First Commercial Shoot

Well it has been a while since the last time i posted an actual story of any sorts. And the last week has proven to have several items on the list that were quite interesting and fun at the same time.

Tuesday of last week I had a friend from college contact me saying that he was in sort of a time crunch and needed a photographer for his CD cover that he wanted to get out by the 1st of February. Well we decided on the shoot for the next day and he had a location for the shoot. Now I am not one that likes to go into a shoot without having at least scouted the location and gotten some ideas. Well having to go in cold to this shoot was something that was looking like it was going to have to happen no matter what. Well since I have a pretty decently full mobile studio I packed that all up into my car for the event. This includes all but 2 of my lenses and only my digital cameras. 

Once I got to the location, (hooray for GPS) I started unloading the car and looking at possible ideas. The space w

as far from ideal for doing this photo shoot. The grand piano was in a fairly small room which was not going to allow for very distant shots at any angle. 

While Eric got changed into his first outfit for the shoot I was testing out flash angles and getting a few shots that would be good for other parts of the CD cover. We started out with some basic and standard shots standing next to the piano and playing the piano. Along with a few solo shots. Its after all that we started to get creative. 

We went into the basement in the location and got a few shots of him writing at a desk on a sheet of music in a sort of rustic feeling. 

So on Friday we got together after getting a few shots edited and a few ideas down on paper. We worked out the way that each page was going to come out and look in the end. Along with making sure that I had all the information needed for tracks and special thanks and everything else he wanted on the CD that wasn't in the photos. 

Sunday I finalized the designs and took care of uploading the final images to the web for the company to download for printing. 

My D300 stood the test of this shoot with flying colors and provided me with flexibility of getting the lower light and the flash setting correct and the shooting speed for capturing the image that was selected for the tray under the CD. 

Cold weather and slow times

So right now here in chicagoland it has been a week of cold weather and very unfavorable conditions to go out and do anything... Staying in the apartment and staying warm... sometimes an issue with the whole heater not keeping up with how much heat we have been losing through windows and other areas of the apartment... 

So the past week has been pretty much slow and contained to any way of staying warm.

First run with the Nikon D300

Well this past friday I was fortunate enough to be able to take my new Nikon D300 out for its first real event shoot. And as soon as I took the first photo I knew it was going to be a great camera for events. 

The event I was at was a coffee house fundraiser set up by the Drama Club at Oswego High School and completely designed and run by students in the Drama Club. I was there to make sure nothing went horribly wrong as my day job and was also doing my side work of photographer. So in between taking care of activities that were requested of me I was able to take a few photos of the event itself. Now the event being a stage event and not having really super bright light everywhere I knew that this could pose an interesting problem for the camera metering system.

So now I'm sure you are wondering how the camera worked out. My verdict on the camera? Most Excellent in all aspects. 

The first thing I did in preparing to work in the low light environment was to set the ISO down a little bit. Now with my D70s any movement from ISO200 proved to get quite grainy and was used only when really necessary. So I was interested to see if the higher ISO's on the D300 would prove to be better. I am happy to say that they didn't only prove to be better, but they well exceeded my expectations. I shot the event at ISO1600 (I wouldn't even dare shoot an event that could possibly be going to print at that on my D70s) and on the D300 the amount of grain I was getting was equivalent to the amount of grain I would get from ISO400 on the D70s. Not bad at all! This allowed me for faster shooting speeds to capture any fast events and even capture the musicians movements without any blur. 

So now actually shooting the event... How to get around 70-80 people seated in many chairs around tables and get into interesting locations for angles of the shots? Well... it wasn't easy... and it pretty much just entailed hoping that something would still be there when I managed to get to the location that would work great. 

Now... Shooting in low light situations can be tricky... The meter in your camera always goes for the even grey card equivalent across the whole screen. When shooting in low light situations this can cause for some areas to be blown out while other areas are still dark. This is what I wanted to avoid at all costs. I wanted to convey the dim light setting while still preserving the qualities of the low light and the bright light. Again, the camera did help quite a bit on this. To start out I usually pick a spot where I get both the bright light and the dim light in one shot and take several test shots to get an idea of what speed I will be shooting at. The usual meter reading is between 1 and 2 full stops underexposed. This setting has always worked well for me in theatre and dance settings for events that I have done. And shooting in RAW mode does help quite a bit in allowing for easy touch ups later. 

Well thats all the time I have for this post. Check back later for more or visit my website at www.wussowphoto.com for more.

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog, going to give this whole blogging thing a try.

What you will find on this blog will be a lot of about things I learn and places to see with photography. When I figure out new tricks or a new way of doing something you will most likely hear about it here. 

Subjects that you will read about might include but are not limited to:

-Cameras (I shoot Nikon DSLR and Nikon 35mm film, but from time to time might include Canon)

-Techniques for shooting

-Problems I have encountered and how I solved them

-Lightroom

-Photoshop

-HDR (photomatix pro)

-Landscape

-Portrait

-Theatrical/Dance

-Panoramic photos (Photoshop stitching)

-Macro Photography

I hope everyone enjoys this blog, I will try to keep it updated as often as possible.