Christmas Card 2013

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I had such a nice response to my Christmas card last year that I really was fretting over what to do this year.

2012

Plan A was to go down to our town square with all the Christmas lights up and try to capture a family photo with christmas light bokeh in the background. But the problem with that is when tiny lights are bunched up, it looks like giant wads of white when it blurs and blends together. The other option is to just open up the depth of field and just get everything, but there was constant traffic in the background of the shots.

After a hour or so, I decided it wasn't going to work and we came home to try plan B. There was no plan B. I attempted at trying to re-create a similar shot as last year, but I hated the idea of repeating what I already did. I packed up my camera and was going to call it a night, but it kept gnawing at me that I wasn't going to have a Christmas card this year. Then I remember seeing a picture of a father holding a 3 picture frame. And inside the frame were photos of his family all looking up at him all Brady Bunch style. I figured what the hell, i'll try to make something like that. 

I took some matting I had left over from my Architectual Salvaging project back in August and I took shots of everyone holding the matting around their head. Then I took a family photo of us holding a frame we have with our wedding photos. With the help of Adobe CS5, I cropped, copied, and pasted our heads in that frame and voila, our Christmas Card for 2013! 

2013

In hindsight, I wish I had us coming out of the matting in the portraits. Maybe a finger or a chin resting outside, giving it a more 3D look. My hair comes out and thought that was interesting. Also, perhaps I should have had us hold the large frame in front out of heads making the portraits our faces. And it might have been cute to mix heads and bodies. Overall I'm pleased with the final result but it comes with a few creative regrets.

All the shots were taken with my Nikkor 35mm 1.8 and had the flash bouncing off the ceiling. I love the light reflection on the top of the frame, it gave it spotlight look and it really highlighted the textured frame.

Architectural Salvaging

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I have been researching online about architectural salvaging and thought I'd try my hand at converting an old window frame into a multi-photo display for my photography. My town has a Habitat for Humanity store were you can buy pretty much anything that's been salvaged from a home. There's a whole section of mix matched windows, doors and other various pieces you'd fine in your house. 

Pieces are always coming in and going. I had my heart set on a square-ish window and happened across this one Saturday morning. I only paid $17 for this window! I brought it home and immediately cleaned and sanded the piece. There were spots of dried mildew that come off, but overall it was in very good shape! I gave it a once over with the primer and painted it a nice "Colonial" red. Spray paint went on smoothly and I let it dry over night.

Each window isn't your standard size picture frames so it won't hold standard size matting. I cut the matting myself. If I had ordered it custom cut online or at a Hobby Lobby, it would have cost anywhere from $4 - $9 per mat. I ended up buying a 10 pack of 11x14 matting and a Exacto knife from amazon for $16. When it arrived, i carefully trimmed each one down to fit the 10.25x11.5 window pane.

The whole piece weighs about 30 pounds, but to be on the safe side I installed a picture wire hanging doo-hicky from Home Depot that would support up to 100 pounds. Safety first!

Overall I'm pleased with the outcome. I'm very happy to fill my house with my personal photography, especially pictures that have meaning to me and my family. Its kind of my mission to remove any store bought, mass produced decorations. Each photo has some significance for either my family and being able to display them in this manner is very satisfying artistically. 

Catching up on my Photography Journey: 1st Wedding Job!

Pin It Now! Its been 7 months since my last entry because I really haven't had anything to write about until now. With in 2 weeks of each other I've had my first experience with Beach photography and my first paid gig shooting my wife's cousin's wedding (you got to start somewhere, am I right?)

I just finished with the post production of the wedding pictures and I can tell you that when a wedding photographer is asking for $1500 to $2000, its not just for clicking a button. We had 2 photographers on the job. My friend Pat and myself, along with my wife helping corral the wedding party. We were there for a total of 10.5 hours. A couple hours for planning and getting familiar with Lake Point Resort in Eufaula, AL and the rest snapping away. After the wedding, i put in about 20 hours of post production work on 2100+ photos that were taken, of which I narrowed down and edited to 373. Right there we've put in over 40 hours of work, and that's not counting time spent getting to the location. Since this job was 1) a favor to a relative and 2) a learning experience, I only requested $200 ($100 each photographer) to cover gas. Divide that by 30.5 hours and I made $3.27 per hour. That is below minimum wage, but a step above sweatshop wages!

My buddy Pat and I are camera enthusiasts and we're your typical "i'm a little bit country, i'm a little bit rock and roll" when it comes to things in general. He owns a Canon, I am all Nikon. His shots and poses are more traditional, whereas I like interesting lines, depth, and candid photojournalistic looks in my shots.

Below is a shot of the groom's father that had passed away when he was a boy. It was to be a surprise from the bride to have the framed picture in the chair on the front row. We were able to get the photo before the ceremony and take a few shots. I liked having the rows of empty chairs lined up. It reminds me of all the grave markers at Arlington cemetery in a row.

Below is an sample of what the wedding party portraits looked like. We were force indoors due to rain and the setting was large glass atrium with double doors on 3 sides. This angle was the only photogenic spot available that was in the room. Had we gone anywhere else we'd have passersby and rubberneckers to contend with in the background. In this shot, the large glass wall looked down the long hall of the main lobby of the resort. It added great depth and provided many lines that usually pointed down to our subjects. I'm a little thankful for the rain because we would have been outside in the middle of the bright afternoon battling glare from the lake .

Overall, I'm very pleased with our first wedding gig and hope to find more opportunities to hone my skills.
To see the complete set from this wedding, you can click here.