adam_nance

In order to shoot vertically, some brackets require you to rotate the camera clockwise lowering your right hand and using it both to support the camera and press the shutter. As opposed to most people's preference to turn their camera counter clockwise and support the camera and lens with their left hand. I find this very inconvenient.

I like the image of the same bride on your home page better. But both images are

good.

 

Between the two designs posted here, I like the one with McCulloch Photography

printed on the photo.

 

Good luck and the bridal show!

 

-Adam

I hate having to scroll through images one at a time. I'd rather see a page full of photos or a page full of thumbnails. Different clients are going to be drawn to different images, and they'll click on the type of image they like and pay less attention to the ones that don't interest them. IMHO, feeding all prospective clients the same images in the same order is doing yourself a disservice.

 

I agree with too many words on the homepage and that the pages should be centered.

 

-Adam

Okay, now I understand a little better. If this is what some clients want, I'm glad

there are photographers out there meeting their needs.

 

-Adam

Correct me if I'm wrong, but...

 

Didn't the bride and groom hire you to take photos of their reception? Who's taking

photos of the reception while you're lining your pockets with the guest's cash?

 

I can only imagine a fashion photographer at a show or a sports photographer at a

game offering to take photos of the audience for $20 a pop while ignoring the job

they were hired to do.

 

I dunno, maybe your clients hire you to take posed photos of their guests standing in

front of a fake backdrop in a side room away from the reception, but my clients hire

me to take pictures of their wedding day.

 

If the guests at my wedding were waiting in line to have their portrait taken rather

than dancing and drinking with me and my new wife, I'd be PISSED.

 

-Adam

In my opinion, guests are never in the way. This is axiomatic--like "the customer is always right."

 

By definition, they are guests and I am hired help and it is my responsibility to work around them. We had a 300 person Lebanese wedding on Saturday. In preparing us for what was about to come during the reception, the groom's sister told me to "picture My Big Fat Greek Wedding." :) It was an awesome reception. These folks partied and had a great time. But they also crowded in so tightly and took so many photos, that many of our photos were difficult to take or ruined by flashes etc. What did we do? Shoot plenty of coverage to make sure that the ruined shots wouldn't impair our ability to deliver the goods.

 

Apart from family portraits, where I sometimes have to ask people to please take their photos from another angle (and people are usually embarassed and apologetic when they realize they were standing in front of the professinoal photographer), I rarely ask others to get out of my way. And I would never ask the B&G to keep others from taking photos.

 

It's the B&G's job to have a great time that day. It's my job to improvise, adapt and overcome.

 

-Adam

I like it! (again, maybe not with that photo)

 

I also kind of agree that the photos posted look like perfectly good pics that were photoshopped.

 

Jen and I often take black and white pics with our 20+ year old Minolta XD-5 and XD-11. Until recently, we've been receiving processed prints from a professional lab that largely erase the idiosyncracies of these aging cameras. (One has a light leak that acts up intermittently and can be alternately aggravating and sublime.)

 

When the photo lab got backed up, we asked them to simply scan the negatives. I figured if any post-processing was needed, I could surely do in photoshop what the techs were doing behind the counter.

 

Here is an example of an unprocessed negative that we plan to hand over to the couple as-is tomorrow morning. I think it has character. And I think it's ripe for this antiquing treatment.

 

I'd definitely like to know the steps listed in the magazine!

 

-Adam<div></div>

Well, yeah I do the same thing for dance shots, but with the SB-800. There's no rule that says the SB800 can't be used in manual mode. In fact, I often use one SB800 to control two other SB800's for dance shots at F8 with a 1/8" exposure and I've never been happier with dance shots.

 

To each his own.

 

When I first got the SB800 I was freaked out about the pre-flash. My wife and I were playing with it at home and the preflash (especially in rear-sync curtain mode) was a bit freaky. But after several weddings with perfect exposures and no closed eyes, I'm sold. I love my SB800 and will buy another two (we currently rent 'em) ASAP.

 

I would never try to talk someone else into using them. Whatever works for you works for you. But I love 'em.

 

-Adam

Pro Lab (Fremont), Capital Hill Photo (14th and Madison), and Ivy Seright (sp?)

(Belltown/Denney regrade area) are all excellent. I use Capitol Hill Photo and while

they tend to get a little backed up around the holidays (who doesn't with all that rich

food around the office?), their work is outstanding. Pro Lab lost one of my negatives

once. If I were a kinder, more gentle-hearted person, I would have forgotten that by

now, but I'm not. :)

 

I think that Camera's west downtown (which is a Ritz in disguise) does an alright job

with digital photos for a quarter a piece, but I've never used them for film.

 

Best,

Adam

Frank, "both" in that sentence refers to both SB-800's:

 

"I vote for two 800's. A) More power and faster recycling times than the 600 (especially with the fifth battery) B) both can be used as master or slave flashes as future needs arise C) identical equipment tends to minimize screwups caused by equipment confusion."

Glazers is the shiznit: excellent gear, superior service, knowledgable staff, and affordable prices.

 

Some days I wish they'd rent me some little talent, but apparantly that's my responsibility. :)

 

-Adam

http://www.msnusers.com/Asktheoleproaboutphotography/joezeltsman.msnw

 

Here are the basics. The photos are dated, but the techniques are sound. My best advice (and I'm not a particularly accomplished portrait photographer) is to learn all the rules carefully and then to learn when to throw them out the window. The expressions, joy, strength, intelligence, drive, determination etc. expressed by a high-quality portrait are infinitely more important than the camera angle and head tilt, but these basics will help you to spend less time thinking about simple problems and more time thinking about what it is you and your subject want to express and how to best portray those qualities on film.

 

Hope this helps!

 

-Adam

I rarely use my tungston gel on the job, but if you're really trying to get the WB

correct, the best way to do it is to gel the flash and set the D70 to tungston. This

way, the light from the flash matches the light from the indoor bulbs and the D70

does a great job of equalizing everything. Colors are perfect.

 

Like I said, I rarely use it on the job though, just because of the KISS principle. The

more I change settings on location, the more likely it is that I'll be outside after the

ceremony taking shots of the couple with my D70 set on tungston and ruin a bunch

of images.

 

-Adam

As stated in Todd Frederick's thread below, the worst noise seems to be underexposed images at high ISO that one has to lighten in CS. So make sure when photographing at high ISO to check your histogram and not underexpose. But even with the correct exposure, grain varies from camera to camera and ISO to ISO and is often a problem with my D70 at 1600 even with a perfectly exposed image.

 

I just downloaded a copy of neatimage from neatimage.com about half an hour ago and so far I'm very pleased with the noise reduction results. Give it a try.

 

Best,

-Adam

I vote for two 800's. A) More power and faster recycling times than the 600 (especially with the fifth battery) B) both can be used as master or slave flashes as future needs arise C) identical equipment tends to minimize screwups caused by equipment confusion.

Derek, I'm with everyone else here (and every other sane person on Earth) when I say

"LEAVE THESE PEOPLE ALONE!"

 

I think wedding followup is a great idea. A "first christmas" email (if they

celebrate Christmas) with a photo of the couple or a first anniversary email with a

photo is tasteful and will likely serve to keep you and the services you provided fresh

in their minds.

 

But after a divorce, the last person on earth (well, besides my mother-in-law) I'd want

to hear from is my wedding photographer. Not only is it tasteless to contact these

folks, it's likely to be useless or counterproductive as it will only leave them with a

bad taste in their mouths when they think about you and assume that you're out for

nothing but money.

 

If you want the opportunity to make money from these folks again, the best thing to

do is to leave them alone.

 

-Adam

Way to slow. Unusable.

 

I clicked on the link above. The letters on the intro page began to write. I tried

clicking on them to skip them, but by the time I had clicked, the choice between

photography and videography had come up and I had clicked on videography.

Ooops...tried to hit the back button, ended up back on photo.net.

 

If I were a client, I'd never go back, but I wanted to offer feedback to you, so I clicked

again. Waited for the letters to write. Clicked photography. Waited a few seconds

for a slideshow to load. Nothing. Clicked "skip." Waited a few seconds for the

homepage to load. Nothing. Clicked gallery. Waited a few seconds...

 

...Gave up and left.

 

And I'm on DSL here at work. If I were at home and a prospective client, I'd cross you

off my list right away.

 

I'm sorry to have to trash something you probably spent a lot of time on. I feel bad

about that. But the above is a description of what I honestly think will happen with a

number of prospective clients. Take it for what it's worth.

 

-Adam

Grad students in the Netherlands can now see in several hundred dormitory windows at the same time. Peeping toms everywhere rejoice.

 

:)

 

Neat photo. It would be cool to see something like that of a huge crowd of people where one could see the expressions on several hundred faces at the same time. Say, Times Square at midnight 12/31 or the mall in DC during MLK's Dream speech or a superbowl stadium right after a touchdown.

 

-Adam

Let's see... tension relief photos...

 

On our off weekends from wedding photography we generally bring a camera along to whatever party/bar we're headed to and spend the evening taking party shots of our friends. Granted, once the drinking starts, the quality of the photos (and the subjects) deteriorates rapidly, but I know what you mean about the pleasures of being able to make pictures and not care at all whether they turn out...<div></div>

I liked...

"The art of wedding photography" by bambi cantrell. Gorgeous photos. Great tips

and techniques.

 

"The best of wedding photojournalism" by bill hurter. Gorgeous photos. Great tips

and techniques.

 

I did not like...

"Professional techniques for the wedding photgrapher" by george shaub. Both the

photos and the tips and techniques are outdated and unimpressive.

 

"Professional techniques for digital wedding photography" by Hawkins. This might be

useful for an all-film luddite photographer who wants to expand into digital, but for a

digitally savvy photographer, I found it useless.

 

"wedding photography with adobe photoshop" by Ferro. This book just plain sucked.

Not only is it incredibly light on information, the techniques they recommend in this

book are inferior to most of the techniques suggested on this board.

 

"Wedding photography...lighting...posing...marketing" by Ferro. Buying this book was

just plain stupid on my part. I didn't realize that it was by the same guy who wrote

the sucky adobe photoshop book. The photos in this book are terrible, I would be

embarassed to show them to my clients, and while there is a diagram of where the

photographer placed his lights for almost every shot, the diagrams are ALL THE SAME

with the flash 30 degrees or so off axis from the lens. Boring and useless.

 

These are just my opinions. Free advice worth every penny.

 

I hope it helps,

 

-Adam

Mikal,

I'd love to see some of your wedding photos! It's so kind of you to offer. Shoot 'em

to me at adamknance@yahoo.com I tried to get your email from photo.net, but it

didn't show up in my inbox.

Best wishes,

-Adam

Oh cr@p! I'm supposed to wear pants now, too?

 

This whole photography thing is a lot of work.

 

;)

Thanks to everyone for the wonderful replies. I'm really getting excited about this

wedding.

 

It takes place on a Saturday, so I'm assuming they're not orthodox.

 

Errol- What makes you think that separating the men and women is discrimination

against women? It sounds to me like the men get the short end of that stick. I'd

rather party on the women's side of the wedding any day. :) Just food for thought.

 

And Ellis says I have to get circumcized? Geesh, I hope I never have to shoot a

eunuch's wedding!

 

:)

 

-Adam

Ellis, thank you. The problem is that I can't get them in order in the Photoshop

browser. I can't seem to sort multiple groups of images from multiple cards taken

nearly simultaneously into chronological order.

 

Because we have two cameras capturing images, we need a way to sort them so my

photos will interlace with Jen's. I can do this in Windows Explorer, but not in

photoshop. And when I sort and rename in Windows Explorer, they still don't come

out in order in the photoshop browser because the two programs sort numbers

differently.

 

MP, I'll look into ACDSee. If it's useful for flipping through and discarding images,

that would help too, since the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer plays inconsistent

tricks with colors. Thanks.

 

Anyone else?

 

-Adam

Hello everyone,

 

Jen and I are meeting Saturday with our first Jewish bride. We're totally excited--it

sounds like a heckuva party--but we don't know much about what to expect. On the

phone, the bride told Jen that it would be a traditional Jewish wedding. We meet

Saturday, so I'm sure I can ask her for all the details, but I'd like to sound a little more

knowledgable before going into the meeting.

 

I saw a post on here a month or two ago about a tent used to cover the B&G, and the

bride said something to Jen on the phone about a traditional chair ceremony(?). Can

anyone give us some details on what to expect and how it will require us to expand

our usual plans (where to stand etc.) or equipment?

 

Thanks for the info! Best wishes,

-Adam