Started last Saturday with week two of the Surf Cup soccer tournament I wrote about earlier. This was going to be a marathon day, so of course I drank too much and stayed up way too late the night before. Still managed to get out of bed by 4:30 so I could get some breakfast and get there on time. Parking sucked the first time, so this time I parked a mile and change away and threw my bike in the back of the truck and rode in. The plan was this week to shoot with my 70-200 and a teleconverter provided by the company. Right off the bat with the teleconverter not working. Lens just hunted continually and wouldn't focus on anything. Turns out that after some troubleshooting it is my lens that won't work, even though it should work with the TC. Good thing I found that out because I was thinking of purchasing a TC. Now I either have to get the lens fixed if possible, or upgrade to the VRII version. Will have to see what the repair would run me first and what is actually wrong with it. Anyway, being maxed out at 200mm meant that I wasn't able to get as many good shots over the day, I was only able to shoot on the near end of the field without having to crop way in, which is fine if I am doing the post, but for the download and immediate sale environment I was working in for the company, those were pretty much worthless. But still, shot another 10 hours of soccer. Then I went home, took a quick shower, grabbed some food, kissed the family goodnight, grabbed a red bull and headed to Hillcrest for an event.
The mission of the night was to do a fashion show and performance at the Merrow, formerly the Ruby Room. The first thing I noticed was that the beautiful, awesome murals outside and the crazy interior paint in the bathrooms was gone, replaced by a rather ugly off white nothing. This made me a bit sad because the old walls were such a great backdrop to shoot at. The event was organized by Elektrofied SD , a really cool group I have shot with a few times now. I loaned them my black backdrop to set up outside. There was another backdrop inside, but I didn't get a chance to shoot on it. I wasn't really happy with my ability to set up lighting and shots against this backdrop. I couldn't get a good rim light set so that would separate dark hair/clothing from the backdrop without lighting the backdrop itself. Later found out the biggest reason was simply that I was setting the models up too close to the backdrop. But didn't know that at the time. This setup was also right next to the smoke pit, which sucked. But oh well. Although I can't say any of them are great, I was happier with the final results than I thought I would be chimping them in my screen, but I guess the trick really is having models who are hot enough that you stop noticing the technical flaws...
So that was outside. Then inside for the fashion show piece and the performances. They hadn't really changed any of the lighting setup inside the club, but since they are no longer the Ruby Room, they didn't seem to have the same high percentage of solid red led washes. So nowhere near as challenging as is used to be to shoot in there. Really the only significant factor that was troublesome was the fog. But I managed to get a lot of shots I really liked, and didn't have to spend anywhere near the time and workload I used to in post to get them useable. So either the lighting was easier to work with or I am getting better. I'd like to think it's a little of both.
I also got a few I liked during the fire performances.
I was probably happiest with the shots I got of this guy spinning the flow staff. It was funny though, before he started this he had some sort of assistant running around pushing the crowd back and trying to get me to move. He made it sound like it was going to be a massive performance on the scale of some of the really good fire staff spinners I know. I kinda laughed and didn't really move at all. Turns out I was right, the guy could spin fast, but did nothing more than a few basic moves. Glad I got some good shots because I was quite underwhelmed by the performance after the buildup.
Had a lot of people grab cards from me and ask about where to find the pics. This led to my biggest disappointment of the night. Near the end, as I was packing up and heading to the bathroom before getting into the car for the 45min drive home, I saw that someone had dumped one of my cards right into the urinal where the pee-cake normally goes.
I know it really shouldn't bother me, but at the end of a 20 hour day of shooting on top of not being happy with the outdoor light setup, it really got to me and pissed me off / discouraged me.
So that was the weekend. Things picked up again on Thursday when I went to take an intro to studio photography class at DK3 Studios in Mira Mesa. I had seen lots of pictures of friends from photo shoots at this studio, it's one of a couple of rental facilities in SD. Of all the rental studios I have seen, it has the best rates and comes most well equipped for your money. I got to meet Dave (the D in the name) at a photo expo, and have been planning to go in and play in his space for a while but haven't had the planets align, so when I got the meetup invite for the intro class on a night where my family was already out of town, I took the hint from the universe. Dave covered basic lighting setups for different things, how to make a white wall into a grey or black backdrop, how to do basic headshot lighting setups, etc. He also brought in a makeup artists to talk about various makeup issues. She in turn brought her two daughters to serve as our test models. It was a fun night and really good to take the various concepts I have been reading about and studying and put them into real world practice. I learned that the main reason I wasn't successful is the setup Saturday night was I was keeping the models too close to the backdrop. I needed to pull them farther away and then it would have been easier to get the results I wanted. Anyway, here are a few shots from the workshop.
Played with high and low key, gels, all sorts of fun stuff, as you can see. I'd say pretty good for a first time in the studio. Overall I was very happy and now feel completely comfortable not only booking studio shoots, but making a decent shopping list when I start buying studio strobes and modifiers for my own uses.
Then this Saturday morning I did another sports shoot with a different company. This one I don't have any pics to post, because I was training and sharing a camera with one of their regular photographers. It was not action shooting, it was posed team and individual shots for kids sports. Basically, the company wants to hammer all creativity out of the process and create McSportraits (maybe I should trademark that term) to sell to parents. It's the kids sports version of the school yearbook portraits. Do paperwork. Spend no more than 60 seconds per kid. Use the pop up flash on your camera. Basically shots a trained monkey could take and the goal is to not be able to tell which photographer took which shot, they all should look the same. While I understand that from a sales and corporate perspective, I am not sure that it's a good fit for me, even worse than the soccer tournament from the past two weeks. So now after three weekends shooting for two different companies, I am torn. It is nice to be able to say I am making a little (emphasis on the LITTLE) money from my camera, it definitely isn't the direction I want to go in with my photography. I specifically want my photos to be distinctive, so have my own style and signature. I don't know what that is yet, it is one of those things I need to find. But part of me says it's good to put in my dues on the assembly line, the McSportrait company pretty much has the SD area youth sports market locked up, so it may be good for me to really see how the profitable business side of the it is run. But another part of me doesn't want to give up weekend days away from my family for next to nothing when I am not getting any creative challenge or even something I can put in my portfolio later.
I am pretty sure I am not going to continue with the McSportraits, I will just shoot the gigs I have already signed on for, don't want to be a flake, then move on and thank them for the experience. I may do a few more of the action shooting events, especially if they do get set up on a salary plus commission plan like they say they intend to, vice just an hourly wage. But I do need to practice my sports shooting, might as well do it on someone else's dime. Now it's time to come up with some ideas and line up some studio shoots!
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