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!

The result of this pic is not makeup, nor did I augment her make-up’ish features with by hand. It’s a new plugin called Photowiz BW Styler. It has a great deal of options to choose from such as film type, grain type, ISO, development and processing methods, tint, paper weight and a number of filters. I was able to achieve this look by overdeveloping the “film” which gave her a sort of a 300 look but is also reminiscent of a 70’s or 80’s dystopian science fiction movie, where the film was overblown and super contrasty. I sort of stumbled on this look and for someone over the age 18 it might even be sexy. I hope to use this again in the future.

So while I know it’s not proper per se to rely on plugins to finish your photos; that the photograph should be properly composed in the camera and the computer process be only for optimizing the photograph you already created in-camera, I can’t help but experiment with new toys.  I’m trying out some B/W film emulators and the such, so I had a short impromptu shoot today with Angie and Alyssa.  It’s quite funny because just after I posted yesterday’s comment about how Alyssa loves to have her picture taken, today she wasn’t having it.  Probably for the first time ever.  Such as life though, right?  There are a couple of pictures here of her reading me the riot act, it’s pretty funny.  And then of course, Angie mocking her.  I managed to get some semi-posed portrait style shots of Angie and Alyssa, something I’ve not done to date.

Enjoy

So my little girl has been one of my most faithful subjects. Anytime I drag the camera out she’s constantly like, “Take a picture of me!!” And then I take a pic and she absolutely HAS to see it on the camera, no matter how crappy the picture turned out. I love her to death. I’m both glad and dismayed at her enthusiasm at being photographed. I’m glad because she’s so photogenic and always willing to be posed even at the tame age of four. I’m dreading this same behavior around spring break in 2022. (She’ll be 18 then for those playing the home game.) Anyway, here’s some of the latest set that I had with her.. I love her to death my little dork pride and joy!

So I have to start redoing dev-inspire.com’s flash site.  I’m not sure what the hell I’m going to do, I think a main site and two sub sites are going to fit the bill.  (Sorry if I’m ripping off a theme here, Vanessa.)  Except I’d like for the main page to contain the main information about the business and then I’ll have sub pages for portfolio as well as wedding and event photography.  Then of course, there’ll be a link to this blog as well.  This way I can have something that’s somewhat easier to update than most flash sites.  Even the simplistic flash/AJAX flash galleries are a pain in the ass because you have to add one photo at a time.  If I want to add my entire collection of finish photos then I’m going to be hurting after the first hundred or so. 

I think what I’m going to practice and learn to do is, again somewhat like what Vanessa does which is when she posts something to show it off, she makes a collage and a single image.

We’ll just have to see how it’s all going to work out.

Another New Beginning

So this is a new thing for me.  As some of you might know I’m a bit technically inclined and I have a number of other sites.  This, as a homage to a good friend of mine, Vanessa’s Photography is my inaugural post.  It seems a bit more logical that I have a singular location to rant on about my photography as well as display my works on my own server with my own readers.  So if you’re here reading this now you’ve either Stumbled here or you were brought here by some mysterious force(I probably sent you a message of some sort saying, "hey check out these latest shots!"  If you are one of my hapless victims, I can only hope that your stay here on my site is a good one.  And may you benefit from my efforts as I’m sure I have from all of yours.  Thank you for visiting and check back soon!