Tick Tock...

We're Lane leaders, we're the best
We're the best oh yes we're fresh......

It is funny how people meet.  Back in High School the one thing I wanted to do was become a cheerleader.  I didn't care who was going with me, or who wasn't.  That was my first independent step out of my shy shell.  My freshman year, sure enough...I tried out, and I made it.  I have since met some of the bestest friends that I still stay in contact with to this day.

Tick Tock please don't stop,
Let's show Adams how to rock....

I approached Doreen about some pictures on Facebook.  We spoke about Cheerleading and stuff.  We never really saw each other, but had many common friends.  A few months ago, Doreen approached me about shooting her daughter's Sweet 16.  I immediately said yes!  Funny how much two people who live miles apart have so much in common!  It turns out that one of her daughter's friends, is the daughter of one of my good friends growing up, and the Godmother to my daughter!  Such a small world.

I say rock, you say roll
I say Ice, you say cold
I say disco you say the beat
I say honey you say it's sweet

Speaking of sweet - Doreen's daughter Mary is the sweetest!  She looked gorgeous in her dress...and had the most fantabulous party!  Internet, I kid you not!  I had a blast shooting this party that was held at Flowerfields in St. James.  I am not done going over the pictures yet, but I wanted to share a little bit from the other night.

                       

Mary - just beautiful!

 

The dance floor for the entire night was full!

So although I never hung out with Doreen, I hope that we get to hang out and continue to share the oddities of life moving forward!  It was a pleasure to officially meet everyone, and I had a great time!  Thank you for sharing this special day with me!

Say hello to my little friend

Today is President's day.  I get to stay home today from my "day" job - without using PTO.  (A big YAY!)   I find myself taking a look at my shoot from last weekend of my little friend, Gary.  Oh how this little boy melts my heart.  He is so cute, I can eat him up!  I look back to last October when I first had a session with Gary, his mom Jackie and dad, Chris - and see how much Gary has grown.  And oh, this shoot - he was all for the smiles and the camera!  

Thank you Jackie, Chris and my little friend Gary.  You have made me realize that I really do want to do portraits.  You encouraged me to learn and push forward with this, and for that - I will be forever grateful!

It is all in the details!

I love taking pictures of parties.  No Internet - I am not joking!  LOL.  But the best part of all, is that at most parties, there are so many details.  All the little things that are put together to create the feel of the day.  When I am at a party, I absolutely love, Love, LOVE shooting the details.  Every little instance I can wrap my lens around is photographed.  But how do you take pictures of the details, and keep it interesting?  You don't want just another picture of the table, or centerpiece...  Don't be afraid to go outside the box.  Break all the rules.  Rules were meant to be broken you know!   Sure, anyone can take a picture of flowers.  But it is the how that matters in my world.  I look back at stuff I have done over the last few years...and wish I would have noticed things I have noticed over the last year back then.  Shoot wide open...to me that creates a wow factor with those little items.  I love a good bokeh!  Sure, get the necessary shots, but break the rules a bit too.  Follow the path and the story you are trying to create in your mind while shooting.  It can be anything you want it to be!

"Shoot Fabulously!"  ~J*

Exactly what is a blog supposed to bee???

I ask myself that all the time.  What should a blog be?  Should I be writing to you?  Should I be writing in 3rd person?  (Eeek, no!  Very creepy!)  I guess it is what it bee!   

I wanted to share a few pictures I have taken with one of my newest lenses.  It is the  Sigma Macro 105mm Prime f2.8 (found here: http://www.sigmaphoto.com/shop/105mm-f28-ex-dg-macro-sigma)

It can capture the little things that I love so much!  :)  I have yet to go out and really play with it. We went to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens in October to play a little, but the weather has been nasty or cold since.  I cannot wait until the spring, where I can go on a photo walk and just shoot in macro!   There apparently is a lot to learn with this lens though.  The same aperture setting on this lens, seems to not have the same effect on my other "zoom" type lenses.   I will read up on it as I get to it I guess!  One thing at a time!  

Theme Parks, Roller Coasters & Donkeys!

My first roller coaster when I was younger - NO, scratch that.  The first big roller coaster I rode when I was younger, was the Cyclone in Coney Island, NY.  This old coaster is a landmark, and still runs next to the new Luna Park today.  After I had my kids, I found a fear of roller coasters.  Why this happened, I do not know.  I loved going to theme parks though.  Odd mix for someone who was too scared to ride anything big.  I then found myself looking at all these roller coasters on a site that I found.   Theme Park Review.  I was determined to ride them...upside down, tall, whatever the coaster.  I had a plan.  My first upside down coaster would be Disney's Aerosmith's Rock n' Roller Coaster!  Never mind that it was completely in the dark - I figured - HEY, It is a Disney ride, how bad could it be!?  I made the plan, and executed it in 2005.  Since then - I have been a roller coaster junkie!  I would (and sometimes still do) you tube all the great coasters...  to see how they were visually.  I didn't like surprises.  The drops, still scared me!  My biggest accomplishment had to be Nitro at Six Flags Great Adventure.  A drop of 215' at that angle is enough to make a grown man cry!  It took me about two years of riding to finally jump on and say screw it!  Then another two years to finally just put my hands up and ignore that feeling the first drop always seemed to deliver.  I have since moved on to bigger and better.  I now have combined the love I have for photography, and the love I have for coasters, and want to produce pictures that tell a story on my next trip, even if I am the only one who understands the story.  I have failed thus far, limiting my picture taking of parks to entire scenes.  With my love for detail, and my new found knowledge of lighting and compensation - my next trip should prove more of a story than ever - I hope!  I tend to run through things too quickly.  My theme this July will be to slow down, and breathe!  :)


Nitro: Drop: 215'

Kinga Ka (back): Drop: 418' @ 90 degrees          El Toro (front): Drop: 176' @ 76 degrees

 Millenium Force, Cedar Point - Drop: 300' @ 80 degrees

 Kings Dominion - i305: Drop: 300'

On-ride photo :P

Roller Coaster Data Base: http://rcdb.com/

TPR:  http://themeparkreview.com/
A great place to talk about and view theme parks and more!
Disclosure: You must have a sense of humor to view this site!  Proper grammar is a must!

Bounce, Bounce!

Good morning Internet!

I have yet to figure out my posting schedule yet.  I want to try and be steady enough, but I don't want to bore you either with too many nonsense posts.   A happy medium I will find.  Maybe  I will have a theme to run weekly.  That may be best.   So for now, you get my thoughts on what I am learning, or maybe something that I have done in the past.

Light is everything in photography.  Without light, there is no image, and everything we do in taking a photo is ultimately about getting the right kind of light to go the right places to create the image.  Understanding how light works in photography is critical to getting good photos.
~Neil Creek in the book Photo Nuts and Bolts  (http://www.digital-photography-school.com/nuts-f)

Being that I am currently working with natural lighting scenarios, I wanted to share with you my first shoot where it truly clicked for me.  It was about 5pm, and the sun was nearly close to being gone.  We went to a dam, where the water was low, but there was some.  The dam wall provided the perfect area to bounce that wonderful light off of.  Some photographers use reflectors.   I prefer to shoot with the surrounding area to bounce the light.  Since I am a single person, I cannot shoot the picture and hold a  reflector properly.  Although I may learn how to do this in the future, I do not want to currently do this.  My goal is to learn how to get the shot I want on the fly.  

This shoot is of my best friend Maggie, and her son B.  Between the water and the wall, I was in heaven!  First we started off with the sun in her face.  You can see why this is not good.  She is squinting, and it produces harsh shadows.  What to do?

We then turned to face a wall.  The sun was setting, and we were quickly loosing light.

My ISO was only set to about 320 for these pictures.  

As you see, we were completely in the shadow, as the sun was going down.  But looking at the pictures above, you would never know it!

Not much of a post I guess....  but this is what I want to do in my photos.  Take the natural light, and use existing structures to get the most out of it, at the lowest ISO possible.  :)   Another question that I will face another day - Just how bright is too bright?


Did anyone noticed the Bon Jovi reference in the title?   I am a big Jovi fan.  Some other faves are Madonna, NKOTB, NSYNC, Justin Timberlake, Daughtry and Lady Gaga.  Proud to be a fan of them all!

I DO

Weddings.
So much goes into being a photographer that many people probably do not realize.
Being a wedding photographer is much more complicated.  
You are not only the photographer, but an assistant to the bride in a way.
You fix her hair, her dress.  Make sure things are not forgotten.
Guiding the bride and groom through their day, adhering to schedules, dealing with family members who want to take charge or change the way you do things, or who want to add their own list -  all the while...
                                                          ..........remembering to capture it all on "film".

Then there is the editing.  I won't lie - I am no master editor.  I do believe that it is not so much how you edit, but how you capture the shot to begin with.  I stress to myself that I must learn every inch of my camera, to get the best outcome possible before it goes into my computer.  I do not want to do much more than light editing when it comes to these pictures.  That would be a completely different art type.

Internet, not sure if you realize by now - I babble.  :)  A LOT!

All in all, I love weddings and would do one every week if I could!  I love all the details that are associated with them!   I have personally shot several weddings over the last two years.  For now, I will share some of my favorite shots with you.

 

 

 

 
 






And so my journey continues!

What's next?

I ask myself this all the time.
What is next?  What do I want to incorporate into my style at this point?
My philosophy on learning my camera is this -  Take it one step at a time, one day at a time.  
I love taking pictures, and think if I try to change my style too fast without taking the time to let the current item seep in, I will forget it, or not use it correctly.

I apologize, this is a lengthy post, but it all helped develop how I take pictures, and I just figured get it out of the way now. :) Let's take a step back in time for a moment.
I am 15 years old and I always had my mom's 110 film camera with me.  The camera was literally falling apart!  The quality wasn't all that great either.  But I loved it.  (Who feels like seeing some oldies here?) I would take my friends, Robin and Marie out to the park - and we would shoot!  (come on Robin, you know you want me to post some!  The one on the steps?  Purttty Please?  lol)  This continued for me with my siblings as well.  Portraits... little did I know this would help me in the future. Since then, I have been developing my style to what it is today.

circa 1992:

Fast forward approx. ten years.  I got my first SLR in 2002.  A Canon Elan 7.  I had no idea what I was truly holding.  I knew at the time that I wanted pictures that were crystal clear - all the time.  I became obsessed from that moment on.  Family, friends, parties.  Every event, everyone could count on me to be there snapping away.  

Enter the age of digital cameras.  I truly was very hesitant of it.  So much so, that in 2005 on my family vacation, I doubled almost all my shots.  What ever I took with my Elan 7, I also took with my Kodak Easyshare dx7630.  At that point, I needed an upgrade to my digital camera.  I took it slow, upgrading to the Kodak Z612.  This camera was amazing!  I regrettably did not know what I was in possession of until my trip to Florida in 2008.  Just about a year prior, I found myself looking (finally) into a DSLR.  After reading up about both Canon and Nikon models at that point in time, I came to the conclusion that the Nikon D40X would be the model I got.  http://www.amazon.com/Nikon-10-2MP-Digital-18-55mm-3-5-5-6G/dp/B0012OGF6Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296935551&sr=8-1  

Downgrading the Z612 http://www.amazon.com/Kodak-EasyShare-Z612-Digital-Optical/dp/B000DZHA6O/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1296935674&sr=1-1 to just a P&S that I took when it wasn't possible to take the D40X.  I barely picked it up.  I regret not using it more.   It met an untimely death when my cat spilled liquid all over it.  :(   So back to my trip in 2008.   We arrived at MCO late due to storms, and got to the hotel at 2am.  I woke up super early and decided to try to take no flash pictures of the hotel room.  I lay the camera down on the toilet seat cover, not realizing the disaster that lay ahead.   SMASH!  It fell off and hit the hard tile floor!   I was so upset, and had no choice now to use my P&S Z612.  Thinking my pictures were going to suck in every way possible.  I decided to continue with the no flash photography though through the trip.  I got home, and my photos were really good!  OK, now when I say good, I mean that they were sharp.  The colors were great!  The subjects were what I viewed at the time to be what I wanted to capture.  From that point on, I decided to not count the little P&Ss out! 

                                                                                     

Once fixed - I continued to shoot with my D40x, but felt annoyed every time I tried to work with the manual features.  Frustrated, I just figured I needed something better because I was not getting what I wanted out of it.  How very close minded of me!  But no one was there to show me, so I went and purchased my current camera - the Nikon D90.  In all honesty, the upgrade was necessary for variable reasons, beyond my situation with the settings.  I shot with Auto for about six months, and then started to mess with manual features.  I felt the need to control things a little better.  I finally understood the why.  One by one, I have opened the door to natural light photography, and I will never close it again!  The D90 shoots amazingly on auto, but I have found that I love shooting wide open.  I love the details.  Shallow depth of field (DOF) is amazing.  The bokeh!  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh)  I have also since picked up the D40x again, and now understand it better too!  It is a great camera and I am glad I fought the urge to sell it once obtaining the bigger camera!  The thing with it was, that all the options have to be changed in the menu, where the D90 has designated buttons for the settings.  I was just too frustrated at the time to figure it out. 

So now, what is next for me?  Building my brand and learning everything there is to make each shoot a better one.   Lighting is a huge challenge, but I am working on being a natural light photographer.   I have recently started to do shoots "professionally".  Everyone had been on me for years about it.  I finally gave in and am giving it a go!  It is a slow beginning, but I want to make sure I am headed in the right direction.  I want to be able to provide my clients with a product that they will treasure forever without jacking the prices up so high that it just becomes unreasonable.  I have already worked with some amazing people, and have made some great friends along the way as a result.  

Thank you to DPS, and the D90 Companion for helping me understand!

DPS: http://www.digital-photography-school.com/tips

The D90 Companion:

http://www.amazon.com/Nikon-D90-Companion-Ben-Long/dp/0596159870/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296937402&sr=8-1

Is this thing on?

Hey Internet!  First post here. :)  Please, do bear with me as I work out the tweaks of my writing style.  I normally write one on one.  This whole blog thing is lost on me.  I have been meaning to do it for some time now, but today seems to finally be the day!  Exclamation points.  I do that a lot.  

This blog will be about my journey.  

My journey of becoming a photographer.  

Yes, I take pictures. 

Does that already make me a photographer?

Everyone asks me the question - Are you a professional? - since I have a big camera and always have it.

I am not sure how to answer that yet.  Still.  I would like to say yes - and some of you may agree to that.  

For me, the answer is much deeper than just being able to take a nice photo.  I have been bashed by a few because I have been proud of my work.  No negativity here though people!  I am still learning, and will always be learning my art.  Some will like it, some will love it.  And some may hate it.  My style is however - my style.  I try to be versatile, and that is part of what I have been learning.   To take that versatility and use it..quickly.   I am comfortable with saying that people like me based on my style, and I do not want to change that to conform with what people think it should be.  

I do want to know though - What do you think it takes to be a professional photographer?  

Do you need to have an expensive camera?  No. 

Lots of people do think that it is as easy as that.  It most certainly is not.  

My journey will hopefully help someone who is looking for guidance.  Until I found Jasmine Star, I had no want for the manual features of my camera.  Since then (July 2010),  it has been a quick paced learning scenario for me. 

ISO.  Aperture.  Shutter Speed.  White Balance.  Compensation.  Exposure.  Lighting.  

Do you know what it all means?  How it all works together?

I can proudly say as of today, I do!  

There is a long road ahead of me, but I hope that you will be here for my journey.  To share the ups and downs as I learn to do the thing that I love!

Jasmine, if you are out there reading this - thank you for making me see the light! :)

Check out the most awesome International Wedding Photographer here!

Santa, posing in the light:

Salem, my younger cat, trying to steal the show!