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!

Well the open house could have been better, but the day and the cars cooperated with me a great deal.  I thought that everyone that came out put a lot of effort into making their cars look as good as possible for the shoot.  Here is a sample of the day’s shots.

Thanks to all those that came out to have their cars shot and to support me and my work!  We’ll see you again for the next open house!

Greetings all!

I wanted to let you in on a small event that I have schedule. Here is the critical information.

WHAT: Photography open house/meet. Come out and get your car shot, get a poster(30×20″ gloss or matte) and a digital download(10+ MP) all while you hang out with other tuners.

WHERE: Meadowlark Botanical Gardens -=- 9750 Meadowlark Gardens Court, Vienna, Virginia 22182

WHEN: Saturday August 16th, and Sunday August 17th from Noon until 6pm both days.

WHAT’S IT COST?: The cost for shooting is $65 dollars for the shoot session, the poster print and a high res digital download(lightly watermarked).

THE DETAILS: To register, simply send me an email at joe@dev-inspire.com . I need the following information included in the email. Please do not omit any of this info as my spots are limited. If you do not include all of the info I cannot confirm your slot. Do not assume your slot is confirmed until you’ve received a confirmation email from me personally.

Needed:

• First and Last Name
• GOOD contact phone number
• Make, Model, and Color of your vehicle
• Tag number and state of the vehicle you wish to have photographed.
• Day preference, Saturday or Sunday as well as early or later.(This does not imply that slots are guaranteed to each day. They are first come, first serve.)

SLOT DETAILS!!

Shooting starts sharply at 12:00PM on Saturday, you will be assigned an exact time(such as 12:15/12:45, etc). Your slot is only 15 minutes long so you should not risk being late. If you are unable to make your assigned slot, please call or txt me immediately that day and let me know so I can bump you to the end of the line.

I have 48 slots available at this time, 24 for each day. I cannot rightly go beyond that, however, if at the end of the day there is still time, I will take adhoc sessions, but I prefer that folks register ahead of time.

What to bring on the day-of:

• Identification, preferably your driver’s license
• Cash or money order, no personal checks please.(If you wish to use paypal, please email me to make arrangements)
• Proper tools to remove front plates from your car(if any) while on the shoot. I will clone out holes and other uglies (removing back plates are optional).
• Tire shine, California dusters, or any other touch up stuff you might need to make your ride as clean as possible.

The way it’ll work

Essentially it’ll be like any other meet except we have certain areas roped off for photography. Each car will be given a 15 minute block and I will shoot each car as extensively as possible. As most of you know I touch each photo individually and I don’t just blanket everything. Different cars will have different effects and feelings making your photograph an individual piece, even if I may use the same angles as other cars.

I can put text or logo on your poster as well(think of race posters you’d get at a car show). I will do those types of designs at no extra cost, just work it out with me when we choose your print.

All the photos will be available online for viewing in a gallery similar to the galleries I’ve had for previous events. Every picture that I shoot will be available there. The photos you choose for your print and your digital download do not necessarily have to be the same photo. You will have a number of photos to choose from for each car. You can consult with me on an individual basis either here on the forum or via email/text(I’d prefer the latter due to pm limitations here on the site). You are more than welcome to hotlink to any photos in any gallery on my site. Doing so is quite easily accomplished by clicking the “share” button in the gallery above the photo you are currently viewing. Your digital download will be lightly watermarked as with the rest of my photos. The difference will be that on the day of you will be granted a license to use the photo elsewhere other than on my site(i.e. sponsorship promotion, myspace, facebook, etc… places where you have to upload and cannot hotlink) You will read and sign the license agreement on the day of your shoot.

Some things to remember… We will be at a garden, but we will not be the only ones there. We need to remain relatively quiet. This means no tomfoolery whatsoever. There are police everywhere in the area so no burnouts, revving, or loud stereos while at the gardens. You’re on your own once you leave the property. Any tomfoolery or jackassery and you’ll be asked to leave. No warnings!

Examples:

In addition to the galleries from The June 22nd Meet at Keith’s Shop, The 2nd Annual Toys R Us meet, and the AAM Nissan/Infiniti Meet here are some examples of my style and the gardens.

Extreme “otherworldly” vs. Normal Processing

Deep Angles

Artistic and “over the top”

Candy and Gloss:

FYI, you won’t get stuck with HDR or normal processing, I will dual-process each photo and you can choose your style. I know some folk don’t like HDR styling.

I had the wonderful opportunity to be the official photographer for the College Park Tuning Spring Meet 2008 event.  It was an absolutely HUGE even with probably around 3000 cars showing up and even more folks just coming to see the cars.  There were dyno pulls and a DJ and food and drink.  All in all I thought it was an absolute success.  CPT was able to raise 3500 dollars and 1500lbs of canned food donations for charity and I honestly couldn’t be more proud to have been a part of a charitable event such as this.  Special thanks to Jeff Perez from JPerez Imagery for his assistance on this shoot.

You can see the full gallery on my site by clicking here.

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. 

Congratulations to my friends Erica and Will on their recent wedding.  Here are a sample of their event.  This was a breakthrough for me as I found things that I do really well that I didn’t know about but more importantly, I found yet more bad habits that I need to fix for next time.  I was able to apply things I learned from my last wedding to keep the progress up.  Paying attention to the mistakes I made at the McFarland wedding seriously paid off this time as my keep rate was just under 50%, which for me… is really really high.  I totaled out 411 finished photos and 8 HDRI’s of the location.

I’ve had a very good response to this event and the images.  Below are just a few of my favorites.

I had so much fun shooting this wonderful couple.  They are definitely beautiful people and are very photogenic thus making my job that much easier.  It was an absolute joy and I’d do it all over again.  Of course everyone’s favorite candids at weddings are of the kids, and they were many at this event.

Thanks for looking, leave some love if you like what you see.

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.

So during work today, I dragged my co-worker Brad out to an alley way that I had passed by several times while humping out the 6 blocks to the UPS store.  At any rate, it was rediculously cold out and we didn’t have a whole lot of time, here are the best shots that I’ve processed so far.

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 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.