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!
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