Boiling Point

This isn't really a legit post. I just wanted to share this. It's stuff like this that really gets my blood boiling: http://bit.ly/c65Gak

Success Story of the Day

This boy's mother ordered some wallets of this picture. She asked me when ordering if I could take out the current background and replace it with a white background. I told her that I couldn't make her any promises but that I'd be more than happy to try and see what happens.

So I worked on it for a little while and tried various gradient background to try and make it look somewhat realistic, and it was looking ok, but not good enough. I then eventually came up with the idea of photographing the background and put that in behind the boy.

(I used the dog as a focus point)

After getting the colors to match and doing some blending, I made it work and I think the mother will be very pleased with the end result.

Delicious and Piping Hot in Three Microwave Minutes!!!

I've been pretty busy at work over the past month trying to juggle dance pictures (over 300 orders for just one school, and there's two schools to do) and senior orders. I'm basically doing the job of two people right now. I'm not really complaining though, I just have a lot going on right now.

The more that I've been working on these dance pictures, the stronger my desire has become to get a new laptop. It's always been in the back of my mind, more of an admiration, like "Those are really nice, I want one but don't need one," sort of thinking. Well now I need one. With the bigger file sizes that my camera produces and the new software that's come out recently, I definitely need a new one. At the present time it just takes a really long time to edit an image; it'll take anywhere from 5 second to a minute to load an image and then I'll make an adjustment and it'll take a while for it to take effect. It's really quite annoying. I can completely forget about using Aperture 3 because it's just too slow on this thing, so I can't take advantage of its new features. Photoshop CS5, which recently came out, is pretty fantastic, but I can't take full advantage of some of the new features because I'll get a window that says there's not enough memory to complete the task. I've had this thing for a good 5 years now. It's pretty much time to upgrade now.

I usually get the "You don't need a new laptop" face from Bethany whenever I mention my desire for a new laptop, and a year ago, I really didn't. But now, I really do.

Lola Freaks Out Some Geese

Test

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> Test post from my phone.

Opening Day!

Today is one of my favourite days of the year: the Detroit Tigers home opener. The only day, in my opinion, that's better is the first day of the regular baseball season. It's pretty fantastic though when both Opening Day and the Tigers home opener fall on the same day. Not this year though. So I'm sitting here at Bethany's apartment watching the game while she's off to Chicago, because I don't have cable yet. The photo above was taken last year, by the way.

I made somewhat of an impulse buy a couple days ago. I purchased a Wescott Collapsable Umbrella Light Kit. It's something I've been eyeballing for quite a while though, however, not as a kit though because until a few days ago, I didn't know these items were available as a kit. The best part is that I got it for $50 off! What a deal! And you can't beat free shipping. The only down side is that it's currently on back order. But I'm fine with that since I'm in no rush to get it.

Another item I've recently purchased is this hotshoe adapter from Flash Zebra so I can have my speedlite off of my camera. Now, the Canon 7D has a wireless flash transmitter, which I've used, and it's pretty great... sometimes. It doesn't work that well in bright daylight though, because the camera communicates with the camera via IR frequencies. Having a direct connection from camera to flash will solve this problem. Also, another thing about the wireless feature with the 7D is that in order to use it, you have to have the built in pop-up flash up, and for some reason, with that up, the camera won't allow you to use a shutter speed faster than 1/60th of a second, Having the flash directly connected to the hotshoe will give me more flexibility with the shutter speed, which will be nice, allowing me to darken ambient light more if so desired.

There's some pretty exciting things happening April 12th. Adobe is going to be releasing Creative Suite 5. I'm pretty excited about it and can't wait to see all the new features it has to offer.

That's all for now. I'm going to finish watching the Tigers now. (They're currently winning!)

Go Tigers!

-David

Untitled (how original)

I was in Florida a couple weeks ago with my parents for our yearly trip to visit my grandpa. He celebrated his 90th birthday while down there. We threw a party for him. Lots of relatives: all for of his kids (my mom, Aunt Maureen, Uncle Bob and Uncle Tom) along with two of my cousins, Brian and Sean, and a friend of Grandpa's, Ginny. He had a pretty great time with all of us there.

The weather was pretty great for the most part, beautiful sunsets every night. There were a few days where the rain made it seem like there would be no sun, but each time it cleared up just in time.

My dad and I went out a couple of times to make some photographs. It was a lot of fun going out shooting with him.

I've been back home now for a couple of weeks. I'm real glad I didn't take my mom's suggestion on waiting to move into my apartment until after we got back from Florida. I wanted to be able to just get back and not have to worry about any moving. I'm really loving the apartment life. My bank account may not agree with me, but none-the-less, it's been pretty great. I still have no cable or internet yet though. It's no biggie yet though, just so long as I get it before the regular baseball season starts. I'm opting out on getting internet to save money. I can already do 80% of what I normally do on my iPhone, and there's internet here at work. So it would seem a little silly for me get it.

That's all for now. Go out and enjoy this nice weather!

[Insert Snappy Title Here]

So much to talk about:

1) I've moved into an apartment. It's absolutely awesome. I don't have any cable or internet yet (posting this at work tsk tsk), but I plan on taking care of that when I get home from Florida in a couple of weeks.

2) Tomorrow (Friday) I'm heading down to Florida with my parents to visit my grandpa. He's turning 90 next week and most of the family is going down there to celebrate.

3) Last friday I did a photo shoot with Bethany's sister, Elyse.

She wanted photos for a cd she made of her playing the piano for her mom's birthday. I was pretty excited to do this for her. It was a lot of fun, I got to take advantage of the wireless transmitter in my 7D and do some off-camera flash shots. I didn't have a light stand so I used my cousin Tom as an assistant. Also, since I didn't have a light stand for the shoot through umbrella that I used, I duct taped it to the flash and it worked pretty swell. (Only the first image was shot with a flash, off to camera right. The other two are just natural light)

4) Sunday, the 14th was my birthday. I'm 24 now. I'm an old man.

5) Apple finally came out with Aperture 3. I downloaded the 30-day trial and tried it out for a good half hour before determining (even more so) that I need a new laptop. The combination of my large image files (up to 20MB!) and the new software are just too much for my 6+ year old MacBook Pro. I've read a couple reviews that the new software is a bit on the buggy side to begin with. Perhaps I'll start seriously saving for a new laptop... which is going to be kind of hard right now with rent and such.

6) If you're from Ypsilanti, this is a pretty fantastic video:

This vs. That

A little over a month ago, Bethany asked me why I prefer Canon over Nikon. My answer to that had absolutely nothing to do with any belief of Canon being superior to Nikon. It was simply because that's what what my dad has always used, and that my high school graduation was a Canon Digital Rebel. In other words, it's just what I'm familiar with.

I had been thinking about that a lot lately. I'd be willing to bet you that if you ask anyone why they shoot with a Canon, or why they shoot with a Nikon, more times than not their answer will have something to do with Canon being better than Nikon, or visa versa. Here's where I stand on that argument. I strictly shoot with a Canon because it's what I'm used to. Here's why I don't have any strong opinions on which camera company is better: Take an image shot with a high end Canon camera, and take a similar image shot with a high end Nikon. I'd be willing to bet you that absolutely nobody would be able to tell which image was shot with which camera.

The same thing applies to the argument of the superior post process software between Adobe Lightroom and Apple's Aperture. Process a photo in Lightroom and process a photo in Aperture and again I'm sure you won't be able to tell which was processed in which program. I've used both Aperture and Lightroom. I prefer using Aperture because I like the layout of the interface more than Lightroom. I also like its file management over Lightroom. There are, however, some features in Lightroom that I wish Aperture had (adjustment brush!) but here's to hoping that Aperture 3 will have that feature.

The best camera is the one that's with you

Flashy

It's 2010. How does that grab ya? I say good riddance to 2009. That was an odd year with odd ups and downs. Promoted to full time at the studio, Grandma Kellman passed away, first car accident... What surprises does 2010 hold? We shall find out.

Right off the bat (seemingly) on the third of the year (a Sunday?!) I had a shoot at a dance school in Howell. By far the smallest of the dance schools that we shoot. Only about 42 dancers. This was my first time doing this shoot and in the past the lighting setup for the head shots we (to me) very unsatisfactory. One light to the left and one to the right at full power... rather lame and boring. So me wanting to increase the quality of the head shots decided to have, for the most part, the same set up, except on light's pulled back a little and I have full power going to one of the strobes while only a third of the power going to the other one. This creating more shadow depth and overall, in my opinion, a much more attractive portrait.

I've been reading a lot of photo blogs lately and I'm loving it. It's completely reignited my love for photography. Before I would have a mindset of "Wow, that's an awesome camera, I want that camera," but now (even though I recently bought a brand new Canon 7D) there's specific equipment and accessories on my wish list. On top of that list right now is a 50mm 1.8 lens. This is considered a fast lens, meaning that it the aperture opens pretty wide letting more light hit the image sensor, allowing you to be able to use faster shutter speeds in lower lighting situations. And it's a fixed focal length which kind of forces you to not rely on zooming into a subject. If you want a closer shot, you have to physically get closer. Ideally though, I really want the 50mm 1.2 L lens (L is Canon's highest quality of glass), unfortunately I don't have $1,600 to drop for it. So I'll just have to settle for the 1.8... which is only about $100. It still takes pretty great quality images. My dad has one and I've kind of been borrowing it and instantly fell in love with it. The image below was taken using that lens.

One of the blogs I read is by photographer David Hobby. His blog is all about using speedlites for off camera flashes. Now because the Canon 7D has a built in wireless transmitter, this gives me the ability to be more creative with my 420EX. However, since it is nearly 5 years old, it has me desiring the newer 580EX II. They're pricy though. I also want a shoot-through umbrella and various accessories from David Honl has to offer. The following images of the rose were shot in my room using my 420EX flash. These aren't really serious images I was going for here, more just putzin' around. It just so happened that I really like what came out.

For the second one, I used a sheet of plain white computer paper as a diffusion panel.

I get pretty excited thinking about what I can do if and when I get the various things on my photographic wish list. It's going to take a while for me to accumulate it all. Never-the-less, I can hardly wait!