D54: Man-Up & Make the Ask

Many photogs I've listened to say that they've stayed away from pj-style street photography for one simple reason.

They don't like asking strangers if they can take their pictures.

Unfortunately, I too suffer from this problem. Too many times I have missed out on a great photo op, simply because I didn't want to bother a stranger and make the ask.

For Halloween night, I wanted to capture some really great images of trick-or-treaters, pumpkins, spooky houses, etc. I found a great house to shoot tonight, but I just felt weird knocking on their door to ask if I could hang out in their front yard for half an hour taking pictures. The worst they could do is say no, so what is this mental block so many togs have?

I need to work on that.

Manual: Page 45 - Memory Card Capacity & Image Size
I think I'm going to pick up (2) 16GB cards this winter, rather than the larger 32GB. I'm starting to have issues w/ one of my current cards, and I'd really like to have some high-capacity back-ups.

Images: Christine Tremoulet
Christine not only captures wonderful images, she also has an awesome deal for a studio-mate! If I was in the Houston area, I would take her up on it in a heartbeat.


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D53: Waking Up With the City

I have a hard time waking up early, but I LOVE being awake early. Go figure.

I got up at 6am today, ready to face the world. Or at least the patrons of my gym.

I know this sounds cliche, but I love the feeling of being outside just before dawn, when anything seems possible. The day is just about to begin, and YOU get to decide how it will unfold.

Will you be productive? Will you choose to be happy? Will you squander your day away on trivial things that add nothing to your life?

Will you guide your day, or let it guide you?

Manual: Page 35 - Taking Photographs: The Details
I love images that capture hidden little details. Personally, I like to add little hidden details that no one know about but me.

Images: Becker
Once again I'm drawn to a tog's wedding work. Truly awesome images. Looking through Becker's portfolio made me realize something. My previous disdain for shooting weddings was primarily due to boring/rigid couples. I have a blast shooting fun, relaxed couples. My goal is going to be to attract more of these couples, and refer the "boring" couples to other togs in the area.


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D52: Road to Nowhere?

With the clouds hanging low over the surrounding mountains, the snow-covered road in the middle seems to disappear into the clouds.

You can clearly see the road ahead, but you have no idea where it is headed. How often do you feel the same way in your life?

I'm a firm believer that everything in our lives is meant to be a lesson of some sort, good or bad. I think that our path in life is guided by our experiences, which also means our path is continually making course-corrections.

Manual: Page 43 - Image Size
I've talked about this topic before, and I still feel the same. I've only ever found a reason to shoot at a lower resolution ONCE. I was doing a job for a client that needed <1mp images for an intranet-based catalog. Other than that, I shoot in RAW, or at least full-res. Any other sizes can easily be done in post.

But that's just my opinion.

Images: David Bergman
David did the Obama Inauguration Gigapan. Some pretty cool work in his portfolio.


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D51: Underrated

Reese's Pieces are seriously underrated, in my opinion. They seem to be an endless supply of peanut-buttery goodness, when compared to candy bars.

I rarely buy candy, mainly because I will eat it. All.

BUT, on the rare occasions that I do buy some cavities in a wrapper, Reese's Pieces is at the top of my list.

Reese's Pieces hit the scene in 1978, and became the favored candy of E.T. in 1982. Soon after, I followed the trend.

Besides, Halloween is Saturday, and the Reese's color scheme is very fallish/halloweenish.

Manual: Page 39 - Using Camera Menus
Early on this was a great resource. By default, all of the menus in my camera were set to the shorter "simple" setting. As this inhibits your customization, I quickly looked up how to change this to the advanced setting.

Images: Rich Legg
I've looked through Rich's work before, but I focused this time on his stock work. The world of stock photography is quite interesting to me. I am specifically interested in finding out what the average stock shooter, such as Rich, pulls in on a yearly basis. For a talented stock tog, I imagine this could be a nice supplement.


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D50: When Life Hands You Lemons

When you do something in a hurry, you will likely get hurried results.

I didn't really make time for pictures today, so I tried to fit a few shots into my schedule. When I got home to review what I had captured, I found that I had captured a bunch of crap.

I decided this would be a good challenge to see if I could come up with an image I was happy with. The result is tonight's image, and I would say I'm fairly happy with it. Quite a bit of post, but sometimes that's what it takes.

Manual: Page 35 - Taking Photographs: The Details
Ha! The title page.

Images: Ilan Bresler
I just became a fan of his street photography work.


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D49: Solutions That Cause Problems

Following a knee injury in my early 20's, I developed a slight pill-addiction. Not anything like Oxycontin, just your run of the mill over-the-counter meds. Every day I took a cocktail of pain killers, caffeine, and a few others just to start my day. In fact, I didn't feel like I could even start my day without them.

Luckily, I was able to easily "kick the habit" when a friend of mine pointed it out to me. I honestly don't even think they were doing ANYTHING, I just thought they were helping me. There was nothing inherently addictive about any of them, so it was a fairly easy transition "quitting".

I was cleaning out my gym bag today and found some Excedrin & Vicodin. I decided to play painkiller-legos in my office tonight when I got bored, so I snapped this shot of my handy work.

Manual: Page 31 - Basic Playback
Honestly, I need to get through these basic pages in my manual. I'm learning NOTHING new.

Images: Mark Halper
Tonight I decided to google "photographer" and go with the 1st link that was an actual photographer's website. Mark didn't show up until the 3rd page.

Great images, and some creepy pictures he calls "interludes". They're basically a small flash movie that looks like a portrait, until the subject moves. Kind of a Harry Potter moving-portraits idea.


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D48: She's A Super-Freak

Somehow this little angel managed to stay healthy & happy when her entire family had the flu. I'm sure there's some medical explanation for this, but I thought it was quite amusing.

I'm currently waiting to hear back from a client about doing some newborn pics. I've never done newborn pics before so I'm quite excited to give it a try!

Manual: Page 23 - Tutorial: Basic Photography and Playback
So what, I'm getting some easy pages out of the way!

Images: Leigh Caraccioli
I looked at Leigh's senior & family galleries, and she does some great work.


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