Monday’s Here: It’s Gonna Be A Busy Week!

Happy Monday! Okay, Mondays are never really that happy because they’re well… Monday! Anyway, this is most likely the only post that I’ll get to this week so I thought I would share a quick photo with you and some of my happenings.

• The photo above was from a shoot I did last weekend with musician Connor Fabiano. We had a great time shooting downtown in San Diego and we got some cool shots for him to use in his promo materials. This was another shoot that I put together while working on a music portfolio. Thanks Connor!
• I’m really lovin’ my Sigma glass! The 70-200mm f2.8 and the new 24-70mm f2.8 HSM lenses are really nice! Sharp, crisp, great color and contrast too! As a matter of fact, the image above was shot with the 24-70mm lens on my D90.
• Speaking of love, I’ve fallen deeply into it with my Think Tank Airport Security 2.0 bag that my wife and kids got me for Father’s Day! This bag rolls like a dream, has a TON of space, and is inside carry-on specs for domestic U.S. airlines. I’ll have a full review up for you soon, but unfortunately I don’t think I’ll get to fly with it until November when I head to Chicago to shoot a wedding.
• I’m going to be out at sea this week and I won’t be back until Thursday. So there won’t be much here by the way of content, but I won’t be gone long. I’m heading to Huntington Beach for the weekend to spend time with family for the 4th of July. Before you ask, yes I’ll have my camera with me… and lights, stands, modifiers, etc.

That’s it for me today. I’ve got to run now and I hope you guys have a great week! Don’t work too hard, shoot plenty of photos, and don’t forget to back them up! See you soon!

Stephen

Less Talk, More Photos!

As I promised yesterday, here’s some of what I have been shooting lately. You got a quick tease on Monday, but today I’m including more from that shoot for you to check out. I’ve got some more images on the way, but for now I leave you with Tony and Tammara.

All of the photos were processed in Lightroom. No Photoshop required. I hope you enjoyed them and I’ll see you back here next week with more photos from some of my other shoots! Have a great weekend!

What I Have Been Up To…

It’s been a few days since I have posted on the blog and it’s definitely time for an update. Things are good, just very, very busy. I’ve had quite a bit going on and so I’m trying to get all caught up with family, work, and photography.

• You see the cartoon above? I read them every single day that Aaron Johnson updates it because they make me smile, and sometimes even laugh out loud. If you haven’t been over to check out What The Duck, then you’re really missing out.
• I’ve been working on post processing like crazy from my three shoots last weekend and also been uploading photos to my client proofing site at Zenfolio for my clients. I love Zenfolio because the experience is awesome for my clients and their prints come from my favorite lab, Mpix. I’ll have some more photos up for you tomorrow.
• I’m re-designing my website currently as time permits. I’m going for a cleaner look than I currently have, but I’m doing it myself because I’m just not ready to part with big bucks for a LiveBooks site yet. More to come soon on the website.

So now you know where most of my time has been spent lately, and hopefully you’ll forgive me for not posting for a few days. As I mentioned above, I’ll have some more photos up for you tomorrow and until then, I hope you all have a great Thursday!

Monday Morning Photo Tease

Happy Monday everyone! I was as busy as all get-out over the weekend. I had three shoots on Saturday and spent an awesome Father’s Day with my family at the San Diego County Fair on Sunday. But I didn’t want to come into the week and leave you hangin’, so here’s a quick tease. More to come!

Sigma 70-200MM f 2.8 EX II HSM First Impressions

It’s early on Saturday morning I know, but I wanted to get one more most up for you this week. I’ve been swamped and I haven’t gotten a chance to post anything else this week so I thought I would share my first impressions of my new Sigma 70-200mm f 2.8 lens.

• This lens is tack sharp! There is no two ways about it. I shot the image above of my Nikon 16-85mm VR lens with the Sigma and I was very impressed with sharpness.
• At 3 pounds this lens is a little heavy, but not nearly as bad as I thought it would be based on a few reviews I have read. I’m sure it would wear me out after a full day of lugging it around on my D90, but it’s still not too bad.
• Colors are accurate and this lens provides great contrast. I love the image quality.
• I love the fact that the tripod collar is removable! If you don’t have a quick release plate on your tripod head, you will love this feature too! You can open up the tripod collar and remove the lens. Cool feature. Bonus points to Sigma!
• Auto Focus is quick. I haven’t compared it to the Nikon 70-200mm f 2.8 lens, but I think it would be fairly close based on my experience with other Nikon AF-S lenses.

I’ve got a total of 3 shoots today. Two this morning and and one this afternoon and you can bet that I’ll be putting this lens (and my Sigma 24-70 f 2.8 HSM lens) through their paces. I’ll have full reviews up before too long so you can see exactly what I think and how these lenses perform.

I hope you guys have a great weekend and I’ll see you back here next week. I’ve got to head out here soon!

One Big Light… Yet Still Small

Yesterday I received my latest order from B&H Photo, which included my two new lenses and a few other goodies. One thing that I have always stressed here is my liking to moving fast and free when it comes to my lighting setups. I now have a way to get more light using just my speedlights.

Back around the WPPI, Lastolite announced a new product called the Triflash. David Hobby even blogged about it. This awesome little umbrella flash bracket allows you to mount three, (count ‘em) THREE speedlights onto one light stand! This is awesome because you can use a large umbrella, like the Westscott 60″ umbrella (that I just bought) or an umbrella type softbox like the Westscott Apollo line. This allows you to have a little more power and a greater volume of light, without having to resort to studio strobes. Don’t get me wrong here, they certainly have their place in the lighting world. But as I’ve said before, I like to move light and fast and don’t want to have to lug around heavy gear.

As a side note, for those of you that follow me on Twitter, my Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 HSM and Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 HSM lenses also arrived yesterday. I got to play with them a little today, and you can expect a full review in the coming weeks.

It’s been a very busy week and I’ve got lots more to do. See you guys soon and Friday is just around the corner! Take care!

Photo Shoot with singer Peter Marin

Yesterday I had the pleasure of shooting with Jazz singer Peter Marin at Balboa Park here in San Diego. We had a great morning and got some really great shots. I thought I would post a couple of shots here on the blog for you to check out. I am still editing them down, but I found a couple of instant selects in the process.

I shot these photos with my trusty Nikon D90, Nikon 85mm f 1.8 lens, and an SB800 at 1/8 power through a 24 x 24 Lastolite Ezybox. That thing gives me the most beautiful, soft light I could ever hope for from a hot shoe flash. It just plain rocks! I just needed one light to pull off these shots. Remember, you don’t always have to have the big studio strobes to get high-quality light. And with small flashes, I can move and work quickly which is a HUGE advantage when shooting on location.

I hope you enjoyed the photos and I’ll see you back here later this week for more about what I’ve been up to! Come back and see me and until then, I hope you have a great week!

Small Flashes – Big Light Photo Contest

Yesterday afternoon I spent some time patching up two of my kids. My daughter fell off her bike and skinned her knee (photo above) and my youngest son wanted to see if one of his toy planes could fly. And fly it did, but the landing sucked. The plane came down and hit him in the face, right above his right eye. Lucky kid. Lucky me! Boys will be boys though.

Alright ladies and gents, it’s time to kick off another photo contest. This time around there’s one of my FlashStrap + Gel Kits up for grabs. Given the prize, I thought an appropriate theme would be Small Flashes – Big Light.

So what does that mean exactly? Well, making big light from small flashes. Thanks to Joe McNally for the idea! So in order to enter, you need to shoot a portrait using small flashes and create big, beautiful light to grace your subject with.

Now For The Rules:
The contest runs from today, June 11, 2009 until July 4, 2009. All images have to be taken during the period of the contest. Your entries will be uploaded to the SZ Photography Flickr Group. Photos will need to have EXIF data that shows the date that it was taken. Also, in order to keep honest photographers honest, you will need to include a setup shot with your subject there so that I know that you’re using small flashes and not studio strobes. I will be the only judge and all of my decisions will be final. I will judge the entries based on lighting technique, originality, and creativity.

The Goods
The chosen winner will receive a FlashStrap + Gel Kit shipped to them completely free of charge. You can read more about the kit here.

Bonus Giveaway
If you use Twitter and re-tweet my tweet about the contest, I’ll give away a FlashStrap + Gel Kit to the 25th person to re-tweet it.

Good luck with your entries and I look forward to judging them. The last contest that I ran for the MB-D80 Battery Grip had some really great photos!

Photo Shoot with Classical Guitarist Paul Bowman

This past Saturday I was privileged to shoot Paul Bowman, a classical guitarist here in San Diego. The shoot was the first of several shoots with musicians, bands, or singers as I build my portfolio. I would like to shoot portraits, headshots, promo and art work for people in the music industry. And as fellow photographer Chase Jarvis says, “Show what you want to shoot.”

Paul and I had a lot of fun working together and I got to listen to him play while we shot which was a treat for me, being a guitar player as well. (For the record I’m nowhere close to the level of musician as Paul is.) I’ll share with you a couple of immediate selects that I got to during my initial editing. All of my post production was performed in Lightroom on these images. No need for Photoshop. Just good lighting and proper technique.

You gotta love black and white photos.

A detail shot while Paul was playing.

Classic portrait, but I used another Speedlight and my surroundings to add some texture and depth to the background.

Great juxtaposition in a location that Paul showed me.

I’ve got a lot more editing to do, but I wanted to share these shots with you. I had a lot of fun on this shoot and Paul is going to get some great images to use for promotion. I’m definitely looking forward to doing more shoots like this and of course I’ll share the images with you guys.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed the images and I’ll see you back here again soon. I had to write this post ahead of time since I’m on the ship, out to sea. Let me know what you think of the shots in the comments and of course if you have questions, ask away! I’ll get to them as soon as I can. Have a great day!

This is a “No Whining Zone”

Last week I had posted an ad on Craigslist in the Creative Gigs section. In the ad I mentioned that I was looking for musicians, bands, or singers who would like to do some TFCD work so that I could start to build a music portrait portfolio. Part of the agreement that was in exchange for their time, I would give them a CD of select images that they could use and I would be able to use those images in my portfolio. Simple and straightforward, right? I’m afraid not for some people.

I got an e-mail from another photographer here in San Diego, who we’ll call Melissa. (Made-up name used to protect the part involved.) Melissa was upset that I had posted such an ad and felt it necessary to e-mail me. Here is what she wrote:

“Thanks to you and others like you, the rest of us miss out on legitimate paying work.

Thanks a lot.”

I wasn’t bothered at all by what she wrote to me. I do know that a lot of other photographers feel the same way that she does however. Even still, there are great guys like fellow photographers Chase Jarvis and David Hobby who think that doing a limited amount of work for free is a great thing.

I did respond and I’ll let you read what I had to say:

Melissa,

I must say that I’m a little confused. The people that I am shooting with are likely not those who would be willing to pay a photographer for a photo shoot. If they were, they probably wouldn’t look on Craigslist to find one or they would post an ad in the Creative Gigs section.

If you know of a way to shoot a type of client that you have never shot before and get them to pay you without having something to show them first, please let me know! I’d like to get in on that too! It would certainly save me a lot of time and effort and raise my gross income at the same time! Heck, I am sure there are a lot of photographers who would love to get paid thousands of dollars to shoot a wedding without having ever shot one before. Also, I highly recommend this Wikipedia article about Supply and Demand. I think it will give you a little more insight into what I’m doing and why I’m going about it this way.

I’m sure that there are a lot of photographers who oppose what I’m doing. Yet there are great photographers like Chase Jarvis who think this is a great idea. But the bottom line is that I’m doing something for someone and at the same time they are doing something for me. They get a few great pictures, I get to build my portfolio. It’s good karma and what goes around, comes around. Please know that I have no intentions of doing this forever. I’m simply working on a portfolio.

Good luck in all your endeavors and if there is ever anything that I can do for you, please let me know. (Yes, I’m being serious.)

Sincerely,

Stephen

I really hope that Melissa understood where I was coming from and what my position is on this matter. I wasn’t there to bash her, be disrespectful, or otherwise. My intent was simply to inform her. We, as humans, make a lot of mistakes along the way because we are often misinformed or we misunderstand someone else.

If you are reading this and you don’t happen to understand, read what Chase and David had to say (see links above). I think it will really open your eyes to how doing something just like this can open some doors for you. Not to mention the fact that there is a lot of experience to be gained.

I’ll be out to sea this week so the blog will be a little scarce. I’ll have some photos up for you tomorrow from a photo shoot on Saturday. Have a great week!