So this being my first live music gig, I really didn’t know what to expect.  It all started a number of month ago when I was stumbling around and found his Hip Hop Violin video on YouTube.  Being a violinist myself, albeit rusty, I was insanely impressed by Paul’s versatility and his passion for his music.  So months later, Paul had an online concert which I of course attended and tried my best to interact with.  Couple of months later, I get an email from Paul’s manager and the rest is in the gallery.  Definitely one of my most awesome gigs.  It hasn’t really hit Paul yet, but he’s definitely a celebrity.  I got to spend the evening with him, his manager and friends and family and it was one of the nicest times I’ve had in a very long time.  Additionally, building professional and personal relationships with all involved was pretty amazing.

The other kicker of the evening was the fact that Paul Dateh was performing with DJ Johnny Juice.  For those playing the home game, that’s DJ Johnny Juice of Public Enemy fame.  I didn’t realize this until the end of the night and it hit me like a ton of bricks as I’ve been a fair Public Enemy fan for some time now.  He was introduced to me early in the evening as just “Juice”.  It totally didn’t dawn on me until the end of the evening that it was DJ Johnny Juice.  I was a huge fan, I’ve taken his Sonar tutorials and the like.  Amazing producer and absolutely astounding on the tables.  He was one of the coolest guys I’ve met, very down to earth and absolutely hilarious.

Meeting the bunch was definitely a high point of my career as a photographer and I am very much looking forward to hanging out with them as well as working with them all professionally in the future.  Thanks to Paul Dateh for his music and charisma.  Thanks to Adam Wallenta for having me and inviting me to dinner.  Thanks to Juice for being a funny mojo with some sick skills on the decks.  Also thanks to We Know City for putting on such a great event and thanks to Home(the club we were at) for helping to produce this event.

Until next time, friends!

So my good friend Jeff Perez of JPerez Imagery officially tied the knot with his beautiful lady, Tali.  They had a small justice of the piece ceremony while the actual wedding is in June in Mexico which I will be unable to attend.  Here are some of the select favorites of mine.  The entire gallery is available to view HERE.

Many wishes to the newly wed couple and I hope their actual wedding goes down without a hitch. 

Ok, I’m absolutely ecstatic about this.  I’ve been wanting to do it for a while and Alyssa has been very excited, but timing and scheduling issues have gotten in the way.  Thusly, I’ll spare you the entire 93 shot set that Alyssa took and leave you with a link to her set, but I’ll drop a few pics here. 

For those that don’t know, she’s a precocious 5yr old with a bright spirit and an addictive smile.  She’s been the subject of a few hundred of my finished photos at this point.

I have no intention of pushing her into photography.  If it’s something she wants to do then I’ll work to provide her with every opportunity for her to learn and grow in her own way.  If she wants to do something else, then same effort, different subject.  I want her to follow her dreams, not mine. 

Here are my shots of her(one of which taken with the Sony for obvious reasons). You can see her set here.

I’m quite excited to present to you all my dev-inspire weddings page.  I designed it from scratch and I’m quite proud of it actually.  I hope it serves it’s function well and brings me good fortune(figuratively and literally).  please check it out.  www.dev-inspire.com and select the weddings link, to check it out.  Feel free to test out the contact form for me. 

Some of you might have already noticed but now when you go to dev-inspire.com you get a new front page that will allow you to branch off to 3 other sites.  These sites are this blog, my photo gallery(kindly hosted by smugmug who absolutely rules.) and a page dedicated to my wedding photography.  Again I’m taking example from my mentor and friend Vanessa Ard of Vanessa’s Photography.  This will enable me to filter out the wedding stuff for my customers and keep the artistic/other stuff separate.  In addition, it’ll provide an area where it will directly get the images into the eyes of those who’ll be making the decisions on whether or not to choose me for my services.

I’m still developing this wedding site so it’ll be some time still.  But for the first time, I’m doing the web developement from the ground up 100% from scratch which is actually far more gratifying that just customizing a template.

Keep the faith, whichever it may be.

This is my fault really, in my ferver of getting my business up and running I neglected to actually give my clients a way to get in contact with me.  If you’ll look to your right at the top of my links box in the side bar you’ll see the "Contact Joe" link, click that to send me an email.

Also, to clarify.  YES I DO WEDDINGS!! MOAR MOAR!!!!  If you know someone who is looking for a photographer for ANYTHING, send them my way.  But yes, I especially do weddings and am currently trying to fill up my 2008 and 2009 schedule so bring it on!!  I have a fairly wide range of packages. 

Lastly, I’m moving from Flickr to Smugmug because Smugmug allows me a bit more freedom with how and where I display my pictures.  So sorry Flickr.  It’s been a good couple of years but it’s time to move on.  So check it out when I get it all finished:  http://dev-inspire.smugmug.com

Peace!

So my first shoot with the 5D would be a self portrait set that I had in my mind.  But actually, none of the photos that I ended up keeping were what I had in my mind so perhaps I’ll give it another go sometime soon.

My first impressions of the 5D are simply WOW, having been using a 30D for about 18 months now I’m already used to the vast majority of the features found on the body as well as the body frame and style(it’s nearly the exact same dimensions as the 30D).  It’s a bit fatter though and that’s to house the infamous full-sized sensor.  So with that, ISO50 is awesome and the noise, or rather, the lack thereof on this camera is amazing.  I think I only had to do any noise reduction in Photoshop on one of these shots.  It’s pretty amazing.  Even at ISO3200, the noise was easily managable and was able to be removed without destroying any detail.  The reason for this is that due to both the physical size of the sensor and the resolution, the noise pixels are smaller and are able to be removed because the “details” of the photo are per pixel, larger than on the 30D.  Absolutely SUPER crisp.

Combine that with the awesome kit lens, 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Macro, and you’ve got a mini-money maker with some fantastic Bokeh and closeup support.  Truely and astounding combination.

Using the IR trigger, I used my 580EXII and 2 of the 3 430EX’s for these shots to do some dramatic and intense split-lighting.  I’ve had some very good responses from this set and I’m looking very much forward to doing more.

Enjoy and feel free to comment.

So now I’m what some would call "Big Pimpin’"  Today I just picked up a Canon 5D body and 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens, 3 Canon 430EX flashes and the trigger unit which works surprisingly well.  I will review all these parts and provide photos as well as comparison to my venerable 30D sometime this week.

Suffice it to say, I’m fricken excited.

That is all.

So i finally got some L glass and I’m totally stoked about it. Here’s a small compilation of what I was about to glean on my first day of shooting. Specifically, at my Kung Fu school where there was a Chinese calligraphy class going on that evening and very little else at that particular time. So I just spent an hour or so shooting around the school getting used to the new glass. Boy is that thing heavy. Good thing I’m a beefy guy. I hear they’re good in bar fights as well. Link after the jump

See more from this set.

Went up to Baltimore yesterday with an old friend of mine, Jeff Perez. He’s a budding photographer looking to get a bit more serious. I’m sure the bug will hit him once he realizes he can make actual money doing this stuff. I took him around and showed him some photojournalism concepts. We walked the inner harbor as well as toured the WWII sub the USS Torsk. I’ve been meaning to get back there since I was there the first time with my crappy point and shoot. But alas, here I am.

So here are just a few of the shots from that trip. If you want to see all of them, click the pics in my flickr stream down on the right side there. Enjoy!