Trapeze Show...

   Had our semi-regular friends and family show at Trapeze High this afternoon. In addition to catching a wonderful group of fliers- including my beautiful and amazing girlfriend- and helping my son out with his first circus performance, I also took some time to shoot the show, got some really good portraits of the flyers before the show and some good shots during the show. One of the best circus photographers out there, Darin Basile, was the main shooter, so I sat in the apron under the board and tried to get a different angle. Fantasies Muse also came to see the show and to shoot a bit as well.

   Didn't really have any earth shaking photography revelations today, but it was nice to be reminded how much faster and easier editing is on a nice, well lit shoot, even with Excalibur. And it was fun to put the D4 in machine gun mode and just let it rip a few times. I guess if I really had to nail down a lesson of the day, it would be never forgetting to go with the flow and be spontaneous. The portraits were all taken about 5 minutes before showtime, wasn't planned, it just sort of happened. It would have been easy to put the camera away and get ready to go fly, but I shot anyway, and those turned out to be the majority of my favorite shots of the day. 

   Got home to some excellent suggestions and feedback for the blog in my inbox, thanks to the two of you (you know who you are) so this post is mostly a test of some new settings. The picture above should link to the gallery and the rest of the trapeze show pics, but if not you can see them here. Enjoy!

Toddler vs Camera Bag....

    One of the first things I had to get when I added a second body was a bag big enough to comfortably hold and transport all my gear. Did a lot of looking and shopping, settled on a an Airport Accelerator from Think Tank Photo.  Full review will come later when I have used it a while and actually taken a flight or three with it. Initial impression is great. But the real reason I feel compelled to post today is that I can now honestly say that the bag is toddler proof- as evidenced below. So, let me know if you think I should send this in to ThinkTank as a testimonial shot....

Phenomenal Weekend

    Finally getting to some time to actually write about last weekend. A ton of firsts and an overall awesome experience with lots of learning happening. Fashion/art/concert show Friday night, my first paid pro gig as a race photographer Saturday morning and  my first glamour/boudoir shoot at a meetup Saturday afternoon. So three firsts in two days, a lot of clicks on the shutter and gigabytes gigabitten. Here's how it went down:

    Friday night:

   Got home from work and quickly packed my truck for a full weekend.Worked the Friday night class at Trapeze High then headed straight down to The Ruby Room for the first shoot of the weekend. This one was a fashion show, art show and concert put on by Romantic Rock Designs. I found this through Craigslist, and had no idea what to expect. I was wonderfully reminded again of how much of a pain it is to park a quad cab F350 dually in North Park, but I can't carry all my gear for a multiple day multiple event weekend on the motorcycle. Luckily I found a place not to far of a hike away. I was quite intimidated when I arrived and saw several photographers already set up with some heave duty studio lighting gear, portable battery packs, the works. There was a whole fashion shoot row set up outside the club. Luckily for me one of the other photographers there happened to be the fabulous Scotty Monson, who I knew via facebook and has shot wonderful images of several of my circus friends and aquaintences, but I had not yet met in person. He took me under his wing, introduced me to everyone, and set me up next to him in between spots on the model promenade. Wouldn't have made it through the first part of the evening without his help. I hadn't brought my light stands or umbrellas because I figured it would be a usual club event setup for the whole night. I could have gone back out to the truck and grabbed a speedlight or two, but I decided to just go with ambient light and give Excalibur a workout. As expected, the D4 performed incredibly. You can see the results here. All those shots were taken with the D4, a 50mm/F1.8 prime lens and ambient light. I learned a few things over the course of the night and afterwards processing the images.

1- fog effects look cool, but are a pain in the rear to shoot through
2- red stage lighting also sucks ass for pictures. expecially LED.
(apparently had a done appropriate googling beforehand I could have learned these earlier. alas, google revealed no easy solutions
3- The D4 JPEGS in camera are pretty damn good. I should probably start shooting Raw+JPEG and unless I specifically need more adjustment in post on an image, just use the JPEG and save myself a lot of work after the fact. Or find an aperture preset that mimics the in camera processing. 
4- the Auto-ISO functionality on the D4 is amazing, but using it requires me to change my shooting process. In a club or show setting I am usually on full manual, I take a few shots, check my settings and adjust shutter speed (or aperture, but usually needing to shoot wide open so not much of an option) to get over or under exposures as needed. I never worried about the exposure compensation function as it was easier just to dial a speed. Of course, when I did this on Excalibur and pumped up the shutter because some of the highlights were getting blown out (full disclosure- I forgot I had been working test setups for the next morning's race and had left the meter in matrix mode vice spot, so my fault not hers) the camera would just bump up the ISO to keep the overall exposure the same. Took me a while to figure out that to get around this without disabling the auto ISO all I had to do was dial the exposure compensation down a notch or two. So, like I expected, having to up my game a bit to keep up with the D4.
     Overall very happy with the results, the posed walkway bit before the show was totally new to me, so didn't get as many good shots of that as I would have liked,  but once everything moved inside I was back in my element and a lot happier with that portion of the evening.Went to stay in a cheap room on base so I could skip the hour drive back up to Carlsbad and the same back down to mission bay for Sat morning, downloaded pics, set them to backup, put the batteries on the charger and managed to get a few hours of sleep before round two.

Saturday Morning:

    Woke up early, grabbed some coffee and headed to the Diva Dash and my first paid assignment shooting the race for PBC Sports Photography. Had the meeting, got my shot assignment list and credentials and got geared up. It was cool, first time I did the two camera setup, had the D4 on my right shoulder with the 50mm/1.8 and the SB910 speedlight on it, since I my primary task was take posed finisher pics, awards ceremony pics, and ambient pics of the various sponsor stations and events. The D3200 went on the left shoulder with the 70-200mm/2.8 as a backup and for longer shots and tighter portraits.
    Again, playing to my strengths as opposed to sitting in a fixed position taking runner shots, although I did a few of those as well and had one obstacle on my assignment list. Had a blast, just like I found at SF Decompression last October, the camera gives an instant connection with people. The most popular shot of the day was large groups doing simultaneous jumps. Seemed like every group wanted one, so by the end of the day I think I was getting pretty good at timing them. My favorite shots though were of a woman and her daughter pre-race posing with a stuffed picture doll of the husband/father who was a deployed Marine (She later won her category), a mother/daughter who ran together and each won their age categories, and a group of women who ran with a young girl with downs' syndrome. I don't have a personal gallery up on this one, still working permission from PBC to use a few of the shots in my portfolio, but you can go through all the race photos here- if it's taken in front of the "Shape Diva Dash" sign, in the shape pavillion area, swinging steps obstacle or the Oakley area, it is probably one of my shots. Another good time, and I learned that shooting with two cameras beats the hell out of changing lenses on the fly to get different shot options. The D3200 isn't as fast as the D4 in terms of low light performance, autofocus or continuous shooting speed, but in daylight conditions with no need for machine gun shutter speeds it holds its' own nicely and the 24mp sensor resolution is nice. It's a good camera combo for daytime events. I also learned that my brilliant and amazing sun hat that I use as sunblock at the trapeze rig (and features a large front bill to keep my face from getting burned) is incompatible with on camera flash. So I got a nice burn over the course of the morning. Oh well, guess I expected to suffer for my art.

Saturday Afternoon:

    Wound up at a meetup shoot set up by Glamour Photographers International, who does a few of them every month. This one turned out to be a bikini/lingerie/nude boudoir event at one of the photographers' houses. Two models and about ten photographers. Started outdoors in the yard and pool deck area. GPI had lights set up in several locations set up to run off Pocket Wizards. (since I use the Phottix Odin I had to borrow a PW transmitter, which one of the hosts was kind enough to loan me for the day). This was another awesome experience and I learned a whole hell of a lot from it:

1- I have no idea how to pose models. But I learned a lot from watching the more experienced shooters do it. I could see practical applications of a lot of techniques and positions I have read about.
2- It's amazing how much difference a slight camera angle change makes. The wrong position can make a pretty model look like a troll, or the right one can make an average model look fantastic.
3- I like implied and artistic shots better than full on frontal nudity.
4- Studio lights do not function like speedlights. Apparently rear curtain sync, high speed sync and level adjustment do not work with studio lights through the pocket wizard (at least not the model I borrowed). Supposedly at least high speed sync and rear curtain will work with studio lights via the Odin, will have to test that when I set up my studio intro lesson with DK3 Studios in the next few weeks.
5- I can totally see the shutter if I shoot faster than the flash can sync, it's one thing to read about it, another to actually see it in action.
6- It's easy to blow out shots when you expect flash compensation to work with the studio strobes like it does with speedlights.
7- My Girlfriend is the awesomest GF ever. (this was a reminder, not a new lesson). Not only did she not kill me for shooting nudes without asking first, she is even helping me go through the images to select the best ones. She does this on all my shoots, and it's awesome because where I tend to focus on the technical side of the shot, she has a better vision of what the subject would want to see and what they wouldn't. Not only is she a former professional circus performer, but she's also a woman and more familiar with percieved body image issues than I am. I did not expect her to offer to do that for this shoot but she did!

    You can see the results from the shoot here. (I have a feeling that this may wind up being my most viewed gallery to date for some reason.......)

    Otherwise, I got to play around with shooting not only under studio strobes, but also ambient lighting and just using the modeling lights on the strobes. The yard had a fountain that I posed one of the models in front of, so I got to play with shutter speed to get some frozen droplets in the fountain and some nice creamy water flow from longer shutter speeds. It was a long day of shooting but I feel like overall it was an epic learning and experience gaining weekend for me.

    Next weekend I have my first official maternity shoot to set up, not counting the pics I did of my GF right after I got the D3200 last summer. This one will actually be for a client. Here's hoping the predicted rain hold off until Monday and that I can apply a lot of what I learned this weekend to that shoot!

Drawing Excalibur

   Ok, so I guess the idea of naming the D4 Excalibur is growing on me. Sorry. Anyway, been playing with it all weekend, finally took her out for a real world test run at a Search and Rescue training session last night. Figured it would be dark and horrible lighting and a good test venue. I am stunned by the results.
   Orange tinted sodium vapor lights, people with LED flashlights all over the place, some fluorescent lighting. At night. No flash. All these pics are ambient light with next to nothing done post processing. Some cropping, played with the white balance on a couple, but no noise reduction and very minimal other adjustments. Pretty sure if I had taken the time to dial in a custom white balance it would have worked out better, but wanted to see how the auto WB coped with the hellish mixed conditions. Also learned that while the auto ISO feature is awesome, I have to change the way I shoot to use it effectively. I usually watch the meter in the viewfinder and if I decide I want to under/over expose something I would either adjust shutter or aperture accordingly. Well, when I do that on the D4 with auto iso active, it adjust the ISO to compensate. Guess I will actually have to start using the exposure compensation adjustment, or shoot in another mode. Anyway, this was a pretty difficult shooting scenario but the Excalibur did the heavy lifting so I could just shoot. As expected, this beast is far more capable than I am and is going to force me to up my game to keep up.
 On the bright side, using the DX lenses in FX mode works great in the dark, can't even see the dark edge on the 35mm 1.8DX shots unless you're looking for it. The 24-70mm is still in the shop with hope it can be saved, and the 70-200mm wasn't wide enough for a lot of what I wanted to get.
   You can see the how we did here. 

All in... no excuses now

     Got the tax refund last week. Following up on my decision in the ER, I dropped a large chunk of change on a D4, which came in yesterday. It just got real. I decided that I am going to treat myself like a pro- fake it till you make it time. Last time I took a gamble on life and went all in, I wound up with an unbeliveably awesome girlfriend and the coolest son ever.Here's hoping this gamble will pay off as well. The camera is amazing, it has more buttons than Joanne's Fabrics does, and a 456 page instruction manual that I have spend all day reading, because I am pretty sure if I press the wrong combination on this thing I can manage to launch nuclear missiles at someone. The one thing that is entirely clear now is that I have no more excuses. If I miss a shot or get it wrong with poor lighting, framing, focus, etc, there is no way to blame my camera. It's all on me. I need to step up my game to be able to keep up with this camera. I think I may even have to name it Excalibur, the best sword around, waiting for me to become a knight worthy of wielding her properly... ok- maybe that's a bit much, but in my defense, you try reading 456 pages of camera manual in one day and see how sane you wind up. But you get the idea. It's quite an intimidating piece of gear and I need to up my game to be deserving of it instead of just some lunk who bought an expensive camera thinking it would make me a great photographer. It won't. What it will do is give the tools to succeed. A good cyclist is still a good cyclist on a beach cruiser, just like a good photographer is still good with the worst point and shoot, but that cyclist isn't going to ride that beach cruiser in the Tour de France.
    I've been testing it out and playing with it, and it really will bring some awesome capability to my work. The low light performance alone definitely lives up to the hype. ISO 204,000. It's noise as hell, but just for S*&ts and giggles I took some shots of my kid sleeping at max stupid ISO last night and they are no noisier than ISO 6400 on the D3200 was, and just as cleanable with noiseware. At 6400 and below on Excalibur I may not even need to bother with off camera NR unless I am going to really blow something up or do a tight crop. The speed and the control layout are also amazing. I'll throw in a plug here, I got Excalibur as a refurb from KEH Camera, a pretty large and well reviewed shop that does a large volume of used gear. Their customer service is great, and their gear ratings are quite conservative. The guy warned me the camera wasn't going to be in new condition, but damn if I can find anyway to tell that by looking at it or using it, the shutter count was 0 when I took it out of the box. The only downsides I can find to it are that it is HUGE compared to the D3200, and louder in operation. No problem at gigs with loud music, but probably too loud to shoot live theatre unless it's a dress rehearsal. It does have quiet and silent modes that I still need to play with to see if they are actually useable in the real world.
   The only real negative from playing with the D4 is that in testing it, I have come to the conclusion that the used 24-70mm zoom I picked up (not from KEH, this was from a CL person, so nothing I can really do about it now) is apparently a lemon. It's not sharp. I test shot it against the 70-200 and there is no comparison, it just doesn't focus in sharply at any aperture or zoom. I noticed this a bit using it on the 3200, hoped I could use the D4 AF fine tune to correct, but that seems to have no effect. I'll have to hope this is an easily correctable thing, but I won't set my hopes too high, apparently there were a few bad ones that managed to slip through Nikon quality control.
    One the good side, I have already picked up my first paid gig. I will be shooting a race later this month. The application required a full frame body as minimum equipment, which would make sense, except I got the company's instruction packet and looked at their required settings, and it makes no sense. I mean, the settings make sense for what I'll be shooting, but limiting me to using small jpeg resolution and pretty much program mode, single shot shooting, it makes no sense to require a pro body, the 3200 would have handled that just fine. Requiring the pro body is sort of like saying- "you need a Ferrari to enter this race, but you can't drive it above 55mph." But still, it's my first paid pro gig. So, can't argue too strenuously. Have to take the cookie cutter gigs and give the client what they want so I can afford to shoot what I want.
    Which leads me to my next quest, which hopefully will be ongoing. What do I want to shoot? Obviously performances. I love shooting circus arts. I want to be able to really capture the essence of a performance, show the artists' soul coming out in what they are doing. That's pretty non-specific. But at least it's a start. Also really looking forward to IgnightFest in June, in addition to getting a weekend of awesome classes in the various flow arts, I'll also get to spend two or three nights shooting some of the best fire spinners around showing off and playing, so lots of chances to experiment.
    Yeah, I'm all in. Hear that universe? I'm throwing all the intention I can muster into this, let's see what you send back my way!

Another one bites the dust....

    What a weekend. Missed out on the paid gig Friday, missed out shooting another roller derby bout saturday night because I needed to stay home with mamma and still sick (but better) baby. But I also had to turn down another gig offer, and this one I really don't feel bad about at all.
    Responded to a CL add looking for a photographer for an event on an upcoming holiday weekend. (details purposely withheld because the contact guy was pretty cool and seemed to have been honestly put into a bad position by the event organizer). Anway, the conversation went something like this:

Gig: We want you to shoot our event on (holiday). There are multiple shifts for photographers, each is 6 hours long. How much would you charge?

Me: How many images would you expect and how much post processing work are you expecting on them?

Gig: Oh, we will take raw images off your card at the end of your shift, no post needed, we have someone for that.

Me: Ok- six hours on a holiday weekend, no post, pretty easy, how about $300?

Gig: We were thinking more like some drink tickets and a $25 dollar food voucher...

Me: For a six hour shoot on a holiday?

Gig: Yeah. Sorry, I am a photographer too, I get it, but that's what the budget is. But you'll be getting exposure and lots of the guests are event people too so you can hand out your cards.....

Me: Yeah, sorry, I can't do six hours for drinks and a food voucher.

Gig: Yeah, I understand. If you can think of anyone you know who may be interested, please pass our contact info along.

Me: Sure, I'll do that.

   So- just so I can say later I keep my promises- Any of you other photographers out there interested in a gig on an unspecified upcoming holiday weekend where you will shoot for six hours in exchange for a couple free drinks and a food voucher? If so message me and I will give you some contact info. Somehow I doubt I will hear from anyone. Noticed today the the same add was still being reposted on CL, seems like they are having lots of trouble finding someone to take this great offer.

  So, you may ask, I am shooting events for free right now. What's the difference? Simple. The events I am shooting now for free are events I would be paying for a ticket or cover charge to see otherwise. I am building experience and a portfolio shooting shows put on by friends, who I would be supporting regardless. If it isn't something that will be fun for me, well, you better pay me what it's worth to spend time away from my family. And sorry, a few drinks and a voucher doesn't cut it.

Long, dark tea time of the soul..... or just a really long night

    Well. This has been a long weekend and it hasn't even started yet. My son the corporate namesake, has been sick the past few days. Last night his breathing got really bad so we wound up in the ER at 1 this morning taking care of him. Despite his discomfort, he was mostly his usual smiling, happy self, had the ER staff totally adoring him. (side note and my second official review in this blog- the ER staff at Rady Children's hospital totally rocks) They had to give him a couple of treatments of albuterol though a nebulizer and some steroids to open his lungs up. So next week we have to decide if he is going to play major league baseball or become a professional cyclist. Spoiler alert- he's ok, too early to tell if it was just a reaction to a viral or other issue, or if he's going to wind up with asthma like his mom. We are hoping for the first option. But he is doing much better today.

   So, other than him being the corporate namesake, what does this have to do with photography and my efforts to go pro- that is the theoretical focus of this blog and what you all want to read about right? Well, there are three distinct connections so far:

   First, when the first nebulizer came out and he realized it was helping, he totally started puffing away on it like a hookah or little baby bong. It took every ounce of self control that my sleep and coffee deprived mind had left to keep me from pulling out the phone camera and posting an instagram with some catchy title about baby's first bong hit.... I think the only thing that really saved me was fear of mom breaking said phone camera in half and doing painful things involving those halves and my anatomy. So I guess I learned a good lesson about self preservation- some times the shot is worth the risk, but other times you just have to let it go. I could also say something about being present in the moment vice being removed thought he distance of the lens, but I still haven't slept yet and that would open a whole other tangent that I am not coherent enough to explore right now. Remind me to post on that sometime in the future.

    Second one came today. While driving around all day between picking up prescriptions and follow up appointments, I got a message from someone whose event I shot a while back. They have an event tonight and the club's regular photographer called in sick, they really liked my shots from last time, could I come out and shoot? My first offer of a paid photo gig. And I had to turn it down. Self preservation again. Not only because if I left sick baby and mom to go out to a club, even for a paid gig, I may come home to find the locks changed, but mostly because after having been awake for 38 hours or so now I think even if I managed to drive there, I would probably fall asleep at the wheel on the trip home. I love photography. I am stoked that the event team liked my work enough that they wanted to hire me. But I have to put my family first and hope that more paid work will come my way in the future.

    Finally, I had lots of time to spend in my own head last night and throughout the day today, lots of mental gymnastics trying to keep awake and distracted. Decided that when I get the tax refund, instead of going halfway and getting the D600, I am just going to dive all the way in and find a gently used D3S or D4 out there. Figure that will be my signal to the universe and myself that this isn't a half-assed thing, I am going for it. I want to put that out into the universe and let the energy come back. Been reading a great book (hey- review number three) The War of Art (go back and read that again, it isn't the Sun Tzu you're thinking of... It's mostly about writing, but applies to any art or quest, and one of the things that struck me is wht he said about turning pro. It isn't about getting paid, it isn't about what you do, it's about how you think of yourself and how you approach your work. So getting the best body and lenses I can is me treating myself like the pro I am, putting who I want to be out there and then letting the universe grow me into it. I know that just having a high end, expensive camera won't make me a better photographer any more than buying a ferrari would make me a better driver. But what the better tool will do is enable to to become a better photographer, become a knight worthy of excalibur... hm... do pros name their cameras? Excalibur seem like a good name for my first pro body.... come on IRS....

   So there you have it. That is what I learned about photography from a sleepless night in the ER with the most awesome kid in the whole world. Now I am gonna go sleep for a month.