California Science Center

Faded and Blurred had our latest photo walk on Saturday, 9/25/10. Dubbed the "choose your own museum" walk, as there are several museums at Exposition Park in LA. It was a family friendly walk, so we packed up my favorite models and headed on out.

As I would be shooting in the museums all day under poor lighting conditions, I took my rarely used Canon 35mm f/1.4L to assist, and it worked amazingly well. All in all, a great way to spend a very hot day in LA!

The Faded & Blurred Venice Walk

On 8/21/10, we had our 1 year anniversary photo walk in Venice for Faded & Blurred. It was a beautiful day, but as always, it was tough to get to Venice through all the LA traffic. Our focus for this walk was through the canals, and then to finish off by the pier for sunset.

As usual, everyone headed off on their own to go explore. I have been in a really wierd space lately, due to the amazing amount of changes going on in my life, and all though I wanted to be there, just couldn't seem to concentrate enough to focus on photography. I felt scattered most of the day, and just never got into a groove. It happens. I did get my sunset shots though, as I was waiting at the pier, and had found my shot just prior to the sun going down. All I had to do then was sit. And wait. Be still. And that was very neccessary for me.



If you are going to be in town Labor Day weekend, a few of us will be heading to the Planes of Fame museum on Saturday, 9/4. We will be meeting for breakfast at Flo's, and then off to the museum by 10. They will have a flight demo of the YAK-3 at noon that should be awesome to shoot. Let me know below if you have any interest. Admission is normally $11, but if we can round up 20 people, they will let us in for only $8.

Scott Kelby's Worldwide Photo Walk

A big huge thank you to all the photographers that came to Faded & Blurred's leg of the Scott Kelby World Wide Photo Walk. All told, we had about 75 participants, just a fantastic turnout! We walked downtown LA, through little Tokyo, to the Walt Disney Center, and then finished it off at Philippes for food and a beer. (or 2)...

What's up for the weekend?

Just a quickie post to see what everyone is up to for the weekend? I'm hoping to see some of you at the Planes of Fame Paul Bowen seminar on Saturday. Here is a map to the location:
View Larger Map

Just finished reading David Ziser's Captured by the Light. An excellent resource full of information for shooting and lighting a wedding, even if the images feel a little dated. Next up for me is Martin Evening's book on Lightroom 3.

Just heard that David duChemin's new book, Vision and Voice, has been released and is starting to ship from Amazon. I am really looking forward to this one, should be a great read.

Just thought I'd throw in an image taken from our Faded & Blurred Hollywood photo walk. Something you'd only see there. Speaking of photo walks, our next walk is on the 24th, for Scott Kelby's 3rd annual World Wide Photo Walk. Are you joining us? Are you participating in another walk? If so, where are you going? It looks like there is already over 1000 walks, and almost 26,000 photographers participating!

F&B Q&A

Okay, big, big news! Our Q&A podcast with the "Vision Monger" himself, David duChemin is up! We are huge fans of David's, both of his work, and of his human approach to imagery. Please go listen to the podcast, it is informative and funny, and David couldn't be more gracious, both with his time, and his sharing of information. You can find it here on iTunes along with our other podcasts. Don't forget to leave us a review and a comment, and subscribe to our podcasts. If you don't use iTunes, you can find the Q&A on our site: http://fadedandblurred.com/qaafab/128-qaafab-no-3-david-duchemin

David has a series of ebooks that are fantastic sources for inspiration, education, exercises, and beautiful imagery. They are $5 each, and I can't recommend them enough. You can pick those up through our site, the link is on our front page: Faded & Blurred

He has also written some fantastic books, 2 of my favorites, actually. "Within the Frame" and "Vision Mongers". You can find those here:


Do yourself, and your craft, a favor, and pick these up. David's mantra is "Gear is good, vision is better", and I couldn't agree more.

Hollywood!

So, Hollywood was hot, dirty, sweaty, steamy, smelly, nasty, crowded, hard to get to, there was a protest closing the street, a scavenger hunt, pissed off super heroes, a sad Big Bird, and Wonder Woman really let herself go,and I loved it. What a great day. Enjoy. More to come when I get my film developed... (I hope)

Faded & Blurred day 76

Faded & Blurred day 76
Originally uploaded by fwisneski

Hey everyone!

Just getting prepped for Faded & Blurreds big photowalk on Hollywood Blvd. The street where celluloid dreams get started, so I and several others will be shooting film. So looking forward to this walk, for more info, go check it out at http://fadedandblurred.com

Hope to see you there, and if you want to participate in the contest for this walk, we will have a couple of extra cameras available.

You could win 1 of these:

Faded & Blurred Hollywood photo walk

Hey everyone!

A quick note to remind everyone that the Faded & Blurred crew are taking to the streets again! This time, we are doing the mythical, magical, (and in reality dirty and dingy) Hollywood Blvd! We will be there on March 20th, at 1pm. We are doing something fun this time out, our contest will only be available to those of you that choose to purchase a disposable film camera, but you have to order it by 3/5/10. All those details are here: F&B Hollywood

I am soooo looking forward to this walk, it's going to be a great one!!!

If you want to reserve your camera, they are $15. At the end of the walk, you need to return them to us. We will get them developed, and you will get back your negatives along with prints and a CD. All the info, and the ability to get your camera, are here: F&B Hollywood

The Faded & Blurred Getty Center Walk

We had beautiful weather for the Getty Center walk. A big thank you to the 65-70 of you that came out! Here are some of the shots I took yesterday, enjoy!

Frank

Faded & Blurred 365 - 2010 day 48

Faded & Blurred 365 - 2010 day 48, originally uploaded by fwisneski.

As you can see from this image, I was heading the wrong way but still managed to catch this. It was hard to keep heading this direction.

I also started reading David DuChemin's fantastic ebook "Chasing the Look" available here: http://www.craftandvision.com/books/chasing-the-look.html for the low, low price of $5. You can't go wrong with any of his books. His other titles are available on Amazon :



I started reading his ebook at lunchtime, and now I am really itching to go shoot. I will get that chance on Saturday at the Getty Center with my Faded & Blurred crew. You coming? http://fadedandblurred.com/upcoming-events/details/1-the-getty-center-photo-walk

Descanso Gardens

Hey there everyone!

I am just finishing up an exhausting but fun photographic weekend. It started off with the Faded & Blurred Descanso Gardens photo walk, then this morning I did an engagement shoot, followed up by my wedding class at Tri-Community this afternoon. Does anyone want to do some editing for me? :-)




As you can see from the pictures, we had a great turnout at Descanso, and the weather was fantastic. A good time was had by all, and we finished it up with pizza and beer at Georgees in La Canada. You can see many of the images shot at the Faded & Blurred Events group on Flickr. It may be the last time we in California will see the sun until February. I shot most of the images here with my 5DMKII and the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS, a fantastic combination. I also used my new Canon S90 for the shot of the yellow flower. I love this new point and shoot camera.

The Canon S90 has a 10mp sensor (the same chip in the G11), it's image stabilized, has a 3x lens which is f/2.0 at the wide end, and will shoot up to ISO 3200 (it is very usable at ISO 800). It also has a decent macro function that you can see in the yellow flower image. And the biggest selling point for me was it's pocketability.







Coming up this week in class:

Monday school is closed in observance of Martin Luther King

Wednesday night: We will discuss packages and pricing strategies

Thursday night: We will have our first engagement shoot. Weather permitting, we will be shooting in downtown Covina. We will meet at school first.

On Sunday, we will also have a model, and again we will be meeting at the school, so go there first. See you all soon!

My 40th Birthday

Hey everyone!

So on Friday, 11/6/09, I celebrated my 40th birthday. I wanted to do something fun, and 3 weeks ago, I found the perfect way to spend a birthday for a photo geek like me. I got an email from Scott Kelby (well, not exactly a personal email, but a mass generated email from NAPP) telling me that Joe McNally would be in LA doing his Lighting on Location tour at the convention center on my birthday!


I immediately bought my ticket, and then told a few close friends, and then we notified the Faded and Blurred troups and students at Tri-Community. Both groups were well represented at the event, and even got to interact with Joe. To say it was an amazing event wouldn't do it any justice at all. Joe is extremely knowledgeable, humble, and funny. A true pleasure to attend his events. We got there early (6:15), had breakfast at the Pantry, (I had never eaten there) and then photo walked our way over to the Convention Center.

Registration was supposed to begin at 9, but we were there by 7:30, so as we were waiting, Jeffery happened to notice Joe McNally sitting in the conference room writing up some notes. We had a t-shirt made for him (I did mention we were geeks, right?) so we snuck in and headed over to meet a photo hero. He was gracious and kind, shook our hands, accepted the t-shirt, and to be honest, my birthday could have ended right then.

Since we were early, we were able to sit right up front, and I thoroughly enjoyed the seminar. Joe does 5 specific sections in his seminar, and builds his lighting with small flash with each new hour. The great part of the show is that Joe get's himself in trouble with his lighting, and we get to see him work through it until he get's his shot. Again, a great message to all photographers that it happens to everyone, and you just need to keep working it out. Except we don't do it in front of 800 people.

At lunch time a big group of us headed over to ESPN Sports Zone, where I got to tweet my first beer as a 40 year old.
If you don't follow me on twitter, I'm known to take a picture of a beer wherever I am. You can find me here: FrankWisePhoto

After lunch, we settled in for the rest of the seminar. At some point in the show, John Pacala slipped Joe's assistant Drew a note asking Joe to announce my birthday. So in front of 800 people, Joe wished me a happy birthday. Awesome. But they weren't done yet. For Joe's final set-up of the day, he needed audience members, and I was choosen. So up I went. I had my picture taken by Joe McNally. He even gave me an 8gb memory card for my birthday! What a way to end the day. Except it still wasn't over. The seminar ended at 5, and of course on a Friday in Los Angeles, you can't actually leave LA, so we headed over to Philippe's for a sandwich and beer, (Sense a theme?) The plan was to grab some food, and then shoot some city lights after dark. Well, plans being what they are, they changed. My friend Maria Carmel (VH1's The Shot photographer reality show winner)was following our days events on Twitter, and knew we were near her home, so she met us at Phillipe's, sat and chatted with us a while.
She happened to mention that her LA loft has a rooftop deck with amazing views in the heart of LA, so away we went, tripods in hand. Again, a great photography experience, with another great photographer.

I would like to thank everyone who made this day so special, and I'm glad I got to spend it with so many friends that also share my passions for photography, and understand just how great a day like this was. Jeffery, a huge thank you for being the the same little giddy school kid I am when we get to meet these people we so look up to.
Nikki, thank you for allowing Jeffery and I just enough rope to climb out on the ledge, and knowing just the right time to grab it and pull us back before we hang ourselves. Paul, thank you for wanting to take this crazy journey we're on with us. Joe, thank you for driving us around, and wanting to spend the day hanging out with us. Some amazing driving skills in the Odyssey my friend. John, thank you for slipping the note to McNally. Jason, thank you for the beer, the beer, the beer, that other beer, and the t-shirt. And thank you for the constant words of encouragement. To the Marias', thank you for hassling Joe McNally, It was fun to watch.
Dave, a big thank you for letting me watch your progression as a photog. It is fun to watch and know that maybe a few of the things I am teaching are being utilized and appreciated. Al, thank the wife for letting you out to come play with us. Todd, I'm glad your aboard, your creativity and willingness to just go with us is a blast. Berto and Lisa, thank you for jumping on board with us from the beginning and always promoting us. Dan, I'm glad I've got a fellow photog always wanting to know when we can break for a beer. To everyone else (and there are a lot of you) just a huge THANK YOU for your constant support and for helping put Faded and Blurred on the map.
To Maria Carmel and Joe McNally, thank you for giving a bunch of photo geeks a day they will never forget.

To my wife Laurie, and my kids, a huge thank you for always being supportive of what I am trying to do, and understanding that I need to do it. You mean the world to me, and none of this really matters without you. I love you more than you'll ever know.

All the images you see here were shot on 11/6/09. what an amazing day. Thank you everyone!


You can see more images here: Frank's Flickr





Joe McNally doing his thing












Getting my picture taken by Joe McNally












Taking direction from Joe












The view from Maria's roof top



















The view from Maria's rooftop

Coming up this week in class:

Monday night, Noir shoot. If you have a trench coat, or a fedora, please bring them with you.

Wednesday night: NO CLASS, closed for Veterans Day

Thursday night: Workflow

See you all soon,

Frank

Pasadena ARTwalk

Hey everyone! I am in the process of finishing up images from our most recent walk in Pasadena for ARTwalk. We had a smaller than usual crowd, but it turned out to be an amazing day. There were several photographers showing work, along with painters and sculptors. After the walk, we went to one of my favorite restaurants, the Yard House. Not necessarily for the food, more so for the 150 beers on tap ;-)



After some much needed lunch, we had a meeting with all interested parties about our plans for the 12/12/09 Help-Portrait project. For more info on what we are doing, you can click here. We had about 25 people for that meeting, and several more have expressed an interest, so we are seriously considering expanding our efforts for the day, and for that, I thank you.

After the meeting, many of us continued our walk. We went to City Hall, where we stumbled into a wedding, and several wedding photogs doing portraits. We also met this lovely lady, Natasha Martinez, who just happens to be Miss Panamerican. I assumed she was there being photographed, but there was no photographer around. I had Carol go ask her if she minded if the 10 of us still there shot her, and she was gracious enough to give us 10 minutes of her time. This amazing light was created by the sun reflecting off a column and bouncing back onto her.

We finished up the evening catching sunset on the Colorado Bridge, and caught some beautiful light. All in all, a wonderful day. If you would like to see images that the group shot, you can click here. If you shot with us on Saturday, please post your images there, we look forward to seeing them.

It was also great to watch many of our group getting very creative with their photos. Doing fun reflective self portraits, shooting through magnifying glasses, shooting each other, all sorts of things. Vincent has a new camera and lens, and he is really putting it through it's paces.

Our next walk will be in Griffith Park on 10/25, you won't want to miss this one. Details here.

Now, what should we do in class this week?

Monday night we will have models.

Wednesday night in Beginning Wedding, we will talk about the events of the day, and go from beginning to end.

Thursday night I will lecture, and assign some homework (Thanks Alberto, great idea!)

See you all soon,

Frank

We're walkin, yes indeed...

In case you haven't heard, Faded and Blurred are pounding the pavement again this Saturday. We will be in Pasadena for the ARTwalk, and all the juicy details and maps are here.

We will have our Flickr group up and running Saturday night so you can share your images. There will be several photographers exhibiting work at the ARTwalk, so I am excited to see what they are showing, how they are displaying it, and possibly pulling some inspiration from it. We hope to see you all there, and please be there at 11. We have to get our group shot!

If you like shooting, like being around other photogs, and are enjoying the beautiful weather we are having, then come on down Saturday! It will be a great day. And after the walk, please remember to tell us about your experience. You can do that here: http://fadedandblurred.com/community/

Make sure your batteries are charged, your memory cards are formatted, and bring some water and a snack. After the walk, if you are interested in participating in our 12/12/09 Help-Portrait giving back event, we will be having a logistical meeting at a local watering hole. Ask myself, Nikki, or Jeffery for details on Saturday. Here are some of the ideas we have:

http://fadedandblurred.com/community/Thread-Help-Portrait

And here is the site that started it all: http://www.help-portrait.com/

See you on Saturday!

Fall is here

Thankful that fall is finally settling in. Cooler temperatures are always welcome, especially after the crazy hot September we had here. I'm not so happy about the shorter days. As a people shooter, it makes it a little easier to grab a model and go shoot when it's not 105 degrees. As a wedding photographer, your not as miserable shooting that wedding in the un-air conditioned church. Landscape shooters look forward to the fall colors. There is so much to enjoy over the next few weeks photographically.

A quick reminder that Faded and Blurred has the Pasadena ARTwalk photo walk coming up on 10/10. I do hope that you will attend, it should be a fun event, in a great city to shoot. And then, just 2 weeks later is our Griffith Park photo walk, so we are keeping busy, and taking advantage of the cooler weather too.

If you haven't backed up your images recently, why not do it now? Burn them to DVD, copy them to your external hard drive, or get yourself an automated back up program. I use Goodsync, and I highly recommend it for PC users. It will run as often as you want it too. I have mine run every 2 hours. Do you have a system that works for you? If so, share it in the comments.

Coming up in class this week:

Monday night we have models

Wednesday night: Album Design

Thursday night: The amazing wedding photography of Jerry Ghionis

See you soon,

Frank

Getting ready...

Hey there everyone! I am calling this post getting ready. I am getting ready for a lot of things it seems these days. Right now, I am getting ready for the next semester at Tri-Community. It's always amazing how much I miss being around all the students, the enthusiasm, the common interest that we all have at the Photography school. I am getting ready to teach my new Advanced Lighting on Location course for the 1st time. I am also getting ready to teach 4 classes starting in January, all 4 will be wedding related, including 2 shooting classes, and 1 of those will be on Sunday afternoons, which opens up all kinds of exciting possibilities.

I am also getting ready to put in lot's of time and effort to a labor of love that Jeffery Saddoris, Nicole Rae, and I are molding, shaping, and tending to called Faded and Blurred. We have designed it to be a community for photographers to share, learn, and get excited about the art of photography. We are building it from the ground up to have a main theme, giving back. Now giving back can be doing some charity work, (we are currently participating in http://www.help-portrait.com/ 's effort to give back on 12-12-09, you can read about our efforts here: http://fadedandblurred.com/community/) or passing along knowledge learned with our tutorials (the 1st 1 is up and it's awesome!) or organizing photowalks to get everyone out shooting. Our first walk in Venice had almost 70 people show up in blazing heat during a major fire. The info just went up on our next 2 walks, and we are planning more. All that info is available here:

http://fadedandblurred.com

Please see if you can join us, the photowalks are a lot of fun, and a great excuse to just get out and shoot. And while you are bouncing around the site, stop by the community section, register (it's free of course) and tell us a little something about you. Maybe you work for a charitable organization that could use photographic services? Maybe you've always wondered how some photogs always get beautiful blue skies? Maybe you have some new work you want to share. Come tell us about it.

I am also getting ready for a busy shooting schedule over the next several months. I feel a shift in style and focus coming that I need/want to explore. I have some paid gigs, but I will also be doing a lot of shooting on my own to examine where I think I might be going. Again, this is a journey. I feel like I took an extended rest, stretched my legs, and now I am ready to get on the road again. I have some ideas, a few new toys, some new friends, and a supportive family allowing me to stretch these wings.

Some of my favorite photographers have also been stretching their wings, and their influence with some amazing blogs recently Zack Arias, Chase Jarvis, and David duChemin have become must reads.

http://www.zarias.com/?p=450

http://www.pixelatedimage.com/blog/

http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/

I am also getting ready to turn 40 soon. I don't know why we look at that number as such a life changer, but I certainly feel that my life is headed in a completely different direction then it was just 1 year ago. and that change is good. Home, family, and business are heading in the right direction. It feels like I have been laying so much ground work for so long, and now I am finally starting to reap what I have sown.

I am getting ready, are you?

Where have I been?

Hey there everyone! Seems like it's been awhile since I posted a new blog. So where have I been? Working on finalizing a new project with Jeffery Saddoris that we call Faded and Blurred.

What is Faded and Blurred? In one word, community. A place where we openly share ideas, concepts, and knowledge. A place where "We look out for each other". Where we help each other. Where we nurture each other. Where we learn from each other.

It is our hope that it becomes an interactive experience. Going forward we will be adding forums and tutorials to ask and answer questions. We expect a high level of participation. The home page is up, the blog is up, the info for our 1st walk is up. You did know about the walk, didn't you?

In the spirit of keeping it easy, we have built in Facebook integration. If you have a FB account, you can log in, leave comments, post topics and replies in the forums, all with your current FB info.

We have plans for doing many photowalks. We hope to use these as a way to meet you, share and laugh with you, motivate you, get the creative juices flowing, and most importantly, help build the community. We also have plans to help out local causes. Hopefully be able to organize our ranks, and loan our services to people and causes in need. The most important thing any organization can do to promote their cause is to attach a face to it. We want to help create those images. We want you to help us, so we will occasionally put the call out for volunteers to help us do that. What does that mean? It could mean taking pictures. It could mean requiring professional services. It could mean requiring some elbow grease and muscle. Whatever we can do.

Please, go have a look around. Tell me what you think. Remember, today is day 1. It will grow. It has to grow. And please, tell your friends. Let's all be a part of something bigger than us.

http://fadedandblurred.com/

For those of you that attended my last Lighting on Location class at Tri, please send images to Sam at samgao@gmail.com. He is looking forward to giving images to the wonderful models we had. If I don't see you at the walk, I will see you in 2 weeks when school starts up again for the fall semester.

Frank

Faded & Blurred....

Some of you have heard rumors and murmurs about a new project that Jeffery Saddoris http://jefferysaddoris.com/ and I are undertaking. We are calling this new endeavor "Faded and Blurred" and we have several ideas and irons in the fire. One of the first things we will be doing to kick off this new project is a free photowalk. We will be photowalking in Venice Beach on August 29th, from 3pm to sunset. We will be meeting in front of Muscle Beach at 3pm, so don't be late. A map of the beach is here:

http://www.venicebeach.com/images/vbmap.jpg

We would also like people to sign up for the walk, so we are in the process of building a website that will allow you to register so that we can have an idea of how many people will be attending. That website is here:

http://fadedandblurred.com/

It is currently under construction, so don't mind our dust, but there will be much more content coming in the next few days and weeks.

So while we wait for teh site, let me know down below in the comments section who is interested. And we have some custom designed T-shirts available, specific to this walk. We will design a new 1 for each walk, and then they will dissappear...

There are several color options, and mens and women's styles available. That link is here:

http://www.mysoti.com/mysoti/product/471537

And lastly, why are we calling this "Faded and Blurred"? Because "Sharp and Vibrant" are so overated...

Frank