PBPhoto

I was hired by 3 families to photograph their children who were on the Homecoming court at Merritt Island High School this weekend.
 


So after getting lost a couple of times (thanks google maps), we made it to the stadium.  By we I mean that the whole family was with me.  It was raining and we were late but we made it.  So I broke my first rule of photography which is: be early to the location.  It gives me time to survey the situation, look for inspiration, and come up with a plan to light things if necessary.  That was out the window.  I walked as fast as I could with my gear to the opposite end zone where there was a tent with the young ladies and their escorts and mothers.  And they were ready to start taking shots.  No time to set up so I just started shooting ambient light only.  Which ended up turning out well but from the back of the camera, I wasn't all that confident. 




So I put a strobe on the camera and took some using the strobe for key light.  I really really really don't like doing that.  But the results here are good I think.  After removing some red eye.  I love this candid.



That didn't last long and the parents and myself headed up into the stands to wait for the halftime events.  I kept looking down to the tent and thinking I wish I would have stayed down there to get some more shots.  Gretchen confirmed that idea by asking me about it.  So I went back down there.  Not sure about security at these things.  There was a couple of deputies at the gate to the field.  I suppose a guy with a camera body with a battery grip and a strobe looks professional and they never questioned me.  You just have to look like you belong.

This was a much better situation.  No one was rushed.  The kids were having fun talking and joking.  And I was thankful that they were under a white tent.  The worlds largest softbox.  So I used it as you can see in the lead picture above.  Nice soft light.  I dragged the shutter (slowed down the shutter speed) to allow the field in the background to burn in.



Then came halftime. 


As they walked across the field I tried to incorporate the marching band and ROTC kiddos.  Looked great by the way.  I took some without flash but the umbrellas were shadowing their faces too much so I went back to using the strobe as more of a fill in this case and also allowing the stadium lights to backlight them and make their umbrellas glow.


And the winner was . . . one of the girls that I was covering.  How cool.

Had the pleasure of photographing another great family this weekend.  It was very relaxing and fun.  And best of all, we got some great shots.  I shot some with ambient light only.  It was an overcast evening so the light was soft.  Brought in a strobe and umbrella on some to make the subjects pop a little. 

Their son is adorable.  Love the missing front teeth.

He is obviously loved like crazy by mommy and daddy.


Here they are.  All three.  This is ambient light only.


We let the young man play some and I worked with mom and dad to give them some shots of themselves.  I brought the strobe in here.  But I kept it almost on axis to mimic the overcast light that didn't have any direction to it.

We went to my family reunion this weekend in Kentucky.  Can't even describe how great the trip was on so many levels.  Had some revelations about my Dad's history.  Grew closer to my sister and her family (I love you guys).  Here they are!



Anyway, before I get too mushy, there was some photography going on as well.  The leaves thankfully changed while we were there.  So in my sister and brother-in-law's back yard me and the boys had some adventures.  They quickly got tired of Daddy stopping every 100 feet and setting up a strobe and umbrella.  But I was undeterred. 



OK I was a little deterred by this guy.  If you have a genus and species on this, please let me know.



The colors were amazing.








The shots above are using a strobe in a shoot-thru umbrella.

Here are two of my favorites from down by the lake.  These are just backlit shots exposed for the shadows on the face.





I'll leave you with this smiley face!

Not even sure where to start with this post.  My great friend Mark Morgan (mmorganphotography) and I shot another wedding recently.  There's so much to say about this one. 

There's a lot photographically but also personal as well. 



OK let's get the personal stuff out of the way first.  The families represented at this wedding were awesome!  They pretty much adopted Mark and I and made us feel like a part of the family for the night.  It was a true blessing to be involved.  To see the love that this bride and groom had for each other was amazing.  And the love that they had for their families was incredible.  The pastor that performed the ceremony was the groom's father.  During the toasts, the groom shared about his father's battle with cancer.  He has survived 6 times as I recall.  A great blessing and I pray for many more years that this father can enjoy his son and new daughter-in-law. 



I hope we can continue the fast friendships that we started at this wedding.  They brought a band from SC.  Made up of long time friends.  And world-class musicians.  Wow.  Being a bass player I payed close attention to the bassist in the band.  Soooo good!  Arggh.  Inspired me to pick it up some after the wedding.


Now to the photographic stuff since this is primarily a photography blog.  We attended the rehearsal dinner the night before.  We discussed the possibility of adding flash.  Where to put them?  How to trigger them?  Put that decision off until the day of to see what the weather brought.  They were going to make their weather call around 2pm.  Around 2pm that day it was raining and thundering.  We were hoping that the weather would break so they could have the ceremony outside with the beach as the background.  The wedding party was apparently praying hard about this because the weather broke into the most beautiful light.  It made the arch glow.  The ocean met the sky and at times you couldn't see the horizon.

So I shot the entire ceremony and formal portraits with ambient light.  That was good for the relaxation factor.  With flash I feel I'm always waiting for Mr. Murphy to visit and cause triggers not to work or batteries to be dead, and so on. 


The final product is great in my humble opinion.  These two were having so much fun that it was easy to get great results.

The reception was held in a conference room type thing.  With the ubiquitous white drop ceilings (God obviously loves photographers) which make great soft boxes when you shoot strobes up at them.  So we set up two monolights.  These were to bring up the overal light level.  I was shooting at f2.8 at iso 400 or iso 500 most of the night.  f2.8 gives the great out of focus backgrounds.  They were triggered optically.  So I carried around my camera with my Canon 540EZ in my hand.  I triggered that one with the radio triggers.  So the one in my hand would fire the larger monolights when it fired.  By holding the small strobe in my hand which was connected to my extended arm, it satisfied my need for off camera flash and gave some direction for the key light. 


I wish I had planned this but I can't.  Because of where we placed the monolights, only the one on the side of the room you were on would fire.  So you can see in the cake shot below that the key light is provided by the monolight behind me and to the left.  The monolight on the other side of the room didn't fire so I dragged the shutter a bit to allow the decorative lighting to burn-in.