Weekend in the Country

Had a refreshing wedding Saturday out in the country on a beautiful little lake, with a gazebo and a small group of the couples families and friends. It was a really nice time, the couple made us feel at home. The reception was held at a winery. The couple was kind enough to feed us and the food was great and although I didn't taste the wine I did take a sniff of the Raspberry wine and it smelled really good.

On Sunday we went to breakfast and followed it up with another day in the country, this time at a family birthday party for one of our three year old great nieces.

A new Season Starts

Our first Wedding of the season (not of the year thought) is this coming weekend. Actually our first two is this weekend with weddings being scheduled on both Saturday and Sunday. We have kept busy over the winter months with other types of shoots. We enjoy both, but our real love is weddings and we are glad to be starting out new season out with a bang.. Granted, we will be busy though June, but we love it!

We've been sharpening our skills with some new training materials and classes too. And look forward to putting our new skills into practice.

We are going have a few price changes, basically the prices are remaining how they are, just a little less confusing for our customers and us too. Maybe a few more options but easier to decide what you desire. We are not really adding any new products this season.

Christmas and the New Year

Christmas is a time for family and we were busy with other peoples families this year, however, we took time out for ours too.. Here is my son proudly smiling after beating Myself, and his Aunt and Cousin at Wii Resort Bowling over Christmas Break.

I hope everyone had a Great Christmas and a will have a good year in 2010, A Few changes are in the works to help us meet your needs a little better. With the way the economy is these days I find people trying to cut cost on services and it gets confusing to me to do custom packages based off of my other packaes. I just had 2 parents albums made last month for a couple that only ordered a Bridal album.. Ooops!! The loved their Bridal album and I guess I will love the other 2 albums over time!

We were busy with a lot of Maternity portraits over the last two months and I can't wait to photography all the babies. While we mostly do weddings we are available for other sessions too.

Parties

This is the season for family get togethers and Christmas Parties and like anyone else we have our own families and friends. We are not available the weekend of Thanksgiving nor the weekend of Christmas. We have had a lot of request for those times, however, we place our families first. We have some dates open the week after Christmas for those family portraits.

Babies... We are getting a lot of babies... and women ready to have them.. This is great and we love it.

Friendly Photographers

I heard on the radio today that the Recession is officially OVER! Hopefully everyone is in agreement on this and it really is and I’ve had the last person that wanted a full blown wedding package with Albums, Engagement sessions and a ton of prints to display call to inform me that they have decided to let their Uncle Fred (or a friend) take their pictures.

I’ve got more of those this year than I ever have, and I feel for these couples and Uncle Fred. He has a lot to live up to, first off, he might need to go buy equipment, chance are he doesn’t have a camera and lenses of the grade needed to shoot a wedding properly. Then there are lighting issues, does he have off camera flash, does he have extra lights for the formal portraits (you know those big light with the umbrellas). Well chances are some might, some might even have a second set of everything, but chances are not good that he does unless he does wedding photography. We also use a second photographer, not only backup equipment, but a backup photographer.

How well trained is Uncle Fred, We are constantly training and following advances in the field of photography. We like to take photographs, not just pictures, and for us weddings is something we love to do, not something we are just willing to do.

Lastly, while everyone is having a good time, enjoying the wedding, and dancing, poor Uncle Fred is having to be on alert for getting every memory on film (or digital media).

Another thing people don’t think of with using family and friends, is how do we get our pictures? On CD? From the grocery store mini-lab? Maybe a wholesale club because they are cheap? Well with a Professional photographer who makes his money on pleasing you, you will get Photographs that are printed at a professional lab on high quality paper. And that 39$ software for making a wedding album or scrapbook? Is that going to give you what you want your grand children looking at in 30 or 40 years?

If by chance you are forced into having someone that is not a professional take your wedding pictures have them read this first, then go online and look at some photography training tutorials. Even my blog that you can access from my site has some good tips for a beginner. There are a lot of resources out there to help someone. I still say hire someone, even the $300.00 starter photographer will be a better person to hate that your best friend or Uncle Fred when the pictures don’t turn out the way you dreamed.

Over the years if you paid $3495.00 for wedding photography needs, and you are married for 50 years, you have spent just 69.90 a year for your wedding photography, albums and prints and your Grandchildren and Great Grandchildren will have something nice to look back on.

Shooting Tips, Time off, and shout out's

The weekend was another great time, a little wet but nothing too bad.

This week I’m going to talk a little business. Our special of getting a free upgrade with any package booked has been a success, but it’ll be over come Thursday and won’t be back for a long time. Our regular price are a great deal, with this special some of our brides got a super great deal.

Its been a great summer so far. We are taking a little time off over the next couple weeks. All the orders we have received so far are completed, any new orders will be delayed by about a week, but shouldn’t be a real issue since those brides have all asked for more time to select their pictures. If you order from the web site your orders will be processed automatically.

Photo Tip: Since a little over a week ago when we were forced indoors at a wedding and not really a lot of time to set up the lights and all, I thought I would mention what we did to compensate for it. For some of the portraits we did we bounced our on camera (actually on a bracket that it and the camera are mounted to) off the ceiling and walls. Yes walls, one of my favorite photographs was taken with the flash pointed behind me, and bouncing off a white wall and ceiling. Using the wall like that was like using a huge soft box to provide a really soft flattering light to our bride. For some of the photographs where we bounced off the wall we also used the small white reflector that is standard on our Canon 580II flash. This little reflector also helped a lot while shooting under the tents where we were bouncing off the top of the tent. We were even forced to shoot straight on for a lot of the pictures but they turned out good. Something else I insist on for my photographers (self included) is shooting in RAW mode, that way I can use Abobe Lightroom and set a custom white balance with ease. Shooting in JPG mode does not even come close in giving me the latitude of changes we can do to the images that RAW mode does.

I’d like to take the time to compliment my team of second photographers.

Rose my wife who is a big help and someone I depend on for a lot of help at weddings and had become a great photographer know exactly what shots we need as well as a great assistant knowing what shots we need to get and making sure we don’t forget any shots. I wouldn’t call her an assistant photographer but a CO-Lead photographer.

Jeni and Terri who some of you may have meet at your wedding or may meet. They are great photographers, hard working women who both go beyond what can be expected of a photographer.

Good team members are hard to find, and harder to keep because they are good. I wouldn’t be able to provide the quality of service that we do without them. Also I’d probably be embarrassed a little going into the bridal party’s changing room.

Another Great Week

Another GREAT Week - Had a shoot Saturday, in between raindrops at a local park, It turned out really well. The couple is getting married in a couple weeks and wanted a nice engagement fun picture for a signature matt. This isn't what they chose, but I liked this one, it shows why We do weddings, They are in love and it showed through he whole shoot and made me feel good for the rest of the day.

Wedding season is really starting up!! -Be sure to check our Links pages for Vendors that we recommend.

Time for another phototip - We've done, Exposure for shooting in the snow (hope we don't need this one again for a while), Shooting outdoors with Fill Flash. This week Lets go into a little of

Shooting at night
we are talking doing Cityscapes, building that are lit up, etc.

First off using a TRIPOD - This is really needed, although you can get by with using something like a wall, or a fence post, or even a trash can or top of your car. The important thing is not to move the camera during the extended exposure you need.

It helps to have a remote release too, or you can use the camera's self timer. If your camera has an option for Mirror Lockup that can help with vibration also.

Okay you have found something you want to take a picture of, set you tripod up mount your camera on it. You can try letting the camera take the picture, but I recommend playing with the settings to get the look you desire. Depending on the scene you can start at f11 at 1/2 second and go up and down from there. If you camera don't have manual settings you can still take the picture using your auto settings, Try flash on, flash off, this helps even though your flash can not reach or light the scene, most cameras will set the shutter to 1/60 of a second when using a flash. Sometime you can set a EV setting of +1 or +2 or -1 or -2 Try these and keep notes so you learn what works for your scene. I've shot scenes at f5.6 and 4 seconds and got great results, it all depends on what you are shooting. Next time around I'll write a little bit on using Flash at night for shooting people and other things close up, and even a WEDDING TIP will be included for those with SLR Cameras.

I shoot Canon SLR Cameras, and will do some Tips on settings for these cameras specifically too.

New and Exciting stuff

Just had a meeting this week with a Social Network Consultant, Kind informative, and something we have done in the past. I.e. This blog, Myspace, Facebook and they recommended a couple others that I hadn't heard of "Twitter" and "Linkedin"

"Linkedin" looks really cool so far, join me on there at http://linkedin.com/ look for me via my email George@starrphotos.net

Great Weekend

The opening image is an Infra-Red Image of the Supension Bridge and Downtown Cincinnati.

I got spoilt over the weekend, the weather was great.. The days started out a little cool but turned out nice. My son and I went down along the Ohio River heading to the Newport Aquarium and got distracted by a Helicopter hovering above one of the skyscrapers. Being four and a half years old this was something for him so we stopped under the suspension bridge. We got out pictures of the helicopter and took some of the cityscape and bridge, took a walk and took some more. It was a very relaxing morning for the both of us. It does make me wonder how good he will be in a few years, he was using one of the extra cameras we have a Canon Rebel XTI which is about his size camera.

The image below is one of his favorite's and I love the angle he took it from, it's like really seeing it from his view.

Time for another Photo Tip

This week I'm going to go with a Photography Tip, The weather outside is really nice so lets take our cameras outside.

I'm a wedding/portrait photographer and I shoot people outdoors a lot. One of the biggest helps I have for shooting outdoors in the sunlight is my FLASH, yes a flash. What most peopel do is forget their flash when they go outdoors. Most of your point and shoot cameras have an option to turn on the flash even outside (flash always) or (Fill Flash) It really does work more than you think to light up faces and take away shadows caused by leaves, and other items.

I always try to find some shade to shoot in outdoors, it helps people not to squint, reduces hotspots on peoples skin and foreheads.

Granted shooting in direct sunlight is to be avoided when you can, but try using your flash. Even in the shade I use the flash to bring detail out for the main subject. I'd rather blow out the background (over expose it) than have the people so underexposed that you can't see their faces.

With an SLR camera you can set the flash power, I normally end up going to a setting that is +2 over what the meter thinks it needs. (see your manual on how to do this, EV+2)

Using your display on a digital camera outdoors is next to useless, shoot a few and and go inside and check your images until you have learned how to get the results you want outdoors.

One other note, for those of you with a Digital SLR, shoot in raw mode, it really helps if you are not right on your exposure, you get about 2 stops of extra exposure (forgiveness for a lot of photography sins)

Good luck and happy shooting!

George

(The Above picture is of My son - just having fun - no fancy equipment or anything)

Just a Short blog this week

Been busy this week with Family pictures. Got all the picture orders in for the SAFE deadline for getting them back before Christmas.

I'm working on redesigning our website, looking to add the ablility to purchase ART prints as well as your wedding pictures and other portraits a little easier. I also like the new format a little better, It'll be hard to give up the site as it is now since I did design it from stratch.

The new format will probably be in place sometime in January 2009.. Something to look forward to.

I've also started work on some HOW TO articles for the hobby photographers out there. Be looking for articles on Nature Photography, Macro Photography, Steroscopic Photography, Panoramic Photography, Night Photography, and might even throw in some usefull hints on doing portraits of your loved ones. They will be geared towards the DSLR's of today, but also will have some hints for the person that just has a simple point and shoot camera.

Given the free time I'll also included some locations around Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky that are great to photograph.

I can't wait for warm weather again to get outdoors again with my camera

Burr.... The snow made for a fun wedding day... Cincinnati was covered in a fine dusting of snow, just enough to make the grass white. Everyone was in a good mood dispite the weather. The wedding went well, This was one of the rare ones where we were not allowed to use flash, and even more difficult due to the fact that we were limited to the very back of the church for the wedding it's self. Dispite this limitation, we had the equipment and training to get very good photographs of the wedding. I'm glad for Canon "L" glass... the reception was a blast, good food, fun, friendly people. It was a pleasure shooting this wedding, The pictures are posted online for the couple and their guests to view in under a week, which is our goal to have them done before the next event we have to do.

Cincinnati has somevery interesting people, and places to photograph.