Cycle 61 Photography

Hunting for a Christmas tree

2009-12-14T00:09:00.001-08:00

Getting some shoots lined up over the next couple of months. For now, a family picture from this afternoon. Nikon D200, 35/1.8 near wide open, lots of rain and natural light.

Letters to a young photographer

2009-11-20T07:33:00.000-08:00

From Joe McNally's blog. Go check it out if you haven't already. Thought provoking, and inspirational.

Q&A

2009-11-12T07:20:00.000-08:00

From some discussion on a local photography website, with a couple of friends.

C61 : Speaking of lenses: D40x on the back of a 70-200.

And some shots with the combo:

VM : I love it.

Those look fantastic! The bokeh is, naturally, excellent. Noise looks good at ISO 800. Did you shoot the whole event at 800 with VR and no flash?

C61 : Thanks. And whatchoo talking about no flash? Plenty of flash in all of those pictures. They're on lightstands, as always. Shot most of the event with this camera at ISO 800, F2.8-4, and 1/200th. Ambient light was ugly (and dim) fluorescent, so ramped up the shutter speed to totally squash it. I didn't dare go above ISO800 with the D40x, 1600 comes out pretty crunchy from what I've seen.

VM : I guess that's a compliment in disguise.

...and one question leads to another. What kind of light modifiers are on the strobes? The light looks nice and soft. Also, yeah, 1600 looks pretty gross, from what I've seen, too. Good idea on killing the fluorescent lights. Couldn't you just use a green gel on the strobes or was it hard to match?

C61 : I'll take the compliment. Light modifiers? None. The indoor pics, the strobes are bounced off the ceiling, with a slight forward tilt and the bounce card extended to provide just a touch of direct light. In the outdoor pic, I have one light set up high and off to my right. If you look closely, you can see a little catchlight in their eyes. Without that strobe, they're in the shade just like the wall behind them.

Regarding gelling the strobes to match the ambient, I probably could, but I'm lazy. And the gel absorbs some light, maybe 1/2-2/3 stop? Lighting a big room with a pair of speedlights like that is already a delicate balance of flash power (=lower ISO or smaller aperture) and recycle time/battery life. I ended up with one flash at 1/2 power with PW attached and the other at 1/4 power using the optical slave. This let me put a PW on each camera, but it meant that my 2nd flash was triggering off of everybody's flashes. Went through three sets of batteries in that one before the night was over. Adding gels would have meant slowing my recycle time OR shooting wide open OR bumping up the ISO to 1600. Not compromises I was willing to make.

VM : Since your photos with the 40x and pro glass look great, tell me: what do you miss the most about the D700?

High ISO and AF speed?

...and maybe FX? (does it really matter much?)

(I'm resisting the Ken Rockwell mantra, "all anyone needs is a D40")

C61 : 2 out of 3, right there. The last one would be the external controls. I would really love to have a second control wheel again, as well as ISO and WB adjustments that didn't involve a trip into the menu system.

And it really should use CF cards. I don't like SD.

VM : And I bet things like dynamic range is better, etc. But eff, 5x the price and no lens! Doesn't the D90 get you 95% there?

I should really just shut up and reflect on the principle of diminishing marginal utility.

C61 : Actually, I don't have a lens now, except the 85/1.4 that doesn't autofocus on the D40.

Edit : Wait, I've got another one somewhere. Lemme go poke around and see what it was.

Edit 2: Damn, it's a screwdriver lens too. Needs the focus motor in body. Oh well, time to work on my manual focus skills.

Choosing a direction

2009-11-11T11:10:00.000-08:00

I've been busy. Very busy. And most of it has not been photography related. Cycle 61 Photography is still in operation, but on a very low-key basis. I've been picking up gigs here and there, but mostly been working at the regular job. As much as I'd like to make this a full-time gig, it's just not a reality for me right now. But I do plan to start ramping things back up, hopefully including this blog.

Which leaves me with a decision...for whom am I writing and posting? For my fellow photographers, for my potential clients, for myself?

There are hundreds of photographers who are operating beautiful and timely photo blogs, full of incredible images for their clients to see. There are many who dive deeper into the background, detailing lighting and business, challenges and solutions. There are gear reviews, there are sites that are full of links to everybody else's blogs and sites, and there's the Strobist and Joe McNally, who seem to put all of this together with flawless balance.

Perhaps I'll just return to posting up pictures and geek out whenever it seems appropriate.

October, part 1

2009-04-13T21:03:00.000-07:00

First up since the long break, a down-home family wedding in Georgia. Guests of honor, of course, get their pics posted on the main page.

This was my shortest cross-country trip to date, with my car sitting in the parking lot at SFO for a total of only 43 hours while I traipsed across the continent to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The only thing longer than the name is the airport itself. I'm mildly surprised that they don't have shuttle flights from one end to the other. It's huge.

Flew in Friday night for a rehearsal dinner, as it were, at a local BBQ joint. Lunch in Silicon Valley and dinner in an Atlanta roadhouse makes for quite an afternoon. But I digress. A good nights' sleep and time to get ready for the ceremony.

Pictures and more, after the jump

The wedding was simple, but beautiful, held on a footbridge over a stream running through the wooded backyard of the grooms' parents' home. The stream (okay, really kind of a ditch, but that was part of the challenge) severely limited the angles which were available, and the afternoon sun coming through the trees was to be directly behind the couple. Through the trees. Bright, mottled light and deep shadows, always a good combination. Here's the setup in available light, from the shooter's perspective.

Two lights up on stands, facing towards the bridge, at about 1/8 power and zoomed in to where the couple would be standing. One had a mild warming gel to nudge the cool shade light coming through the trees to a more pleasing tone. A few minutes later, this is the scene:

Much better. The wide shots didn't amount to much, given the lack of water below the bridge and cluttered background, but the light worked out well for the closer shots, with a good separation from the background, and no worries about whether the patches of sunlight were falling correctly on everybody's faces.

I did most of my other shooting with camera in right hand, and flash in small softbox in left, adjusting aperture, ISO, and flash power on the fly. I just kind of get in the ballpark with these shots, and it seems to work well for me. We're pretty much in total darkness here without the flash, but I can't bring myself to put it on top of the camera. I like this look much better.

After all the real shots are done, and the party is well underway, I take some time to pick up a few details here and there, and experiment a bit with the unreal capability of the camera in near-total darkness. I love being able to do this...

I keep hearing that I'm crazy for shooting off-camera flash at weddings. I simply do whatever gets the images I need. Wouldn't have it any other way.

Random Milestone

2009-04-13T20:55:00.001-07:00

Just was scrolling down through the last few posts, got to the bottom of the page, and happened to notice this sitting there. I figure that myself and the various web bots probably account for about 24,500 of these page views, but as I'm typing up some more posts it's good to see that somebody's reading the blog.

This, of course, is about as many hits as the Strobist gets in a slow hour...but you've gotta start somewhere, right?

Cycle 61 Photography is still here...

2009-04-12T19:58:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time. But there's been quite a bit going on behind the scenes. Updates coming soon. Probably going to jump back eight months or so and catch up sequentially. At least that's the plan. See you all again soon.

Moving Day

2008-08-30T14:13:00.000-07:00

Been working last night and most of the morning getting everything loaded out of the house and into the truck for our epic journey five miles down the road. We're moving out of our 900 square foot box and into a much bigger, and nicer place in Pleasanton. This is currently the view from the webcam on my iMac, which sits in the garage/office/studio. Hopefully I'll be back online at the new place in a few days.

Wordle

2008-08-28T02:46:00.000-07:00

Fun random and rather educational internet toy: Wordle

It reads any patch of text, blog, website, whatever, and gives you back a graphic with your most used words. Words that are most used show up largest, less used are smaller, etc. Here's what's been in my blog recently:

Hmmmmmm.....

ISO is far and away my most used word (damn, I did it again!) followed closely by D700 and D200, along with "much". I don't say that much, do I? I see that light and shots make the b-list, and money is almost nonexistent. Hey, just like real life.... Gotta fix that. I'm gonna go wordle the strobist and see what we get.

Just as I expected. It's all about light.

Found in Ivan Makarov's excellent blog, IM Digital

Vacation Pictures

2008-08-27T22:01:00.000-07:00

How bad can it be to spend a week in a place that looks like this?

More pics after the jump.

The new portable traveling dog, Eddie. The full-size dog was traded in a few months ago.

Some flowers by the shore of Seneca Lake. Note the artsy vignetting. I didn't until it was too late. Need a thinner polarizer. Maybe I could crop it square and have a really expensive Holga.

My uncle, doing one of his favorite things in life, sitting at a campground surrounded by family.

Feet. I love feet. They say as much about a person as hands, sometimes.

My mom's new place. They're on the road full time, as of a few days ago!

Hi Mom! (Ya gotta look at me next time :-)

This one raised some questions. Like "Why the heck are you sticking your camera in the fire!?!?!"

You know what they say about a bad day fishing...

My little girl... this kid may look cute, but she's a fish killer!

More feet. Well, same feet, later in the week. My girl hates this picture, but I don't think she reads the blog. You never can tell with seven year olds these days.

Tupperware Archaeology.

D700, 50/1.4, and a campfire. What more do you need?

Wedding in the dark

2008-08-25T18:00:00.000-07:00

Picked up another second shooter gig off of craigslist for Saturday afternoon. I was hired just to shoot the ceremony by "My Perfect Day Media" a husband and wife video/photo team based out of Los Angeles. The money wasn't much, but I'm still in need of some better portfolio pictures, so I took it on.

The church was huge, and they were very specific about what they needed: a long-range shooter from the balcony in the back, a couple of wide shots with natural light, and whatever else I could come up with in an hour ceremony. The wide shots were easy, at 24mm on the D700, f/5 1/25th and around ISO 1600 to 2000. I tried a couple of different combinations for the longer shots, turns out the D200 with the 85/1.4 and the D700 with the Sigma 150 give me about the same images. The 700 shoots cleaner at higher ISO's, which makes up for the difference between the 1.4 and the 2.8. Ended up shooting the D200 wide and the D700 long, mostly around 1/80th wide open at ISO 2000-2500. Weird, and not at all what I expected, but it worked.

After the ceremony, I was able to get some nice portraits of the bridesmaids and flower girls, which will probably be my best payoff for the two hours or so I spent there. I hung around for the bride and groom making their departure, but the main photographers were all over the car like paparazzi, so I did what I could.

Good fun, and good practice, and a couple of good shots for the website.

And somebody hit my car while it was in the parking garage. Grrrrr

Sigma 150/2.8 Macro

2008-08-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

In lieu of the ubiquitous 70-200, I decided to go a different route for my fast telephoto needs, and after much research came up with the Sigma 150mm f/2.8 macro. Shutterbug Magazine did a review of it a while back, and had only good things to say. I personally like the fact that it has macro capability (full 1:1 with no extra attachments needed!) and that it's about half the size and less than half the cost of the 70-200. I've found this lens balances very, very well on the D700, and I've been able to handhold it down to about 1/60th with excellent results.

Downsides (after a few weeks use) seems to be a slower autofocus, especially in poor light, and the focus ring turns the opposite direction than Nikon lenses do, which is a bit counterintuitive when trying to tweak focus a bit, or get it in the right vicinity so the AF can do it's thing. After Saturday's wedding, I also think mine may front-focus a bit at long ranges. That, however, can be adjusted if necessary.

Pictures after the break..

Wedding, from the upper balcony of the church. 1/80th f/5, ISO 2200

Flower girl, natural light portrait outside the church. 1/160th f/3.0 ISO 200

David, portrait by camping lantern and glowstick. 1/25th f/3.2 ISO 3200

Pretty much my only macro shot so far. For size reference, the background is the knitting on a pink t-shirt. The whole pin is maybe 3/4" across. 1/1000th f/8, ISO 200

And a candid shot at the poker tournament yesterday. Shot with the D200 (so actually 225mm equivalent) 1/200th at f/4, ISO 400 with flashes on lightstands bounced off the ceiling from the corners of the room.

In Memory of Mark

2008-08-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

Got to break out the lights at last, after a couple of "available dark" gigs over the last few days. The event was "In Memory of Mark", a charity poker tournament, arranged to raise money for Mark's two year old daughter's college fund.

The event was fun, fast moving, and a pleasure to shoot. Indoors, outdoors, sometimes everything just works out perfectly. I felt for the first time that I had my kit dialed in, and was able to seamlessly shoot with both cameras and not have to fumble around with lenses, flashes, and whatnot.

Shot the D200 with the Sigma 150 for long portraits, candids from three tables away, isolating subjects from the crowd, etc, and the D700 with 24-70 as my all-purpose machine. With the lighting as good as it was, no problems at all with the D200 noise, and the 700 of course worked flawlessly.

I also used the LiveView several times, getting shots with the camera held high above me and out over a table, etc. Definitely better than point and hope, which is how you usually have to do these shots. Outside was a bit tougher, but something about an open bar gives you the courage to shoot at ISO 3200 and use your flashes from inside the building as a key light on your subjects.

Whoever designed the ceiling in the reception hall at Congregation Beth Am in Palo Alto clearly had photographers in mind. Best bounce conditions I've ever had the pleasure of shooting under. White painted, and low at the walls angling up to about 20' in the center, the inside of the hall acted like a giant parabolic reflector for light. Covered something like 1500 square feet with two strobes, and then covered it very well when the other photographer showed up with a pair of Sunpaks and two more lightstands. We had f/4 at ISO 400 throughout pretty much the whole room, and 5.6 if we were shooting a table near any of the four lights.

It got really fun once the tournament boiled down to one table, and we moved in even closer...

Ninja Photography

2008-08-24T22:04:00.001-07:00

Available Dark...

Answered a Craigslist ad early last week for a photographer to do a "shoot in low light, no flash condition, outdoors this Friday night" It looked interesting, and didn't pay a whole lot but I was intrigued by the idea. Turns out "low light" meant candle light and some white Christmas lights in nearby trees. Oh, and I had to remain absolutely unseen and unheard. The event? A marriage proposal on a wooded bluff above Baker's Beach in San Francisco.

I arrived about 7:30, and met the other guys setting this up. They were busy stringing the lights, and helped with a sound check...I was initially going to shoot wide, and fairly close, but the shutter was too loud, and the priority for the night was stealth, not quality of images. Obviously not my choice of compromises, but you take what you can get. The Sigma 150 was not going to help, because at that length there was no way I would be getting acceptable shutter speeds as the light fell.

Here's your light source, now get to work!

Talk about dark out there... I ended up with the 85/1.4 wide open, at ISO 6400, handholding the camera braced against the ground at about 1/5 to 1/10 of a second. Crazy dark. But the D700 did it's job admirably, coming up with some surprisingly acceptable images under these conditions.

Black hoodie, black pants, crawling around in the sand and bushes being a ninja... just another Friday night at Cycle 61 Photography :-)

Oh, and by the way, she said yes. And we were invited to come out of hiding and meet the happy couple. And I'm shooting their wedding. Like I said, just another boring Friday night...

Vacation

2008-08-09T08:07:00.000-07:00

It's been a great week, camping and fishing up here in the lakes of upstate New York. Back in gear next week, but it's been a very relaxing, and much needed break. More to come in a few days. Lots of big stuff going on.

Seat without a view...

2008-08-03T12:43:00.000-07:00

Chase Jarvis has his "Room without a view" series, I figured I could do the same. Sitting in Chicago International right now, after a quick and cloudy hop from San Francisco. We'll be on our way to Rochester NY in an hour or so, for a week of camping and hopefully some lifestyle and landscape shooting in upstate New York. In the meantime, enjoy the scenery!
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Time Machine

2008-08-03T01:30:00.000-07:00

These images are under a Creative Commons License. Feel free to copy and distribute for non-commercial purposes.

Spent an afternoon in Oakland's DeFremery Park, somewhere back in 1969, as Angela Davis, a political activist on the FBI's most wanted list for her anti-war activities, gave her firey "Liberation of our People" speech to an eager crowd, gathered from all around.

Actually, this isn't Angela Davis, nor is it 1969. But for a few hours, it sure felt that way...

I generally avoid politics here, but when I saw an opportunity to get involved with Mark Tribe's Port Huron Project, I couldn't resist. It's a series of re-enactments of some of the most famous speeches from the late sixties by figures such as Angela Davis, Cesar Chavez, Coretta Scott King, and others.

The people involved in the project are amazingly dedicated to what they are doing, and their passion for this movement is clear. The problems our country faces today are frighteningly similar to those of forty years ago, and now, as then, there is a rising tide of discontent and voices that will not be silenced. Mark and his crew are using these bits of history to hold up a mirror to modern society, and to the people who would stand by and wonder when somebody's going to do something about it.

I love natural light

2008-07-31T18:54:00.000-07:00

It just seems like there's never enough of it to do what we really want. I can certainly see why portrait photographers who use natural light want a "north window studio". This is essentially what I have in my living room, except the backyard is enclosed by trees and there's a huge awning extending 15 feet out, which combine to make my "studio" darker than the inside of a cow. The light is gorgeous, there's just hardly any of it there.

I'm now able to shoot in conditions that I wouldn't have even tried before...this definitely bears further practice! Next week is going to be interesting.

Murphy's law, subsection 342

2008-07-31T15:18:00.000-07:00

Good old Mr. Murphy, inventor of the law stating "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong" apparently had a background in photography. One of the deeply buried corrolaries to the law stated that four days after you buy something new, you will find an equal or better item for sale on Craigslist at a price you cannot refuse.

What am I talking about?

A D3, another 24-70, another 85/1.4, and accessories.

For about the price of a new D3.

So now the bag is a bit too full, one of each lens has to go, and I get to spend the next week in New York deciding whether I'm going to keep the D3 or the D700. When I get back, one of the cameras will be on it's way to a new owner.

I just have to decide which one. I swear, I didn't mean for this to happen, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity. Either way, it's going to be a sweet kit.

I have an interesting event coming up this weekend, a shoot for a historical/political group that does re-enactments of famous speeches, rallies, etc. It's a combination political rally and public, collaborative theater. The group is called the Port Huron Project , check them out, and if you're in Oakland this Saturday, come on down and watch the show!

I'll try to get some pictures up from the event Saturday night, as I'm flying out to New York to go camping for a week on Sunday morning. Enjoy!

Weekends...

2008-07-28T12:10:00.000-07:00

Kids at the beach. How much more fun does it get than that?

It's here...

2008-07-26T15:15:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Nikon, Ritz Camera, FedEx, and a gentle squeeze of the bank account, my new D700 showed up today. This is the full-frame camera that I (along with so many others) have been waiting for Nikon to build, and they've done a great job. Quick first impressions, and a few more pictures, after the jump.

Found this sitting on the front porch when I got home today:

Brought it in, out of the box, and there's the big 700 I've been waiting for:

First off, the camera feels great in hand, very solid and comfortable. It exudes quality, and just begs to be used. The screen on the back is incredible, at 3.0" and more than twice the resolution of my D200, it's beautiful.

First lens to go on was the 24-70, which is now able to be the wide angle it was designed as. 24mm on the full frame is wider than 18mm on dx, so I get to shoot a little closer than before, which is gonna be nice. Yes, my kitchen's a mess, but here's the view at 24mm:

The high ISO abilities of this camera are every bit as incredible as I've heard. Take a look at this photo, shot under the one 100w bulb in my kitchen at ISO 25,600. Click through for full-size if you have a big screen and/or a minute for it to load.

I'm going to stop drooling over it now, and go take some pictures...

A clearer view...

2008-07-21T02:41:00.000-07:00

WARNING: Gear lust ahead!

I've got my budget all laid out for everything I'm going to be picking up over the next week or so to fill in a fully capable pro kit, and one lens seems to have jumped the gun and come onboard before everything was, shall we say, approved.

The Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 is, according to everything I've read, absolutely superlative in terms of it's image quality, even wide open, and it provides an excellent range on a full-frame body. It's supposed to be as sharp as the 28-70, but wider, and as good wide open as the 17-55, which is a DX (crop format) lens. Right now it's on the D200, where I'm finding that 24mm is not wide enough for my taste on DX, but it's going to settle right in on the D700 when it arrives in a few weeks.

The rest of my list is roughly as follows:

D700. Already discussed. The body that so many of us have been waiting for.

Sigma 150mm f/2.8 macro. This will be my long portrait/short telephoto lens, and I expect it to reside more on the D200, which will be staying in my kit for some time still. This provides me with a bit more reach than I've had previously (150mm vs 135) and gets me to a nice f/2.8 for a very reasonable $550 or so.

Nikon 85mm f/1.4 I try and try to convince myself to get the 1.8 instead. But I've used both, and the 1.4 is simply magic.

Another SB-800 and Pocket Wizard. One light simply isn't going to do everything I need.

Beyond that, I have enough budgeted for either a 14-24 (a beautiful lens, but I'm torn trying to make a business case for it) or a set of a couple of AB lights and associated modifiers (probably more practical) I'm leaning heavily towards the lights, as I think 24mm on FX will be wide enough for me for a while. I've rarely shot wider than 27mm equivalent, so I'm ok with 24. Hopefully.

Also, a couple of lightstands, an umbrella or two, a roll of seamless, some business cards and a sign for the back window of the van. I'm sending some design work to a little company called FatTofu (http://fattofu.com/) who will be doing my logo and stuff. As you can tell by the graphic above, I am not a designer!

Anyway, thanks to all for the support as always. More to come soon. And I promise to keep the gear posts to a minimum. This stuff is tools, and right now I'm investing in the future of my business. Hopefully I'm not putting the cart too far ahead of the horse.

iMac, therefore iAm

2008-07-18T04:51:00.000-07:00

Just another step in my continual pursuit of the most forced relevance ever in a blog post title...

After three painful weeks of getting my internet fix via only my cell phone's little 2" screen, I was finally able to pick up my new iMac this afternoon. This will be primarily the business computer, but the family is going to get in some time on the new box here or there, I'm sure. It's a 24" model, and frankly every time I look at the screen I just about get lost in how huge, bright, and clear it is. I've got MS Office all set up, and a copy of QuickBooks Pro to help keep track of business over the next year or so. The wireless connection to the internet, printer, and other computer are working after some tweaking and a ping from Comcast's techs.

I try not to make this too much of a gear lust blog, but sometimes I can't help myself. I've waited too long for this one. The last computer was Dell's bottom of the line econobox six years ago, and it has more than done it's time. It was getting to the point where the monitor was so far gone I couldn't judge image quality hardly at all, and the 30gb (!) C: drive has been stuffed within an inch of it's life for around 18 months now. I've got over 500 gigs worth of external drives just kind of orbiting around the old box, waiting for it to die.

Next project: porting my two Lightroom catalogs over to the new machine, coming up with a logical storage solution, and figuring out how the old box fits into the plan and the network. It's probably going to end up as a dedicated machine to run the slide scanner, working through many, many thousands of my grandpa's old Kodachromes dating all the way back to the early sixties.

We'll be finishing up the details of the business launch budget soon, and there will be a few more nice bits of gear wandering into my camera bag soon. Give it a couple of days, and I'll have some more detail (and pictures) for you. In the meantime, I've got a job to bid for some corporate portraits, so I'm off to dig up John Harrington's "Best Business Practices for Photographers" and remind myself what professional photography is worth in dollars and cents.

And I'll post some pictures too. Gotta have those!

Why I love a cheap lens...

2008-07-13T20:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, I admit to some pixel peeping now and then. I get asked sometimes what lens I shoot with, and the surprising answer is that one of my favorites is the 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 AFS DX. It's cheap, it's plastic, it was the second string kit lens two years ago, it's slow variable aperture, yadda yadda yadda.

It's damn sharp, it's a great range, and it does almost everything for me. I've used it everywhere, I flung it from a ceiling fan (long story) and it just lets me make images.

The eye above belongs to my son, it's an unsharpened 100% crop of a portrait I shot in the living room an hour ago. Lighting was a small softbox overhead with an SB-800 in it, f/14 at ISO 100. Take this picture, drop it in Photoshop, and put a touch of sharpening on it. See what you think. Not bad for a $250 lump of 7.5x super-zoom consumer plastic.

Somehow I think that this lens will still have a place in my bag once the 2.8's and such move in in a few weeks here. According to Lightroom, over 60,000 images with it in the last 18 months.

Thanks Nikon for a great little piece of glass.

Another wedding in the bag

2008-07-12T16:22:00.000-07:00

Had the opportunity to shoot another wedding yesterday, as second shooter this time, assisting Michael Loeb of Loeb Photography. Michael's been shooting weddings since the beginning of time, (or at least since medium format film was the format of choice) and working for him was a real treat.

One of the things I noticed the most was how much effort went into directing the various parties of the wedding for many of the group shots and posed portraits. He did a great job keeping everybody nearby, and cycling through the groups while getting all the setups he had on his list. Much more organized than I was at my last event. Years of experience showing through.

I got there early, and was able to get shots of the bride and bridesmaids getting ready, and some detail shots I missed last time as well (bride's shoes, flowers, table settings, etc) The group was a lot of fun, relaxed, easy to work with, and happy to have us around.

The ceremony was beautiful, outside at a little gazebo, and our persistent wildfires have left a high layer of smoke over the area, which turns into a gorgeous warm diffuse light at about 6pm. Made shooting outside a pleasure, no harsh shadows or squinty eyes anywhere. Set up one flash on a stand at the back of the audience, opposite the sun for a bit of pop, and that was all we needed.

Overall, I had a great time. I think I might get to like this wedding thing....

The lights come up...

2008-07-09T22:39:00.000-07:00

Some early business is starting to trickle in, I've made a few sales to the parents from the dance school, and there's a possibility of some further business from them as well. The head of the school saw the gallery and is isntereted in having me do the school's photography next season. I'm going to be in touch with her soon, and I'm planning to be contacting many of the local childrens' sports leauges regarding photos.

I had kind of made the assumption that these positions would be filled, but my experience with the dance academy is teaching me otherwise....

Right now I'm looking at youth sports & activities, family pictures/portraits, weddings, and I'd like to find an inroad to some commercial and architectural photography as well.

That's not too much to shoot for, is it? :-)
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

My shopping list has just changed a bit...

2008-07-02T01:01:00.001-07:00

Anybody who follows Nikon gear rumors and releases already knows the camera above, but for anybody who has been under a rock the last several weeks, Nikon has announced the D700, a new camera combining the full-frame sensor of the D3 with the smaller, lighter form of the D300. DP Review has a hands-on preview here, and all the major camera sites have copies of Nikon's release. This is the camera I (and many others) have been waiting for, and they're supposed to be available by late July. I'll be placing my order in a few weeks.

But wait! I thought you had no job! Why are you looking at new cameras? How is this possible?

Read on...

Over the course of several weeks of separation from the corporate, clock-punching, every day the same job I've held for the last six years, I've had time to do some serious thinking and planning. I've realized several things, and probably the most pertinent is that I do not want to work for anybody else.

I asked my wife a few days ago if she felt I was good with commitment. I asked her what my success rate is when I'm fully on board with something, really jumping in with both feet.

She says 100%

I've known this for years, but now my hand has been forced, and I choose the path less trodden. It's not the easy road, but it's been my passion, my dream, and now I have the chance to make the decision.

I'm not going back to work.

Cycle 61 Photography is going full-time, right now. I'm cashing in some resources that I've saved up over the last few years, and making this thing real. The resources exist, and will be liquid in a few weeks, to fill in the gaps in a functional professional set of gear, to finish my licensing, to put together some advertising, and to support us while the ball really gets rolling with the business.

I have a tentative agreement with a dance school to shoot their events, a wedding in August, one in October, and a few others in the early stages. Certainly not a full-time schedule as yet, but it's a start.

I have a job interview tomorrow morning for yet another maintenance technician job at a pharmaceutical company. I'm still going to go, but it's probably going to be my last. I've officially been hired as President, CEO, and head photographer here at Cycle 61.

Commitment

2008-06-26T20:07:00.000-07:00

Nick Davis, Cycle61 Photography, on assignment for 4TheRiders

Decisions have been made, gears are turning, and changes, big changes, are in progress. Stay tuned for more details, as things are about to get very, very exciting around here!

A change of course...

2008-05-29T23:14:00.000-07:00

Many things have changed dramatically since I last weighed in here, nearly two months ago. My apologies to all who were living vicariously, or watching hopefully, through my blog. I'll summarize a bit, but there will still be a lot of stuff here.

When I was posting avidly, daily or more, my work schedule at the real job was 10am to 8pm, which allowed me to stay up until all hours of the night writing about my photographic endeavors. This changed in late February, roughly a week after the eclipse and just before the Feb 29th wedding. I was transferred to day shift, which starts at 4am at the plant, and for a supervisor, often extends until 6 or 7pm. 14 hour days, as you might imagine, pay well but severely limit one's free time to pursue hobbies, business launches, or for that matter, family.

I had submitted a request to drop my supervisor position and return to my tools, to do the job I loved and was damn good at for a more reasonable 8-10 hours a day, but that request was ignored. The company was under no obligation to allow me a demotion, and they elected not to. At the same time, I began to experience serious pressure to separate my work and photographic activities. My blog had been found, and my lack of discretion regarding work-related issues (and photographing an eclipse from the roof of the plant) were rather sternly frowned upon.

The combination of a total lack of personal time, the need to preserve my job, and desire to see my kids once in a while conspired to reduce my time spent posting on the blog to virtually nothing. I continued to do some photography when I could, mostly events through the school and other minor things of that nature. An attempt to gather the Bay Area DPR crew fell flat, but I hope they made it up to Yosemite as they were planning this month.

Financial considerations forced me to unload some of my less critical gear, quite to my dismay. The F4, a few lenses, and a flash and Pocket Wizard went to Craigslist. I still have the trusty D200, a pair of PW's, an SB-800, and an umbrella/lightstand. I find this can suffice for 95% of what I'm still doing, although I mourn the loss of the F4.

Then, in the space of perhaps three weeks, everything turned upside down. I had become increasingly disillusioned with work, mentally wandering from resentful to hating every minute I was there. I spent as little time there as I could, and consequently fell far behind on my responsibilities. I spoke to the manager repeatedly about giving up my desk and returning to my tools, to no avail. It was not difficult to sense that things were not going well, but I dealt with it by looking the other way. I spent weekends and evenings riding my motorcycle around the local hills and canyons, alone and often with local groups. It became an escape for me, because you can't ride a bike and think about anything else. You focus on the ride, or you don't ride. So I rode. Santa Cruz, Half Moon Bay, called in sick and traversed the Sierra Mountains one day, I just needed to be away.

So they sent me away.

Out the door Friday, May 16th with enough of a severance check to meet the family's needs for a bit.

Naturally, I went for a ride. Down Highway 1, through Monterey, Carmel, Big Sur, almost to the fabulous Hearst Castle I rode that afternoon, just trying to forget the world with each bend in the road. And no, I didn't have my camera. Sorry.

I returned home late that night, spoke to my wife of what had transpired that day, and went to bed. Enjoyed the weekend with no worries of work or anything, and then went camping with the kids for a few days. Good times.

I have since gotten my job search into high gear, and although I don't have the money to sustain me until I find the perfect job, I think I'll be able to find a much better balance between work, family, pleasure, and business. I have made many friends in the local motorcycle community, and I am excited about the possibility of shooting at the local tracks, at races and events. I need to visit this further, but there are those making a living at it.

Cycle 61 Photography is not dead.

I just needed to go for a ride.

I make no promises of daily posts, as I find myself prone to spending far too much time on the internet and not enough focusing on my real life. I love my kids and family, and I have to remember that I'm doing this for them. I'll soon have another job, hopefully now for 40 hours a week instead of 80, and the photography will continue. Perhaps I could have borrowed many thousands of dollars, launched a Craigslist ad blitz, painted my car with the company logo, and found myself a full time photographer by now, but I have a household to support, and that (for now) still requires a paycheck.

Thanks to all who have been so encouraging along the way, please keep an eye out for me, because I will be here.

And I finally got the nerve to carry my camera while I ride, so although I may occasionally digress, at least the pictures will be good.

And on we go.....

Strobist: Overclock Your Speedlight for More Power

2008-03-31T22:39:00.000-07:00

Hats off to Strobist for this one. I was trying to put something together myself, but this is far better executed than anything I had in mind. For those of you who really are pushing their flashes to the limit, you have to check out the new amazing article on Strobist, and see what happens when MIT engineering students get hold of a couple of flashes and start playing around.

Strobist: Overclock Your Speedlight for More Power

Feeling a bit lost...

2008-03-30T13:56:00.001-07:00

I want to put out a few updates on what's been going on with the blog, and the business, because I know it's been a while since I've posted anything here. I promise, there won't be any more droughts like this anytime soon. Oddly enough, I check my own blog fairly regularly and seeing the same post on top for nearly two weeks has really been bothering me. More detail, and an action plan, after the jump.

Most of the reason I've gone dark has been my work schedule at the real job. You know, the one that pays my bills (most of the time). I was transferred back to day shift two weeks ago, and I've been trying to catch up on a lot of things there, which has tied me up from 4am until about 5 or 6 pm every day since then. We've had a rough couple of weeks. So leaving for work at 3:15 am, getting home at 6:30 or 7pm, and trying to be a dad hasn't left much time for business building.

My landlord and I reached an agreement and he signed the forms that will allow me to operate a business with my rented house as the listed address. I have to fix a couple of appliances, but at least my rent isn't going up (for now).

I still need to contact the city and find out what documentation is needed to certify my disabled veteran status, which will eliminate most of the filing costs for the business license. Once I've got this taken care of I'll file and Cycle 61 Photography will be official!

I've been playing quite a bit with the small softbox, and the more I use it the more I love the light it gives me. The little 12x16 job is easy to handhold, and for individuals or small tabletop setups it's awesome. It's also light enough to dangle on the end of a thin lightstand, like I did for the kids painting easter eggs here. Pricey for the size at ~$70, but the light is much better controllable than a shoot-through umbrella. I'm definitely addicted, I want to try a bigger one!

I'm going to get back in gear with the business stuff over the next week (hopefully I'll be able to cut back to less than 14 hour days at work) and there will be many updates as things continue to evolve. Thanks for your patience, all!

At least somebody's feeling good

2008-03-18T18:16:00.000-07:00

Yuck...
After a brief day of respite yesterday, my flu is back and really kicked my butt this morning. I've got to get over this thing, I can't afford any more time off of work, and I've hardly been able to think photography for well over a week now. But there have been a few things happening. More after the jump...

As I mentioned earlier, my landlord and I finally came to an agreement regrading use of the house to operate a business. This had been a major sticking point, and it meant that I'll be official by the end of March, where I had hoped for February. Oh well, at least the ball is rolling again. Next up is to get my paperwork from the VA to let the city know I'm a disabled vet, which will save some $$$ on the paperwork.

Next up is some more tabletop product photography I've been working on. I'm really enjoying the little PhotoFlex 12"x16" softbox for this kind of stuff, it's a cinch to work with and gives great results. No shortage of power either, with an SB-800 at 1/4 power I get f/11 to f/16, ISO 100 at 12-18" working distance. Much better control too, there's no way I could get the light to fade off like this into a black background with an umbrella.

By the way, I'm cleaning up my camera bag a bit, if anybody local is interested in an SB-600, a 50/1.8, a 105/2.5 AiS, a GorillaPod, or the above pictured F4, check the link here.

A few hours out of the sickhouse

2008-03-16T12:41:00.000-07:00

Our whole family has been hit hard by this flu that's going around, and after a week of trying to sleep it off every hour I'm not at work, I took the kids out to the park for a few hours. It feels great to be out of the house, but I sense I may be buying another day or two of misery. Hopefully not. We'll see.

The wedding album from Bryce and Danielle's wedding came in from Blurb on Friday, and is being delivered to the couple today. It's 20 pages hardcover, and it looks pretty nice. Next time I'll definitely include more pages, as the cost doesn't go up by much for an additional 10-20 pages.

My daughter's team took first place in their division at the regional tournament yesterday, and they're moving up to state in a few weeks. Pictures and more detail later, if I'm still feeling OK when we get home.

Oh, Nuts!

2008-03-13T11:49:00.000-07:00

Okay, the title is a bit of a stretch to connect the picture above with any sort of subject that I'm going to write about today. This picture is the first of what will be a series of six, using these great cups we picked up at Cost Plus World Market. Each is a different color, they have this nifty stainless steel caddy that carries them all around, and they've been begging me to do something creative with them since the moment they came home. This series is a self-assignment to keep the creative juices flowing, and to keep me looking for color-coordinated foods...

In business news, it's been a very slow week for me. I've been sick most of the week, and between work and trying to recover from a nasty flu, there simply hasn't been much photography going on.

One important breakthrough, I've reached an agreement with my landlord to sign the paperwork so I can file for my business license with the city. I also found out there's a possibility that as a disabled veteran, my license fees may be waived. Not a huge cost savings, only $85 or so, but every little bit helps.

And thanks to all those who have been leaving such great supportive and informative comments! Your words of encouragement are greatly motivating to me, and some of the resources you've pointed me towards have been invaluable.

Gotta go. More to come soon.

Strobist Assignment Review

2008-03-10T00:41:00.000-07:00

Just posted on the Strobist Blog, the results are in from Strobist: Lighting 102: Discussion - Double-Duty Light and I'm thrilled to have my "Nest Egg" image make the list! Please take a moment, check out the post and some of the images, and see the amazing things that can be done with a single light...

Senior Portraits

2008-03-09T23:34:00.001-07:00

William Davis, originally uploaded by cycle61.

From today's senior shoot for my cousin. Two SB's, camera right and left with CTO gels, slow shutter (1/5 second!) to burn in ambient light behind on the stage. I've got a few more from the shoot on my Flickr.

Copies of all the portraits I shot last week are posted in the theater lobby at 5x7" matted on 8x10" paper. It was interesting standing back at the wall during intermission, watching everybody gather around them, pointing out their pictures, their friends, which shots they liked or didn't like, etc. My website address wasn't there, but it's now posted along with the pictures, and I'm listed as the "Production Photogrpaher" in the program. Pretty exciting stuff for me. Now I've just got to get some business in a town that's less than 80 miles away...

I also got in some shooting during the "12th Night" performance. Conditions were far from ideal, but considering I'm shooting with a shirt wrapped around the camera, from the back row, wide open at f/5.6, ISO 3200, I think the shots came out pretty nicely. It certainly would have been nice to have a 70-200/2.8 and a body that doesn't make such a mess at high ISO's, but you get to use the camera you have, not the one you dream about...

February business review

2008-03-07T20:42:00.000-08:00

Just going to take a few minutes to look back over the last month here...I’m not sure what the expected financial “break even” point is for a fledgling photographic business, especially a part time one, but I’m certainly not there yet. Cycle 61 Photography’s business plan in the early stages of development, and at this point my photographic activity is primarily to be involved with everything I can. February’s progress report and upcoming events, after the jump.

Total photographic income for February is $60.00, which was my “thank you” for shooting the wedding last week. Please note again that this was a personal job, and this is not going to be my normal rate… Also, no stock sales as yet but I'm not in a hurry, I have 99 images online at PhotoShelter now and I know that stock is a numbers game as much as anything. My goal for this is to double my collection to 200 images live by the end of March.

Expenses, mostly mileage on the car and purchasing “The Moment it Clicks”, a new 4gb memory card, the LumiQuest softbox, some rechargeable batteries, and a parking ticket, were considerably more. (Can I count my parking ticket?) I also need to start factoring in the cost of the data plan for my cell phone and a few other items.

I've been leaning on my landlord to sign the permission to operate a business from my residence, apparently his lawyer advised him he should raise my rent if he lets me base my business here. I'm trying to explain that my business basically fits in my backpack, and the city just won't let me use a PO Box or I'd pay the $39 and be done with all this hassle.

I’m shooting senior portraits for my cousin this weekend, along with (possibly) a group shot of the “12th Night” cast. Next weekend is a regional tournament for a bunch of the local elementary schools, I’ll be shooting events for two of the teams. I shot this last year as well, and produced a book for the parents through Blurb, which sold out immediately at $20/copy. The Saturday after that is the meeting of our Bay Area DPR photography group, and I’ll be working as an assistant and behind-the-scenes shooter on a professional fashion shoot in San Francisco that afternoon.

I also finally finished the post work for the wedding I shot last week, the gallery is online and ready to go!

I've been DAM busy this week

2008-03-07T01:24:00.000-08:00

Remember that post a few days ago about 814 Photographs? Well, post processing of those photos and some backend work on my image archive is the reason you've been looking at that ASMP camera for three days now. Thanks, by the way, to the couple of people who put in a few words of support on Chase's website. It should be interesting to see what happens with that. More about my DAM week, after the jump.

First off, let me say that I am absolutely in love with Adobe's Lightroom, and the powerful tools it brings to the table with regards to image editing workflow, cataloging, and archiving. The bad news is that I am now painfully aware of how woefully unorganized my image library is, and that it's going to take a lot of boring, unglamorous work to get a handle on ~52,000 images from the last two years.

My thanks to Josh McCulloch, who wrote in a comment late last week:

- Post Production workflow: Check out the DAM book and the DAM forums at The DAM Book Website. This is a great resource for anything related to PP workflow. They have forums for all different software, including Lightroom. Definitely worth checking out, they're a great group of helpful people. I wish I had learned PP and set up my image archive well when I started shooting, instead of 2 years and 15,000 images later. It's much easier to do it as you go!

I burned an hour or two in the forums there, learning a bit about Lightroom and a lot about how little I really knew, and decided to pick up a copy of the DAM Book. It arrived 48 hours later (Thanks Amazon!) and I've been digging through it earnestly the last few nights.

Without going into too much of a review, I'll recommend this book for any photographer who finds themselves with an ever-expanding library of photos, and wants to be able to use their images to the fullest, rather than have them simply taking up space. I know that I can't remember everything I need to know about 50 thousand images, and my archive is going to need some serious work to get up to speed. However, I think the end product will be worth the effort.

In related news, I managed to turn my clean Lightroom library screen into a multi-colored, multi-categoried mess over the last several days, trying to get an initial edit of the wedding photos put together, then select the group shots and candids that needed minimal processing, then working with the wedding party portraits to clean them up and make them beautiful. By now, all my initial ratings are jumbled, I don't remember what color is supposed to be what, which version of which picture I uploaded, which still need to be edited, and which ones I can make available for prints. Oh, and I still need to put together a CD of the selects and embed some kind of slideshow.

I definitely needed to think this one through a bit more before plunging headfirst into selecting, editing and uploading pictures, and now I get to go back and clean up after myself. The good news is that I have not deleted or overwritten anything, and I have a backup copy of the selects offsite. If my house burns down tomorrow, I can still deliver the pictures.

In the meantime, I'm going to try and get a bit of sleep.

Help send me to ASMP!

2008-03-03T23:08:00.000-08:00

As you all know, I'm building a business here, and now I need your help. This will only take a minute of your time, and won't cost a penny. Thanks in advance. Here's the deal:
Chase Jarvis, master photographer, outdoor guy, and businessman supreme, has posted an offer on his blog to send one fortunate photographer to the ASMP Strictly Business II Conference in Chicago on April 11-13, all expenses paid. More about the conference, from their website:

ASMP’s Strictly Business 2 is a weekend conference that will teach you real-world business skills and help you thrive in our highly competitive industry. SB2 brings you consultations, lectures, video presentations, a keynote address, workshops, hands-on negotiating training, and social gatherings to share and learn from your peers. This weekend will change the way you look at your business — join us.

The contest is a two step process, first you nominate yourself with an essay, up to 100 words, then you get friends, family, co-workers, associates, etc to post their support for you. This is where I need your help.

If you're reading this blog, if you like the concepts and premise of what I'm doing, if you believe that passion, beauty, art, and business can coexist and thrive, then please take a look at Chase's offer, and then hit the link here to post a comment on his page in support of Cycle 61 Photography. Be sure to include my name, website (this one) and why you think I should be chosen to attend the conference.

My essay is simple. It's the opening paragraphs of "Welcome to Cycle 61 Photography" I believed in it then, and I believe in it now. Here it is again:

My name is Nick Davis, I'm an amateur photographer with professional aspirations, and I have committed to building the entity known to me as Cycle 61 Photography into a real, legitimate, licensed, legal, profitable, and above all, sustainable business. In keeping with the wonderful open-source, open book, free sharing mindset that has developed in the photographic community in the internet age, this process is going to be open for all to follow along the way. There will be pitfalls, setbacks and triumph, challenges and conquests, anguish, stress, beauty, and light. Always light. Photography is about light, after all.

Thank you as always for your help and support. My endeavor would not be possible without it. Cycle 61 exists, in large part, because of and for you.

Theater group shoot complete.

2008-03-03T00:56:00.000-08:00

The shoot for my cousin's drama group at Davis High School is a wrap, and considering the madness associated with theater the week before opening night, I think everything went very smoothly. I started right off by telling the director Gwyn that my first priority was to stay out of her way, and when she visibly relaxed, at that moment I knew we were gonna be okay. The shoot was a lot of fun, more technically challenging than I had imagined, and very educational. What worked and what didn't, along with more pictures and thoughts from the day, after the jump.

After quick introductions with the director and some of the cast and crew, they busied themselves setting up the stage and preparing lines, while I did a few quick lighting tests to see what I could get on the stage. Short answer: not enough. With two flashes shooting diagonally in towards the stage at 1/2 power, I had f/4 at ISO 800, but only if my subject had line-of sight to BOTH flashes. The light was bad, the shadows were terrible, and I was getting nothing usable at they practiced their sword fights and choreography.

Finally, in desperation, I asked one of the lighting guys if I could mount a flash in the rafters. He pointed me to the service ladder, so I grabbed a clamp and my SB-800 and headed for the catwalk above. Spent a moment finding a clean shot for the flash amongst a battery of stage lights, but once it was in position, it worked great. At 1/2 power, zoomed to 50mm, it more than doubled the light I had available on stage, and eliminated all the shadow issues. Now I was free to use the second flash for accent, rim light, etc as the flash above filled in the stage.
With my new-found lighting skills, I got some decent shots as the group went through their scenes again, and I was able to roam a bit more as the director was on stage constantly making small corrections here and there. After about two hours of rehearsal, they called break. I was informed that they would be doing smaller scenes afterwards, and this was my to be my only chance to shoot portraits.
I ran back up the ladder, grabbed my other light, and quickly set up in the corner for the best portrait background I could find on a moment's notice. Beth quickly helped me test my light, and we were on our way. She did a great job of holding the reflector, calling "Next" as they queued up for their shot, and being cute enough to relax a bunch of high schoolers.

As I have almost no experience shooting portraits, I think these came out quite well, but I would definitely value any input from some of you more experienced people photographers (Kent, Mike, hello?) I do have to share one that I screwed up, one of the tech guys Steve, who has great hair and the coolest glasses, which he even offered to take off. The umbrella was reflecting awfully in his glasses, but I was so damn sure I could find an angle where I would miss the reflection that he was called off before I finally relented. Sorry about that one, I owe you a re-shoot!

Wedding day reflections

2008-03-02T01:15:00.000-08:00

Note to self #1 : Leave early and check traffic. I was panicked for a few minutes when a motorcycle accident brought I-880 to a grinding halt 45 minutes before the ceremony.

As I spent several hours today going through the photos from yesterday's wedding, some of the random thoughts swirling around in my mind finally started to settle into place. A few observations from the day, after the jump.

Weddings are definitely not for the faint of heart. You get one chance at the shot, and one chance only. I got very lucky in this regard several times yesterday. For example, I missed the kiss. Yes, that kiss. But the first one was so quick that several members of the family immediately called for an encore, for which I was able to squeeze off three or four frames.

The bride announced, much to my relief, that they would be walking three blocks down to the lake to shoot pictures. I had thought about doing this, but I didn't dare suggest it with her so far pregnant and several members of the family in poor health. I'm not sure how I would have handled the situation had she not suggested it first. Meeting with the couple ahead of time would have provided an opportunity so sort this out.

I need to try to pay attention to details through the viewfinder. I had a bit of a spotty record for this yesterday. I have several otherwise nice shots ruined by hairs across the face, lamps growing out of people's heads, strange objects in the near foreground that are hard to crop out, etc. I got a good laugh out of the couple when shooting one portrait by the lake. I was standing there, camera to my eye, and after several seconds they started wondering what I was doing, as I hadn't shot anything yet. Obviously they couldn't see the fire engine that was driving through their heads in the background...

I found I'm actually more comfortable with off-camera flash than on-camera. I was cautioned that I would find myself shooting on-camera TTL out of necessity and speed, but this didn't turn out to be the case. The shots I did use on-camera were, for the most part, outside in direct sun before the ceremony, and that inside, I was far better off with the Pocket Wizards and a flash on a lightstand.

I need to watch my gear. I nearly walked away from an SB-600 with a diffuser on it sitting on a bench in the chapel room. Miraculously, I made it through the whole day without losing anything at all.

I know painfully little about post-processing workflow. I'm using Lightroom, which I purchased last week after a month trial, and it's great, I just have no idea how to sort out what I'm trying to do. I made a quick pass through the shots, choosing about 250 out of the original ~800, and then went through again and gave all those pictures star ratings, 1 to 5. I edited down to 50 shots that tell the story of the wedding, did some cropping, sharpening, and color correcting on those, and they're now uploading to my Zenfolio account.

There are probably two dozen other good shots, individual portraits and group shots, that will be retouched and uploaded shortly, but they're going in a different category as they're not really part of the wedding story.

The couple and family can buy prints directly from Zenfolio, which should generate a bit of residual income from the shoot, and I'm toying with the idea of putting together a nice album for them as well. Promised deliverables are a cd/dvd with the images, and a slideshow. I'll get that wrapped up later, they know that the first place they'll be able to see their photos is online.

I need to put together a basic contract for the couple to sign, stating service, deliverable, image copyright, payment, and release. We don't have anything written at all. Even though this was done largely as a favor and for the experience, I need to make sure I cover my a$$.

I'm going to do a trial order of the prints from Zenfolio and see how the quality looks. I'm pretty much guessing at print sharpening, etc. If it's not up to standard with the files I sent, some re-work may be in order.

All that fun, and I got paid too! Just enough to cover my parking ticket...

Real Official Photography Job #2 is tomorrow. Portraits and cast shots for my cousin's theater group. Goodnight!

814 Photographs

2008-03-01T01:04:00.000-08:00

That's my total count for Bryce and Danielle's wedding and reception. The rest of the wedding, by the numbers:

21 people total
58 minutes behind scheduled start time
5 different people assisting me at various times
8 extra AA batteries
2 camera bodies
3 lenses
3 memory cards almost full
9 hours total from ceremony start to photographer exit
2 hours that I was gone to deal with an emergency
1 guinea pig that didn't make it through the night
167 number of pictures taken with my camera while I was gone
34 of the above pictures made the select list (Thanks Rina!)
50 dollar parking ticket (stupid!)
2 sore feet
1 relieved photographer, and most importantly,
1 happy couple

I arrived at the courthouse about half an hour before the scheduled start time of 2:15, scouted around a bit, checked out the wedding room upstairs, and went back down to meet the wedding party. The party trickled in over the next 45 minutes of so, and we all basically milled about in front of the building waiting for Bryce and Danielle's number to be called. I shot with both bodies quite a bit out here, one with the 85/1.8 and no flash, and the other with the wide zoom and an SB-600 with the Demb diffuser. With direct sun on one side and a giant polished white building acting as a 12 story reflector, it was fun to shoot the 85 close to wide open, making the traffic behind us fade away while the building filled in the shadows.

We were eventually ushered inside, where my job suddenly got much more challenging. Here's the scene: Dark wooden walls, tiered ceiling with track lighting and fluorescents, weird patterned carpet wall thingy where the people stand to get married, and two freakin' humongous windows behind the wedding party. And the place is a wedding mill, so you've got almost no time. We were in the room for 14 minutes total. Doesn't leave a whole lot of time for setup and test shots. I think we did okay, all things considered.

The formal ceremony complete, the party decided they wanted to walk down to nearby Lake Merrit to do some semi-formals and group shots. I am glad they did, because it's exactly where I wanted to go, but I didn't dare ask everybody to make the hike. They did it gladly for Danielle however, and the results were certainly better than anything we could have shot on the sidewalk by the court.

Back to the house for a moment, then it was on to the Outpost, a little beer/ dinner/ sports bar/ casino place in San Ramon, where everybody was settling in for dinner just in time for an emergency phone call from home.

We lost another guinea pig. Crap. This one was having seizures, and as this was an unpaid wedding, I set my camera on aperture priority at f/5, slapped on the flash in TTL mode with the Joe Demb diffuser, and handed it over to Rina, the friend who asked me to shoot this gig in the first place. I bailed and headed home to do the good dad thing, while Rina did a great job shooting the cake cutting and bouquet tosses. Hey, Joe McNally couldn't be in the plane with John Glenn, and I couldn't be at part of the reception. But I got the shots I needed anyway.Ha!

Once things had calmed down a bit at the house, I headed back to see what was left of the party. Arrived in time to get a bunch of drunk looking group shots, and the car with the "Just Married" sign in the back window. I used my mini-softbox quite a bit, it makes good light at arm's length, and we partied until everybody was done. I'll have another post tomorrow, with some follow-up thoughts and reflections. I'll tell you this right now, I had a blast tonight. Everything was unfamiliar, fast moving, a little bit overwhelming, and it pushed me to make the best images I could under constantly changing and constantly challenging conditions. And I liked it. I will definitely be doing this again.

Congratulations, Bryce and Danielle! Enjoy your honeymoon, and give me a call when you need baby pictures!

Wedding Day

2008-02-29T02:13:00.001-08:00

Wedding Kit, originally uploaded by cycle61.

No studio pictures, websites, attempted graphic design, or one-eyed storytellers tonight. I'm going to bed early, can't stay up for the blogging hour (3am according to Strobist) because my first wedding is tomorrow. I've got everything laid out and packed, batteries charged, cards formatted, sensors cleaned, and address Googled and programmed into the GPS.

I'm borrowing a second camera and lens, another D200 (with one shooting bank set up identically to my camera) and an 85/1.8, which I've used quite a bit in the past. The only thing I haven't used much are the Demb diffusers, but I'm going to try and minimize on-camera flash as much as possible.

Additionally, I gave my gallery page on Zenfolio a serious makeover, it looks more professional now. I'm probably going to be using it to host the wedding pics, as it's clean and powerful enough to act as a frontend for a while. I had hoped to use my PhotoShelter Archive for this, but it's going to be some time before I get the interface figured out.

Tomorrow, by the way, will be my first officially paid job as a photographer. I've sold a few prints here and there, but Friday, February 29, 2008 marks a new beginning for me as well as for the happy couple, Bryce and Danielle.

Wish me luck, and I'll try to have a better looking picture up here tomorrow!

Portrait. And more wedding practice.

2008-02-28T01:50:00.001-08:00

Portrait of an intense child, originally uploaded by cycle61.

Quick portrait of my oldest daughter, shot while trying out my new softbox. Bedroom studio, but that's OK when your model is 9 and your assistant is 6. A bit of Photoshop work to enhance the contrast and add some tone.

Strobist: Nikon SB-800 in tiny softbox, camera left. 1/4 power, F/8 ISO 200, 1/250th to kill the ambient light.

Just picked up the softbox, a Photoflex LiteDome Q3 this afternoon. I'm hoping to be able to use it at the wedding on Friday. I realized after some experimentation that there's absolutely no way I'm going to wield an umbrella one-handed, and I don't want to go bare flash if I can help it. This seems like a good solution for now. If I get it in fairly close, it actually makes very nice light. I'd love to try this one on the end of a monopod with a TTL sync cord as well...

Business card rev. 2

2008-02-27T09:57:00.000-08:00

Phase II of my card design process. Throw something out there and see if it sticks. Kinda like making spaghetti. Adjusted per some helpful suggestions. Is this better looking than the first version?

Ever closer to reality

2008-02-26T22:49:00.001-08:00

The graphic you see above is my new business card, roughly life size, which is crawling out of my printer as I type these words. Cycle 61 Photography may not officially exist yet, but we do have business cards! Okay, I admit, in the grand scheme of things, this is pretty darn small news. However, it's a first for me, and even though it's made up on Office Depot's snap-apart clean edge card blanks on my inkjet printer at home, it is a real card. I am definitely not going to do it this way again, the time and ink I wasted getting the darn thing to line up right probably cost me more than professional printing, but at least I know that I have them available to hand out on Friday at the wedding.
Other options I looked at were any number of online printing places, which offered quality, customization, speed, and good prices (pick any two), and even better would have been MooCards through Flickr. The Moo Cards are very nicely done, bigger than regular business cards, and have excellent print quality, but they happen to ship from the U.K., so getting them here on Friday wasn't gonna happen.

I'm hiding this after the jump, so technically I admitted it but most of you won't get this far. The design above was made in Photoshop. My regular readers (Hi mom!) know that my copy of Photoshop isn't exactly, um, registered. Okay,okay, it's pirated. I've been using Lightroom for the last month, and have resolved that I won't use PS for professional work until I pay for a copy. Doing my business cards on it doesn't sit right with me. I'm saving my pennies for a Mac right now (see the little countdown thingy in the sidebar) and buying PS now would push that back quite a ways. I swear it's my next purchase after the iMac is safely parked on the desktop.
Oh, and Anna, the Mac decision is, of course, pending your approval. It's our tax refund.(I don't think she reads this, but better safe than sorry!)

Pre-Wedding lighting practice

2008-02-26T22:19:00.000-08:00

Hey, it's a photography business, I've got to justify shooting picture of my kids somehow, right? This is my youngest, Blake, and his buddy Evan playing around in the front yard. The bosses (my wife and Evan's mom) assigned me to go out and take pictures of the boys in their hats and scarves, so I grabbed the camera and the "Strobist Starter Kit" (SB-800 with Pocket Wizard, cable, and ball bungee [this will have to be the subject of a future post]) and we went outside to have fun.
The sun cooperated nicely, giving me a decent rim light and a 1-1.5 stop under background at ISO 100, f/8 and 1/250th of a second. Set the SB at 1/4 power, keep the kids within three or four feet, hold the camera low and the flash high, and shoot away.
Wish I had wider than 18mm on a 1.5x crop body, I could have gone really dramatic with these guys. You have to get within about six inches of the dirt to make four year olds look like this, but they (and the moms)love it when you do. More from this set on my Flickr stream.

With the first official wedding coming up on Friday, I'm going to try to get a few more chances to do some shooting like this, fast-paced and informal but still well-lit and well-balanced. I'm also going to see if I can set up an umbrella combo I can handle with my left hand and really make some sweet mobile light, but it may prove too unwieldy. A small softbox would be perfect here. That's it for now. Goodnight, and good shooting!

Would you hire these guys to design your website?

2008-02-25T01:20:00.000-08:00

Nope, me neither. But I did hire somebody with almost as much web design experience as my buddies here, the "Pirates of Santa Cruz." They hang out down by the boardwalk on cold foggy mornings, watching the early beach volleyball players and trying to assemble enough money for breakfast (Or so they said) By the way, if you meet these gentlemen, tell them I said hi, and ask the dude missing an eye about the Baltimore Orioles. He's got some stories to tell. Well worth the $5 I gave him after half an hour or so. Who knows, maybe one of these fellas is actually an IT castaway, left over from the Dotcom bust in '99-'01, and he just decided that living on the beach in Santa Cruz sounded better than day after day in a soulless Silicon Valley Cubicle. But I digress. Back to my clueless web designer guy, after the jump.

Oh, and film lives! This is Kodak Portra 160 with the 17-35 on my Nikon F4. I'm at 17mm, practically underneath the brim of the guy's hat shooting this portrait.

My clueless web guy, if you hadn't guessed, is me. I don't know why, as photographers, we go on and on about why you need a professional, trained, geared, and with years of experience, to produce excellent quality photographs, and then we all think that because we read "HTML for Dummies" that suddenly we're web designers. After several frustrating hours bouncing around in GoDaddy's WebSite Tonite! interface, this is what I came up with. This is the web equivalent of somebody who's trying to figure out which end of the camera to point at the pretty flower. Please feel free to click through to the larger image, and when you're done laughing, come on back...

Okay, are you done?

Good.

I'm not even going to start on my PhotoShelter Archive interface, suffice to say that it's far more powerful and customizable than the kiddie pool at GoDaddy, and I basically drowned there.

If you click the PhotoShelter link above, what you'll see it their absolutely unmodified template. I'm leaving it alone until I know what I'm doing.

I'm sure there are many of you out there who have mastered the twin arts of photography and web design, but until I join your ranks, I'll stick to my camera and let a professional (or at least an advanced amateur) handle the HTML.

Had it not been for the fact that my computer pretty much spent the whole weekend uploading images to the Archive, I'd pretty much have to count the whole thing as a loss. But at least my important pictures from December through this week are now stored on an industrial, geographically redundant server, thanks to PhotoShelter. Now I've just got to get my modem to go over 45.5kbps upstream....

San Jose group shot is on Strobist!

2008-02-22T17:07:00.001-08:00

IMG_3500, originally uploaded by ecphoto.

Our group shot from the San Jose meetup just got posted on Strobist for all the world to see. Awesome for the group, it's like winning the lottery (except without all the money). One of the responding comments, however, leads me to ponder a few things....

One commenter, who chose to remain anonymous so he could be vicious and ignorant all at the same time, decided to jump in and attack our picture, our meetup, and Strobist in general, saying

Here's what I'd like to see: Frame after frame after frame to see how the recycle went down with an approximate recycle time. Next I'd like to see the image at least 6 inches wide, 1200 pixels maybe, so I could see how this could be used by someone for a printed piece, you know resolution , apparent depth of field, for that degree of enlargement. Here is my point: awesome job on the firing of the strobes and I'm assuming you didn't pop any heads for the final image from others, but beyond the web how usable is a dinky picture? David mixes in photo shoots from uber shooters and I think my greatest fear is that people will read what they want about how simple it is to knock out a great website images and then promote themselves as working photographers in some sort of editorial or corporate manner and fail miserably when it comes to the non web world of off set printing. I don't shoot in burst but when I have attorneys or high paid people in front of me, especially groups of them it's just not kosher to hope that I get one frame where everything fired on schedule after waiting for ever for the recycle on my miniature strobes. As far as 1200 pixels wide I meant at a higher ppi, and btw when I pulled off the file from the group shot it came up to 500 wide at 72ppi. I'm not arguing that one can't have fun enjoying any hobby, but that hobby has turned into pseudo professional careers for lots of folks and I'm trying to clarify that when David mixes Annie and Platon with you guys some folks may not really know the difference other than opportunity. And as far as what mr green shirt was holding , it was in jest, it looks like he's holding something other than a camera. Have fun but don't quit your day job. Also thanks for buying gear it helps solve lots of issues that would previously taken for ever to resolve in the past world of pros testing gear.

I'm sorry, but where is this guy coming from? Sounds to me like a frightened and semi-uneducated "Pro" who is feeling threatened by a bunch of us amateurs with our toy flashes. Somebody please slap me if I ever sound that way.

Not taking a break, it just looks that way...

2008-02-22T11:26:00.000-08:00

There seems to have been a bit of concern that I've been asleep at the wheel here at Cycle 61 Photography (everybody who knows me personally is giggling right now) but I want to assure you this is not the case. I've been pushing forward with my business building with every minute that my schedule allows. There hasn't been any huge news, but Rome wasn't built in a day, right? How things are going, after the jump.

In keeping with one of my business building goals (#8 here) I've got two jobs scheduled for next weekend. The first is a wedding for the niece of one of my wife's good friends. I'm doing this for them as a favor, but mostly to get some experience for myself. Please understand this is not my permanent business model.

The second is for my cousin's theater group, which is a collective of the drama departments of two great high schools. I shot one of their shows last year, using only my 18-135 and ~~available darkness~~ stage lighting, and came up with images like the one here. Certainly not ideal, but several people asked for copies and apparently it was good enough to get me invited back.

This year I'm hoping to do a much better job for them. I'm going to go up next Sunday, ahead of opening night, and shoot during a dress rehearsal, which will allow me to use some off-camera flash instead of being limited to the minimal stage lighting. I also plan to do a cast group shots and some portraits of the leads. Edit: Looks like I'm going to do individual shots for everybody, should be fun! I still want to do a few lead shots for a poster, like Bogart and Bacall in Cascablanca Money has yet to be negotiated, but as this performance is put on by a school I'm asking them to cover my costs for prints, etc and call the rest a charitable donation for the amount of my day rate (which I still need to determine).

I know, of course, that this isn't earth-shattering news for any of you guys who shoot on assignment all the time, but I'm getting there.

I'm still working on getting my landlord's signature on the business papers to file with the city, he was going to take them to his lawyer friend yesterday so that should be taken care of pretty quickly. Once I've got his blessing, I can go ahead and make my business a real entity.

Speaking of which, I've got to get some business cards to hand out at the wedding and to the theater guys. I was going to wait until the business was legitimate, but I guess I don't have that long. Thanks Mike, for the reminder.

I'm also continuing to build my stock collection at Photoshelter, and I'm going to be setting up a Personal Archive account with them this week, to replace Zenfolio for event images, print sales, direct downloads, etc. Zen's very pretty, but seems a bit limited in their fulfillment options and customization.

So, although it's been a slow news week, things are happening!

Got a better picture with my cell phone...

2008-02-21T07:13:00.001-08:00

My remote timelapse of the evening sky and the moon transit was unfortunately interrupted when my battery died midway through the eclipse, mostly due to an ESO fault(*). Left the backlight on for the top LCD. Pretty much cuts the battery life in half. Ah well. One more for the excuse list. The video came out alright, however, all five seconds of it. Amazing how fast three hours go by at 25 fps.

* ESO=Equipment Smarter than Operator

*EDIT* Removed link to really poor quality sunset video. You want to see some cool time-lapse stuff, check out Time Lapse Crane.

The moon!

2008-02-20T18:31:00.000-08:00

The moon has just risen over the top of Mission Peak, quite a bit further to the north than I was expecting. This actually means I've got it framed perfectly on my remote camera, and should be able to capture the whole transit without any problem

Waiting for the eclipse

2008-02-20T18:09:00.000-08:00

I'm writing this from my cell phone, as my camera sits and waits for the partially eclipsed moon to rise. The camera is set up in a safe location, and it's been taking pictures on the timer every minute for the last two hours or so, and will continue until the eclipse is complete or the battery dies.
The cloud cover seems light enough to spot the full moon through, although at totality it may be a different issue. I'm planning to put together a composite image, a time-lapse video, or both from the pictures it's capturing right now.
Hopefully I'll come up with something presentable, and if not, oh well.
Oh and please file this post under excuse-busting, just because I'm diligently working doesn't mean my camera can't be hard at work somewhere else, shooting an eclipse.

Excuses, Excuses

2008-02-20T07:27:00.000-08:00

There are, by any reasonable estimation, about seven zillion reasons why I can't start a photography business. I was planning on using one of them today, but I decided that to save everybody time, I'll just get them all out of the way in one post. After this, with any luck, you won't have to hear any of them again. And if you do, at least I warned you in advance.
I'll continue to grow this list with any suggestions you may have. I plan to refer back to this post any time I feel like quitting, and then I can rise above the aggregate total of all the excuses you're about to see...

Nick's Reasons Not to Succeed in Photography:

I can't
I won't
My boss won't let me
My wife won't let me
M kids won't let me
My schedule won't let me
There's too many great pros out there already
I don't have time
With digital, now everybody's a pro
There's no money in it
Photography isn't art anymore with digital
I'll fix it in photoshop
Microstock is the way of the future
Nobody buys prints anymore
The amateurs are taking over
Every MWAC is advertising $350 weddings on Craigslist
My dog ate my homework
My dog ate my guinea pig *sniff* :-(
I don't know how to light
All that gear is too expensive
The market is saturated
My taxes will be too complicated
I lost the keys to my car and now I have to ride everywhere on my motorcycle (No, really!)
My kids won't let me take their picture anymore
Everybody else takes better pictures than me
Nobody likes my website
I have no place for a studio
I'm not as good as _________ (Your name here)
My landlord won't sign the stupid paper letting me run a business out of my home
My first wedding is next week and despite the fact that it's a civil ceremony with a justice of the peace and a 7-month pregnant bride, I'm still nervous...
I have to get the kids ready for school
No, really. See #31. Gotta go.
I have to move some furniture
My battery died

And that's all I've got for now. Suggestions welcome.

Lighting 102 Assignment 5.2

2008-02-18T04:16:00.000-08:00

Double Duty Light

Okay, pop quiz. How many lights were used to create the image you see below? It was created for the Strobist assignment outlined here. Go check it out, I'll wait.

Are you back? On with the discussion...

The challenge is to illustrate a concept while getting as much mileage as possible out of a single light. This is sometimes necessary because you may have only one light, but if you have three and need ten (although I can't imagine why) the same principles apply, just on a larger scale. It certainly takes a bit more work and planning to light a sweep and spotlight three separate objects in four different colors with one light source, but to watch it all come together, check out the video (1:30)

One Nikon SB-800 camera right, with a lasagna box snoot so only a small feathered edge of light falls on the material below the objects, and three small mirror fragments stuck into a piece of styrofoam just off-camera left, and some gels from a sample pack. Now I just have to get the bedsheet off the kitchen table before the boss gets home :-)

Oh, and the concept? Financial Planning. Target usage, a finance blog called "Get Rich Slowly"

Decisions, Decisions

2008-02-17T21:14:00.000-08:00

One of the parts of building my business that will require a significant financial investment, and soon, is a new computer system. My current machine, a 5 year old Dell, has just about reached the end of it's theoretical lifespan. The starter crank on the back keeps rusting out, and vacuum tubes are getting tough to come by these days...
But seriously, it's gonna be new computer time soon. I can take comfort in knowing that this time around, my ~$2k investment will be tax-deductible, which eases the sting a bit, but it's a few months out and I have some other computer related things that aren't going to wait that long. The two major categories are (big surprise here!) photography and business.
On the photographic side, my workflow has been evolving in fits and starts over the last 18 months or so. I started with Picasa, a free organizer and basic editor from Google, which served us quite well in our P&S photography days. I then ventured into the free Nikon View and Nikon Transfer software, which have proven to be worth every penny I paid. The only advantage they have over Picasa is that they can handle .NEF files without attempting to auto-correct them. This trait of Picasa's has been a deal-breaker for me since I started shooting raw last spring. I tried Photoshop Elements for a week or so, Nikon Capture NX for about two days, and up until last week my workflow was:

Manual Import (yep, drag and drop)->
View NX ->
Adobe DNG Converter ->
Adobe Camera Raw ->
Photoshop CS ->
Export as necessary.
Yeah.
That sucks.

I am currently 19 days into a 30-day trial of Adobe's Lightroom, which works far better now that my machine has a full 2GB of RAM. LR replaces the first four steps of my old workflow, and replaces the fifth step about 95% of the time. I could theoretically live without Photoshop for quite a while given the power that LR has. Another huge advantage is it's non-destructive, always preserving the sanctity of your original files. be they raw or jpeg. Adobe supports both PC and Mac with the same program, so this one is not a problem for me. I can pay for the PC version now, and when I upgrade to a Mac in a few months, I simply download the Mac version, transfer my library and index file, and keep on going.
I have an old copy of Photoshop CS, (caution, ugly secrets ahead) which is not registered or even paid for. I got it from Kazaa in between viruses about three years ago (before they went legal). Using this program has been a moral weight for me recently, and I currently rationalize it with the argument that I haven't made any money from it yet, and when I do, I'll pay for CS3. Yes, that's very, very weak. If somebody was stealing MY intellectual property, and rationalizing it likewise, I'd be irritated. This is another one that I could easily port over to a Mac if I buy it before my PC expires. However, buying Photoshop could put quite a dent in my new computer budget, so I'm stuck operating on a pirated copy for now. I am NOT happy about this. I may actually quit cold turkey, and from here on any potentially paid work shall not be touched by Photoshop. Or, if I activate my 30-day trial of CS3, that buys me a month to re-evaluate my position here. I think that sounds like a plan.

The other bit of software I will be needing soon is some type of accounting/financial management package. I've been looking around quite a bit today, and I really don't have any answers. Intuit's QuickBooks seems like a popular option, John Harrington (who definitely knows his way around a photography business) has recommended it, and it seems to be pretty close to an industry standard. However, there seem to be huge differences in the Mac and PC versions, to the point that it's like two totally different software packages. Quicken Home & Business seems simpler still, and may be easier to carry over, but it lacks some features I think I'd want fairly soon.
Other contenders are the MYOB (Mind your own Business) products, which seem fairly robust for Mac, Peachtree, which is probably much more accounting than I need, and Microsoft's Office-integrated Small Business.

Quick summary if you've made it this far: I'm switching to Mac in a few months, and I need a business accounting software package that I can set up now and bring with me when I make the jump.

And I need to find all my receipts from January.

Help!?!?!?

Rest in Peace, Buttercup

2008-02-15T23:07:00.000-08:00

Today's business building has been interrupted by a death in the family. Buttercup, my oldest daughter's guinea pig (on the right in the above picture), was killed in an unfortunate encounter with our large and apparently hungry German Shepherd, Bruno. Honey, the critter on the left, escaped unharmed but certainly frightened, and Bruno is permanently located outside until further notice. Life throws tough lessons at little kids sometimes. Losing a pet is bad enough, but to have it eaten by another one of the family has been rough on the kids. They're doing OK now, and although we'll be feeling this one for a while, life goes on.

In business news, I sent an email to my cousin regarding the shoot for his theater group, reminded my landlord that I need his signature on the papers to operate a business out of my (his) house, and have been going through some of my pictures from the last week or so for potential stock material. I'm having a hard time deciding, as I thought some of the pictures they kicked back last week were really good, and I don't want my "rejected" percentage to get any higher than it already is. I'll finish that tomorrow, it's been an emotional afternoon around here.

Forward Progress

2008-02-14T00:50:00.000-08:00

This last week has been one of starting the ball rolling on many of the small tasks that all aim towards the launch of a business. There's been nothing exciting or earth-shattering here, just the beginning steps of a journey. To mix a metaphor, the first step in building a skyscraper is digging a big hole in the ground, so here I go with my shovel...

Paperwork to operate a business within the City of Dublin: Done, but not filed. Need to get landlord's signature on form for business use of a rented residential property. He's already verbally agreed, and the city has no issues with me using my own house as a base of operations. One autograph, $50, and this one's in the bag.

Resellers permit: Paperwork complete, to be filed after city application is complete. Business must exist prior to this permit being issued. No fee.

Fictitious business name: Not complete. Once the city confirms that Cycle 61 Photography is not taken already (if it is, I can't find it. Check Google)

Monthly learning event: Feb 9th Strobist meetup counts for this, as does reading Joe McNally's "The Moment it Clicks" and Scott Kelby's "Digital Photography Book, Volume II" I'm also trying to get together with Kent Johnson to learn some lighting and help him refine some teaching stuff he's putting together.

Network, Network, Network: Been corresponding with some of the folks at PhotoShelter regarding their ads, local events, and stock photography business in general. Working on building ties through my friend Paul's video production business, as well as meeting up and shooting with a number of local photographers at the Strobist meet. I set up my profile on LinkedIn, a professional networking site, and have already found some people I did not expect. (If you have a LinkedIn account, I'd love to hear from you!)

Tell friends and family: In Progress. My mom found the website (Hi mom!) and I've told a number of friends at work about what I'm doing here. I've told my wife, who seems mildly disinterested. I don't think she quite believes me. I haven't spammed my friends and relatives en masse yet, but I may do that soon.

Have a job scheduled: Currently a blank slate. There's been a standing offer from a co-worker to do some senior portraits for her daughter, but the date keeps slipping away. Time to nail that one down. The other tentative job is shooting cast pictures for my cousins' theater group, which would have to be done long enough before March 6th, their opening night, to get some nice posted put together for the lobby walls. And hopefully I can shoot a dress rehearsal with some flash too, my ISO 3200 shots at the performance last year weren't great.

Upload my best material onto PhotoShelter: In progress, but I got disappointing results from my last batch. Most of the shots that include people (predominantly my kids) were rejected for unspecified reasons, leaving my portfolio still landscape-heavy. I still need to go through this weekend's shoots and pull some photos to upload.

Taxes: Need to confirm more positively, but I pretty much missed the boat for 2007 deductions. I may, however, be able to use my existing equipment and deduct it as a "startup expense" from my 2008 business taxes. Looks like 2007 taxes are going to be a ten minute job again.

So that's where I'm at today. There are many more items on my lists that I haven't even gotten started on, and the "To-do" list actually seems to have grown by several entries in the last few days. Item #1 on the new list is to develop a financial tracking system, and fast. I have a pocketful of receipts and mileage notes, already totaling a few hundred $$$, and if I don't get them all organized ASAP I'm going to start losing things.

Thanks for reading and as always, let me know what you think!

Sunset at the Firefalls

2008-02-13T06:58:00.000-08:00

Last light on Horsetail Falls

I've got to get back to reality one of these days, but I had so much fun in the snow this weekend that my car accidentally made a left turn yesterday morning and whaddaya know, all of a sudden I'm in Yosemite...

What is this you see above? Glad you asked. Answers after the jump.

Last light on Horsetail Falls

Every February in Yosemite, the last rays of the setting sun crawl across the face of El Capitan, leaving the granite wall darkened except for a glorious light show on Horsetail falls. The only thing predictable about this event is the week or so that it might happen, as the falls are fed only by snowmelt, and the combination of heavy snow, warm weather, and clear evening must be perfect to ignite the falls as seen here.

I honestly had no idea that this was going to be happening until about an hour before sunset. I had kinda bounced around the valley for most of the afternoon, shooting a bit and trying to find a good spot for sunset, when I remembered Galen Rowell's description of the firefalls in his book "Mountain Light" He had said that the conditions were unpredictable, but it happens mid-February if it's going to happen at all. Hey, look at that, it's mid-February! Found a couple of people with long glass, looking like they were going somewhere purposeful, and sure enough, they're headed to the south bank of the Merced river to shoot the falls. I tag along, set up on the snowy river bank, and watch the magic for a half hour or so.

Truly one of nature's wonders. I'm blessed to have been able to witness it.

If you like this kind of stuff, definitely check out the Little Red Tent blog, written by photographer Edie Howe, a nice gal who just happens to live in the park...

More business building to come tomorrow. I have been busy working on my action steps, I promise.

All work and no play...

2008-02-11T09:19:00.000-08:00

Nothing official today, just some images from our trip up to the mountains this weekend. I took the kids, loaded up all our coats and sleds, headed out around 8am, and by 11 we were up Highway 80 in ten feet of snow. The weather was very warm, almost 50 degrees (!) which initially was quite nice, but everybody rapidly got soaked and went through two sets of clothes in three hours. We all head a great time, and came back with some fun pictures as well. Enjoy!

Blake sets up for a run down the hill.

Kati hauls her sled back to the top of the slope.

Flying down the hill, snow spraying everywhere.

The girls catch air off a bump during a fast run.

Bethanie slides safely to a stop. Love the light on this one.

And of course, the sunset over the highway as we begin our long drive home.

San Jose Strobist Meetup

2008-02-09T22:03:00.000-08:00

Met up with a bunch of Bay Area Strobists today, we took over a church gym graciously procured by one of the members, and proceeded to shoot pretty much everything in sight. The group convened about 10am, and after a few introductory words by Allan Chen, (Kaiyen) the group spread out and built several very cool lighting setups. Click through for more shots and details.

One of the coolest, in my opinion, was an elaborate still-life setup for Greg's black, almost perfectly reflective guitar, with white trim and brass metalwork and details. Overall lighting was achieved with a 300ws head into a 3'x4' softbox overhead, a huge reflector panel opposite, a snooted SB with a deep purple gel for the background, and a snooted SB gelled yellow to bring out some color in the brass. Controlling reflections on this guitar was quite a challenge, as it's basically a big contorted multi-colored mirror. Greg's selling it on eBay if anybody's interested.

Setup #2 started out simple enough, a basic little softbox overhead.

Then we added some rim lights. Then colored the background blue with another gelled flash. Then a reflector below. Then we switched from blue to orange on the B/G. Then we added about five more CTO's,because one just made it look puke-y and cranked up the B/G flash. Then switched the softbox for a shoot through umbrella, moved in closer, added an assistant holding another Vivitar 285 on a boom for a hairlight, and shot the whole thing with the 70-200 from about 30 feet away through an 18" gap under the umbrella. Simple, really. Five separate strobes, four lightstands, a boom, a reflector, and an assistant. Everybody's got that in their camera bag, right? Several others used the setup, with different colors and adjustments, to good effect.

It was decided we needed a group photo, of course, and Evan (ECPhoto), my unfortunate model above, proposed a truly nuclear setup, essentially utilizing EVERY SINGLE LIGHT we had in attendance. I'm pretty sure the total was somewhere around 40 speedlights, and a couple of 300 w/s heads. We were running in the vicinity of f/22 on the main lights, and my eyebrows are still smoking...It came out looking like this:

IMG_3500, originally uploaded by ecphoto.

Of course, with that much light to throw around, we couldn't let it go to waste, so Allan (Kaiyen) kindly offered to jump off a chair repeatedly while doing his best "Guitar Hero" pose until a moment before he landed. But enough words. Here's Allan Chen, lookin' like a rockstar!

Had a great time all. We're definitely going to be doing this one again. See ya soon!

And thanks to Bill (StockPhotoJourney), who registered bastrobist.com for us! It just links to the Flickr page for the group right now, but how cool to have our own URL. Plus it's a lot easier to type than http://www.flickr.com/groups/608107@N24/

Alamy rejection part II

2008-02-08T03:02:00.000-08:00

Alamy has officially irritated me now. I'm starting to think they aren't going to be a big part of my business plan at this point. After the first rejection, when I had submitted ten images and they rejected the whole batch on account of one, I basically assumed the other 9 were going to be OK. So I picked four of those, and re-submitted the images in strict accordance with their guidelines. And now it turns out that two of those four aren't going to cut it for them. Here are the failed images, with Alamy's explanation. Click on the pictures to see them 1000 pix wide in a new window.

Image #1: DSC_9883.jpg
Soft or lacking definition

It's supposed to be a little soft. It's a kid running on the beach in the fog, for crying out loud. It sharpens up nicely, but y'all said NOT to do that.

Image #2: Lighthouse and beach.jpg
Interpolation artifacts

Interpolation artifacts my ass. It's a frickin' film scan, there is no interpolation going on here!

Seriously, if my initial ten pics had come back with six rejected, I certainly wouldn't have re-submitted any of those six. Instead, they only listed one failure, then slammed me with two more on the second attempt. I'm sorely tempted to submit the two images they accepted this time, along with two more, and see how many rejects they come up with.

There may be a third chapter to this soon. Depends on how funny this all seems in the morning.

Cycle 61 Photography, action step #1

2008-02-07T18:02:00.000-08:00

Dropping the bomb...

This afternoon I took what is the first significant action step on my way to building Cycle 61 into a real, live photography business. I’ve needed to make some significant changes to my life for quite a while now, and although I’ve been waffling about doing this for several months, I now find that I have adequate motivation to do so. What I did today should free up many hours of my week, and many brain cycles that are currently absorbed by the stress of my job.

I have previously mentioned my day job, and not in glowing terms. I work for a major Toyota supplier in California, and early last year I accepted a "Promotion" to a supervisory position, overseeing a maintenance group. The net effect on my life was an increase in my workload of 15-20 hours per week, the loss of any predictability in my schedule or shift assignment, and a significantly elevated stress level. Oh, and they paid me about $1.20 an hour more, but I lost my Christmas bonus, or most of it.

The only reason I held on this long was that I have a deep-seated aversion to failure, and to drop the position would have felt like a failure to me. But now, I'm working towards something, not running away from something. So in the interest of my family, and my business, I dropped the above letter on my boss' desk this afternoon.
Wish me luck.

Photography and Copyright in the internet age

2008-02-07T00:08:00.001-08:00

Today I'm going to break from my normal stream of thought and switch channels to somebody else's. Kevin Kelly, author of the Technium blog, has written a very thought-provoking essay "Better Than Free" on what value creative content has in an environment where anything that can be seen or heard can be copied, stored, and redistributed nearly instantaneously. His post, including the image above, is protected under a "Creative Commons" license, which in this case permits free distribution so long as the original creator is credited, and no further restrictions are placed on the work by distributors. He summarizes:

"When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied."

What those things, which he refers to as generatives, might be, after the jump.
Kevin continues his thinking, asking

"We can start with a simple user question: why would we ever pay for anything that we could get for free? When anyone buys a version of something they could get for free, what are they purchasing?

From my study of the network economy I see roughly eight categories of intangible value that we buy when we pay for something that could be free."

Immediacy -- Sooner or later you can find a free copy of whatever you want, but getting a copy delivered to your inbox the moment it is released -- or even better, produced -- by its creators is a generative asset.

Personalization -- As many have noted, personalization requires an ongoing conversation between the creator and consumer, artist and fan, producer and user. It is deeply generative because it is iterative and time consuming. You can't copy the personalization that a relationship represents.

Interpretation -- As the old joke goes: software, free. The manual, $10,000. But it's no joke. A couple of high profile companies, like Red Hat, Apache, and others make their living doing exactly that.

Authenticity -- You might be able to grab a key software application for free, but even if you don't need a manual, you might like to be sure it is bug free, reliable, and warranted. You'll pay for authenticity.

Accessibility -- Ownership often sucks. You have to keep your things tidy, up-to-date, and in the case of digital material, backed up. And in this mobile world, you have to carry it along with you.

Embodiment --Nothing gets embodied as much as music in a live performance, with real bodies. The music is free; the bodily performance expensive. This formula is quickly becoming a common one for not only musicians, but even authors. The book is free; the bodily talk is expensive.

Patronage -- It is my belief that audiences WANT to pay creators. Fans like to reward artists, musicians, authors and the like with the tokens of their appreciation, because it allows them to connect. The elusive, intangible connection that flows between appreciative fans and the artist is worth something.

Findability -- Where as the previous generative qualities reside within creative digital works, findability is an asset that occurs at a higher level in the aggregate of many works. When there are millions of books, millions of songs, millions of films, millions of applications, millions of everything requesting our attention -- and most of it free -- being found is valuable.

These eight qualities require a new skill set...these new eight generatives demand an understanding of how abundance breeds a sharing mindset, how generosity is a business model, how vital it has become to cultivate and nurture qualities that can't be replicated with a click of the mouse.

Please note, this is not anywhere near a transcript of the full essay, I'm merely skipping along the tips of the icebergs here. Please take a few minutes to head over to his site and read the whole thing, if you're in the business you can't afford not to.

Business building news from PhotoShelter

2008-02-06T17:20:00.000-08:00

A huge part of building a photography business is visibility. People have to know about you somehow. Although I've not decided what my specialty will be, I know that one part of my business is going to be stock sales. And along those lines, Photoshelter has just given me a huge boost off my launch pad. The image you see above is the banner ad they launched today on the design site www.behance.net, using one of my images! More details after I catch my breath...

I was contacted earlier this week by Andrew Fingerman, VP of Marketing at PhotoShelter, who wrote:

I came across your Cycle 61 blog a few days ago... love your mission and the story you're sharing. You're exactly the type of new fresh photographer that is helping make our collection diverse and appealing to buyers. Naturally, after I saw the blog I went to check out your images in the collection. One of your images stood out as PERFECT for a new set of banner ads we're doing to raise awareness among buyers....I am working on the next round of ads for a designer site called Behance.net, and I would love the opportunity to feature your image. This is one of the ways we are able to play an advocate role for independent, up and coming photographers. I figured it would be a nice boost as you kickoff your mission. As a best practice, we always ask permission from the photographer to use their image, recognizing that it also helps us raise awareness for the Collection. The credit would obviously be loud and clear "Nick Davis has some of the coolest images you've never seen..."

Of course I wrote back as quickly as I could that I would love to have my image be part of their campaign, and now it's live on behance.net, hardly 48 hours after our initial contact.

Thanks Andrew, for picking this up and helping support the little guys like me. I think the real story here is far larger than any one image or ad on a website. This kind of action shows me that you guys are building something that has the power to really turn the industry around. Should be an interesting ride. I'm all in. Let's help bring some self-respect back to the artists, stop selling ourselves out, and see what we can do.

When you see somebody going places, grab hold and hang on tight. I'm white-knuckle here, and I love every second of it.

Alamy update: 90% Success = 100% Failure

2008-02-06T10:21:00.000-08:00

Quick update here. I got an email from Alamy this morning regarding my images I submitted for QC. They completed their review much more quickly than I had expected, only taking a week instead of the stated 25 days. Of the ten images I submitted (I was only supposed to submit four)nine passed QC. Unfortunately, 90% isn't good enough for them. The one that failed was the shot of the kid's sandals on a ramp down into the water with a pair of feet wading in the background. Their stated reasons for failing the image were "Interpolation artifacts" and "Soft or lacking definition" Pictures and thoughts after the jump.

Although I knew their policies going in, this seems a bit silly to me. I'm undecided as to whether I want to re-upload four of the images, leaving out the failed one, or just take a pass on the whole thing and stick to one agency for now. PhotoShelter has been very good for me so far, I'm thinking that using them exclusively for a while might be a good plan.

More business building steps

2008-02-06T00:08:00.000-08:00

Today we continue with some more action steps, some building blocks to get my business out of the ethereal realm of "I wish" and into the concrete reality of "I am." The things I'm writing today are things that I am doing. I haven't done them all, or even started them all, but they are all tasks I must accomplish, processes to be completed. Many are simple daily things like keeping up with my contacts, as outlined yesterday, and many are far more involved and complex. I'll try to keep the descriptions brief, because I'm developing this on the fly and I tend to get wordy when I do that. Let's see how many things I can think of, right off the top of my head. Start counting, after the jump.

I need to talk to a tax person, regarding my 2007 expenditures, and whether my hobby already may count as a Sole proprietorship in California. From an article on www.bplans.com "Sole proprietorships are so easy to set up and maintain that you may already own one without knowing it."
Write an actual business plan. This one will spawn about a hundred more of it's own little action steps, so it will definitely warrant a post or two by itself. I am again using www.bplans.com as one of my resources, thanks StanfordPhoto for the link.
Obtain the necessary paperwork from the City of Dublin (in California, where I live) to officialize my business. (My word processor doesn't think officialize is a word, but I say it is.) I remember looking into this before for a different business idea, and the process was going to total about three months and around $800. Time to get going on this.
Thoroughly investigate the commercial viability of several different genres of photography, and cross-check this to what I enjoy doing, and what I am capable of doing at a professional level. If these lists don't line up, I need to either focus on my skills in a viable area of photography, or find a way to make a niche all my own. I personally prefer a combination of both.
Develop some type of physical marketing media that I can carry with me and hand out to people as I have the opportunity. (Like, maybe a business card?) Yes, but I'm thinking something a bit more eye-catching. Photography is all visual, after all, and a 3"x5" promo card with some contact info on the back would catch my eye much more than another business card. Something like what Paul Treacy has here. I may need a few different versions, depending on who's getting them.
Tie my online presence together much more cohesively. Right now I have this blog, my gallery site at Zenfolio, and a bunch of pictures on Flickr. I'm looking into moving to Photoshelter for my gallery hosting, they're much more customizable as far as integration, but I don't really have a website to integrate into. Maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse here, but I'm expecting a LOT of traffic in a couple of days. More on that in a day or so.
Canvas the people and organizations I'm in contact with every day for possible leads or assignments. I can sell myself to a stranger, but it's more difficult when talking to family or friends. The kids' school may want staff pictures. My cousin is in a semi-professional theater group, I shot for them last year and may get to again next month. The wife of one of my co-workers' shoots weddings professionally. I need to pursue these.
Tell the people who are close to me what I'm doing. This sounds silly, but as of right now, I'm only really accountable to you, mostly a bunch of strangers. I could give up, walk away, and pretty much never hear about it again. But I won't. Very few of my co-workers know about this whole thing yet. Most of my family doesn't know either. My wife, whose life may be profoundly affected by this, is only vaguely aware. My boss probably won't know until I tell him that I'm stepping down from the supervisor position he got me into last year, because it takes too many hours out of my week.
Keep getting my name out there. I need your support to make this happen. In just the last week, traffic here has taken off, and I've gotten messages from several people I never would have expected to hear from. This is part of grassroots marketing, viral marketing, word of mouth, whatever. If we launch this blog onto Google's first search page for "Photography business" because a ton of you think this is inspiring, and link to my site, that's going to be awesome.
Craigslist. I'm going to start advertising on Craigslist regularly. It's free, it's incredibly well-trafficked, and people use it for everything. I wrecked a car and then blew up the motor as well. Sold it to a buddy, he's rebuilding it with about 90% CL parts, and will probably turn a decent profit when he sells. High end businesses use CL because they know that's where people look. My brother in law has a moving company up in Seattle that's grown into a $500k per year operation on 2 factors: Consistent CL advertising, and excellent customer service.

Okay, my mind's spinning free now, and I'm about out of coherent ideas that relate to business building for now. More stuff tomorrow, topic to be determined by the events of the next 23 hours...

Cycle 61 Photography: Baby steps

2008-02-05T00:43:00.000-08:00

After outlining my goals over the last two days, today I'm going to lay down a couple of action steps that need to happen in order to get the ball rolling towards reaching those goals. These are my baby steps. No point trying to leap tall buildings right out of the gate (I'll get to that soon enough), let's try walking a bit first. A few of the little things I'm going to be working on, after the jump. And apologies to my son for the picture above, he's four now and I don't have a good recent picture that could illustrate "Baby steps"
The first step, and one that will be a continual challenge for me, is keeping up with the volume of correspondence and communication that any business generates. Already, a number of people have spoken up in the comments, and I intend to keep in touch with you guys. StockPhoto, I will definitely be in touch about the tax guy. I think I'm too late for 2007, but if so, I'm going to find out why and what I could have done differently. Paul Treacy, yes, let's keep tabs. I'd be interested in hearing more about your experiences over the last 15 years, and I'll be digging into your website more soon. Sean, thanks again for the post, sometimes I'm more about passion than brains, but I usually figure it out in the end. I read your business plan post from last year, and there's a lot of things in there that I need to explore. Aczyzyk, thanks for the support. I'm following a dream here, maybe I can inspire a few others to do the same.
And Mom, I know you left a comment but I can't seem to find it anywhere. I love you!
Baby step #2 is that I need to get a lot of my good material onto Photoshelter, and very quickly. Something big is about to happen. I'm so excited about it I'm bubbling, but I'll have to keep the cat in the bag for another few days. Stay tuned...
And speaking of baby steps, today the Strobist goes way back to basics, with a cool reader-submitted video that's Pre-Lighting 101 for those who aren't yet comfortable with the basics. It's a very good place to begin if you're just starting to explore off-camera lighting. I hope David keeps it in a prominent spot in his site.

Today is Super Tuesday. Get out and vote! That's where I'm headed to right now.

Tomorrow: More action steps, and maybe some big news!

Goals and Objectives, Part II

2008-02-03T23:50:00.000-08:00

So yesterday, I laid out a few of my big picture goals. Noting too crazy, just replacing my overtime income, quitting my job, and total world domination. Wait, scratch that last part. I'll settle for North America. But the reality is that while these are great points on the horizon, I'm going to need a few intermediate steps, some things I can work on directly. They will build towards my long term plans, of course, but they're concrete, achievable things that I can plan for. No world domination today, instead, some nuts and bolts after the jump.
Okay, here comes some real-world, more meaningful, short term targets. The goals from here on out are also nowhere near sequential. Remember, stream of consciousness.

Goal #3 is to decide on a genre of photography in which I will focus my efforts. Yep, that's right, I don't even have a specialty yet. But I will. I have to. Being a "landscape and kids" guy isn't going to cut it. I'll recap a conversation I had with David Hobby, of Strobist. I had mentioned stock photography, asked about his thoughts on the future of stock as a business model, and mentioned that I had a hard drive full of images that look "just like the ones I see on all the stock websites" He answered simply "Then you're in trouble" I rant in detail about the subject in my earlier post here.

Goal #4 is to make Cycle 61 Photography a legal and legitimate entity, without breaking the bank. My taxes this year are agonizingly simple. One income, standard deductions, three kids an a wife. Bam. Done in about 15 minutes, literally. A quick look at what I've spent on and about my hobby in 2007 reveals that had I been able to deduct these expenses, I would have saved in taxes far more than the few hundred bucks it would have cost to go through the paperwork to launch a sole proprietorship here in California. Any significant financial outlay in pursuit of my business goals needs to be deductible, and soon. I've already spent several hundred $ this year that could all have been tax deductible. Also, I'm working on a business card, and I would feel really fake printing a business card when technically I don't have a business.

Goal #5 is simple. Draw clients by being very, very good at what I do, and relying on word of mouth and low level marketing. There won't be any billboards in my near future, but a window sign on the back of the van is a distinct possibility. Maybe one on the Jag, too. I drive that heap slowly enough that everybody could read it. A friend who does weddings and events gets almost all her customers through word of mouth, and maybe one or two a year through her ridiculously expensive 1/4 page ad in the Yellow Pages.

Goal #6 Build my photographic knowledge by taking a class, seminar, lesson, shooting with a pro, or just reading a good book or two every month. I've currently got on order from Amazon a copy of Joe McNally's "The moment it clicks" and Scott Kelby's "The Digital Photography Book, Volume II" I've been meaning to check out Joe's book, but the review tonight on Strobist put me over the edge.

Goal #7 Network, network, network. This one is natural, but also very difficult, because it always looks to an outsider like "talking on the phone" or "checking my email" or worst of all "screwing around on the internet" I've been working on this diligently, building contacts with the photography groups in the area, helping to arrange and set up meetups, and taking any chance I can to rub shoulders with photographers in the area. There's a local Strobist group meeting in Santa Clara next weekend, details are here if you're interested.

Goal #8 Always have a job scheduled. This may be anything, from an upcoming shoot, to a day as an assistant, to a personal project that could yield paying stock images, anything. This is key for me, as it will force me to keep actively building my contacts, clients, and opportunities. Talk about stream of consciousness, that first line was on screen before I knew how it was going to end. Goal #8 is officially my favorite. My next job: Before the strobist meetup on 2/9, I will do some early morning street photography in San Jose with the purpose of developing a dozen or so "Urban" images for my stock portfolio.

Tomorrow: Baby steps

Cycle 61 Photography: Goals and Objectives

2008-02-03T22:45:00.000-08:00

Welcome back to the very first steps of building a photography business from nothing into a viable, enjoyable, and sustainable entity. (Accidental alliteration) (Twice) Yesterday I outlined where I am in the process, and in what form the business currently exists. Today I'm going to hammer out some goals, and see where I want to direct my efforts over the next several months. This may come out rather "stream of consciousness" as I'm basically developing these ideas a few moments before they hit the keyboard. I'm naked here. Mentally. Read on, if you dare, after the jump.

I realize already I'm going to have to start at the top and work down. So for today, here's the big ones:

My first, and most over-arching goal, is simply to have Cycle 61 Photography replace my current job. This is a huge, and daunting vision unto itself. My job, although it sucks the very life out of my soul, offers a steady and decent paycheck, enough to cover the cost of a family of five living a modest lifestyle in the San Francisco bay area, one of the country's most expensive regions. To do this will mean playing in the big leagues of the photographic industry. This goal may be a few years off, but it's the pinnacle towards which all other efforts shall point. Chase Jarvis is my inspiration here. When he was done being a ski bum with a camera, he took all his shots, assembled a portfolio, and said to himself "How can I make the most possible money off of my images." So he sold them (and himself) to REI. From nothing to big-league commercial/advertising in about a month. Chase, you rock!

The second, and slightly more attainable goal, it to replace the overtime income I currently earn. My employer frequently permits us to work, 60, 70, 80 hours a week, and most of us jump at the chance. I simply can't cover my bills on 40 hours pay (see, I told you there would be ugly, raw spots here) and I want to not be at work any more than I have to. This is not so lofty as goal #1, but will still be a major accomplishment. Over 40% of my 2007 income was overtime. I've got three kids that are growing up right under my nose, and I'm missing it, because I'm always at work.

This is the long range stuff. --RANT ON-- I've said this already, but I don't want to be just another landscape photographer, another wedding or headshot or whatever guy. I'm willing to work through that, but I'm going to find a niche, dig it out with an axe, make it viable, and absolutely own it. I want everybody who shoots in my field to have the thought, nagging in the back of their mind, that if they do a kick-ass job then everybody will think they're copying Nick Davis. Why? Because I'm Nick Davis. And although I'm a really nice guy, I'm arrogant, tenacious, and crazy enough to launch a photography business and know that I can make it fly. --RANT OFF-- Whew. That feels good to get those words out. Okay, let's make that rant be goal #0. Even more fundamental that replacing my income, is building something amazing, and powerful, and truly, uniquely mine. Today was big picture. More nuts and bolts tomorrow. See ya!

Welcome to Cycle 61 Photography

2008-02-02T21:19:00.000-08:00

Good morning, and welcome to Cycle 61 Photography (It's morning somewhere, so no nitpicking yet.)

It's Saturday, February 2, 2008 as I write this.

My name is Nick Davis, I'm an amateur photographer with professional aspirations, and I have committed to building the entity known to me as Cycle 61 Photography into a real, legitimate, licensed, legal, profitable, and above all, sustainable business. In keeping with the wonderful open-source, open book, free sharing mindset that has developed in the photographic community in the internet age, this process is going to be open for all to follow along the way.
Over the next year or so, you will watch a photography business grow from the ground up. There will be pitfalls, setbacks and triumph, challenges and conquests, anguish, stress, beauty, and light. Always light. Photography is about light, after all.
The next few days will be about where I'm at, where I want to go with this thing, and how I'm going to get there. Read on after the jump.

My current position, just to establish a solid baseline, is as follows.

I have a website, with my own domain name. The website is www.cycle61.com, it's galleries are hosted via a Premium account on www.zenfolio.com ($120 per year) which allows me unlimited storage and the ability to sell prints of my images directly from the website. The domain name itself was purchased from www.godaddy.com for about $45 for two years. If you're reading this in November 2009, please send me an email and remind me to renew!
Cycle 61 is a nerdy joke from my electrician days. Normal US electricity being 60hz, or cycles per second, "Cycle 61" would be something extra, something more than what was expected. Yes, I'm a dork. Somewhere in Europe, there's got to be somebody running "Cycle 51" for the same reason.
I have been accepted at Photoshelter, a newly launched stock agency, and a very progressive, non-predatory one in terms of how they treat their creative contributors. Check them out, and if you're a microstock photographer, please reconsider how you're valuing your work. I have, at this moment, around 50 images fully processed and live on their system, with about that many in the approval pipeline as well. My total sales so far are $0.00, but I've only been live with them about a week, and my keywording needs refinement.
I have photographed precisely one event under the guise of a semi-professional, that event being the talent show at my kids' elementary school. I was running a Nikon D200, a rented 70-200/2.8 lens, a set of Pocket Wizards and two flashes set off-camera. After the third or fourth person who asked if I was shooting for the school, I started answering yes. Pictures were downloaded, processed, sorted, and uploaded to a dedicated gallery on my Zenfolio site by 8am the next day. The school secretary sent out an email with the relevant info to all the parents later that afternoon. In the first 24 hours I've had about 60 hits on the site, but no sales as yet.
I have a passionate, burning desire to be a photographer. I know and understand that the realities of any job are different than the outsider perceives them to be. I do not expect this to be easy. I can, and will, bust my butt to make this thing real.
I have been establishing a network of contacts in the photography business over the last several months. I am continuing to build and develop this network daily, and Ive begun to see an exponential growth in the number of people I find myself in contact with. I'm also starting to run into the same people through different paths, which tells me I'm doing something right. I have been active in a couple of photography group arranged over various internet forums, notably DPReview and Strobist. I've met some full-time professionals, and a lot of people like myself, who would like to be pro and probably have the photographic talent to pull it off. The differences between these groups, between those who do and those who could but don't, are fascinating to me.

Quick recap. I will build my avocation into a legitimate photography business. I've got nothing to hide, and everything to gain, by being open an accountable to all. This may not always be pretty, but I guarantee it will never be boring. If you are a pro, follow along and drop me a line if you see something I need to fix. If you're not, but you ever wanted to do what's about to happen on this site, keep reading and maybe I can save you a pitfall or two.

Control is an illusion, but you can always enjoy the ride.

Next: My photographic and business goals.

Some flashy stuff

2008-02-01T03:00:00.001-08:00

Kid with guitar, originally uploaded by cycle61.

One of my personal favorite images from this evening's talent show at the kids' elementary school. The gym is far too dark for ambient action shooting without a D3, so some creative Strobist work is a necessity. More after the jump.
I set up two SB's, one on either side of the room, pointing towards the stage, both set at maximum zoom, 1/4 power, and triggered by my Pocket Wizards. This served me well for most of the acts, but towards the end, I knew I had enough good shots in the can to keep the school happy, so I started playing around. Several times, I walked up the right side of the room, shutting off my flash on the way by, and shooting across the stage at the now backlit performers. I will definitely be doing this more in the future.

Oh, and I'm shooting with a rented Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 VR lens. It's mine for two weeks. Unless I decide to flee to Canada or something. It's that good.

Stock photography with PhotoShelter and Alamy

2008-01-30T05:42:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I signed up with PhotoShelter, with the intention of having a number of my images for sale as stock on their website. So far I've been quite pleased with what I've seen. Their turnaround time is fairly quick, their website interface is clean and easy to use (encouraging, as this should help drive the buyer experience as well) and two of my images, good ones, were rejected because "We've pretty much hit critical mass with this sort of subject matter, and we don't want to inundate our buyers with too much similar content."
However, I really want to get a good feel for the non micro-stock market, and in a one-horse race, you always know who the winner is. More after the jump.

So, in the interest of a better perspective on the market, I signed up with one of the largest companies in stock today, Alamy Stock Photography. They are a long-established company, with a library of over 10 million images and counting. Although more research is needed (and please let me know if you have any information) they don't seem to me fighting for the bottom rung of the ladder in terms of how they value their contributors, like the micros do. I have heard that once you have been initially approved, your submissions are un-managed as far as quality, which may explain some of their tremendous image count, but what I've seen in poking around the site looks to be very good.
Their technical guidelines for image submission are very precise, and seemingly quite stringent, so it should be interesting to see how my 10 pictures fare. They require uncompressed file sizes of 48mb or more, which (translates to roughly 5000x3300 pixels) which means that everything has to be up-rezzed before submitting, unless you're scanning at 5000 dpi or shooting medium format digital. They have the usual requirements of no dust, artifacts, out of focus, oversharpening, etc. I know my pictures are set on these requirements, as I've spent several hours over the last week first finding images I wanted to submit, then digging out the original .NEF files and re-converting them at maximum size and with very minimal sharpening.
Their stated turnaround time is 25 days (!) so it may be a bit before I have any more information on the future of these images with Alamy.

Note from the RTFM department: Alamy recommends submitting 4 images as an initial test. If ANY of the submitted images are rejected for ANY reason, the entire set will be rejected.
Oops. Wish I'd read that before I sent ten. Too late now. Hopefully, all ten will pass Almy's QC people. Wish me luck.

Nikon Announcements (with US Pricing)

2008-01-29T09:04:00.001-08:00

Update to last night's gear lust post:
US pricing for the Nikon 16-85 VR is listed at $649. Slightly more palatable, but still about $200 over what I'd pay for it. Close focus is listed at 1.3 feet, which is decent.
PC-E NIKKOR 24mm f/3.5D ED will hit the shelves in March at $1929, and the 60mm micro is listed at $549.
Source: Imaging Resource

Nikon Announcements from PMA

2008-01-29T03:06:00.000-08:00

Nikon has just announced their new lens and camera arrivals for PMA 2008, including a D60 consumer SLR (D40x replacement), the rumored 16-85mm VR, an update to the 60mm/2.8 Micro, and one lens that I don't think anybody saw coming. More details after the jump.
The 16-85mm VR was hotly rumored over the last month or so after a few images leaked out on a Taiwanese bulletin board. Many doubted, some believed, and much debate ensued. Meanwhile, I tried to decide if this is a lens I'd be interested in. I decided to buy one if they came out at $400 or less. Actual price: £429.99/ €642.00, which works out to about $950 in US dollars. No thanks, Nikon. I like wide angle, but not enough to pay $900 for 2mm. For that kind of scratch, I could pick up a used 14mm f/2.8.

The new D60 appears to be a VERY minor update to the D40x, which was itself a modest update to the D40. If it has an electronic shutter, it might be useful for high speed sync flash, but otherwise, this camera doesn't show up very bright on my radar.

Next up is an update to the venerable 60mm 2.8 micro. The new lens gains AF-S (ultrasonic "Silent Wave" motor built into the lens) and a few new ED glass elements, as well as Nikon's "Nano coating". Nice, but nothing earth-shaking here.

Which brings us into the realm of the truly awesome, the PC-E Nikkor 24mm f/3.5D ED

This is truly incredible in an age of high ISO, slow variable aperture zooms and pop-up flashes. A wide angle, manual focus tilt-shift lens, from Nikon no less? It features up to ±11.5 mm shift and ±8.5° tilt, as well as a close focus distance of 0.7 feet/0.21 meters, for ultra close-up shots and unbelievable perspective control.
It has all Nikon's newest glass chemistry tricks, ED and Nano coat and all, as well as two aspherical elements to eliminate aberrations and other weirdness. It has electronic aperture control on the D3 and D300, and manual control on all other cameras. Also promised by Nikon are a 45mm and 85mm version soon.

It's priced somewhere north of US $2100. Doesn't matter. Those who need it will buy it, and those who don't understand will scratch their heads.

Between the D3 and now this astonishing new lens, Nikon seems to be making a very firm commitment to both full-frame cameras and serving top-end professional needs. Imagine high end commercial architectural photography with a D3 and the 24 PC.

It's a good time to be a photographer.

San Francisco Strobist style meet

2008-01-28T01:48:00.000-08:00

First, I want to say thanks again to Mike Wong, fashion photographer and portrait victim above, for hosting this great event at his new studio here in Fremont, California. After last week's Strobist seminar, I was very excited to meet with a group of photographically minded individuals for a day of talking cameras, lenses, lighting, photo business, and of course, doing some shooting. More after the jump.

As our group has normally been much more Landscape and Nature oriented, we got off to a bit of a slow start, with a lot more talk than action (yes Pradipta, I stole that one) but after a bit the cameras and lights started coming out, and the fun began. Many of us were shooting using Nikon's CLS, both with pop-up flashes and SU-800's, and a few were running Pocket Wizards. One set of the tiny and versatile Elinchrom Skyports also made a brief appearance, courtesy of Kent Johnson, from across the bay.

Probably my favorite ~~victim~~ subject of the afternoon was a gentleman by the name of Oscar Rico, who was kind enough to stand exactly in front of the background and between a few lights while we had an extensive discussion of flash metering and ambient balancing. This is fortunate, because had I been standing in front of the camera (and the lights) the images would not have looked nearly as nice. Thank you Oscar. And your portrait looks wonderful, if I may be so bold. I wish I had not been using quite so strong a background gel, because I can't entirely get rid of a bit of green on your shoulder.

All in all, a great afternoon (even though I missed the food run) and we've definitely got to do this again sometime soon. I look forward to meeting with the Flickr based Bay Area group as well, there's not much overlap of membership as yet, but I think we can build off each other and make this a fantastic community. Seattle, watch your back!

Glass half full...

2008-01-26T03:04:00.001-08:00

My brain on Strobist (2), originally uploaded by cycle61.

Found a broken glass in the sink last night, and couldn't let it go to waste. Decided to have some Strobist fun. Fortunately, it had snapped cleanly, so I was left with one solid chunk to lay on the surface. I went in search of an appropriate fluid to pour, and came up with a bottle of Pine-Sol, with a few drops of blue food coloring added. The glass sits upon a sheet of Plexi, with a paper towel underneath, which all sits on an inverted Tupperware tub containing my SB-800, aimed up at 1/32 power. The background is my kitchen door, lit (almost) white by an SB-600 at 1/8 power. Exposure is f/8 at ISO 200. Flashes triggered by Pocket Wizard and optical slave. Should be picking up another PW later this morning before the DPReview meetup at Mike Wong's studio in Fremont.
Best part of the photo for me...kitchen smelled like Pine-Sol, so my wife assumed I was cleaning and left me alone for the whole thing. And my SB-800 is really, really clean :-)

John Harrington's gear bag(s)

2008-01-25T11:35:00.000-08:00

John Harrington, a professional photographer based out of Washington DC and author of the indispensable "Photo Business Forum" blog, has stepped into the shoes of Chase Jarvis and created "What We Use" a series of videos about professional camera and lighting gear, packing, traveling, and usage. The entire set of 32 videos, ostensibly used for training his interns, is available on his "Assignment Construct" website, and runs almost two hours total.

If you've got some time to burn, and want to see how they roll in the big leagues, grab some popcorn and check it out!

PS. John Harrington wrote the book on the business of photography. Literally. He's one to keep an eye on, if you're interested in being successful as a professional photographer. I own this book, and I cannot recommend it enough. Best $25 I ever spent. I'll give it a full review and plug soon.

Seattle and San Francisco II

2008-01-25T01:41:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Chase Jarvis's crew put together a video of the Seattle Strobist event as well. One guy even drove up from San Francisco to join the Seattle group.

Alright, guys, the bar has been set. Let's see what SF can do. I'm meeting with a group that gathered through DPReview this Saturday, but I want to be a part of getting the San Francisco Strobist community off the ground. Let's make this a great thing!

Update II - Full write up of the Seattle Meet is live, on Strobist: More Fun in Seattle: Full Write-up! Includes more pix and video, along with stories from the after-party.

Strobist in Seattle and San Francisco

2008-01-24T16:20:00.001-08:00

Images from the Seattle Strobist meet have been running around on Flickr for a few days now, and the video has just been posted earlier today. David Hobby, after last weekend's seminar near San Francisco, flew up to Seattle to drop in on the Strobist group that has been meeting there recently. His post on the group is here on the Strobist blog.

Tim Porter, Flickr screen name OAXOAX, is organizing a San Francisco Bay Area meetup this Saturday, I won't be able to attend due to a prior commitment (to another photography meetup, very much in the same style) but it will be awesome to see what comes out of it. Tim, and all others attending, have fun, and I hope to be able to join you all soon!

Just Spotted: Dedicated SF Bay Area Strobist Group on Flickr! Check it out.

PhotoShelter and Stock Photography II

2008-01-23T18:53:00.000-08:00

I received an email this morning from PhotoShelter, indicating that their editors had reviewed the images I had submitted, and for me to go to the site for further instructions. Of my eight landscape photos, three had been accepted outright, two rejected, and three were "Soft rejected"
My accepted images, which are now "Live" on the system.

Photoshelter from the inside, after the jump.
The website guided me through the process of keywording and captioning the images, along with specifying a category (News, creative, etc.) and stating whether model and property releases were available or necessary. Once these tasks were complete, they offered a choice of pricing models, either rights-managed or royalty free, along with editorial.
Their rights managed pricing models include an example calculator based on the popular fotoQuote software, which allows you to quickly see how pricing for you image would be for potential buyers. I was surprised and encouraged by some of the numbers I saw, most ranging from a few hundred dollars to well over $1000. Here's one example:

My three "Soft Rejected" were deemed by the editors as more suitable for the "News+" category, and as such, needed full captions before they could be accepted. I added captions including locations and dates, and re-submitted them. I also added several more images, still mostly nature and landscape stuff. It's what I have available at the moment, but I will be expanding my offerings very soon.

The final two images, the ones that were rejected outright, were actually the most encouraging for me. They attached the following message to the images: "We've pretty much hit critical mass with this sort of subject matter, and we don't want to inundate our buyers with too much similar content. That in mind, we are currently only accepting work of this category if it's really outstanding in terms of composition, exposure, and a fresh point of view. Thanks for your understanding!"

This is a good thing, in my mind. They are controlling their content submissions, which will definitely improve the overall quality of the material available for buyers.

My personal webpage on the PhotoShelter is here. Check it out!

I'll continue to post as I get more feedback from PhotoShelter, but I'm very encouraged by what I've seen so far.

PhotoShelter and stock photography

2008-01-21T22:35:00.000-08:00

Just a few days ago, I signed up with a new company on the stock photography scene known as PhotoShelter. PhotoShelter was created a few years ago by two photographers, and in addition to running a powerful online image archive, they have recently launched the PhotoShelter Collection, taking a bold step towards returning some economic balance to the stock industry. Microstock companies such as Shutterstock and Istockphoto have severely devalued photographer's contributions, selling images for $0.99 or worse, in unlimited quantities via a subscription model.
PhotoShelter represents an entirely different pricing model, allowing photographers to set prices for their images in a rights-managed environment, and allowing a minimum price of $50 for an image.
Many notable photographers and industry watchers have recently written about Photoshelter, including John Harrington's Photo Business News blog, Chase Jarvis, and the Strobist, written by David Hobby.
I was fortunate enough to get a chance to discuss PhotoShelter with David at the Strobist Seminar last weekend, and came away with two major thinking points, after the jump.

1) These are good people, running a good business, one that is designed to work for both producers and users of photography. Photographers will no longer be giving away their work for $0.99 and a photo credit, and end users looking for new, creative, and high quality photography will no longer be tied to a few legacy companies, which are currently deadlocked in a race to the bottom of the pricing barrel. If they can draw some major buyers in from the old guard agencies, and if photographers realize that their creative works need not be devalued to obscenely, Photoshelter stands to be at the lead of a huge upheaval in the industry.

2) If I want to take a serious part in the future of commercial, stock, or any type of professional photography, I need to specialize. I asked David what he thought about the future of stock in general, and commented that I had recently started uploading some stuff, and that "I have a hard drive full of photos that look just like what I see on the stock sites now."

His stark answer: "Then you're in trouble."

Ouch.

But almost certainly true.

There's untold numbers of excellent wedding photographers, fashion photographers, landscape photographers (Mark Adamus is one who's work consistently astonishes me) but how many people can conceive a series of a carjacking and robbery, shoot it all on a Hassleblad, and then compose 2,000 frames (including the set-up shots and outtakes) into a video and submit it as his Hasselblad Masters entry? Chase Jarvis can. He specializes. He shoots stuff that nobody else does, and once they do, they're just copying him.

I've been shooting seriously for about a year now, and although my fundamental skills are quite solid, I have been sorely lacking in vision. I personally resolving to continue to shoot, but to do it now with a mindset of finding, and developing, a niche, one that I love and can shoot better than anyone else.

I don't want to be another wedding photographer. I don't want to be another guy at the art fair selling landscape prints out of a van. I want to be Nick freakin' Davis dammit, and I want everybody in my field who pick up a camera and points it at their subject to be thinking, in the back of their minds, "If I get this right, everybody's going to think I'm copying Nick...."

I just re-read that carefully, and it sure sounds arrogant. I'm a nice guy, I swear. But I'm going to find my niche, I'll dig it out with an axe if I have to, and when I do, I'm going to absolutely own it.

Ken Brown, you've got your Gullwing Mercedes. Get thee to Pebble Beach and milk them for all they're worth.

I've just gotta find mine.

Oh, and there were gonna be photos here too. These are the eight shots that I uploaded to the PhotoShelter Collection a few days ago. They won't change the world, but they're pretty typical pre-resolution Nick Davis.

Strobist seminar Wrap-up

2008-01-20T00:55:00.000-08:00

See what the Strobist can do in a boring conference room with brown walls

The Northern California Strobist.com seminar has drawn to a close, and what a day it's been. I never would have imagined I could spend thirteen hours learning about, and playing with lighting, but that's exactly what we did. Full story after the jump.
Sign in was at 9, and by 9:30 we had launched into rounds of introductions. Our Bay Area group seems to be a bit more balanced than the statistics David has been collecting for the Strobist.com readership as a whole. He came back with something like 94% male, while our group today was more along the lines of 80/20, if not better. We also seemed to have quite a few pros, or semi pros in attendance, more than I would have expected. Somehow I keep thinking pros know everything already, which is one reason I'm a bit intimidated at the thought of being one!
The event drew photographers from all over. We had attendees from Southern California, Salt Lake, Phoenix, and one guy from St. Paul, Minnesota, who had given up on hope of getting David to visit him up there.
You know you have a good group on your hands when it takes well over an hour for introductions, simply because of all the tangents and side conversations that launch out of the various details of people's lives and histories. We found ourselves discussing ethics of lighting in journalistic photography, the Computer History Museum (turns out I had breakfast with one of the museum Docents, Steve), a $5,000 Cheeto picture, and a blind skateboard photographer in London.

And this is all before we even started.

The rest of the morning was spent burning through the seven lighting controls that are outlined in Lighting 102 with plenty of photos to illustrate each concept. We move quickly through the material, as the group seems to have a pretty solid grasp of the concepts we're dealing with here. David's teaching is very hands-on, and when he's talking through an image that's on screen, it's like he's shooting it all over again. He walks back and forth positioning imaginary (and sometimes real) lightstands, holds a quite invisible camera to his eye to frame a shot of an invisible sunflower, and still adjusts his aperture via the aperture ring.

Never mind that he's not even holding a camera, there's still an aperture ring and shutter speed dial to play with dammit!

His teaching style is much like his writing, fast paced, informative, and fun. Power point presentation notwithstanding, the morning felt more like an intelligent and friendly conversation than a lesson.

After a decent but overpriced Caesar Salad from Parcel 104 the hotel's in-house restaurant, we settled in for a bit more conversation. David talked about some upcoming things that should make some real waves in the Strobist community, and in the photographic community as a whole. We're under kind of a verbal NDA, so no details yet. One cat is out of the bag, and that's the new Pocket Wizard MultiMax USB.

David has us size up the room with an eye towards what can be used as backgrounds, light modifiers, shooting locations, etc. We discuss options and decide on four setups, a "Clamshell" Portrait with a colored background, a photograph of the Devil himself, a soft side-lit portrait in an alcove outside, using the frosted glass hotel doors as a giant diffuser, and a ringlight portrait with colored rim lights from the side.
In a matter of a few hours, we set up, shoot, chimp, modify, play with, and review on-screen the progression of each of these photos. The process is so wonderfully transparent, open-minded, and open book that you can't help but to learn. Those with Pocket Wizards were invited to shoot using David's flashes as they were being set up to make the final photo. Seeing this all come together, one light at a time, one layer at a time, until suddenly there's an amazing photograph, and you watched the whole thing happen.
A few of the images from the shoot:

Setup for the "Prince of Darkness" photo.
Not too often do you get a deep red gel and a ringflash used together.
But when you do it right, it looks like this

This huge frosted glass door, in an outside alcove, becomes an immense softbox, with a single flash on a stand in the hallway inside.
The beautifully lit portrait is here

David sets up a shot of Ken Brown, winner of the 2007 SPOY contest for his Gullwing Mercedes photo here.
The final result

Then finally, David shows us how he really triggers his strobes. And all this time we thought it was Pocket Wizards!

Click through to see his secret moves!

We wrapped up shooting and as some of the attendees trickled out, launched into another wide ranging ~~BS session~~ discussion of photography, lighting, Google, business, blogging, secret visits to the Seattle Strobist meetup (figure you guys know by now!) Joey Lawrence, the future of stock photography, PhotoShelter, networking, business plans, and pretty much anything else we could think of.
The conversation wandered from the conference room to the restaurant, and over dinner and a few beers we all convinced Ken Brown that he should go and own the world of high end car photography. The rest of us all have to find another niche. Somewhere around 10pm we finally wound down, set up a quick group shot, and headed out.
But what Strobist group photo would be complete without a few well-placed lights?
Ron Nabity (NabityPhotos) had his Canon G9, a Vivitar 285HV, and a no-brand set of Poverty Wizards, and I had my SB-800. We set up the Vivitar in the hallway outside the restaurant, aimed back in through the huge window, and set the 800 on a table, aimed at the ceiling with the optical slave enabled. By the second test shot, we had the exposure nailed, and Ron's wife Linda was kind enough to snap this for us.

Thanks again David, for putting together an absolutely incredible, informative, and entertaining day. Come back soon, OK?

Ivan Makarov also writes an excellent review of the seminar on his blog, IMDigital.

Strobist lighting seminar preview

2008-01-19T01:17:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow's the lighting seminar with David Hobby, Mister Strobist himself. Apparently David flew into town early, and did a secret seminar on the Google campus with some of the engineers there. A couple of very interesting portraits, shot in what could have been an ordinary setting. Check it out at the link above.
The seminar tomorrow should be great, breakfast with a few of the other guys, a morning of theory and demonstrations, lunch at Ming's, and an afternoon of shooting each other in various different setups, open discussion, and generally great geeky fun.
Unless it all descends into highly intelligent anarchy, which would be fine with me too.
Follow up post, and a detailed seminar writeup, with loads of pictures, should be up here by this time tomorrow, unless we're still at the bar.

Goodnight!

Things not to do at 3am...

2008-01-18T11:49:00.000-08:00

So last night I had a nice conversation with a couple of police officers after they caught me flashing at the local elementary school.

Not like that.

Sicko.

I was trying to take a photograph for Strobist's latest assignment which involves cross lighting and balancing ambient with tightly controlled flash. My concept was a motorcyclist, leaning into a turn towards the camera, with the ambient light coming from outside the turn, and the flash highlighting the rider's head and shoulders, and the front of the bike. Sounds easy enough, except for a few minor details:
It was 3am (not much daylight to work with)
I'm not a very good rider yet.
I don't have anybody else to work the camera while I ride, or vice versa.
I don't have a remote for the camera
Other than all that, no problem, right?

So I find a dark corner of an empty parking lot, set up one flash at a distance to act as ambient/backlight for the bike, set up the other with a cardboard tube on it for a snoot , take a couple of test shots to get the exposure right, and set my timer. So now the camera shoots every ten seconds, with a Pocket Wizard triggering the flashes, and me circling the parking lot quickly trying to time my laps so I was in front of the camera when the flashes popped.

About three laps after I got this shot, I pulled the bike around for another pass, and saw two sets of blue lights pulling in off the main road.

Crap.

So I stopped the bike, cut the engine, and pulled my helmet off. They ask for my license, etc, then the questions start.
"What are you doing out here?"
Taking pictures.
"Why?"
"Because I'm a photographer. It's what I do."
"Why are you doing it at 3am?"
"Because it's dark."
--Blank stares--
So I launch into an explanation of balancing ambient light, freezing motion with the flash, the setup I was using, the function of the cardboard snoot, what a Pocket Wizard was, how I was using a CTO on the backlight to create some separation...
--Blank stares continue--
But one of them was sufficiently interested to ask to see the pictures.

I show him the one above. Almost asked if they would pose for a photo, but as they seemed to be losing interest I figured that might be pushing my luck.

Another quick apology, pack up, and ride home.

Ha. I out-geeked half of the Dublin PD in one shot (Literally!!)

Thanks Strobist!

Reasons to shoot in RAW

2008-01-16T22:56:00.000-08:00

Although I would like to progress to where I'm less focused on the equipment part of photography, and more on the art, there are some basics that cannot be ignored. Good equipment is not critical to good photography, nor is any particular technique, or style, or workflow. However, without an understanding of some of the fundamentals of digital imaging, trying to create good photos is like trying to take a bicycle tour of Paris without knowing that your tires are supposed to have air in them. It can be done, and in some ways the slow pace and greater effort may be enjoyable, but you should know what you're doing and why.
I shoot with a semi-professional camera body, a Nikon D200. This is a fantastic machine, no longer the best in it's class, but it still will give years of good service. I chose it because at the time, it represented the best balance of performance vs. cost for my budget and needs. Yours may vary. I also shoot primarily with an 18-135mm plastic mounted zoom lens. This lens costs less than $300 new, has serious distortions at the wide end, some vignetting at the telephoto end, and is generally considered unacceptable by "serious" pros. It would get me laughed off the sidelines of any sporting event, and is not much good in the dark due to a slow maximum aperture of 3.5-5.6.
So why do I use it? Because it produces very sharp, clean images when used within it's limitations. And because it's far and away the most versatile lens I own. And because if somebody loves an image, they never ask "what lens did you shoot that with?" (and if they do, I really enjoy the looks on their faces when I tell them what it is)
So the gear doesn't matter. Not really. There are incredible photos shot with garbage cameras, and there are countless pictures taken with top of the line pro gear that I would be embarrassed to have taken.
(Watch this, I'm coming back around to the Title)
How you use the gear, on the other hand, DOES matter quite a bit. This still doesn't mean there's a right or wrong way, but there are some things I do to improve my odds.
One of the most important of those is shooting in RAW. Always. Every time. If you shoot in jpeg mode, you had better be good, very good. Because your camera takes all the data you just painstakingly dropped onto the sensor in the form of photons, processes it according to a dozen or so choices you made in the menus of your camera, compresses it as it sees fit, and throws away the 75% to 90% or so that it didn't need to create that interpretation of your picture.
If you got EVERYTHING right the first time, congratulations. If not, your options are now very limited. Your image exists in 8-bit form, only 256 levels to work with, so any adjustments to exposure, color balance, anything, will have to be done very, very delicately.

I took this picture of my daughter the other morning, trying to extract a stowaway from the hood of her coat. It's bad. The camera lens is fogged up from just coming inside from the cold, the color balance is way off (using bounced off-camera flash in a room with green walls) and the exposure overall could be better.
Had this been shot in jpeg, I doubt I would have tried anything except the delete button.
But I opened it in Photoshop, and with a few clicks of the settings on the raw converter, a significant crop, and a bit of sharpening, came up with this:

Click to see larger 800 pix version

Please note, I am NOT advocating shooting carelessly and planning to correct things in photoshop afterwards. I would be much more proud of this shot if I had framed it better to begin with, and gotten my colors right, etc.
Landscape photographers need raw to extract every last bit of subtle detail from their mountain slopes and forests, fashion and advertising shooters need it to precisely match their colors and lighting, wedding photogs need it to keep the intricate patterns in a bride's white dress as well as a black tux that's 5, 6, 8 stops darker.
I need raw because I make mistakes. I acknowledge my own fallibility, and I want to create the very best images I can. If one day I wake up and decide I'm perfect, I'll set the dial to jpeg, but until then, I'm not taking any chances.

Rumors of a new "Walk-around" lens from Nikon

2008-01-03T12:22:00.000-08:00

There has been a rising tide of rumors on many of the Web's photography forums, notably DPReview, regarding a new lens to be introduced by Nikon sometime soon, probably at PMA on January 31. The lens is supposed to be a 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6 VR AFS DX, which would give DX camera users a much wider angle than is available in the current crop of "18 to whatever" lenses (55, 70, 135, 200, you get the picture)

Skepticism abounds, as it should for any unproven internet rumor, but evidence is solidifying, with Nikon reviewer Thom Hogan stating "Moreover, it appears that the DX equivalent of a 24-120mm lens has also entered production (that would be a 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6G VR DX AF-S for those who really want to know, and that's a ~24-128mm equivalent)" and a number of quite convincing images surfacing about the web.

I'm personally a believer in this one, and if it's sharp and hits the market under $400, I'll be buying one to replace the 18-135 as my walk-around lens. I don't use the telephoto end of this lens much, but I'm ALWAYS looking to go wider.

Christmas Lights

2007-12-26T23:02:00.000-08:00

Christmas morning has come and gone, and while there are still about three cubic yards of wrapping paper stuffed under the coffee table and Lincoln Logs scattered about, the madness has faded back into everyday life.

Shots of the kids opening presents are always a favorite, and can be quite a challenge in available light, given the tendency of Christmas morning to happen in the winter at 5:00 am. Unless you live in the Southern Hemisphere, conduct christmas outside in the mid-day, or have a new D3 you're going to have to add light to the scene somehow.

Last year, my first as a DSLR photographer, saw me produce images like this:
ISO 1600, cheap lens wide open at f/3.5, 1/15th of a second. I had to shoot ten just to get one that was recognizable of everybody. But I stuck to my vow that I was NOT going to use my pop-up flash and take nasty point and shoot pictures.

This year, due to the miracle of off-camera lighting, things worked out a little differently. I used one flash, the SB-800, set up on a Super Clamp and Umbrella stand adapter with the diffuser on and aimed at about a 45 degree angle.
The other flash, an SB-600 was located on-camera, aimed at the ceiling and manually zoomed to 50mm. This flash served as an additional light and a trigger for the SB-800, which was in SU-4 slave mode.
With both flashes set to 1/4 power, camera in manual exposure at ISO 400, f/5.6 and 1/125th, I was free to go anywhere in the room and shoot wherever I wanted at any range and zoom with good clean light and nearly perfect exposure every time.

The setup shot:

The first gifts:

More trouble ahead:

You should have heard the "Thank you!" that followed a moment after this image:

I asked for a set of Pocket Wizards, but Santa apparently forgot to stop at B&H this year, so I'm stuck with optical triggering for a little while yet. I did, however, get large prints of two pictures framed and hung so it wasn't a complete loss for me...

Strobist: Registration Opens for Jan. 19th San Francisco-Area Lighting Seminar

2007-12-22T13:51:00.000-08:00

Strobist: Registration Opens for Jan. 19th San Francisco-Area Lighting Seminar

Well, it was open, for about thirty seconds or so. Apparently this off camera lighting stuff is popular with a whole lot of people, because within seconds of the link appearing on thon the Strobist main page, it was sold out. Apparently I was ~~obsessive~~ lucky enough to catch the registration page during the few seconds it was open.

Thanks to David Hobby for hosting this seminar, I'm looking forward to it!

Strobist is coming to San Francisco!

2007-12-21T00:38:00.000-08:00

Okay, now I'm totally looking like a Strobist fan/geek/stalker. So maybe I am. Nothing wrong with that, right? David's running a seminar on January 19th in San Francisco, and I am going to be there come hell or high water.
Maybe I'll even learn a thing or two....

Meanwhile, I've been playing a bit with my new tool, an old Nikon 105mm f/2.5 AiS lens. I'm not sure how old it is, but the Serial number puts it somewhere between August 1981 and December 2005. Thanks, that narrows it down! Anyway, it's been very interesting, and I think it'll make a superb portrait lens. It seems to have a bit of a glow wide open, which initially seems like softness but all the detail is still there. Managing the tiny DOF is a challenge, as is manually focusing in a D200 viewfinder.
Picture shot wide open at f/2.5

100% crop from the middle of the picture, at the point of focus. Sort of shows the soft/glowing but detailed look I'm getting used to from this excellent lens.

Film is NOT dead....

2007-12-19T00:57:00.001-08:00

Got my slides back from Yosemite a few days ago, finally got a chance to scan some of them in. I've been shooting both film and digital for several months now, and I'm still up in the air as to which I prefer. Digital obviously beats film far and away for convenience, but for absolute image quality, I'm not so sure. I think the specialized films may still have an edge for those willing to work for it.
My F4 on the ice in Tuolomne meadows:

One of many photos I took while laying on the ice on a frozen pond, hoping my zipper didn't freeze to the surface....

Strobist-style

2007-12-16T20:14:00.000-08:00

So I, along with every other aspiring photographer who wants to learn what to do with a light, read David Hobby's immensely popular Strobist blog. He's currently running an incredible contest, Strobist pictures of the year, and I've finally got something entered. Anything on the Strobist flickr pool is fair game and that makes about 65,000 photos at the moment.

The criteria are pretty much that the picture is decent, uses off-camera lighting, and belongs to you.

You have until the 18th if you want in!

So I guess there has to be a first post somewhere....

2007-12-15T14:48:00.000-08:00

My name is Nick Davis, I'm a full time industrial maintenance guy, part time photographer, and working on moving those priorities around a bit sometime soon...

I'm the proud parent of three kids, who you'll probably be seeing a lot of, and I've been married for almost 11 years to a wonderful woman who will NOT let me point a camera at her!

I've been shooting pictures of my kids for years, as does any good parent, and I love to get out and photograph almost anything, people, nature, landscapes, architecture, you know, the whole "I can't really decide what I want to do with my photography" bit.

I'm beginning at do some semi-professional work, both through selling prints of my landscape photos and in doing portraits for co-workers' and their families.

I'd love to shoot weddings (I think) but I'm gonna have to try a few first, before I know.

Maybe this whole thing needs to go in some kind of "about me" section, but I'm gonna drop it here for now.

Anyway, thanks for reading, and be sure to check back, I'll keep this updated regularly as the images flow in!