ellery_chua___singapore

Sorry about your loss.

Strong suggestion to slow down if this is happening twice you need to hurry less. Be Queen Victoria do not rush. But easier said than done at a wedding. Speed is equated to compentency and if you take too long guests get bored and distracted. Grin get insurance at this rate it could pay for itself.

On SB800 being better flash - do not I wish it. Have a mate who blow the flash tube at a wedding - laughed about it and thought tough luck on him getting a defective. Then I did a run way job and which ended with one SB800 with a hole in the plastic frensel lens and a fried circuit board in the SB8a. Had a friendly chat with the nikon tech - his words were to the effect that melting fresenels and blown tubes are very common if shooting with the difusion cap on as the heat build up is greater with the newer flashes than the older ones. Dunno which is worse replacing feet or changing flash tubes which incidentally cost 1/3 of a new unit - ditto for if the frensel screen melts. Ah yes if you find batteries too hot to handle in the sb800 - this is supposed to be normal as the flash draws more current so the batteries 2500mh rechargeable get real hot when run hard.

Almost tempted to go back to the potato masher mertz like the 60's.

Ok a wedding studio that occassion uses my services when they overload tried out the ink jet route for proofs, they gave it up for cost and color reasons, there were some issues with banding in prints. They are now using a color laser that has been calibrated to print proofs.

There was another american photographer on an email list that used the xerox 1250 as a proof printer - this would work but the cost factor is something real. 60 month lease at about U$550 - 650 per month with a charge fee per print - toner and service and parts in package - not the paper though. Comes with a mac with splash rip.

Inkjet costs is in the inks and nozzle clots are to be expected.

Do not mean to rain on your parade.

Stacy

I like your original - yes I would agree that when viewed in PS its a little too orangey/peachy - but what skin tone are you aiming for ? Or are you trying to match to what the customer's skin tone is ? I feel the original has a touch too much red, and magenta. Trying to figure how to post the adjusted copy.<div></div>

Emin

The set at pbase is very very nice ( georgous comes to mind love the mood) - question here is you spend the time retouching to touch up or to photoshop from something different to what we see or is it as capture close and you refine. Your work is artistic, if you need to spend so much time on post production - its is normally a good time to look and see what you can do make as right in camera before needing to do PS. Then you can make it wow even more.

Ok as I understand most people do not PS until client comes back with the selection from the proofs. Proofs are normally before major retouching. Otherwise you will drown in the work - example to get 150 proofs (retouched) you may have to retouch say 230 selected. Then you may have to put artistic overdrive on the 40 or so images they selected from the 150 proofs. Urgh my mimd numbs at the thought of needing to go thru 3500+ to get out 230 possibliles for the 150 proofs. Editing out 180 to 300 prints from 800 to 1500 captured is already a tedious task.

Just looking the package- $2000 for 150 proofs, a 40 page 8x10 album and 3597 photos - man this is a huge amount - on a 12 hour wedding shoot I average about 800 to 1500 of which client gets back about 700 to 1300 - I promise them at least 300 to 400 images. If your 3K plus is culled then perhaps you may want to relook at that - you are shooting to death your camera. My guess is that you should be asking for some thing closer to 3.5 to 4.5 thousand maybe look at an album that is more upmarket than what you are using. But you will have to do the research for your market. The talent level in NY is so high that it's difficult to sustain if you cannot move ahead fast enough.

Advertising may help with find the right parties for the prices. Do you make extra from additonal sale of extra pages ? For framed enlargments ? Album set for parents, grand parents - traditional families you need to focus on selling also to the seniors of the family.

Meylen

Ok let's look at practicallities. Ask your photographer to have the data recovered. It's no longer rocket science any more - software programs of under 300 US$ will do this - what you need is a computer, running time for the recover to take place. Assuming that its not a full scale crash more like a serious FAT error.

Worse case offer to split the cost of the software with the photog but get him to run it. Even if you can recover 80% of what was shot - it is still a lot better than nothing (now).

Ok this could be wrong -

1.try some warm air and sugar water feeder - butterflies are insects and they do become more animated when the ambient temperature is warmer, sugar water is food I expect a fed butterfly that is warm will be able to fly more. warm air could be from a hair drier at very low heat setting - no point cooking the poor dears.

2. suspect that checking with a insect wrangler will get more tips how to get the butterflies up to speed on this.

Like in every thing in life the pro's make it look good and simple but you do not see what happend before the they did all of that. It looks simple to set up a posed candid - go try to do it - good likelyhood first couple of times is not going to be the "perfect" shot you envisaged.

There is nothing "holy" about the term. It a marketing label = you focus should be can you provide the images that wow. do that and you're doing ok. show wow and you will have business.

there is ture photojournalism - it just a darn sight more difficult to do to prodcut wow pictures. It takes good relexes, intimate feel with your equipment, a good eye, a good people reading skills, a gogogo spirt that never runs out of go juice, and a little luck.

what does the agreement say ? If you are shy about this how would you react if the couple now tells you that they will pay you only 500 ?

my 2 cents a 700 wedding is not likely to come back for enlargments unless you're a rare talent hidding in the bushes. 4R's is what they will do. so why sweat it ? In this day and age it could be better to let the client run around to handle their own reprints if there is no value in the print order.

Peace 2 too.

Ok at least I now know where you are comming from. 8 months is kinda lite on experience to make a firm conclusion but then if you've been shoot every other day for 8 months it may explain the doubts. You need to see more. Hey I need to see more too - not that I'm even in my middle game.

Wedding work is not always resulting in art pieces, for some for every shoot they do they can come back with 20 to 50 pieces that can become art after post production. For others its 1 or 3. In every wedding the images are there, we just have to see them and be ready to capture in the way to make it as good as it can be. Was told this wondered if my leg was being pulled, begining to understand the truth behind this.

Art is a left brain activity (the doing of not the talking about), any thing that requires language is right brain activity. A personal opinion is that artist are often more left brain active - ie they think in a purer visual format rather than in words, phrases over layed over a visual flash. Thats why composition by the numbers hits and misses - sometimes the image need to go its own way. Art talk is (for me ) a weird animal - right brain activity on a left brain subject - an imposition of finite values over what is proabably an infintie subject. That's why its difficult to define art - but most people can tell you what they think qualifies and they may never agree on this point too.

Tip = beware of absolutes they will trip you up. Most things are in a range of continium. Shades of grey no pure whites or blacks.

Matt

My reply was condensed into as few words as possible - was rushed for time. It does not sound very politically correct.

Point one - your post was some what offensive, since you passed judgement that wedding work is not art but a craft and expect the reader to basically prove otherwise to you. We the readers do not have a duty to teach you better. My experience with this sort of thing is that it is pointless to try to change another person's opinion when there is not to gained in the exercise especially when the expressed opinion is biased and a challenge is thrown in to prove that opinion wrong. You are not a prospective client 8-) even if you were, I would probably pass on such a prospective - no point doing a dangerous handle with care case - tendencies that these then to get into issues sometime not of your doing life is short while gather ugly experiences unnecessarily ?

Point 2 - the expression some thing has die and is rotting away - goes to the core of any photo or art inclinced work - if you do not like/love what you are doing its time to move on to something else. When the feeling is not there anymore, the work will be at best documentary capture at worse ugly in some way. Work always has a reflection no matter how faint of the author.

Point 3 - I asked if you had enough experience doing wedding work and looking at work of wow catagory of wedding shooters to make that judgement. You have not answered that. Why I asked is because I do not recall seeing any work or posting from you. I suspect that you may not have enough depth into the subject to form a sound judgement. It was also subtle hint to do the home work and not expect others to do it for you.

Point 4 - art if viewed through the view point of a fine arts BA point of view tends to be come too sterile. A much more seasoned photographer once suggest checking with the customer for their reactions to works, or better yet some one unrelated to the customer (no emotional ties to subject matter) - when the image starts producing positive emotional response you're going the right way. Negetive - well its time to do serious postmorteun. Your critera lists reads a lot like comming from an intellectual fine arts BA point of view - not bad just some time a little out of touch with real world realities. Hopefully it was not from art gallery view point - I heard not experience that this can be sometimes so hype laddend that if the hype could be converted to rocket fuel - we could fuel a mission to Uranus and back.

The old adage about not using new just bought equipment in a major did not get made for non essential reasons.

Unless you a real quick study it could make for a choopy ride. Use what you have used in the past for lower light setting situations. IS is not the big thing that it is held to be. IS might work stablising the camera, it however does nothing to freeze the subject from moving during a long shutter speed shot - any thing below 1/20 is in high danger of being a motion blur capture exercise. But the 70-200/2.8 non IS has been used successfully in these situtions - it is all on the shooter's experience and ability not the lump of metal and glass.

Matt

I would not know if you have done wedding work either as a freebie or commercially. Nor do I know if you have gone looking at wedding photographer's website. You need to have done both for long enough to make a value judgment. If you enought time behind the wheel and have looked at enough strong shooters -and can still come to this decision then perhaps it may be time for you to shoot some thing else -as something has died within you and is rotting away.

An arm chair critic is a lot like well a half cocked gun.

There is no need for any of us to justify to you or any one else if we do can be considered as art. It is for us to know if we are still trying to do so and wether we succeed or not - the images tell that to anyone who will look honestly. We who shot them know and keep score. In the words of Monty Zucker - "Beauty is in the cheque book of the client"

I would disagree with two of your critera - that it has to make a social statement and contribute in historical context - art that comes from the heart would skip past these right brain AR trip wires. I would expect this as a yard stick measure from an academical view of art or as I term it - art from the brain. Art by the check lists, santized and delifed to the nth degree.

Nothing is totally hopeless. You need to understand flash work - why it does what it does, where the limits are and how to work around the limits. Do a search here. Practice with notes - LOOK closely at the results compare and contrast different setting.

It is rocket science but no elementary school maths either. Would suggest getting better prepare before the next time. The shadows could be clean up to a certain extent in PhotoShop but no one wants to do it that way.

In extremely dim lit conditions AF will not work unless you work with the flash projecting that red pattern for the AF to catch on to. But for people work this wrecks havok with expressions. Manual focusing is the only answer. For this to work assuming the AF lens you have has a decent focus throw, practice here makes perfect. Also you need to check that you can see clearly - as close to 6:6 as possible not point trying to focus if your eyesight is not able to see clearly in the first place.

I have worked with the kit lens 18-70/3.5~4.5 I think in these situations, focusing manually is possible. The faster lens will mean if you are using ambient as main light with or without flash as fill, you can do this at hand holdable and subject doable shutter speeds. Naturally this needs an iso as high as necessary.

P

That's how any out fit that subcon work out to non professional (ie full time at photography) shooters operate. They know you are freelancing and have a day job and are eager to make some bucks. So they string you on with work and pay much latter after you hand over. If you are full time in the industry and plugged into a network you will know who and what or will have learnt how to find the ones with jobs.

Any company that recurits from the net this way is highly likely to be difficult to collect payment from.

Lisa

Sorry to hear about the bad news. From what you say some of them could be salavageable, some not. Why not pick out the ones that you like the most ? You could emmail off some to me, to see what I can do for you. Grin aside from the different looks - you could in theory get a good selection done by several of us. I also would suggest that if your photog has not offered some form of discount or compensation, provided this was a paid photog and not a friend doing a favour, to talk to him about this. Ask if he will try to salavage the shots from the digital camera pics - this is the part where as a professional it gets painful.

As a form of professional courtsy I would not say anothing about the "mirror failure" reason. It is however a little dangerous to work without a backup.

Nadine,

What you are seeing mirrors what I saw when I started using the D70 with the SB800. Back to topic - in film days with nikon system, it was safer to turn off their version of intelligent TTL since that always set an arbitary compensation point to create a fill flash look. Standard TTL was what I used, with asa setting on camera of plus 1 stop ie asa400 at asa200 shot mainly neg's so any over exposure if any would just mean a more saturated neg. With slides I'd probably go with 3/4 stop plus exposure. Without the 1 stop plus compensation, the return prints had less saturation and muddy whites, blacks with out detials.

David

Do you use the signa ? How is the flare control on this like ? I tried the 15mm sigma on film years back but could not live with the ease that it flared - too much "flare" effect was seen making it too special effects for what I am trying to do.

Lauren

Check out the Tamaron - tried that at the shop. Lovely very little distortion at edges, good resolution at edges too.

Congrads - Like your work as featured on the old website. It must look even better now. Grin your old site gave me some food for thought - been trying to "understand" the photojournalistic wedding approach - thanks for the sharing.

A question on the web site requirements - I seem to get the feeling that a unique looks is wanted. In process of doing my first website, if you could spare some pointers I'd be most appreciative.

Mary

please add me to the list

ellery chua - singapore

Mary,

I suspect that your web designer is doing a small prima donna number.

Any of the scan to CD offered from a normal situation from a print/processing shop - would be 1200 x 1800 which would make good 5R to 6R prints. 8R too if you are not very very fussy. If your printer gives you good prints - the files provided will allow for reprints easily.

The image degradation your web desinger is talking about is insignificant in this application. Even in reprinting 4x6 up to 6x8 it is not noticable if the scans were done properly in the first place. It sounds a lot like requoting from text without the experience in either scaning film or using scan done by a proper lab.

Note that for web work you will need to USM a little more than if you were doing prints at a color lab - or at least for the files I have used in the past this was true. Color and tones may need some tweking to make images more lively. Some scans tend to be very very neutral aka bland so the images are a little lifeless.

PhotoShop has a web site gallery automate function that works pretty well - great for computer usage challenged people.

He is wrong in need to start work from files other than jpegs. Again a case of text book (an out of date text book) knowledge vs practical experience. Or is he trying to sway you to allow him to have them recan and work on at $65 per hour ? Then it make a different sort of sense. Enterprising chap then he is but a little to sharp.

Simon,

Since a lot of the facts are unavailbe - what does the contract require for delivery, what is media of shoot ie film or digital, is the issue tranparent ie the transfering photog is showing all the document work on the job. Is the job linked to a specific shooter ?

How is billing and fee collection handled ?

For your friend its simple - if he is doing this for the cash there has to be a decent profit if not then he needs to ask why is he doing it. If for the experience - well if you do about 10 wedding you should start to have a good feel for what is required. 30 tests seems a little extreme.

To me it sounds a whole lot like some one went around sign up parties are bargin basement prices, creams off a little profit say 100 pounds , pass off the job to some non pro who is very willing to work for next to free just for the privilge of doing a actual wedding. 30 wedding would net for such a person at 100 pounds each 3000pounds no peanuts amount at all.

Simon being a 2nd or 3rd shooter is not a learning experience if the 1st and 2nd are also green. The blind leading the blind comes to mind. The idea of being a 2nd or 3rd is that you get see how the 1st and or 2nd go about doing their job, and also get some rudimentary guidence as to how not to bollocks the shoot.

Its not surprising the number of happily inexperienced people covering a wedding for friends/family is increasing. Roughly speaking we can expect a new Dslr owner to come on line say what 10,000 pr 20,000 per month - if even 10% of these people decide to dabble in a wedding since now they have a tool that would in P mode work 70 to 80% of the time. Picture quality is different issue. Grant we are comming into a "need not be perfect, just good enough to see is ok" mind set - which only mean 1 thing - if you wanna to exists as a pro you have to delivery a picture that steals their breath aways, works that make grown men and women cry (not that your personal crap level has reached weapon of mass destruction ratings)call it a pressing need to deliver art not pictures to the couple. (at least a point to aim at, if you fail then they get nice shots, if you fail further they get very nice snap shots, if the mojo total does not work then they get uncle bob specials and you may have to change you name to mud for a while.)

In Asia, it is a lot worse. Since most of the wedding photo budget is blown on pre weddings, there is little left for the actual day. Simply because too many have never seen anything more than documentary work - they do not realised what can be done.

As some one remark there is a bell curve on this - the top of the market will pay for good work, the middle will pay as little as possible for something - hopefully it is not too bad, the bottom simply have bigger problems to care about than photography. If we want to remain as professional wedding photographers we need to cover the relevant section of the market and not to worry about the ones that got away.

Let lighten up too on the newbies - we all were onece there. At least there is a place to ask questions before the wedding.

Hey I did an "uncle Bob" for my first wedding. I did my first one as a favour to my best friend's sister - they had a pro they just wanted more pictures. Way over 20 years ago we had not internet, no forums and almost no one who did wedding was willing to talk another through one. Could have done with some advice, but hey being a young kid means you never think that you can fail. Trusted in the power of auto thysitor flash as main light to cover my axxxx, work with a 50mm and a stop down 35mm with my legs and some pre guessing in place of a zoom - it worked out very well. Well the prints got printed by the pro Kodak lab which they ran, and were color corrected. Georgeous colors. Did mainly candids, a little formal and kept the hell out of the way of the pro. Grin the bride still loves the photos.

Aga

TIme to walk away quickly from this one. The amended terms are grossly one sided to their favour. Any person even a lawyer that drafts these sort of terms is looking out for themselves at the pointed cost of the other party. It sort of mean that come delivery date I can guess there will be a lot of "this is unaccecptable, this is not the quality I expected" ... to a need for a dramatic discount for closure.

Off coursre I could be totally wrong but given the situation now - I think the best answer to them is you will not accept any changes to the terms of your contract - but plse before that go thru it and check that it does cover you well enough; if they insists and it becomes a change or you will not get the job, ditch it.

The damage to property sounds a little crappy to me - example if you accidentally broke a stain glass window in a churh, the church would ask you for compensation, if you fail to compensate them then they would go to the bride and groom. Putting the clause in for them, its in one sense prudent but it also takes a very one sided approach to the whole thing. The part about being liable for legal fee is bullocks - let the judge and jury decide on matters of leagal costs no point to volunteer to pay for their cost if they should decided to sue you - in fact that could be an incentive to sue you after all its all on you.