Then and Now

Petapixel recently ran an interesting article where a handful of photographers compared a photo from their first real gig, mostly engagements, to their most recent. It sounded like fun, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I've photographed, either as a primary or secondary photographer, sixty-three weddings (including a few elopements) since my first on January 8th, 2011. But that was as a second shooter for a friend of mine. My first wedding was five months later, when Abbas and Hanyia tied the knot.

Not bad, I'd say (and Abbas must have agreed since he gave me a referral just last year!) but everything gets better with practice. Here's another from my most recent wedding.

Here's to many more years of wonderful weddings, beautiful wedding photos, and killer receptions.

Berkshires Getaway (and one more)

Erika and Nana's wedding brought my second shooter and I to Crissey Farm, an amazing venue in Stockbridge, MA, and the nearby Naumkaeg House and Gardens. Erika is a consummate planner, and from my talks with her (and reviewing her detailed itinerary) I knew that the wedding would go off on-schedule and without a hitch. 

That said, this one still exceeded my expectations.

The weather was perfect. The locations looked better in person than in the photos I'd seen beforehand. Erika and Nana (and their families and friends) were amazingly fun, friendly, and easy to work with.

The photos always get done, but some days everything just clicks and it feels effortless.

That alone would have made for a great weekend, but I also spent Friday photographing the Women Entrepreneurs Empowerment Forum for UConn, which featured Joanna Coles and Governor Dannel Malloy. It was a great event - I just wish I'd had time to actually listen to all the talks and visit the booths. Just the scraps I picked up between photos have given me some great ideas for my business.

(Alas - no photos here from that event, due to a special arrangement between UConn and I. However, you can get the gist from their official Instagram hashtag.)

Time to post some Instagram photos, edit some more, and get ready for another week of yearbook photos!

Con Men

Ugh.

One of the downsides of running a business which is advertised online is that periodically someone will try to take advantage of you. Which sucks, but, you know, it comes with the territory. If you pay attention and have some limits/standards, you can avoid getting burned.

But it's still disappointing.

Who wakes up and decides to impersonate a deaf person (they also claimed to be in the ICU elsewhere) just to try to rip someone off? 

Anyway, two things to take from this:

• If you find or sell work online, be careful. If something seems off or weird, trust your gut and ask lots of questions. In this case, the person didn't seem to really be reading my texts, and of course the actual scam, wanting me to funnel money for them. (For anyone who hasn't seen this before: they want to send a check or credit card payment which takes a few days to clear, but you have to send someone a money order immediately. By the time their payment comes back as fraudulent, your cash is gone.)
• If you are one of my clients who found me online, without the benefit of a friend's referral, thank you so much for your trust. I'm very aware that hiring a photographer is always a huge act of trust (that they will carry through with their promises, that their product will be of the promised quality). Giving that trust online is an even bigger leap of faith. It means the world to me, and nothing is more important to me than delivering on that trust.

I won't say something like "this ruins my faith in people", because it doesn't. Almost everyone who reaches out to me is not only who they claim to be, but wonderful people that are a pleasure to work with.

Y'all are great.

Yearbook Season

Just a quick update from the road.

I spend my autumns, besides shooting beautiful fall weddings and events, working for a New England yearbook company. It's loads of fun, I get to travel a lot and work with loads of great photographers (some of whom become my trusty wedding second shooters), and take lots of photos that I don't have to edit, which is always a treat.

Sadly, I can't show you any of the really fun photos I'm taking, because sharing pictures of other people's kids is creepy. (Also, they belong to the company I work for.)

But I thought I'd leave a little note here, to explain why I am so crazy busy in September and October. I make every effort to still respond to emails ASAP (usually successful) and to keep up my rapid editing turnaround (less successful - this season is why my contract says editing may take "four to six weeks"), but sometimes yearbook season will get the best of me.

Anyway, take care all, and happy back to school!

A Very Expensive Paperweight

A few days ago, I had a major equipment drop, the first of my career.

It wasn't a great day.

I was photographing machines for a client (the same folks from All Hail Our Machine Overlords), with my camera on a tripod and lots of lighting gear and backdrops set up. It is, in theory, an exceptionally safe working environment. No moving people, the machines are infinitely patient, the camera is on a tripod. Despite all of that, while I was moving my tripod and adjusting the camera, the camera fell, tumbling forward off the tripod, falling about five feet, and smashed on the floor.

All told, my camera rig is worth about $4,000.

My initial assessment was really bad. The battery grip was in pieces. The body wouldn't turn on. The lens focus and telephoto were stuck. Worst of all (from a certain perspective), I hadn't brought a backup body or lens, so I had to tell my customer, "Sorry, but that's it for the day." (Disclaimer: I only left the backups at home because I thought, surely, nothing can go wrong at such a straightforward shoot. I always have backups for one-shot-only events like weddings.)

When I got home, I was able to revive my camera body. Whew. The lens and battery grip are dead, though, one an expensive paperweight and the other a pile of parts.

Some advice, for anyone who's prone to finding themselves in a similar situation, starting with the most general:

Have a backup plan. 

Thankfully, past me did a good job preparing for exactly such a situation. I have insurance on my equipment, and savings set aside for exactly this kind of emergency. If all of that fails, I have credit and family to fall back on. If I needed to replace the equipment immediately, I have a list of local places at which I could buy, rent, or borrow equipment.

So, business wise, I'm okay. Knowing that was a huge comfort while literally picking up pieces of my camera.

Even if you don't own a business, it's a good idea to take some time and think about where you are most vulnerable to an accident, and figure out how you can mitigate that risk. 

Don't ignore that bad feeling in your gut.

My tripod hadn't felt right all morning. I don't use my tripod often, though, and it seemed to be working, so I carried on. I've since worked out that a key spring in the tripod head had come lose. It's an easy fix, but a critical failure.

First of all, if your tripod feels weird, you should have a hand on your camera constantly until you figure out the problem, and should not use the tripod until it is working correctly.

But more broadly, when something feels wrong, you should always stop and try to assess that feeling. 

The image we did get.

Going forward, I'm in good shape. I was able to return and finish the photos a few days later, and I have a new lens on the way. I've been looking to add an additional backup body and lens to the ones I already have for a while - and while the cost of replacing this equipment makes that a little more challenging, I still think I may speed up that process. I'm going to see, as well, if Canon can fix my broken lens or not.

In short: It was bad, but it could've been worse.

Swati and Saurin

I'm pretty new to maternity photos, but when I get a chance to do them, I jump at it. (Seriously, how great is my job? I pretty much exclusively work with people on their happiest occasions.)

Swati and Saurin are recent transplants from Texas, due next month. They're a sweet couple, and quite frankly their kid has a 100% chance of being adorable.

They brought donuts as well, which, you know, doesn't hurt. I also ran into a couple birders at our second location, who showed me a very rare bird. 

Sunrise, beach, glowing parents-to-be, donuts, and wildlife, all before 9:00 AM? That's a good day.

I Wanna Dance With Somebody

Shantelle and Al's families are full of big personalities, and when they celebrate, they don't do it halfway.

We met them in Rhode Island for prep photos. The guys, as usual, had it easier, but the girls were on schedule and a really fun group to hang out with.

From there we headed to Blissful Meadows in Massachusetts for the ceremony and reception.

Their ceremony was right up my alley - short, personal, and funny. It was also hot, but considering there was an 80% chance of rain forcast, and we had beautiful blue skies, no one complained too much. I especially liked one detail of their wedding: five white roses, for loved ones who had passed away, carried down the aisle by their flower girls. Or, I should say, flower grandmas.

Then there was the reception. The DJ's practically had to herd people back to their tables for dinner, or else everyone would have just kept on dancing. It's a ton of fun when a wedding has so much energy that it literally shakes the building.

Parabéns no seu casamento, Shantelle and Al!

FODSLR Macro Extension Tubes

This is a bit of a product review (unpaid and unsolicited), which is not something I typically do here, but some photo friends of mine have found informal versions of this on Facebook useful. So if you're just here for beautiful wedding photos, feel free to skip it. No hard feelings.

...

Still here? Cool. Let me tell you about FODSLR Macro Extension Tubes.

Macro extension tubes turn a regular lens into a macro lens. They are a lot cheaper than a dedicated lens, but also have some small technical trade-offs that I won't go into here. They come in "smart" and "dumb" versions, depending on whether they let your camera talk to the lens (to change your aperture and auto-focus) or not. These FODSLR (a brand name, apparently?) tubes are smart. (Dumb ones are a waste of time and better avoided.)

These are also remarkably cheap. I picked them up on sale for $25 - since the price has gone up and down, but I've never seen it above $40 (half the "list price" of $79.99). $80-$120 is a more common price for this sort of thing.

That said, there are some quality-consistency issues. My first set, two of the tubes would not come apart. A friend who bought these on my recommendation has also found his a bit "sticky". I returned mine (yay free shipping and free returns with Prime!), and the second set they sent are perfect. Take from that what you will.

I like them. A lot.

Of course, these tubes don't work in a vacuum - they're just one tool to add to your toolbox. The nice thing about extension tubes is they have no glass in them, so they are as good as the camera and lens you put them between. (The above photo also benefits from a professional speedlite, the DJ's up-lighting, and whoever lit about a hundred candles on the table.)

That said, these are straightforward to use. I'd recommend using lots of light so you can stop-down your aperture a lot.

Then just play around and have fun!