Texas Blue Bonnet Photography

    So, apparently there is a thing called Texas Bluebonnet season. For a few weeks every year, large swaths of Texas are covered in these wild flowers, and taking pictures of people surrounded by them is a pretty big deal. Being a new Texan, of course I had to try it out, since family portraits in the blue bonnets seem to be a decent potential source of income if I can learn to do them well. My favorite model happened to hear that there was a field them right next to a local skate park that my son likes to play on, and it was a perfect overcast day, so we piled the family and the camera kit into the car and off we went. I knew I would want to play with depth of field, and would definitely want to be shooting a lot wide open, so I figured I would need to use a ND filter then add some fill flash off camera to light my models. Once we got a good setup, I would use the remote, jump into the frame, and get some family shots with me in frame as well. The day; however, had other plans. Here's what I learned.

   Main Lesson: Your models all have to be onboard with the concept. I was into it, so was my wife. Trouble is the kids weren't. Our son saw his skate park next door and wanted to skate. Our daughter thought it was too cold may have been a little bit hungry. Needless to say, neither was very excited about posing in the blue bonnets.

  I abandoned the idea of setting up the remote flash and just shot what I could with available light and high shutter speeds to open the aperture up. Our son had enough and headed to the skate park and was much happier there.

   The ladies hung a little bit longer and we found a sheltered spot under a small tree with purple flowers.

 The little one did a bit better with mom standing and rocking her, but still wasn't really having it, so they went back to the car and had a snack while I packed up all the gear I didn't get to use. Before we called it a day completely, I got a few shots of our (now much happier) son playing.

    So, overall, pretty unsuccessful first attempt at shooting in the blue bonnets. We're looking for a chance to go again before the season ends, especially since the weather has been damp and cool enough that the bloom should be a bit larger now than it was then. Here's my takeaways:

1- Make sure your subjects are all having a good time and want to shoot. Keep some sort of bribery/toys/etc in the kit to force some smiles in cases of emergencies. Maybe a cooler full of ice cream and cookies in the trunk?

2- Available light is nice, but I definitely could have used a fill. If I would have had the time to set up the remote fill flash, shots would have been better, especially given that my main model was wearing a cowboy hat. Alternatively, I could have used a reflector, but given that it was overcast and I didn't have an assistant, the flash would have been the way to go.

3- The big one- I should have brought a stepladder or kitchen step with me so I could get higher up and shoot at more a downward angle, this would have let me get the effect of having my subjects surrounded by the flowers, instead of them mainly being visible in the foreground.

4- Color is a big deal on these shoots. I should have taken the time to do a color checker shot so I could make a custom profile and white balance in post. I usually do, but again, when two kids are screaming, things tend to get sloppy and corners tend to get cut.

   That was my first attempt at blue bonnet shoots. I expect the next one will get me a little bit better results, in the meantime maybe I will get around to discussing some storage solutions that do work, unlike the last post about one that doesn't.

Gear Review- Western Digital MyCloud 6TB NAS drive for Photographers

    It's been a while since I wrote up a gear review, so I am going to try and catch up.  I am usually positive, but this one will be mixed. Today I am going to talk about my WD 6TB MyCloud NAS drive. Every photographer everywhere is constantly in search of storage, as well as a convenient way to share work, back up from the road, work on multiple computers, you name it. Many of you have probably considered, or are already using, network attached storage, or you own personal cloud server. If you have the skills and abilities to set up your own server, you probably can come up with a great option or fifteen, but that isn't me. I was looking for plug and play, and I found this one and decided to go for it. I wanted several things from my network storage: 1- an easy way to back up images shot while on travel. 2- a simple way to share images and other working stuff between my wife and my computers and 3- another redundant backup when I needed it.

    I'll start with the good. When the drive works, it provides all those functions just fine. I was able to backup all my wedding pictures from Vegas to my drive back home before I hopped on a plane, so even if the plane crashed I wouldn't lose the images. On that day it worked, and reasonably well. That's really all I can say on the good side. 

   Which leaves the bad:

1) Speed. More accurately, the lack thereof. This thing is slow. Those wedding pictures took almost 12 hours to upload. You aren't going to be able to use this as a working drive. I can't speak to the speed of the wifi on that wedding pic upload, but here at home I have a very fast network. 5G connectivity and routinely see triple digit speeds on my speedtests. But transferring 4gb of images to the drive looks like it would take around 8 hours. It's slow. Even trying to access it's interface via the web is an exercise in patience. 

2) Reliability. This is the second kicker. I say the 4gb image transfer looks like it would take around 8 hours because that's the system transfer estimate. I have yet to complete the transfer without the drive mysteriously dropping offline. Sometimes the drive is easy to connect to, other times it is effectively impossible. Automatic backups set to use the drive fail more often than they succeed because the drive just won't connect. 

3) User interface. (background, I am on a Mac, latest OS, all updates, etc.) This sucks. Sometimes the drive will mount like any other on my desktop. Other times it won't and I will have to use the MyCloud App. Which is pretty basic and really not a great interface at all. Other times both these options will fail and I will have to try and enter through the web portal, either through the WD Mycloud site, or direct IP into the drive. Sometimes all of these work, sometimes a few do, other times none do. Some interfaces allow some options, others don't. For example, you can't do anything admin wise to the drive from the desktop application, you have to go direct login. Really, the used experience just isn't there. If I could consistently just have the drive show up like any other on my desktop, that would be all I need, but I can't do that. 

4) Customer support. Non- existant. To get anything done with this drive I have to google around and hope someone else has had the same problem, found a solution, and posted it. The WD help system really isn't all that useful. 

That's the long and short of it. I was hoping this would be more secure and more cost effective than using an online cloud service like drop box or google drive. If it worked it would be, but it doesn't work consistently or reliably, so it really isn't a viable solution for me, and probably won't be for you either.

As I get caught up I will be posting some reviews to other storage solutions that I like better and use, but in the mean time, I am going to go back to fighting to get some files onto the NAS drive again because I am stubborn and hope I can figure it out one of these days. 

Rebranding Update...

    Well, it's finally official. Happy Dragon Photography is only a memory. The new Texas LLC is Hidden Hills Arts. Hidden Hills Arts will encompass multiple artistic disciplines, including San Antonio's only Flying Trapeze.

    Yup, that is my backyard. And my flying trapeze rig. I am kind of loving life right now. I also could not resist taking a sunset hair flip shot of one of the people who helped us set the rig up. because, well, it was just necessary. 

    We hope to be a hub for the local circus, acro yoga and aerial community as well as aspiring trapeze artists. We basically want to build our dream life on our dream property, and hopefully make enough money to pay the bills so I can retire when I retire in a couple of years.

   On that note, I have still been shooting away when and where I can find work. I haven't really done headshots before, so I decided to help out a local trainer and fitness blogger and do a TFP headshot set in her gym. Also another chance to play with my 85/1.4 and some good background bokeh.

  We did ok. I also had the chance to break in the property with a first shoot. This is my back yard again. I really love how the sunset golden hour light hits several locations around the place. Can't wait to do many more shoots all over the place, and setup the garage studio.

  So, I will be slowly transitioning all my web info and presences on various social media over from Happy Dragon to Hidden Hills, so please bear with me as I change it all over, and let me know if you notice anything I miss.