Ian's Cap and Gown Portraits

When I'm not being a photographer, which is most of the time, I'm a youth pastor. As a fundraiser a while back, we auctioned off many of our youth as slave labor. I auctioned myself off too as a good model of expecting no more from others than I am willing to give.

I went for $60, and my task was to take some cap and gown portraits of the (follow me here) boyfriend of the oldest daughter of a lady in our church.

After shooting two graduation ceremonies for Village Photographers that day, I met up with Tallassee High School class of 2013 graduate Ian et al for the pics below. These are my ten favorite, but we got over 20 really good photos at two locations in just over an hour.We started at the Patterson Log Cabin, the oldest home in Tallassee, AL. Our second location was below Thurlow Dam, also in Tallassee.

I shot using my Nikon D70 and SunPak 522 (or just natural light in some shots).

 

It was a great experience, and I'm glad my photography skills were able to bring in some funds for the ongoing ministry of our youth group. I'm also thrilled to finally get these posted here.

Goings On

Thanks to all the happy people who came over to my photo booth or picked up a print at the Tallassee Farmers' Market Holiday Market!

Holiday Market turned out to be a pretty good success. It wasn't a huge money maker, but I mainly do Holiday Market and Trade Day just to get my name out there and practice on low pressure clients. I covered my costs and recouped some costs I didn't cover on Trade Day. The real test of Holiday Market will be if it stirs up some additional gigs.

Holiday Market pics should be ready to print and mail later this week. They'll hit Facebook before they print, and I'll amend this post with a link when that happens. I've also got pics of the Christmas Parade sponsored by the Tallassee Chamber of Commerce. Those pictures should go up later today.

[Amendment:  Holiday Market pics are out, and I forgot to post the pics to FB first. My bad. They're up now, though. Here's the link: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.390532951030825.93500.174367212647401&type=1&l=7d828790f6 ]

As soon as I finish this post, I'm headed to Phenix City to take some product photos for Genesis Home Decor. I'm excited to branch out into a new area of photography. It's always good to add a new tool to your set, and this is one which actually could prove quite profitable. These are coming at a bargain rate, but even that is helping to repay the household for stuff bought with non-business funds.

I also have some Christmas photos to take for a couple sets of family friends, but those are pro-bono. It's always good to practice, and friends are more patient with trying out techniques than paying customers.

Plenty going on. AND grad season is beginning at the end of this week.

Holiday Market

It's time for Holiday Market! "What is Holiday Market?" you ask. It's a local arts, crafts, food, etc. market put on by the Tallassee Farmers' Market. It occurs in conjunction with the Tallassee tree-lighting ceremony and Christmas parade. The market is open Friday from noon to 6PM and Saturday from 8AM to 1PM.

So why am I excited about Holiday Market? Because @PEaCe Photography is going to be there with a really awesome photo booth, and I'm @PEaCe Photography! Keeping with what worked well at Trade Day, I'm charging based on the size of the group. Groups of 1-3 people are $1, 4-6 people are $2, and 7-there's no more room are $3. At trade day, I couldn't handle a group larger than about 7 people, which is one reason I'm going tent-less this time. (The other reason is so that I can just compensate for the sunlight rather than try and control it.)

I'm hoping for better results this weekend than we had at Trade Day back in October. I've got far less $ sunk into being at Holiday Market, so I'm hoping to pull back into the black this Friday and Saturday.

The equipment I borrowed from Village Photographers couldn't be picked up until this afternoon, the real garland and wreath I'm using wouldn't survive the additional wear and tear of being set up for days on end, I just didn't feel like stringing all the lights over my backdrop stand, and so for all these reasons  and more I wasn't able to get in a full test of the set up. But trust me, it's going to be great.

The resulting pictures will be somewhat different from day to night. So I'm hoping a lot of folks come Friday evening for the most dramatic lighting. Folks who get theirs done in the day will still have a great picture, it just won't have the deep contrasty awesomeness of the night time shots.

Since I only had pieces of my backdrop up at any given time, my sample photo selection was a bit limited. Nonetheless, I have the cutest kid around for a model and I was able to compensate for the lack of the flash effect I wanted by tweaking the levels in Adobe Lightroom. Below are the resulting samples.

Customers can select from the following boarders:

Trade Day Happened

Tallassee Trade Day was this last weekend. I set up a photo booth and took pictures looking a lot like this:

I've got most of the best pictures selected. There are a few I'm going to have to get a second opinion on from my wife. After that, there will be a few special editing issues to take care of that will be a bit of a time sink, then I'll just let Adobe Light Room apply the boarders and create the final JPEGs and they'll be ready for printing...then addressing...then shipping out.

Those pics above are some samples I took beforehand in my back yard when testing out my setup. The font is called "Big Top" and can be found free on dafont.com. Thank you Shamrock, whoever you are. If I had made any money, then I'd probably figure out how to send you a couple bucks.

As it stands, I'm pretty deep in the red for Trade Day. That will likely get a little better after we send the prints out. We had a pretty significant number of people wanting additional prints of their pictures last year. If we can get some additional orders, that will help. If I can get some portrait sessions or other work out of it, then that would be a big help, too. That's actually why I do trade day, getting my name out there to build some business. That, and the experience.

I learned two big lessons this year. First, it's not worth the trouble of chasing the sun to work under a tent. I'll be shooting Holiday Market without the tent and just blast people with flashes and shoot with my D70 at 1/500 sec. (because that's as fast as anything will sync to a flash). Second, prints don't sell well...if at all. I'm not settled on what to do with this information, but I've got to do something with it. I can't spend money on prints to sell and recoup 0% of that; it's just bad business. If nothing else, I'll be selling the prints I have at crazy low prices at Holiday Market. Hopefully I can capitalize on people buying presents.

Last year, I actually made a little money on Trade Day. This year, Tallassee's Trade Day was competing with Loachapoka's Syrup Soppin' Day, an arts-n-crafts fair in Wetumpka, and some Jr. League thing in Montgomery. Which means that Trade Day had fewer vendors and fewer attenders. I shot about 2/3 as many groups as I did last year and sold $20 in prints compared to over $50 last year. (That $20 for this year amounts to one 16X20 collage.) I did have the forethought to charge $1 for 1-3 people and $2 for 4 or more this year, so that helped boost the gross income some.

Lest you think I'm down on this year's Trade Day, let me say that I'm not. It wasn't a huge success in it's own right, but I did cover most of the costs that can't be justified in some other way. I had a good time. My customers will have a good keepsake. It was fun. I'd do it again if I had it to do over, though I'd do it slightly differently.

Oh, and I'd like to give a shout out to Village Photographers for loaning me some equipment that helped to make my photo booth more legit than it might have been otherwise.

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.

Holiday Market, Up and Out

The pictures from both Day One and Day Two of the Tallassee Holiday Market are now on their way! You can also view the pictures online by clicking your day above.

If you would like to purchase more prints of your pictures, they will cost an additional $1 per 4x6. You can also get your picture as a .JPG file via email with full rights to use it however you choose for $5. Please email me (p e c a s p e r s @ g m a i l . c o m - without the spaces), call 334-452-3PEC (that's 334-452-3732), or message me on facebook to make arrangements.

Here are some things I learned from this event:
1) Always have a back up.
2) Take allergy medicine the day before because I will inevitably be downwind from a smokey grill.
3) A tripod will make editing simpler.
4) Doris's tent does go higher!
5) Go even bigger on the backdrop/scenery.
6) I need a seating option that is both wider and more stable.
7) A festive, fun thing for little kids to hold is great, but it would be better if it was something they could keep. (I had a few little ones who didn't want to give back my jingle bell.)
8) People like to buy things they can take with them, but most will not place an order for you to send them stuff.
9) It would be good to have a calendar to make portrait appointments on the spot.
10) Long underwear will make you sweat during set-up, which will leave you with cold feet later.

It was a great experience. Tripp Storm of the Tallassee Farmers Market was a pleasure to work with. I made some other good contacts. We did little more than clear expenses, but I think we'll see the benefits further down the road. Thanks to all who came by the booth!

Holiday Market Day One Done

Alright folks. The first day of the Holiday Market is done. I've downloaded the pictures to my laptop. I'm charging batteries. I'm about to reformat all my memory cards. Then, I'm going to sleep. I'll be up about 5 AM to be ready to go set up about 6:30 to be ready to shoot by 8AM. That's what I call early.

Today wasn't a rousing success. I think I probably cleared the cost of the business license. However, I talked to a lot of people who are planning on coming by with their kids or grandkids before or after the parade tomorrow. I'm expecting big things for day two.

You might have seen my facebook post about needing to borrow a camera. My camera stopped working right before activity started to pick up for no discernible reason. It had happened momentarily earlier in the day, but this time it seemed to be a complete failure. Only Jessica's prayers can give any explanation to why it started working again after a half hour of not. Nonetheless, it's working again. I was able to finish out the night taking pics. I probably missed four or five opportunities for photo sales, but I'm pretty sure I'll catch those folks again tomorrow.

No fear for tomorrow. Richard Patterson of Village Photographers was on his way in our general direction and Jessica met him at the interstate to borrow a pair of cameras, just in case. Also on tomorrow, I realized the tent can go about a foot higher! I'm stoked, because that means I can actually have people standing if the group is too big. It just occurred to me that it also means I'm going to have to do something extra to keep the backdrop from blowing in the wind. I think I can handle that, though.

See you tomorrow!

Holiday Market Is TODAY

Tallassee's Holiday Market starts at noon today! You should come out and have your picture made before the Christmas Parade. If you do, it'll look a little something like this:

See you at the Market!

End of Trade Day

If you got your picture taken at our photo booth at Trade day earlier, those should be uploaded sometime Monday. Postcards will be mailed late next week. Thanks for all who came out in support of local businesses, tasty food, and free stuff.

Trade Day was a decent success for @PEaCe Phototgraphy. We didn't make a million dollars or anything, but we did better than breaking even. It was a great experience. Plenty of people took business cards, and I expect to hear from a number of folks about custom Christmas card pictures. The printed pictures didn't sell as well as I'd hoped, but one lady ordered a custom collage and I only came home with one Thurlow Dam picture, so the prints were far from being a bust. The unofficial count of postcard pics is 62; a fine first outing.

I learned a number of things today: 1)I needed more height on the tent to allow more height on the flash umbrella [fix with 4 cinder blocks]; 2)I should have covered the sides of the tent at first instead of chasing the sun [fix implicit]; 3)side coverings and backdrop should have been weighted better [fix with sandbags/water bottles and clamps]; 4)print ordering got too much space [fix by putting 4x6s into an album for ordering and have only 5x7s or larger prints for sale]; 5)the backdrop was too small, and the scene was not quite broad enough [fix by setting up scene in the corner and using two backdrops]; 6)the back drop was too close to the subject causing shadows [fix by setting up scene further in front of the backdrop--also allows extra people to stand behind scene instead of only going wide]; 7)I was pretty dried out by the end of the day [fix by drinking more water]. I'm sure there are other things I'll remember later, but this is a good list for now.

[EDIT: Below are links to the unedited images in albums on my facebook page.]

[Trade Day Album 1 and Trade Day Album 2]