So Whatever Happened to At PEaCe Photography?

The previous post is from October 2013. It is now 2014. You might be wondering, "What happened?"

There should have been a post about Tallassee Trade Day 2013, and one about Holiday Market, and at least one about graduation season with Village Photographers. But there's not. Here's why.

In June, I developed a pain in my shoulder. Thinking it was just the result of me sleeping on it funny, I did nothing about it. Fast-forward to September, it's getting worse. I started seeing a chiropractor (a graduate of Life University, whose commencement I've shot many times). My shoulder/arm problem turned out to be a neck problem. I was getting better for a while, and then I got terribly, horribly, suddenly worse. Chiropractor to physician, physician to neurosurgeon, it was a herniated disk in my neck--uncorrectable by therapy.

So there, I had neck surgery in early December and have been recovering slowly ever since.

Trade Day would have probably been a bust since there was rain and low attendance. Holiday Market is one I'm kind of bummed to have missed, along with the Tallassee Christmas parade. That was the weekend after my surgery, and I was pretty sure my head was going to fall off at any moment. None of my Wetumpka High School church-kids are in the band or anything, so I didn't mind missing the Wetumpka Christmas parade except for the free candy and chance to practice. I felt worthless having to cast off my graduation assignments, but I had warned Village it might happen. All the crews already had a suitable replacement lead--no harm, no foul there.

I'm not able to be up and active for more than three or four hours at a time yet, but I'm getting there. I walked over a mile today, and it didn't kill me. It's going to be great to be able to get back to some random gigs here and there in 2014. I'm already looking forward to the May-June grad season. Plus, I'm supposed to shoot my first wedding in April. We'll see how it goes.

Thanks for being concerned about me. :P

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.

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.

Tallassee High School Spring Show 2013

For the last three years, I've been missing the real Spring Show. The last two years, I was fortunate enough to substitute teach on the day they were performing for the 4th graders, but it's not the same. Not this year! I had to drop money off at the school early on a day I was headed out to of town to shoot a graduation and exchange a bunch of text messages with one of my LibertyYouth, but I would not be denied.

The young men and women of Tallassee High School's various choirs put on a great show. Choir Director Mr. Cunningham put together a wide range of songs--serious and silly--pulling from current radio, Broadway, YouTube viral videos, and classic hits. They even sang my Thompson High School class song from 1999, "I Will Remember You" by Sarah McLachlan. And let's not even go into how many costume changes they rolled through. Wow, just wow.

I took my 170-500mm lens and my regular 18-70mm lens with my Nikon D70. This was a great learning/reminding experience. The harsh realities of setting my shutter speed to low and shooting without the help of a tripod made me cull a load of shots; camera shake can't be helped in Adobe Lightroom. One of these days, I'll be able to upgrade to a camera that can really get the job done in lower light. But the short-comings of my equipment aside, I still got a few great shots.

You can find the other reasonably decent shots on my Facebook page.

Music in the Park...in the Dark

Blah, blah, blah... I'm tired but wanted to go ahead and post these photos. I'll write more tomorrow.
: P

[ADDED]
It's well past "tomorrow," but something needs to be said about these pics. What follows are some photos I took when my wife and I attended "Music in the Park" in Tallassee, AL, on April 12, 2013. It was a fund-raising event to benefit the restoration of the Mt. Vernon Theater in historic downtown Tallassee.

The pictures were taken with my Nikon D70, which is a poor choice for night photography, but it's all I had. I can't for the life of me remember the guy's name who was playing while we were there, however he was really good and played a broad selection from old Blues Traveler to new indy-pop hits you would recognize from commercials.

Good times. I wish there were more things like this going on in Tallassee more often.

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.

At PEaCe Photography Learns about the Alabama Small BusinessDevelopment Center

The Tallassee Chamber of Commerce hosted a "lunch and learn" for Chamber members to hear from the Alabama State University chapter/office/branch/whatever-is-appropriate of the Alabama Small Business Development Center. 1220 Cafe provided the food (the chicken salad sandwiches were a little mayonnaisey for me, but the BBQ was AMAZING, and they have the best cookies anywhere).

As I told my wife, it wasn't very educational, but it was very informative. The ASBDC provides a wide range of services to help small businesses get started out well, achieve growth, obtain loans, and plan for the future. The best part is that their services are free with the exception of a few long-term classes. I say "free," but I should say tax-payer funded. Which is to say, I'm already paying for it, so I might as well make use of it. If nothing else, it'd be a good idea to have a formal business plan and well thought out accounting system. They also help businesses get in the system for government contracts. Now I don't know if I'm ready for that, but it couldn't hurt to look into it. March is pretty busy for me, but I will very likely be going to see them in April.

My thanks go out to the Tallassee Chamber, 1220, and the ASBDC. I enjoyed the lunch, got some info, and met some folks. I look forward to seeing some profit from it down the line.

Photography and Internet Marketing

Along with a number of Tallassee area small business owners (plus one pastor), I attended a seminar about marketing and the importance of managing your presence in digital and social media. Michael Blinder of Blinder Media Group spent just under two hours talking to us about current trends in both traditional and digital advertising. We learned about a number of things with great acronyms like SoLoMo, RoBO, SEO, and more. It was fascinating stuff, and I'm not being sarcastic.

Besides photography and ministry, I'm also a communication theory nerd and a computer geek. The majority of the seminar was a reminder of things I already knew or applying familiar concepts in ways that were new to me. On the tech side, I learned some great things about the way Internet searches and digital ad serving has changed in the past few years. Again, fascinating stuff.

But why am I posting this on my photography blog?

One of the things he talked a lot about toward the end of his presentation was how vital it is for companies to claim their listings in the most significant directories and to keep that data consistent. He mentioned specifically Google+ Places and how it affects where your business shows up in Google Maps results. What interests me as a photographer looking for revenue streams is that most small businesses have really bad pictures on their websites, Facebook pages, etc. OR that they have none at all--which might actually be better.

Look for a small business social media photo package to be detailed in a post later. For now, thanks to The Tallassee Tribune for bringing Mr. Binder in, and to 1220 Cafe for hosting us (those cookies were AMAZING).

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.