daydreamsart

I have an Alien Bee 800 and love it. I don't do much studio work, but when I do, I use it with a softbox, and a speedlight on a stand with an umbrella for a second light. I've also been using the AB800 for off camera room lighting at weddings and it's great. It's also easy to pack around. If you have the money, you should go with what the others have mentioned, but if money's tight, you won't be dissappointed with the Alien Bees.

 

If you're any good with a paint brush, you can make your own backdrops. WalMart has muslin 110" wide or so. Get some acrylic paint, sponges, etc.

 

Get some books on lighting and you'll know more about what you need depending on the style you're after.

 

A light meter is a must!

Why are you replying to it at all?

Nice work!!! You must have a natural talent for capturing the moment and know how to use your camera. You're right. Lifestyle portraiture is popular, and kids are much easier for that since they prefer to do their own thing anyway. You just need to be quick. I've found that even when people want the candid style, they often still want at least one traditionally posed portrait and it's a valuable skill to have as a photographer. A book you might like that covers both styles is "Group Portrait Photography Handbook" 2nd Edition, by Bill Hurter and published by Amherst Media. It's one of the best books I've found on the subject.

I sampled the skin color and it did have a lot of blue in it. The levels needed adjusting. I warmed it up and sharpened a little.<div></div>

I offer the Renaissance Verona leather library bound albums. I've been happy with them and so have my customers.

I go through WHCC for my client's guest cards, which are the same as business cards. You can have them printed both sides if you want. The minimum is only 180 cards and the price is reasonable.

My home owners is through Farmers. They wouldn't cover my gear. I checked with State Farm, and they would cover it, but I'd have to change my home owners over, and that would cost more. I ended up going with Hill and Usher. Not only is the gear well covered, but the liability insurance is a comfort to have.

A good size bridal room, nice mirror, window light on one side - preferably northern.

To create an action, open the actions palette. Click the arrow at the top right which opens a fly out menu and click on "new action." Name it and choose where you want it on your actions palette, then click "record." It will now record whatever you do. When you are finished, click the square left of the red circle to stop recording.

I have the 20D, but I think the noise levels are the same as the 30D. I'll go as high as ISO 1600 with good results. When it's that dark, though, I usually replace the 24-70 2.8L with a faster prime. You might be interested in <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00DNvQ">this thread from the archives</a> about shooting with high ISO's if you haven't already seen it.

<i>"In regards to the last comment: NEVER offer .exe files for download. (unless you are showing off your software programming or something) as they can so easily be viruses very VERY few visitors would (or should) take the risk."</i>

 

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Give me a break. I would have expected better advice from you, NTBD.net media. I've been offering exe shows for years and have had thousands of downloads. As a professional trying to impress potential clients, why would I offer shows with viruses? My current portfolio show, "Where Love Is", has been downloaded 2,774 times in the past 12 months. My show "Dancing Dreams" has been downloaded many times more than that over the past several years. My client shows get downloaded by their friends and families without any worries. Instead of using the rule "never" and closing all doors to the good things the internet has to offer, a person needs to educate themselves and secure their system by installing a firewall, virus and spyware protection, then use them and keep them current. You should be careful with ANYTHING you download. Be sure it's from a source you trust. EXE files are not the only extension that can be infected, there are MANY many more. As I said, flash is good. I personally don't care for the showitfast look, but then I've been spoiled with the quality of an exe show. I don't have the time or inclination to learn Macromedia right now to design my own flash shows. Maybe someday. The majority of my visitors and potential clients are PC users, and many apparently trust me.

I don't think avi is what you want. I struggled with this myself as I was trying to create slideshows that could be viewed on Macs and PCs a while back. There were big problems with all the formats but flash. Flash is the best quality available for now if you want mac users to be able to view your shows. ProShow doesn't work on macs. For simplicity, you could go with the showitfast program (flash) and macs can view also, or if you want quality (full screen, image quality, smooth transitions) and limit viewers to PCs only, go with an exe file. I remember trying avi, mp4, QT, Windows Media, and the final output quality sucked compared to exe.

Have a notepad on a clip board and have them print their name and any other pertinent information you need like phone and address. Then you have a list in the order you took them. That's how I do it and it works great.

I use a PC, and LaCie LCD monitor. I calibrate the monitor with the Monaco Optix. I'm happy with my set up, but do need a new PC. PC is all I've ever known and I haven't found a good reason to switch horses. Whatever system you use, be sure to get plenty of memory and hard drive space, with at least one additional hard drive. If you're sending your printing out, then ask your lab if they have an ICC profile you can get. Your monitor will still need to be calibrated. If you don't get an ICC from them, get some test prints.

 

What are you using now? What kind of monitor? Has it been properly calibrated with a colorimeter?

This article was part of a newsletter I got today and I thought I'd share. It's

by Lexar, but would apply to any cards.<br><br>

 

<a href="http://www.pictureline.com/newsletter/article.php?id=244">Article

Link</a>

The 50-70mm focal length of your lens would be best. Take a look at your son's yearbook from last year to get an idea of what style of portraiture is expected in the senior section. For outdoors, if you don't want to use fill flash then a reflector would be good. Backgrounds can be anything, a wall or wide open space. Creative use of depth of field can make about any background work. An online search for senior portraits can give you a lot of posing ideas. Also, the personal photography forum here on photo.net (where this thread will most likely be moved to) has several threads about this.

A big print is good for drawing attention. Most seem to go with 16x20 at the shows I've been to, but my 20x30 matted and framed stopped a lot of people. I like the first shot in your wedding gallery better than what you posted here and think it would make a nicer large print. Something else to think about is lighting. The last show I went to, the room lighting sucked and I didn't bring any of my own. A mistake I won't be repeating. For albums, I had a portfolio of favorites, and an album from a complete wedding. The complete wedding got the most attention. I also had some smaller proof albums of bridal and engagement sessions. In addition to the large display print, I had some 10x13's matted and framed on the table. Good luck!

Nicola, It's not the fact that the person is from overseas, it's the the letter itself. I could go into details, but the scammers obviously read these forums and I don't want to help them improve. Replying only makes things worse. I'd rather err on the side of protecting my ASSets than take a chance on something that's pretty much guaranteed to be a scam.

They seem to be putting a LITTLE more effort into them, but still, every line (and between the lines) read "SCAM" to me. Here's one I got yesterday:<br><br>

 

Hello, How are you doing? Thriving!!!

My name is Terry Ray, i'm from Rathmines , Ireland ( Europe ). I will be coming over to Idaho with my new bride Nicole Barnes who's also Irish by nature to start my new work with the Coca-cola Co. And just before then we will be getting married on the 5th of November, 2006 and we are looking for the best wedding photographer to take care of our photography. We require the best of photography on our wedding event for the best memories of photography for our children in future and as a matter of fact we have budgeted quite a handful of funds to get the best of photography on the day of our wedding event. Also, the event will be taking place in 2 locations that is from the church to the reception which is also where the Party Venue wil take place where our guests will wine, dine and dance. We are expecting at most 100 guests on the day of our occassion because most of our families in Europe and in the United Kingdom will be present for the occassion. Also, we would like you to know the reception will be taking place @<br>

Best Western CottonTree Inn<br>

1415 bench road, pocatello Idaho <br><br>

Here's what we desire as per photography on the day of our event, you could arrange a customized package for us; <br>

Wedding Day Photography (includes 7 hrs of coverage)<br>

> Online Proofing and Ordering<br>

> A full set of Proof Prints<br>

> Leathercraftsmen Album (12 pages 24 sides, about 50 Photographs)<br>

> Engagement Session or Post Wedding Session<br>

> 2 Parent Albums (each includes 12- 5X7) (these can be coffee table

> albums instead)<br>

> Coffee table Book<br>

> High Resolution CD of all the Images and all negatives on Dvd. and other optional items. Please let me know if you are available on this date and also if you're willing to help. Have a nice weekend, thanks.<br><br>

 

Terry Ray

Pictures to EXE for creating the slide show, Audacity (freeware) for audio editing, and Ulead DVD Movie Factory for burning the slide show as a DVD movie.

Have you looked at this site yet? http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

Wide open apertures are tricky and it's good to know exactly what will be in focus at a given aperture and distance. This calculator will show you that if you focus on something 20 feet away with your 50mm lens at f/1.4 on a D70, the area in focus will be 2.75 feet. So for photographing a few people, you'll want to be at least that far away, maybe further. Write down the focus distance at certain f/stops, get familiar with them, and you'll know that lens well.

Wow, Zoltan! Very beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

I'd go with some of each. I doubt a teenage boy would be intimidated by a flash on a bracket, at least I haven't come across one. Teenagers usually want to look tough and cool. Mom and the grandparents will want smiles, so include some of those. A great source of ideas for seniors is the entertainment industry. Look through CD covers at the music store and teen magazines. That's what the kids want to look like - teen idols. Ask him about his hobbies. Does he play sports, musical instruments, etc.? Think of ways to incorporate these into his portraits. Guys are often a bit uneasy in front of a lens, so be ready to give plenty of direction. They aren't like young kids that quickly ignore the camera. When you get a shot you think he might like, show it to him on the monitor. That helps them to relax and trust you more.<div></div>

I'd rather have too many than not enough. Right now I have 36 in the wedding gallery, 18 in the engagements, and 36 portraits. (Not counting private client galleries which have hundreds.) A wedding coordinator told me not long ago that my site just didn't really show what I do. I'm in the process of changing that problem and plan on having a lot more pictures online, and simplifying my site a little more. Either 100-150 in one gallery, or splitting them up as has already been mentioned, then maybe having around 75 in each gallery. Plus, I'm going to have a sample album in it's own gallery, which will show not only how I do albums, but show an entire wedding. Portraits will all be in one gallery. I also have several slide shows available for download as EXE (zip) files (public and private). I wouldn't worry about storage space since it's pretty cheap, unless you're going with a freebie site and then you won't have much space at all. I'm using about 400 MB of space on my server at the moment and have up to 500MB available. Plenty for me, but I seriously need to clean out my main image closet before filling it back up. I have until next Tuesday. Bridal fair Wednesday.

If their teeth are yellow, I brighten them a bit. If they have blemishes, I erase them (they're not permanent anyway, why should they remain on a portrait?). If they have moles, I might lighten them a little, but not remove them, since they are a permanent part of the person. I might brighten the eyes, not necessarily whiten. Since we're dealing with a 2 dimensional portrait, and people are (usually) 3 dimensional, I think reality can be compromised. The trick is knowing where to stop. Retouching is too often WAY over done to the point of making the person look scary. The subject shouldn't be able to tell exactly what you did. I don't want someone to say "that doesn't look like me". What I like to hear is "I've never liked pictures of myself before, but I love these." Wrinkles are not a bad thing, but softening the skin a little doesn't hurt. Soft focus lenses are great for wrinkles, but then the whole portrait is soft. PS and sharp lenses are the best of both worlds when it comes to portraiture. Lighting and posing techniques can help a lot, as can properly applied make-up. I never ask someone if they want touch ups, but my clients trust and expect the best from me, and that includes my digital retouch work.