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.

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.

Looking for a Wedding Photographer?

Anybody out there looking for a wedding photographer? Because I'm still looking for somebody to be my first full-blown wedding! (I shot a surprise wedding at my church a couple years ago, but I don't count that one because it was REALLY informal. It's a great story, even so.)

I'm penciled in for a friend's wedding in late June, and I've got a lead on one in early June and one in August. The end of April is pretty open. May is going to be pretty wrapped up with graduations, but that schedule isn't set in stone yet either. Now is the time to book me before I get enough wedding experience to justify raising my rates.

Speaking of rates, here's how I'd break it down for my first couple weddings:

$50 + $50 per hour on site + $0.555 per mile round-trip from Tallassee, AL.

That gets you whatever coverage you want of the "getting ready," bridal portraits, groomal (I made that word up) portraits, wedding party photos, ceremony photos, reception photos, etc. I take the pictures, cull the bad ones, do appropriate tweaks and touch-ups on the keepers, and deliver them to you with full printing and usage rights on a DVD or CDs. I retain the right to use the best of the best as samples here on my blog and other social media outlets.

I can arrange printing through a 3rd party service (probably Mpix), but I'd charge an extra $20 for the time and effort to set it up (might be worth it, these are wedding photos, and I haven't been thrilled with some of my recent Sam's results).

An additional $25 would get you a very basic single-angle video. The cost of a somewhat more elaborate video would depend on what equipment I am able to purchase/rent/borrow/steal if the bride wants it.

Here's some of what I've done as just a guest at weddings:

This first one, it wasn't even my camera. It was the bride's, and so I had to figure out how to make it behave on the fly. These pics were pulled from Facebook, and have not been tweaked or adjusted.

This one it was my camera, but I was without a good external flash, and it was before I got quality editing software.

These are getting close to what you might expect, but were shot on a borrowed Nikon D90.

Here's my Pinterest board of the kind of wedding photos I'd like to emulate.

Call me at 334-452-3PEC or email me at pecaspers(at)gmail(dot)com to set something up.


Here are a few shots from that surprise wedding I mentioned, just for kicks and giggles.

Bound By Grace Ministries Thrift Store

A couple weeks back I went to a seminar on Internet marketing for small businesses, and it gave me an idea for a service I could provide (see that post here). Just the other day, I went to a Tallassee Chamber of Commerce event (see that post here), and there I ran into Debbie Lusk of Bound By Grace Ministries which runs a thrift store in Tallassee.

I said to myself, "Self, that's a store that could use a better Internet presence." And as often happens, I agreed. So I told Mrs. Lusk that I was going to come take pictures of her store, and that I was going to do it for free. She felt quite special. Then I told her that I was using their store as a guinea pig, and she didn't feel so special anymore. Oops. You should always err on the side of leaving people feeling special.

These pics are now visible in their Google+ Local listing. I've posted my top five here, go see the rest on there. I have also posted them on my @PEaCe Photography Facebook page.

They have a lot of really interesting stuff. I was there half an hour longer than I had intended to be because I keep getting distracted by looking at their wide variety of...well...everything. Thanks Mike and Debbie for letting me shoot some sample pics in your store. I hope it helps us both.

Product Photography for Genesis Home Decor

Last Monday, I took a quick trip to Phenix City to take some product photos for Genesis Home Decor. She has a selection of home accent items. The short version is this. She had gotten feedback from the folks at Etsy that she needed better photos to sell her products effectively. So she posted an ad on Craigslist, I found said ad, we exchanged a series of emails, and BAM! Here are some of my favorites of the shoot.

I'm quite pleased with what we accomplished. The shoot took a bit longer than I had expected (over two hours before I was breaking down). It was a great learning experience for me. A few things come to mind that I could do better/differently/faster next time. Hey Paul, you need to...

• Set up multiple backdrops at once so you can take all your pics of a product together. This would have saved some time in shifting gears, and it would have kept me from accidentally forgetting to shoot two items on the black.
• Set your flashes and don't move them. I had one strobe bouncing off the ceiling a bit away from the camera, and another mounted to the camera that I would change direction on as I saw fit. Having both lights stationary would have cut down on time I spent adjusting settings.
• Set your settings and don't change them...mostly. This would only be possible if the lights aren't moving and changing. It also doesn't apply to the adjustments necessary for the relative lightness or darkness of a product, or switching between various backgrounds. Consistency in setting also allows for easier processing of the images after the shoot.
• Request good props to work with. This wasn't a problem; she had gotten a few things out to use in the pictures, and I found the baskets particularly helpful. Plus, putting other Genesis products in the background worked great. I only mention it here so that I think about it in the future.
• When shooting something reflective, picture frames for instance, put your reflector panels to use and black that reflection out. I had real trouble getting a shot of the picture frames without me and/or other distracting elements visible in the reflection. Thinking about it later, I should have shielded the items with my light control panel so there was a solid black field instead of a noticeable reflection.
• When in doubt about how to pose an item, ask the customer to do it for you. I was struggling to start with, in spite of the sample pictures she had of other product photos that she liked. So I asked her to arrange some stuff, and "Bob's your uncle!" We were rolling right along.
• Make a packing checklist. I forgot to take contracts and my shoot-through umbrellas with me. Not having the umbrellas meant I had to rethink my lighting (making all my at home tests fruitless). Not having the contracts cost me the extra self addressed stamped envelope I had to enclose with the photo CD so she could send me back a copy.
• Dress cool, and drink plenty of water. There's just something about a photo shoot that always makes me hot.

For any product pros out there who might disparage my wrinkled backdrops, I'll get a steamer and use smooth backdrops as soon as I can afford to buy a steamer and am charging enough to make the extra effort worth it.

Well, that's enough on that. On the way, more Holiday Market stuff, more grad season stuff, and some family portraits down the road.

Oh and a shout out to Village Photographers for letting me borrow the equipment that made this shoot and Holiday Market such a success.

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:

I Failed Louie's Chicken Fingers

***This post has been radically edited from its original content in light of events subsequent to its posting.***

I got a call from SignWorld in Auburn asking if I had any pictures from around Tallassee that they might be able to use in a mural for the new Louie's Chicken Fingers. I posted on here a LARGE number of pictures so they could see what I've got.

I posted a selection of older pictures I had to dig through my archives to find. Some of those older pictures weren't taken with a pro-level camera, but even so are high enough quality to print fairly large.
Then there were some more recent Tallassee area photos.

I was tweaking and uploading the pics while substitute teaching. It's a good thing we had a test that day!

The SignWorld folks liked my work, but they wanted something HUGE. We're talking 5 feet tall by 12 feet wide or so (I don't remember the exact dimensions). It was supposed to be something to fill a focal wall in the newly renovated restaurant. After going back and forth a few times, I uploaded a wall-sized collage of images for them to evaluate, which I put together before getting the exact dimensions but also told them I could redo it if this was on the right track. Since they never called back, I'm guessing it didn't suit them.

It was a fantastic opportunity, and it bugs me greatly that I couldn't capitalize on it. I'm chomping at the bit to upgrade my camera so that I can take pictures that could be blown up to fill a wall (or sold through stock photography companies). However, I can't sink more money that I don't have on the possibility of maybe potentially recouping it later. That's not good business.

Sorry Louie's, I failed you. I'll pop in sometime soon, and I can't wait to see what did fill that wall.

Anyway, here's a small version of the collage I created.

Trade Day Prints Going in the Mail Soon!

Trade Day Photo Booth prints have been picked up, info labels are printed and affixed, and address labels are going on as I type (thanks to my beautiful, wonderful wife). Everything looks good for those to go out tomorrow. We are short one print because of an error neither of us caught, but we'll get that one printed at Wal-mart tomorrow and be back on track.

Are you terrified that I don't get my prints done at a professional level lab? I'm only slightly ashamed of it. If I were doing a major job, then I'd probably go with MPix or maybe Shutterfly. However, every penny matters and speed is more important than print quality for this task. I undercut MPix by 6 cents per 4X6 print plus shipping costs and don't have to wait for them to ship to me before I can turn the pictures around and send them back out. Shipping large prints also gets cost prohibitive very quickly.

Back to Trade Day...

You can see unboardered and more or less uncropped images in the facebook album linked below.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.373004172783703.89603.174367212647401&type=1&l=79c641f408

Here's what the booth looked like from the outside:

It's all over but the shoutin'--as they say--as far as Trade Day is concerned. Still, I hope that there plenty of people who holler back that they want more prints or photo sessions to get me out of the red on this one.