mcorona

July 13, 2009

Here's what I would do with the image.

I saw it as more of a high key, so I played with it towards that end.

I took the original jpg and did a little skin smoothing.

Switched it to LAB colors, took the "lightness" channel and used that as my BW image.

Played with the curves a bit to make it little brither. Then I dodged the eyes like 10%

July 4, 2009

<a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/554077-REG/Manfrotto_by_Bogen_Imaging_222_222_Grip_Action_Ballhead.html#reviews">http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/554077-REG/Manfrotto_by_Bogen_Imaging_222_222_Grip_Action_Ballhead.html#reviews</a>

This is what I use. It allows you to quickly switch between portrait and landscape modes during the ceremony.

July 4, 2009

What other equipment do you have?

Do you have a tripod?

June 30, 2009

We do something similar once a year in our city for a local church fundraiser.

We generally just do quick portraits which is what is asked of us.

We go out do shots during the tournament.

I set the iso to 400, the shutter at 250, and then just dial the aperture up and down as lighting conditions change.

Everything is done at JPG (white balancing is pretty easy either sunny or cloudy it's close enough)

Copied to my macbook pro, I do quick edits in Bridge/Photoshop. Burn a disk, have an assistant drive to Costco, Get 4 of each print. Meanwhile I make a slideshow of the images that is burned onto a DVD, which they use to broadcast over dinner.

First time was a little stressful but it's easy now.

Link to a couple galleries. <a href="http://clarkcorona.exposuremanager.com/g/golf_tournaments">Click Here.</a>

June 24, 2009

I just whent back to count how many Raw Vs JPG I shoot.

It seems to be about 40% raw 60% JPG.

I do JPG for getting ready, Raw for ceremony + portraits + romantics, and JPG for the reception except the first dance which I shoot RAW.

June 20, 2009

Here's mine. Normally for weddings.

Takes me about 2 days, 1 if I'm in a rush.

Import Photos into lightroom. Once the first card is done, I insert the next one and begin editing. You can edit while you import.

Unlike most people I don't go through the all and select keepers before I edit. I instead Look at al the shots in a series. Delete the ones I don't want and edit the rest. Since the lighting and exposure is usually about the same in each series this is the most logical way for me to do it.(A series for example would be the family formals, or the cake toss.)

Once I'm all done I rename all the photos using the date and time for their file name. So if it was a pic for today it would be 20090620-092930m That would be June 20th 2009 at 9:29 and 30 seconds. the 'm' is for Martin so I know I took it and not my partner.

After the rename I open them up in Bridge. I like bridge because I can select pictures in any pattern and apply batch actions to them. So I'll select all the ones I want to ajust sharpness on and run them through a batch.

I then get them as big as I can in bridge, and go through and do final touches on images I want. Finally I run a batch that saves them all as JPG at Quality 8 and leave them uploading overnight to our print lab.

June 19, 2009

I still consider myself very young as a wedding photographer, but even I get requests all the time from people wanting to be an assistant for free. Just for the chance to get some sort of break into the business and build a portfolio.

Honestly, I would rather just pay someone to be a mule and be my 3rd arm and not expect to teach them anything.

It seems, you just want to do the easy part of wedding photography, we can do that ourselves already. The hard part is the Marketing, the Networking, the 'Business' side of it.

Your contract model simply doesn't work. "I deliver proofs to the main photographer and he accepts my work or not. If he accepts, I am paid by the hour for my time. If he rejects the work, he gets no photos I get no money." How would me paying extra for your photos make me any more profit? The bride isn't going to pay extra if your photos are used. Even if you're an amazing photographer, You're requiring me to give you all credit for the photos whenever I try to use them for marketing. So tell me, really what would be in it for me?

It seems the benefits would all be going to you,

You'd get paid. You'd be learning. Somebody else would be booking all the brides.

Where's the benefit to the lead photographer?

No one is asking you to give up your job and become somebody's slave. But at the same time you have to recognize that you're trying to get something of value from someone. It's hard for me to just give the secrets and techniques of my craft to just anyone. Let alone pay them for it. There's certainly much you can learn online, but there is no subsitute for experience and a good mentor.

June 16, 2009

Here's my rather quick edit. To be honest though, it's kind of a Cliché shot; Which I don't mind. I love Cliché But it has to be taken correctly instead of trying to fix it later. In this case, the overexposed building shouldn't be in the shot at all. Here's a couple of links to my own take on this shot. <a href="http://clarkcorona.exposuremanager.com/scripts/expman.pl?rm=show_photo&photo_id=20081011-13082946&dir=galleries/4/52">Click here for Link 1</a> On this 2nd one I liked it alot better when I got in there.... right under :) <a href="http://clarkcorona.exposuremanager.com/p/2009_04_11_-_lake_natoma_inn/20090411-184152m37">Click here for Link 2</a>

June 6, 2009

Here's my take on it... Everything I did was done on layers, and the opacity of each later was adjusted to taste.

First I adjusted the contrast of the image with curves. Cropped the image. on one layer I erased everything but the skin with the eraser tool and applied a blur to it, then set to opacity to something like 20%

Another layer I desaturated the image and then applied a light blur to it and set it to 'overlay' and then once again adjusted the layer opacity.

Another layer, I did a 'lighting effects' 'spotlight' I kind of put a beam of light as if it was pointing angled right onto the brides face. Once again, adjusted this layer's opacity.

Finally I made a new layer and simply used a black paintbrush to dark the edges a little bit.

I think that's everything. I thought about removing the bridesmaid as well like some of the previous posts, but It's not something I would ever do for a bride unless specifically requested by her. <img src="http://clarkcorona.com/temp/temp-internetfix.jpg" alt="" />

March 30, 2009

I recently started using the closet preset (sun,shade,tungsten,etc) for pretty much everything except Formals and Romantics, where I custom white balance since the lighting doesn't usually change that much for me.

This has been working out very well for me. It gives me accuracy and saves me editing time. Since I shoot formals in manual mode (both camera and flash) It's usually a matter of getting one image exactly how I want and auto syncing the rest of the formals to match.

I haven't done it yet, but it's usually so close I'd feel comfortable shooting everything in JPG.

March 30, 2009

I think it depends on how far you want to go with weddings.

It also depends on if you are charging.

If you aren't then go budget and get an ef-s.

If you are charging for weddings, my advise would be to stick with what you have until your photography makes enough to get the 24-70 2.8L

March 30, 2009

Some of the gallery links didn't have any picture for me.

I'm on firefox.

March 26, 2009

another word for Wordpress. Hosted on my own domain/server.

http://clarkcorona.com/blog is my blog. I like the templates available.

March 26, 2009

My first flash was a 430EX.

It's awsome. I still have it. I still use it. I mainly use it as a slave in conjuction with my 580II.

March 21, 2009

For light color walls: "If it's a white ceiling, I would put the flash head at 45 degrees with the built-in wide angle diffuser in place." - Steve. I would only recommend this if you are zoomed in, say more than 50mm. If you're zoomed too wide and hitting the ceiling, you will capture a very light colored circle of light on the ceiling, and if the ceiling closer to you than your subject, to expose for your subject correctly the circle of light will be overexposed and very predominant (our eyes tend to focus on the lighter areas of picture.)When I'm in rooms like that (usually getting ready rooms for men) they're smaller and I end up going a little wide. If the room is light light colored and small, I just aim the flash head straight back behind me.

I did get one room that had a very very dark green walls this last year. The paint wasn't matte it had kind of a gloss. I could bounce a little bit off of it, but I knew only to bounce on the wall when I was planning on making that photo black and white. I think the best I could do with that was to diffuse my flash using something like this: <img src="http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f273/HackerUK/0712_Diffuser.jpg" alt="" width="399" height="600" />

I also gelled my flash to match all the tungsten lights that surrounded me.

March 17, 2009

"I honestly believe that I could show up to a wedding with a 1d m3, complete selection of professional wide aperture lenses, and excellent education and ability to apply the equipment; but compared to an amateur using a Rebel XSi and kit lens BUT who 'shops the pictures to be 'fashion...' I would seem sub-par to the majority of folks."

To me, that whole statement seems very silly.

Just like you think that someone who 'shops' too much creates sub-par imagery, someone might think that it's silly to automatically assume that showing up with a 1d m3 instead of a Rebel XSi makes anybody more professional than anybody else.

Just because you don't like the method or work doesn't make it sub-par by the way. The point to where everybody thinks the line should be drawn is very subjective by the way.

February 26, 2009

Chris weeks really seems to like this lens.

http://aphotocontributor.typepad.com/aphotocontributor/2008/12/going-to-the-dogs.html

February 24, 2009

John V, as apposed to everyone who buys lenses on silly whims, I think most people buy lenses they think/know they will use. I only own 3 lenses, what does that mean?

Also, Is it possible that some people look at BOTH silly charts AND pictures made with those lenses.

Some of us like to look at as many aspects as possible about lenses before we buy. We like to understand what we were buying better. If I noticed that a lens did particularly poorly on charts and yet did rather well amongst established pros, I'd want to know why. This information is free.

February 24, 2009

Sorry I was mistaken, yes it was SEARS, I don't know why I thought target.

But yeah, Kmart had filed bankrupcy and then (it was like a couple years later) bought sears for like 10 billion.

But yeah, my point was bankrupcy doesn't always mean dead and gone.

February 24, 2009

I remember back in the Day. K-mart file for bankruptcy, six months later they bought Target, go figure.

February 24, 2009

phanfare.com I like their cleaner interface so much more. Plus they have Desktop client software. It's a little program that makes it easier to upload organize albums. You should give them a try for free. If you do end up signing up put me on as a referal :)

They do their printing through Kodak.

February 24, 2009

Am I seeing something different?

To me the 28-135 looks alot worse than the 24-105 @ f/8

Alot more purple fringing,

Set them to 35mm /f4 , the 28-135 looks almost useless.

But in general, the tests don't seem very accurate.

February 24, 2009

I noticed a significant increase in lower light focus when I upgraded to the 5DMKII from the 5D.

I don't need to overshoot like I used to with the 5D, just to make sure I get a good focus shot.

February 24, 2009

Is it me, or is it easier to get these from smaller local photography stores than online?

When I bought mine, I kept looking online and calling around places like Best Buy or Fry's.

Then I walked into a local shop, They had two Kits, but the owner took the lens outta the kit and sold me the body only. He said the lens was easy enough to sell by itself.

February 22, 2009

You mentioned you purchased it primarily as a portrait lens. Which means about 40mm to 80mm (If you're on a cropped sensor) would be most useful to you on this lens. Staying within that range would allow you to minimize the distortion of facial features, particularly the nose.

At 40mm you're already at F/4 as your widest aperture. For most this usually isn't enough to blur out backgrounds. Getting something with a wider aperture would also increase the effectiveness of your flash.

This lens would be a good lens for other things, But I wouldn't consider it a good lens for portraits. For portraits, and in the same price range, I would get the 50mm f/1.8.

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"If that lens costs $80, what is your work worth?"

David, If you were buying a print, would you ask the photographer what lens he used and then based on that try to haggle the price out?

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Posts posted by mcorona