Mike Hudson Photography

Photographing the Royal Wedding

2011-09-13T10:54:00.000-07:00

Back in the late 1980's, I was a student going to college in the US, but living with my family in England during summer and Christmas breaks. In the summers, I would take pictures of the Royal Family, eventually photographing Princess Diana over fifty times, and meeting her twice. I would also see the Queen, Princes Charles and Andrew, and most of the more 'minor' royals, as well as many European royals. It was fun, and a big adrenaline rush, not to mention good practice for an aspiring professional photographer. I also saw some of the world's biggest celebrities of the time, and attended film premieres, two royal weddings, and other social events. But after 1989, I became a professional photographer, got married and settled in the US. So when the chance came to be part of a big royal occasion one more time, I bought a plane ticket, and headed across the pond to see William and Kate.

The day before the wedding, I arrived in London by train at 11am and walked the route a couple times, eventually settling on a good spot by 4:00 that afternoon. I wanted a location that had a front row spot and a good view across a wide part of the road- not too close so I'd be looking up William and Kate's noses, but where I'd get a shot of both of them from the other side of the street, and where I could get out quickly and get a prime view of the balcony appearance after the wedding.

The people around me were great– sharing drinks, food, and even a nice chair and blanket to use throughout the night. I had many chances during the night to walk up and down the route, see what people were doing, etc. Some were sleeping, others just sitting up talking. Old and young, British and foreign, it was a really mixed crowd. I had a group of English women on one side of me and a Canadian family on the other. It got cold during the night, down to the 40's. I actually slept for about fifteen minutes I think. In the morning, more people started arriving after 5am, and by daybreak it was packed. Then the bomb sniffer dogs arrived, the guards began to line the route and military bands marched by again and again.

Despite what it may seem, I'm not a big "fan" of the Royal Family. I've still never seen Kate and William on TV, or watched clips of the wedding. I picked up a souvenir newspaper on the way home from London, but haven't ever looked through it. But I wanted to go and be a part of something really big, to spend the night on the streets with strangers who became friends, and to experience the emotions of a million people all in one place for a genuinely happy occasion. And it was emotional– surrounded by so many people, all cheering as the couple each said "I do" over the nearby loudspeakers, singing along to the hymn, Jerusalem, and waving and shouting as the new couple rode by.

I shot over 1,000 pictures, as well as dozens of HD video clips. It took weeks to sort through them all, edit out the bad shots, process the raw images, caption them for stock sales, and post a gallery. My plan is to put together a ten minute video of the stills, audio clips and videos from my experience. Stayed tuned.

Since 1989...

2011-09-01T09:13:00.000-07:00

22 years as a professional photographer today. I still can't believe I'm able to do this and make a living.

I've shot in homeless shelters, and billionaires' offices; kings, queens, leaders of the free world, and leaders of the un-free world; sports stars and megastars; some of the most squalid homes on the planet, and some of the most sublime scenery known to man; thousands of good, decent people, and a few of the biggest losers ever; behind the scenes and in front of huge audiences; I've worn scrubs to shoot delicate surgeries, and stuck my head and camera out of small planes at 1000 feet. I've been privileged to play a large part in over one hundred couples' weddings and even photographed a funeral. I've made more than a few people look better than they really are.

I've bought twelve new cameras since 1989, and twenty-four camera lenses, from SLR (35mm) lenses to Schneider-Kreuznach 4x5" lenses, as well as three enlarger lenses. Thirty-one filters, one 5x7" enlarger, six portable flash units, eight studio flash units, five remote wireless triggers, and seven Macintosh computers.

When I started out, I told myself that I could always pack bags at the local grocery store if things didn't work out. I still don't feel like I have a real job. It's been a good life.

Decorating the British Consulate Residence...

2010-05-07T11:34:00.000-07:00

Most people who know me know that I spent several years growing up in England, from age twelve to eighteen. My parents and three sisters still live there today. Every time I go back for a visit, I always do a lot of shooting, often going away for a few days on my own to shoot. I've sold some of these pictures for book covers, some as fine art prints or posters, and one even went on a national ad campaign for bottled water a couple years ago. For a long time, I thought of approaching the British Consulate (like an embassy but smaller) here in Chicago and seeing if I could decorate their walls with some of my prints.

The years went by and I never made contact with anyone about my idea. Then about three months ago I bumped into a friend I hadn't seen for a few years, who now works at the Consulate. I told him of my idea, and a month later, I was in Chicago talking with them about putting some prints up. The Consulate is in the Wrigley Building, but they have a penthouse apartment where the Consul General (the Director) lives, and has receptions for people wishing to do business in Britain, as well as British groups coming to Chicago. It's in a great location, just off Michigan Avenue, sixty stories up, with a panoramic view of the city.

Last night, thirteen prints made their debut at a party to mark the British elections, where about 150 guests gathered to mingle, eat fish and chips, sausage rolls, drink British beer and watch the results come in. These are the largest prints I've ever had made, including two 16x48 inch panoramas, a 36x48 print and a triptych of 20x30 prints.

The prints will be on view for at least the next three months. Unfortunately, the suite is private so you'll have to enjoy them from the gallery I've posted. I'm always looking for other venues to show my work; if interested, send me a message.

View the prints and price list here.

Lighting

2010-03-25T15:11:00.000-07:00

I was asked by a new commercial client today if it'll be necessary to set up lights for a shoot we're doing. I know the location will be bright enough to shoot without any additional lights, but I responded that we may use them anyway. Here's why...

Photography literally means 'drawing with light'. Think about it– without light, whatever you're taking a picture of won't be visible. As a photographer, I'm always faced with decisions about how to photograph a particular subject. Should I use available light, or light with my portable strobes (variable powered flashes)? How will the light fall on my subject? Will they be backlit? How will I light up the background so it doesn't go dark? If I'm using available light, will the color be off due to mixed sources (all lighting emits different colors- tungsten light bulbs are yellow, fluorescents can be green or light yellow, and halogens defy normal colors)? Will the available light complement my subject, or should I use supplemental lighting to define my subject?

Yesterday I did a shoot for a client that will go on the cover of a magazine. This was an important shot, probably to be seen by 100-150,000 people, and the cover will set the tone of the magazine. Put a bland picture on the cover and people may not open the magazine. Put a quality picture on the front and readers will associate that quality with the organization producing the magazine. I wanted it to look really sharp and draw attention to the woman who was the cover model. Bland lighting wasn't going to cut it. In the end I used three lights– two on the woman and one bounced off the ceiling, lighting up the colorful background. It took more time to set up and shoot the picture, but the effort was justified by the final result.

And that brings me to my point. The magazine client and I have been working together for many years and we almost always use additional lighting. Another client of mine has a tight budget (ok, all my clients do...) and wants to squeeze the most out of my time while we're shooting together. We rarely use my lights, often moving quickly from shot to shot without time to think about making things look any better. Basically, we're shooting snapshots with little thought about lighting. There are times this works ok, but most times, unfortunately, the pictures don't look like anything special. Image is everything, and for better or worse, people will judge your business by the image you portray. If the images of your business are classy, well executed and eye catching, your customers will look at your business that way too. There are times when I won't want to use additional lighting and natural light can sometimes be perfect for the job, but for the best quality, take the time to create your images, don't just let them appear.

The first shot was used for placement, to see where the subject would stand and how the background would appear; the second will be the cover shot. BTW, extra space above her head and around the edges will be used for the magazine masthead and additional copy.

Nice Portrait

2010-01-29T13:45:00.000-08:00

Got a call to shoot a college student, the vice president of the student government, for the college magazine. Usually when I get these calls, the setting and concept for the picture is all left to me. After reading a draft of the article, I decided to place her in their SG meeting room. I decided to use three lights, two to light the room and one on the subject, placed in a softbox. Met the subject yesterday, and she suggested holding her gavel, something she used in all her meetings. We spent about an hour all together, lighting and shooting the picture.

I was pleased with the lighting especially. The key to a good photo is almost always in the lighting. I could've taken an easy route and just shot her in front of one of the campus buildings in natural light, but that wouldn't provide any context to what she's all about, and what the article says about her, as well as being a pretty dull picture. We had a good rapport and shot over sixty pictures in several different poses.

Landscape Photography- Acadia National Park

2009-10-28T12:06:00.000-07:00

Each autumn now, for the past three years, I've been traveling up to Maine to spend a week photographing Acadia National Park. This was my fourth trip, and I learned a lot about my equipment, how I approach photography, and myself.

Acadia is a small park, with only about 40 miles of paved roads, and all contained on the relatively small Mount Desert Island. Each morning I woke up at 5am (4am my time), and left my motel at 6:00 to be in place for dawn half an hour later. After the sun rose at 6:50, I'd spend the rest of the day searching for new things to shoot. Here's what I learned:

* landscape photography is better when you don't shoot everything at f16. F2.8 is far more creative and interesting, and f1.8 is even better.

* once the sun peaks out, the best light is done for most of the rest of the day.

* always carry a compass and know where the sun will set and where it will rise. Use it throughout the day to determine where the sun will be when the light is perfect, and what it will light up.

* I need to get a larger rectangular filter holder to cover the 16mm setting on my wide angle lens. Now I have a full frame digital camera (Canon 5DMk2), my widest angle is 16mm instead of 21mm with my 1.3X crop cameras.

* when shooting at the coast, get tide charts to know when the waves will be peaking.

* after a day of rain, streams turn into hundreds of small waterfalls.

* the pre-dawn light is a beautiful blue, twenty minutes before sunrise.

* when I'm thinking of what to shoot next, I don't really want to eat anything, and have small snacks throughout the day instead of any meals. I often don't think of food for several hours. I love to sleep in, but when faced with the prospect of shooting the dawn, I can wake up at any time of the night. Sunrise is almost always better than sunset.

* shooting in a location where tens of thousands of pictures are taken each day, it's a challenge to do something different. Having shot four times there now, it was much harder to see worthy subjects. But I think my images are better for the extra thought that went into them.

I love flying into Bangor Airport; there are only two or three gates and it's much quieter than any other public airport I've flown into. Upon arriving, it was fun to go into the small store there and see one of my pictures on the cover of Bangor Metro magazine. I had a three page spread of my Acadia work inside the magazine. I was going to pick up a few extra copies when I left, but alas, October was gone, replaced by November.

Changing Business in a Bad Economy

2009-10-28T09:05:00.001-07:00

It's been a strange year professionally for me. A year ago I watched as others struggled with the effects of a souring economy; I read stories about several photographers packing it in after years of being in business. It wasn't until about April when things started to slow down for me. My biggest client saw their revenues way down and slashed their marketing budgets dramatically. Consequently, I lost a client I'd had since 2001, as the first client dropped their services completely. Six months later, everyone has been more careful about where they spend their money, and business has been down for me about 50% as a result.

But while work has been down, some smaller jobs have kept me busy, as well as several personal projects and other clients, both old and new. While some photographers I know are getting out of the business, I'm excited about some new directions I'm heading in. In the past year, I've been doing more stock photography, and traveled to five different national parks (Shenandoah, Rocky Mountain, Arches, Canyonlands and Acadia) to work on photos. Next October I plan on leading my first photo tour to Maine to shoot in Acadia, with ideas for more trips and teaching photography in the works. I've done more fashion shoots, working with professional models, which makes a nice change from many of the people I normally shoot for marketing campaigns ("I hate having my picture taken..."). And while I've always relied on getting my own work and promoting myself, I'm seriously looking at the idea of getting a rep to help promote my business, negotiate contracts (my most hated part of my job), and land new and bigger jobs.

Stay tuned; the future is looking bright.

What to Bring....

2009-07-07T16:07:00.001-07:00

My friend Scott recently posted on his Facebook page that he would be going on a trip somewhere with the family, and wondered what gear he should bring. Scott is what I would call a 'keen amateur' and has just bought a digital camera for the first time. I didn't plan on spending an hour replying to his post, but I get asked similar questions often. Here's what I wrote:

Ok, I'll give it a shot... first off, the one GLARING thing I see that's missing, is a camera body cap. Sounds very innocuous, but with that missing, all the dust from the air and your carpet are wafting onto your sensor. (I'm assuming here that the black camera is your digital camera, though maybe you're using the digital to take the picture). In any case, keep that camera covered all the time, and change lenses quickly. You'll be very frustrated when you come back and find dust spots all over your pristine skies. Then you'll spend days or even weeks getting rid of them on the computer. I know– it's happened in the past to me. Get a bulb to blow off the sensor regularly. Some Sensor Swabs (about $50/ pack) are useful too, but most dust can be blown off with a bulb. Price for a bulb ~ $15.

Do you have something, like a laptop, to backup your pics to each day? You may also want to backup the pics to DVD-RWs, that way you have them in two places if one fails. When I go to Maine each Fall, I put the pictures each day onto a portable HD, then onto a DVD-RW. I've never needed the DVDs but if the drive goes out on me, I'm OK. Price for a few DVD-RWs ~$25.

I'd leave one backup camera in your hotel room/ suitcase and not even get it out unless your main camera fails. No point bringing another camera on a hike when the chances are slim that you'll have camera failure. Pack lightly, though don't leave out the essentials.

If you're shooting in the daylight hours (8am-6pm) you may not want your tripod, but I'd STRONGLY encourage you to get up an hour before sunrise and stake out a place to shoot the sun coming up. Shoot a couple sunrises and sunsets and you won't want to shoot during the day, the light is so harsh and boring. Most great landscape pix are shot within an hour of sunrise or sunset. The quality of light is so much better. When I go to Maine, I spend most of the day (after shooting the sunrise) figuring out where the best sunset shot will be. Bring a compass and figure out where the sun rises and sets, then use that during the day to determine where the best locations are for future pix. Bring the tripod- it's bulky and unwieldy, but you'll have sharp pictures, and be glad you brought it. Price for getting up early- Free– and a little missed sleep, which you won't even notice once you see how beautiful the landscape is at that time.

Make sure you have more than one memory card; get the biggest ones you can afford, at least 4GB should be ok for a day's shooting, depending on your shooting style. I do a lot of panoramas, some of which require 15-25 images for one shot, so I've been known to shoot 8-10GB in a day.

A 2X lens converter sounds good, but most (even my $300 Canon 1.4X) will degrade image quality a little, so I usually don't recommend them. Depending on the wildlife you're shooting, you may be able to patiently just walk closer to your subject. When I shot some bears out East last week, I was able to get within twenty feet (ok- these were small bears!). Deer and elk are usually easy to shoot if you move slowly and use your 80-200 zoom. Open the aperture all the way to throw the background out of focus.

A very useful accessory that a lot of landscape photographers use now is a bubble level that mounts to your hotshoe and helps you get straight horizons. Price ~$20. (http://www.adorama.com/TPBLS.html?searchinfo=bubble+level)

The graduated ND is pretty useful. You can get around it by shooting two images, one for the sky and one for the foreground, then combining in PS, but it's better to get one shot in-camera. My Singh-Ray ND filter cost $100. Lee makes good ones too. A filter holder would be handy too though you can get by without one.

When you get to where you're going, visit the visitor center and gift shops and see what locations are photogenic- what scenes are in all the postcards and posters? Look at the photography coffee table books from the area; read the captions to find out where they were taken, then visit those places.

Hope that helps Scott! Look forward to seeing what you come up with!

2009-05-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

After about two months of re-scanning and hunting down old prints, etc, the latest version of my fine art website has been launched. It's the eleventh re-working since my first site in 1996. Enjoy.

Conflict of Interest?

2009-05-12T07:39:00.001-07:00

I just received an email from a friend/ client of mine:

"I have a photographer's question for you. A friend of mine is the marketing director for a school in Colorado. He is having some issues with a photographer and a designer that work for him. The designer would like the raw, un-touched files for the work they are creating, but the photographer will only provide jpegs or tiffs. The designer says you can manipulate raw files more and would like them that way but the photographer doesn't want to provide those because it will reflect poorly on their work if the photographer doesn't do some retouch. What do you think? This would be my response, unless it's been specified up front that the designer requires the raw files and the photographer expects it, the photographer can refuse to give the raw files. What would you say?"

This was my response:

"It's a tricky situation. I never send out raw images; I don't think I've ever been asked to. The main reason why someone wouldn't want to do it is, like you say, their photos can be made to look bad (unintentionally of course) and that reflects back on the photographer. While I'm shooting, I have certain ideas of how the pictures will look when finished; occasionally that's pretty much as they look when shot, other times it can be quite different. After a shoot, I do a lot of work on each picture to get them to look just the way I had planned when I took the shot. Because it takes time (and expensive software), I usually charge $15 per image for a finished shot. Click here to see some samples of before/ after pictures, as well as my take on the subject.

I'm assuming this photographer is new to your friend's school; usually this sort of thing would've been talked about beforehand if they wanted the raw images, or if they had certain ideas for how they wanted the finished pictures to look. I would contact the photographer and say, fine, don't give us the raw images, but here's what we want done with them (darken this one, boost the colors on this one, etc). It's not really the designer's job to manipulate the pictures; that's what the photographer is hired for. See if they can work out an amicable arrangement. It sounds more like the designer doesn't trust the photographer to do a good job, which may be the case, but then that's a good reason for them to talk things over before shooting. If the marketing director hired both of them independently, it means he likes both their work– the designer needs to work with what the photographer gives her, and the photographer needs to let the designer use his pictures in the way she best sees fit."

Mike

Catching Up

2009-02-16T07:19:00.001-08:00

I spent five days in England for a family birthday last week, arriving back in Chicago Wednesday afternoon. Thursday morning I was up bright and early for a full day's hospital shoot, with eight setups and breakdowns of the lighting. Today I have seventy-one emails to plow through! Hopefully by the end of the day I'll be somewhat caught up....

The Cost of Photography

2009-01-21T09:15:00.000-08:00

What's a photograph worth? And what's a photographer's experience worth? I've got almost twenty years experience shooting everything from presidents to the homeless. How do I figure out what to charge? Read on...

I used to be scared to charge much when I first started out as a photographer; after all, I'd been working at the dining hall in college for about $5 an hour, so to charge any more than $7-8 seemed high to me (this is 1989 you have to realize). I used to be shocked, like most people, when I heard of plumbers charging $100 just to show up at your door! Now I charge more than that- so what's changed and how do I justify my rates? Read on to see what it costs to be a photographer....

Soon after I started out, I realized I needed to have top quality equipment to stay in business, and I needed to regularly train on new gear and new software. And to add to that, I had to purchase all the things I needed to run a small office- pencils, a desk, file folders, a paper cutter, not to mention a computer, printer, flatbed scanner, film scanner, etc, etc. Unlike company employees, I had to purchase everything myself, down to the paper clips and envelopes I use.

Since I went digital in 2002, I've owned three high end digital cameras (the Canon 1D series). I couldn't believe I spent $5000 on a camera the first time I bought one. Now I've spent $15,000 on three! The savings over having to buy film (I used to order about $500 of film every few months) has been substantial, but a good digital camera has a life of only about three years, so there's a trade-off. I've figured that, depending on the shoot, I usually have $10-20,000 of photography equipment with me on any given job. And unlike my plumber in the paragraph above, I'm often upgrading gear and purchasing new software to keep current. Here's a rundown of some of the equipment I use in the production of my photos:

Honda Civic ($16,000)- can't do without a car and this is my business car. 40MPG!
Canon 400mm lens ($7000+)- with sports being a big part of my work, I need the best gear– bar none, this is the best sports lens you can get.
Canon 1DMk3 camera ($5000)- the camera I currently use on every job
Apple Mac G5 Quad computer ($4000)- the best computer you could buy (three years ago), upgraded several times with hard drives (just added an internal 1.5TB hard drive this morning) and 6.5GB of RAM. Will probably upgrade to a new computer within the next year to keep up with all the large files I need to process after every shoot.
Canon lenses- probably about $20,000 in lenses over the years, from a 15mm full frame fisheye to a 300mm f/2.8 (not including the 400mm above). Most lenses I now use cost over $1200 each.
Lighting- six high powered flash units (each about $500) , plus stands, soft boxes, umbrellas, radio slaves, cases, etc

After a shoot, I generally spend one hour in post production for every hour I spend shooting, so my shooting fee covers my time in the office too. After a shoot, everything is backed up onto DVD's and hard drives and cataloged for easy retrieval later– my catalog is up to 140,000 images, and about 400 CD's and DVD's. All of this costs money and time, which is another part of my shooting fee.

Hopefully that explains a bit, and gives you an idea of what you're paying for when you hire a professional photographer. I wouldn't do any other job– I won't get rich being a photographer, but it's the best job in the world!

Stock Photography

2008-12-12T12:45:00.000-08:00

For a year, my stock photography was online at the website, Digital Railroad. For $550/ year, they hosted about 3-4000 of my images. Over the year, I sold only two pictures- the first sale didn't even cover my annual fee, the second was my biggest stock sale ever. Soon after paying my annual fee in September, DRR went bankrupt, taking my money with them...

For now, I'm looking for a new website to host my pictures and take care of sales. I have some images on Alamy, but am looking for something a little different.

Recently, I was contacted by a sports store owner from NY asking if he could use some images I had taken in Acadia National Park for his new store. After some discussion, he mentioned "On many stock photo sites I have come across it looks like I can purchase an image at differnt sizes for a price and then it is mine to use as I like. Is this not the case with your photos? I was hoping to buy the rights to a specific image based on the size of the file. If this is not the case I may have to buy a stock photo elsewhere. It would be too bad as I really love your work."

Here was my response to him:

"I know the stock photo sites you're referring to; I just can't compete with their prices. Their prices are for 'royalty free' images. Basically, you pay a fee and you can do whatever you want with the pictures. I only sell my images as 'rights managed', meaning you can use them for a certain amount of time for rights that are agreed upon at the time of the sale. The big agencies and online sites all offer royalty free (as well as right managed), but the contributing photographers make little to anything on sales. I have a lot of costs to cover for my Acadia pictures (airfare, car rental, hotel, food, as well as my time spent there and ~$15,000 of equipment I bring with me to take the pictures), so I have to charge enough to begin to recoup my costs. I hope you can understand my position."

Here're a couple links that explain it better than I can.
http://www.stockphotography.com/faq/CompareGuide/
http://www.asmp.org/commerce/royaltyfree.php

That was on Monday; I haven't heard back from him, so I'm assuming he's using one of the low cost stock photo sites, and that's OK. I put so much time, energy and expense into my pictures, that I can't justify selling them for a few dollars. I'd rather lose sales than give away exclusive rights for almost nothing.

That brings up another point– the cost of photography. I'll write that in another posting. Stay tuned...

Industrial Annual Report Photography

2008-12-12T12:26:00.000-08:00

Wow- it's been a LONG time since I updated this page. It only means one thing... I've been busy, and in this economy, that's a good thing. Since my last posting, I've been to Maine for a week of foliage photography, spent three days in Colorado shooting log cabins for a luxury home builder, shot all the images for a new luxury hotel during a three day shoot, and countless other commercial and sports photo jobs.

One of the best parts of my job is that every day the work is a different. Some days I'm shooting sports, other days I'm at a hospital, and another day might find me at a college. Yesterday I visited a site I'd never been to before. I was working for a design firm in Baltimore, shooting some images to go in an annual report for an international chemical company. The shoot took place at a power plant in northern Indiana. Understandably, security is tight at a place like this, and once inside, it was a cross between being at an industrial wasteland and Homer Simpson's nuclear power plant. It was good to be home later and smell the fresh air and see grass again! I'm still not exactly sure what they do at the plant- water treatment or electricity generation. I felt too dumb to ask! But the photography was good, despite the wind chill being about 10 degrees. After some initial hitches (the tanker truck we were supposed to shoot wasn't even due to come that day, and the control room we were going to shoot in was off limits– we shot in a dingy corner, with one ten inch screen in the dirty wall instead), we got some good shots.

The Rain Bowl

2008-09-13T20:16:00.000-07:00

I woke up at 8:00 this morning, and by 8:02 I was down in my basement mopping water off the floor. We've had two straight days of rain and everywhere is flooding, including my basement. My back yard has several inches of standing water on it, with nowhere for it to go. I spent the whole morning bringing stuff up from the basement, and connecting a pump to help clear the water. Unfortunately, I also had a football game to shoot today....

Kickoff was at 1:00 but the rain became heavier at 12:30 and I decided not to shoot the game. The basement was filling with water again. Hoping it would be postponed, I tuned into the radio, only to hear the game in progress. By about 1:30 I had done all I could to stem the flow, so I wrapped the 300mm lens and camera in custom made rain gear (actually in Jewel grocery bags...) and headed out the door. In twenty-three years of shooting sports, I've never shot in such wet conditions. It was tough juggling the camera with an umbrella, with the rain sometimes coming at me sideways. One thing I've learned though, is that adverse conditions often create some of the best pictures. The field was saturated in many parts, with several inches of standing water especially along the sidelines. Tackles were great though, with water spraying out in all directions. I managed to keep the front element of the lens pretty dry, thanks mainly to the six inch deep lens hood. By the last few minutes of the fourth quarter, the rain stopped and I was able to shoot without the umbrella. In the end, Wheaton College beat the fourth ranked team in the nation. It wasn't pretty, but the pictures came out great.

When I returned home, I found my phone line was dead due to the rainstorm, so I had to edit the pictures here, then drive to the public library to upload them to the college for their website.

Now I've got to get back to that basement....

Processing RAW Images

2008-09-02T15:10:00.001-07:00

Professional photographers talk about this subject a LOT, at least the ones I know.

Clients often ask why I don't just burn them a CD after a shoot and send it to them? Why do I charge extra for high resolution images? I came up with a web page that explains a little about what I do after a shoot is over. So far, the response has been good- most people didn't know there was so much extra work that goes on after a shoot. In the 'old days' of film, I'd drop off the color neg or transparency (slide) film at the lab, return in a day or two and see how they came out. If the pictures weren't quite right, there wasn't much I could do. Now with digital, we have the opportunity to tweak each image to perfection.

For the last six years, I've been using Canon's proprietary software to process my RAW images unto workable JPGs. Recently, with the encouragement of my friend Adam, who works for Adobe, I've been playing around with the new version of Adobe Lightroom a lot. I really like all the adjustments that can be made. It's powerful software and is especially good at bringing back highlight detail in a picture. it does a lot of things I like, as well as some I don't. I don't need the cataloging element, and it's taking me a long time to figure out how best to use it, but it looks like I may fully make the switch to Lightroom in the near future.

Update

2008-09-02T14:57:00.000-07:00

(The London Eye)

Wow, can't believe it's already been 2-1/2 months since my last post. Better catch up a little here. I spent ten days in June and early July out in England, shooting mainly in the south of England and London. Work slowed down a little this summer, giving me some time to catch up on stock photography projects. After a brief family vacation/ stock photo trip to northern Michigan at the beginning of August, I went all out and bought a 400/2.8 lens in anticipation of a busy sports season this Fall. I finally got to use it this weekend for four soccer games. It's a heavy lens (almost 12lbs) so it's going to take some getting used to.

There now- all caught up! I plan on starting a picture blog for the sports shots I do this year. Stay tuned for a link.

Weekend Travels Out East

2008-06-16T15:26:00.000-07:00

I drove out to Massachusetts this weekend for a friend's wedding. I left Thursday morning driving through Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York the first day. I'd never been to NY state, one of the last states for me to cross of my "list." I really enjoyed driving through the Catskill Mountains. There wasn't a lot of extra time to stop for photos, but I did shoot some on the way back Saturday and Sunday. It's always frustrating when you visit a place for the first time and the light turns nice, but you don't know where to shoot. That happened yesterday as I drove in eastern NY state on Saturday night. There had been some big storms leaving Massachusetts but as I came around a bend in the road, the sky was all lit up with rich oranges and blues.

I shot a couple frames as I drove (always have the camera ready on a drive!). Unfortunately, I couldn't just pull over and shoot. Oh well.....

Yesterday I headed off the interstate (which I do as often as I can) and drove on Route 417 in western NY. Unbeknownst to me it was Amish country. The sparsely traveled road had plenty of signs warning that I shared the road with horses and buggies. I did come across this young boy traveling ahead of me.
Wish I could've shot more, but I also don't like to intrude on people, especially if they may not like having their picture taken.

Finally, last night as I headed past Toledo Ohio, the sky was doing some interesting things. I kept my eye on it for several minutes to see if a tornado would develop- don't think one ever did, but the clouds were great.
Again, I could only do drive-by shooting as I was on a tollway with few exits.

My Oldest Piece of Equipment Retires

2008-06-16T15:15:00.000-07:00

My trusty Manfrotto tripod, bought at PJ's Camera for $129 in January 1989, was retired last week when I received my new Manfrotto 190CXPRO Carbon Fibre tripod. The original tripod had fasteners on the legs that broke regularly. It was also pretty heavy, though that never stopped me from lugging it everywhere from Maine, to England, to Tuscany over the past nineteen years! This new carbon fibre tripod is very light, though my Kaiser ball head adds a couple pounds. Not sure what I'll do with my old tripod- any offers?

DSLR Digital Quality and Medium Format Backs

2008-05-22T14:26:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity last night to attend a free seminar put on by Hasselblad. They were showing off their medium format digital cameras, backs and scanners. I went with no intention of purchasing a camera or digital back any time soon, fully aware of the astronomical prices you have to pay to own one of them.

You know they aim to impress when they put on a free seminar, feed you dinner and have an open bar for all attendees....

The main presentation was an overview of the new H3DII, as well as live model shoot showing what the camera could do. The presentation was a little lacking in finesse (the pre-show video featured a guy reading off a script he held in his hands, as if they threw it together that afternoon), but the camera seems amazing. I don't think there was anyone in the room who wasn't impressed with the sharpness of the close-ups of the model's face.

Click here to see a 100% crop of the model's face. Note all the little hairs on her face, as well as the little spots of makeup. Pretty impressive indeed. No sharpening done to the image; saved at 10 quality. This was taken by me on their 31 megapixel (MP) camera

I bought a pair of used 503CX/CW cameras 3-1/2 years ago along with four top quality Carl Zeiss lenses. I've been interested in shooting digital with it for my fine art and landscape shoots, as well as some commercial applications, but it's just been too expensive. But now I'm tempted to get the 16MP back that fits onto my 503 camera bodies. Not a lot more resolution than my 10MP Canon 1DMk3 (ok, 60% more, but a 21MP 1DsMk3 is $2000 less than the Hasselblad back), but the optics are far better than Canon's. Last night I think I was finally convinced that digital is better than film, in terms of dynamic range (how much detail can be retained in the highlights all the way down to the shadows) and sharpness. Still, a digital print will never be as fun to make as a gelatin silver print made in my darkroom!

Beautiful weather..... and stuck doing invoices

2008-05-16T16:20:00.000-07:00

It's a beautiful day here. I shot some products for Prairie Arts this morning; some prototypes of art deco pottery that they just got in. There were only five pieces, and the pictures look deceptively simple, but the setup for a studio shoot always takes at least an hour.

This afternoon, all I did was business stuff- mainly invoices. You'd think it'd be a simple thing, but it's always a real chore- going back to figure out how long I spent on a job, travel times involved, rates for certain types of work, etc. One invoice can take 15-20 minutes! Oh well, they're mostly done now.

Now I need to figure out the best time for me to travel to England this summer. I go every year and shoot stock photos, but it's always hard to be gone for any length of time when clients need you for jobs. It's looking like late June will work out best.

National Geographic Adventure Magazine

2008-05-14T15:41:00.000-07:00

It's May and that means that National Geographic Adventure magazine is using my image of Wales (taken last summer at Tintern Abbey) as a full page in their travel feature on "Wales Untamed." See page 36 if you get a copy.

Spring Weather and College Graduations

2008-05-14T15:23:00.001-07:00

I'm enjoying my first day off shooting since May 3rd. Not that I'm out enjoying the nice weather today, but catching up processing images from the last few days. Recently I shot the graduation ceremonies at Aurora University (my third year doing theirs) and Wheaton College (my longest lasting 'gig'- since 1985). The weather looked dodgy for the Wheaton graduation on Sunday but the rain held off and some good pictures were taken. After shooting graduation in all kinds of weather, I've realized that pleasant sunny days aren't always the best. Wind brings out a special energy that sunshine doesn't. Grads holding down their caps while the wind whips at their gowns usually bring excitement and smiles to their faces.

A number of the Wheaton students have appeared for the last four in my pictures through their involvement in varsity sports. Kind of sad to see some of them go. Several women's soccer players had gone to the national championships (and won) three out of their four years at Wheaton. Andy Studebaker is headed to the NFL by way of the Philadelphia Eagles, but Kent Raymond, Wheaton's greatest hope for a national championship in men's basketball, and arguably the best player Wheaton's ever had, is coming back for a fifth year. Hopefully it'll mean another trip to the national finals for me again next March!

Catching Up

2008-05-01T20:57:00.000-07:00

This week is a slower one for photos, but a busy one for catching up on invoicing, entering receipts, etc. I admit this isn't my favorite part of the job. With the warmer weather, I'd rather be out shooting. However, I found my picture in National Geographic during a trip to the bookstore last night; I'll post a picture tomorrow. Full page no less!

Had two shoots today; one at my chiropractor's office, and a fashion/ style shoot for Naperville Magazine. It can be hard to corral two four year old twins into a tight vertical shot on a golf course, but my experience as a father of four young children came in handy. Apparently they were fighting in the dressing room just before the shoot, but they were great once the camera came out.

Long Days and Full Flash Cards

2008-04-21T13:17:00.001-07:00

Last week was even busier than the week before, with four straight days shooting for the Catholic Health Association in Kankakee, Bourbonnais, Joliet and Frankfort, and three days shooting for Provena St Joseph Hospital in Elgin (new hospital tower opening events), as well as two track meets. Today I've been crunching through over 3000 pictures, editing them and processing the RAW images into JPGs.

The CHA shoots were almost all shot under existing light, something I don't normally do. It was necessary, though, to be able to squeeze in as many shots as possible for the client. All in all, we got a number of good shots. I enjoyed working with the many residents and medical staff we shot with. We must have collected over 150 model releases.

On Friday I shot a track meet for Wheaton College, shooting for seven hours. I never thought I'd fill my 12GB flash card, but it happened. I also used most of my two 2GB cards. From 1,076 pictures, I reduced that number down to 467 this morning.

Busy Week

2008-04-03T13:55:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy week photographically. On Tuesday I learned that one of my images (see below) had been licensed by McCann-Erickson (a large, worldwide advertising agency) for a national ad campaign. Today I learned that the image of a field I shot in North Yorkshire in 2006 will be used in a series of Poland Spring (bottled water) ads starting this month.

Yesterday I spent the whole day on a hospital shoot in Joliet shooting for a nursing annual report. It was a long (ten hour) day but some of the candid images, shot without supplemental lights, came out great. It's kind of funny to watch the nurses scatter when they see a guy with a camera show up. It's hard to find any that are OK with being in a picture! We did one more shoot this morning, then I processed almost three dozen high resolution images this afternoon. I think it should be a nice recruiting piece for them.

On Sunday afternoon, I cracked the LCD screen on the back of my new camera. I've got some big full day shoots lined up so I wanted to get it repaired ASAP. I overnighted it to California on Monday, and got it back today (Thursday). As a CPS (Canon Professional Services) member, they did it at no charge. Nice service, and quick. Still, for a $4500 camera, it's nice to know they will replace it for free!

First Posting

2008-03-25T15:23:00.000-07:00

Well here it is- the first posting. Please return to this site often to hear what I've been shooting, and see samples of new images. Thanks for visiting.