager with congrats.

In fact, I was so in the groove of shooting graduation ceremonies that I took my camera and shutter-bugged it up when I went to see a number of my youth group kids graduate 8th grade at Southside Middle School and from Tallassee High School. Results from those two events would have been better if I had been able to borrow some Village equipment, but they're kinda funny about loaning stuff out during the busiest part of grad season--go fig. The Tallassee High School principal, Coach Battles, even kicked me off the field shortly after taking the picture second picture below. That's what I get for being unofficial. I hope the one official guy they had got a good one of everyone, but I couldn't help but think, "Who shoots a graduation solo? No second or third shot, really? These kids have no options!"

Check my facebook page for more on those Tallassee City Schools ceremonies.

Whew! Glad to get this posted finally. In the next few days I should be getting the schedule for summer graduations...happy, happy, happy to work.

Not Professional Baby Pictures

I am a professional photographer. And yes, I took these pictures of my new daughter. However, I took them with a simple point-and-shoot using available natural light coming through the window.

Here are some tips for taking similarly excellent newborn pics before you leave the hospital with your next little one.

(1) Use your bed sheet to give you a plain white background. That gives you good contrast, isn't distracting, and lets you white-balance off it in your editing software (anything from Picassa to Photoshop).

(2) Set up your "studio" right next to the window. This will give you a huge, soft, directional, natural light source. It would be best if you can shoot at a time of day when the sun is angling into your window, but mid-day is good. The pics below were taken around noon.

(3) Turn on every light in the room. This will provide you with as much secondary light as possible. If you want a higher level of contrast between light and dark areas, then turn all the lights off instead. 

(4) If your camera will let you, set your aperture as wide as it will go. (My camera wouldn't let me.) Some point-and-shoot cameras have an aperture priority mode. Any DSLR will have one.

(5) Set your ISO as high as you can without making your pictures unbearably noisy. Many cameras will claim to have huge ISO ranges, but the top two settings are useless most of the time. Typically 800 is pretty safe; the pics below were shot at ISO 800. If you can't manually adjust your ISO, then you should put on you big girl panties and go buy a new camera.

(6) Turn your flash off.

(7) Be sure you are focusing on your baby's eyes. (This doesn't apply if his/her face isn't in the picture. :P)

(8) Get low and close and take some pictures. Don't get so close that your camera can't focus.

(9) Step back and zoom in on some pictures. You will get more separation of the subject (baby) and the background by backing off and zooming in.

(10) Don't wait for a smile. Babies make all sorts of cute and amazing faces. Get your newborn yawning, crying, looking at you, looking away from you, fighting with clothes, and whatever else. You can delete pictures later, but you can't recreate the moments you missed. That's a basic rule of thumb for digital photography; when in doubt, shoot it.

We had been cleared to be discharged when we were ready to leave, and this little D-I-Y session was a bit more hurried than I would have liked. Still, we got some pretty good pics without involving either my serious gear or the hospital photographer. Personally, I would have still let the hospital photographer take her pictures, but the two times she stopped by were bad times. As it is, I'm glad we took the time we did to get the pics we did.

I hope the info above helps you get better pics, too.

Fall Photo Wander Number 1

Tallassee Trade Day is coming up, and I'm intending on having some better fall pictures to display and hopefully sell some prints. I'm also trying to get some quality, commercially viable shots to submit to stock photography companies. My last attempts at getting accepted to sell stock photos through two companies were rejected, which is not surprising; no one gets accepted their first time out.

My camera and I took a little photo wander the other day to fill these needs. Below are the results.

Yates Lake Trip from August 2012

Back in late August, my in-laws rented a house on Yates Lake just on the other side of Tallassee, AL. Here are some pics I took while we were there. All of the portraits were taken with either natural light only or with a little bit of flash just to fill in the shadows. These were taken with my Nikon D70, which does a great job at outdoor pics.

First, we have some shots of the cutest kid EVER, Peter.

Next we have a shot of Paw-Paw through the back windows of the house and high school senior cousin Rachel on the back porch.

And the last thing I have for you are some lake scenery shots. It's fine by me if you right-click and use the pics below as desktop backgrounds, just so long as it doesn't keep you from getting anything done by making you daydream about being outside at the lake.