The Salton Sea

A couple of weeks ago, I headed out to the Salton Sea with 2 other photographers to shoot for a day. I haven't been out there in 15 years, and I had never been to Bombay Beach, which was our destination. We tried to get some models, but as usual, the same excuses came up. Grandpa died, no gas money, I'm sick, blah, blah, blah.

No matter, as Tammy (one of the photogs) graciously offered to model. I knew she had her wedding dress still, and she was looking to do a shoot with it, so off we went. I think it worked out better than I could have imagined.

Welcome back students!

This is kind of bittersweet for me. I'm embarking on my last semester at Tri. I will miss you guys at school, but my priorities lay elsewhere. For those of you that don't know, my daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes 6 weeks ago. Yes, I need to continue to take care of my daughter, and my family. But I also need to refocus on my own passion, my own craft. We teachers at Tri only have 6 weeks off from school per year, and I just didn't ever have enough time to do anything photographically for myself. So I will also be shooting a lot more.

With that said, we kicked off our first shooting class with a bang. 60 plus students, all shooting a good friend, fellow student, and Faded & Blurred member, Tammy.

iPhone snaps

Originally uploaded by fwisneski
While I was teaching my students a new on board flash technique, using their DSLR's, I happened to see a student shooting with her iPhone. Everyone knows how much I love shooting with my iPhone. Curious to see what she was getting, I asked her to show me. I liked what I saw, so I shot a few too. Here is my favorite.

Yes, it's grainy and dark, and it is obviously a very small file size. But it has feeling and motion, and tells a story. That's enough for me.

Processed in my iPhone with "Best Camera"

Processed with Aperture 3

IMG_8434 - Version 2, originally uploaded by fwisneski.

Hi Everyone!

The image above was processed with Aperture 3. Apple released it this week, and I am playing with the 30 day free trial. It is available for $199. Jeffery and I are having wildly different experiences with it, and I am not ready to give a thumbs up or thumbs down on it yet. The 1 intriguing factor for me with this program is the ability to do slideshows. As a recent Apple convert, I do miss ProShow Producer, but perhaps this program can finally replace that.

Also, in a concerted effort to make the website and blog more cohesive, I made some design changes. Let me know what you think.

Here is a quick update on what to expect this week in class:

Sunday: We will be at Tri. We are going to cover Lightroom. Please don't forget to bring images!

Monday: No school! We are closed for President's day

Wednesday: We will discuss last week's church shoot. Again, bring images!

Thursday: We have models, come prepared to shoot, and BRING IMAGES!!!

See you this week!

Bridal shoot

Wow, what a weekend. It was all wedding, all the time, and surprisingly, there was very little rain to interfere.

Saturday was spent shooting a wedding, and I followed up by taking the class to Pasadena City Hall for a bridal shoot, with 3 brides. I was so geared up for rain this weekend, I must say that I'm disappointed I didn't get to shoot any brides in the rain.

I think the class was fantastic today, plenty to shoot, at a favorite location of mine, and as it was Superbowl Sunday, we had the place to ourselves. Even with all 60 of us. What a treat!

As I had shot a wedding the day before, I wanted to try some different things out for myself today, so 2 of my lesser used lenses were all that I brought. I used the 17-40 mm f4L, and the 135 f2. Both were a blast to use, all though with so many people around, the 135 was tough to avoid getting extra people in the shot from so far back.

Coming up this week in class:

Monday night we will cover Lightroom. I will bring in some shots from the Pasadena City Hall shoot, to show some editing and work flow.

Wednesday night we will have a mock wedding ceremony. Or at least that is how it started out. In Reality it will be a live, honest to goodness vow renewal ceremony, but with a twist. Stephanies husband doesn't know that. ;-) And the service will be performed by our very own Herman! Bring your cameras and speedlights, because we are heading to the church. The address is 4303 Maupin Ave, Baldwin Park. Only for Tri-Students! Map below, and parking is rough, so please carpool.

Thursday night we have models.

Sunday we will cover Lightroom and Photoshop for post process basics


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Coming up this week

Hi everyone!

I realize this is a few days late, but as often happens around here, it's been CRAZY busy. For those of you that missed it, we had a fantastic shoot in my Sunday class with our model J. Rose as our bride, and she just rocked. We learned how to saturate skies while shooting almost directly into the sun, and we did it with speed lights!



The rest of the images in this post were shot on location at Lower Arroyo Park in Pasadena, the location for Sundays shoot. I love this location, and have used it many times for many things. We will meet there, please do not go to Tri Community. This shoot is only open to students, expect it to be crowded. If you have mentioned bringing a model, please send me a confirmation email. This shoot should be fun!












Coming up for the rest of my classes:

Wednesday night we will be talking about pricing and packages for weddings. We didn't cover this last week, as it was storming and we had a small class.

On Thursday night we will be shooting, we will have at least 1 couple.

Obviously on Sunday we will be shooting. I have included a Google map to the location below.








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Sometimes equipment really is important...

Creativity and vision are always more important than equipment in photography. Without those, you can take crappy pictures with a 60gb $40,000 Hasselblad all day. With those, you can take amazing pictures with an iPhone.

But when it comes to particular photographic endeavors, sometimes, equipment really is important. In my wedding class, I am often asked if you can shoot a wedding with a Nikon D40 or a Canon Rebel XTI and the 18-55 kit lens.

While the quick answer is yes you can, the truthful answer is "not my wedding". Often times, in weddings, you are shooting under extreme lighting conditions. Wedding photographers live at high ISO's and big apertures. This ain't no sissy job. Dark churches that don't allow flash, dark reception halls that do allow flash, harsh midday sun, group portraits at dusk, large groups, huge groups, beach weddings with sand and wind, the list is long. As such, often times, consumer gear won't suffice. You need the extra boost of fast glass, f/2.8 zooms, and f/1.4 primes. You need the extra boost of quality high ISO's. You need the ability to change settings on the fly without diving into a menu.

Sports photography requires many of the same things, as does photojournalistic work. Wedding shooters live at f/2.8 and ISO 1600. The newer cameras (Think Canon 5D MKII and Nikon D700) take amazing images at high ISO's. They make the job for the shooter easier. It gives the shooter 1 less thing to worry about. Less stress, worrying about image quality or what will happen if you can't use flash, or how do I keep my shutter speeds up enough to avoid blur. The next piece of the puzzle is glass. Gotta have f/2.8 zooms if you are serious about shooting weddings. And IS or VR if it is available for the zoom your looking for. I live with my 24-70 f/2.8 and 70-200 f/2.8IS attached to my camera bodies.

And if that wasn't enough, what do you do if a camera or flash malfunctions during a shoot? Well, you grab another one out of your bag and keep shooting. You don't get to come back tomorrow if your flash breaks down. I see a lot of people getting their first DSLR and a kit lens, and now they are wedding photographers. Please keep in mind, that to do this professionally, taking pretty pictures is only part of the occasion.

The 2 pictures you see here were taken during a class I taught on Thursday night. The lovely model is Sondra. Thank you Sondra, I know it must be overwhelming to work with so many students. While the class was using my flashes off camera, in the dark at an abandoned gas station, we had the model lit with a low powered hot light to aid in focusing. I utilized that light, ISO 6400, and f/2.8 with my Canon 5D MKII. Are they noisy? Sure, but I had 80 students that wanted to shoot, and I didn't want to get in their way. So I just followed the hot light, and fired away. All in all, I am amazed at the quality of these images at ISO 6400. The Canon 5D MKII continues to surprise me. And the good thing about this exercise is that I get to test out things like this before I need to utilize it in a real world, paying situation.

If you have any equipment questions or concerns, you can always ask them here: Faded and Blurred

And of course, if you are looking to learn more about photography, you can always come check out Tri-Community.

Coming up in class this week:

Monday night we have cars and models. Bring your gear!

Wednesday night we will cover paperwork. Contracts, releases, etc.

Thursday night we will have some Photoshop instruction.

See you all soon, have a great rest of your weekend!

Frank