Labor Day - Festivals and All

This is a great time of the year with Labor Day, Festivals, Halloween, and Fall Leaves.. Of course we plan on getting in our share of these between the fall weddings and events we are scheduled to shoot. I love the fall colors for weddings, I'm not sure what I like better, the new life of Spring or the wonderful fall colors.

I have to admit I also love the fun of the summer time, and the bright holiday light of winter. Maybe it's just LIFE that leaves me with the urge to take more and more pictures.

I've added some galleries to our web site today, be sure to check them out.

• http://starrphotos.net/airshowslide/
• http://starrphotos.net/packslide
• http://starrphotos.net/parkslide/
• http://starrphotos.net/zooslide/

A blur of a weekend - Parties and more...

We had an interesting weekend, Started out with a Birthday party Friday Night, and then it was Monday morning 10 minutes later. We had a some good shooting all weekend and got some great pictures I’m sure our clients will appreciate. The above images in from a shoot about 2 weeks ago at Ault Park, I posted one ohter image from it, This images was taken in under a shade arc in the garden, I used a little fill flash to take out the shadows and make the couple stand out. I could see cropping in a little more although I like this image as is.

I got a chance to play around myself with some lighting Saturday morning. Tried out some new wireless flash triggers that worked great. My model for the morning still had breakfast on is face, but it wasn’t worth the fight to wash his face, and I was very lucky that he fit me into his very tight schedule during a commercial break of Phines and Pherb (I probably slaughtered the spelling) but this is what you expect with a 5 year old on a Saturday morning the weekend before school starts up.

Okay as promised I’m taking a little time to go over a little of the lighting techniques that we find useful. One of the toughest areas of lighting that we encounter are mirrors and shiny alters. Like anyone that has shot any pictures around these, you know that you are very likely to get a BRIGHT ball of light reflected back at you from a shiny surface, it could be polished wood, brass, a mirror or even a sweaty forehead. Well the forehead you can wipe off, and even apply a little make up to make it NOT SHINE. But what do you do for a mirrored surface?

A couple things come to mind, short of not using a flash there are still things you can do. If you think of the light striking your subject and the reflective surface, your on camera flash is a really small spot of light, and being small, it tends to reflect brightly off of surfaces. If the light was as big as your subject it would be a very even light, completely flooding the entire scene. One thing we do is try to make the light source bigger. This doesn’t mean getting a huge light, sometimes it is a simple as an umbrella in front of our flash. Other times we reflect the light off of something. Maybe we will use a reflector, but more commonly a ceiling or wall. If we prevent the flash from directly hitting the reflective surface it won’t be as bright of a reflection. Now simply aiming our flash a the ceiling works wonders, but will cause some issues in it’s self. The eye sockets are the most noticeable, they will be dark, so when aiming at the ceiling we use a little reflector mounted on our flash. On the Canon 580IIex there is a built in little card for this. This will not fix the whole issue and might cause a reflection from your subject.

This is going to take some experimentation on your part to get it working the way you expect it. Something we do, is not just bouncing off a ceiling. Think about direction the light is traveling. If you bounce off a wall to light the subject and there is a mirror behind them, your flash will not hit the reflective surface but will light up your subject. Also think about the wall behind you.

I know this is not a lot of help to our point and shoot fans as you can’t do a lot to control the direction of your flash. Although there are things you can try, you can put a piece of tissue over the flash part of the camera (thin) and experiment with that effect to defuse the light some and make it softer.

Also besides bouncing flash to move it, you can take your flash off camera to change the direction of lighting, but that is beyond what a short tip can do for you.

Playing Around a Little

As part of my on going training I'm always learning something new, This picture was from a couple weeks ago and was just handy.. The effect is called "stepping out of the frame" I'm a little rough with it yet so be kind.

I missed the car show this weekend, but that happens. It's been really busy lately and Just needed the day to relax.. Our son got up at 8am and climbed in bed with us and we slept until 10, got up and I made breakfest and the three of us just enjoyed the day.

Got an interesting question today about weddings, that does come up from time to time. What if we have to move the date? Generally we will work with you to move your date, provided we have your alternate date open. If you let us know as soon as you can then chances are good we can work with you. We have a backup team for weddings in case something happens and we can use them if all else fails. Also Sunday's are better for alternate dates. If you think it might change, for a small fee we can hold the second date for a while.

I'm going to start a section for Tips for Brides where I can share some questions I've got over the years. How to select a Photographer, or DJ or floist, etc.. one of the best ways I can say on any of these is look at the work of the PERSON you are hiring, not just the company. When you hire us, you get GEORGE STARR, not a photographer that just happens to be around and able to go to your wedding. You see my work here, some of my Second Photographer's work might appear in the albums, but in general you see the work I produce personally. If you see flower designs ask the florist, did YOU do these, or of a DJ ask him, are you the one that is going to be at my reception.

Now I will say there is the posibilty for a substitute lead photographer if something would happen with me. Generally it would be my wife or another well qualified Lead photographer. This has NEVER happened, but I am human so I won't say that it never will.

Next Time around I'll post up a little something on thing to remember.. You will be suprised what people forget.

Okay this Blog is titled Playing around a little, Here we see a Groomsmen doing what a Groomsmen does best on the day of a wedding.. KILL time..

On a kinda sad note: With rising prices everything goes up, and the same is with Wedding photography. Our price have been and always will be very reasonable, but there had been a slight increase in our package rates. Nothing earth shaking, and some of the packages have been updated to add more features. We have added Press Printed books, and guest books, even Canvas Gallery Wraps into some of our packages. We have also added Social Media Sized files of some of your favorite images so you can share your images on all the Social Networks out there like Linkedin, Facebook and MySpace. If we quoted you already don't worry we will honor our quoted prices for a few months. The new prices are on our web site http://starrphotos.net/weddingrates.htm It not all bad... some nice things have been added.

Stormy Weekend

It was a stormy weekend but we stayed dry *MOSTLY* Our wedding on Saturday went well, when we were doing pictures outside we got ran back in when it started pouring rain. We got all but the wedding party formals whre they the bridemaids and Groomsmen were together outdoors, and we finished those up in front of the alter of the church. They all turned out great and are already posted for the couple and their guests.

It was really a busy month in May and we kept up pretty good. All the wedding photographs were up for display withing 3-4 days of the weddings which is well before our contract goal or 2 weeks!! We had a lot of great weddings last month and like always people are having a rough time narrowing down the pictures they want.

It's nice to finally have some warm weather for a change too...

Photo Tip: When you take a picture, any picture, divide the frame up into 4 sections and check the four sections to see what is in them, v/s your main subject. Look for things like Trash cans, bottles, trash, outlets, or other unsightly things. This simple step will become second nature after you've taken 20 or 30 thousand pictures... (okay, you might catch on before that)

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.

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)