the extra mile

It's been another slightly productive day in the world of photography for the little magpie. I got my monetary compensation for the wedding shoot and was given the task of making all of the photos available for family and friends of the bride and groom. With a reasonable amount of free time, they could do this themselves by copying the disc I made for them or taking it to Ritz, but in my letter to the client I stressed the fact that I'd be happy to do anything else that was needed involving the photos. This means that I'd edit further, make prints, copies of the disc, even get digital frames that they could (after paying me for them) give ask thank you gifts. Whatever they want. So they want the photos to be available to everyone. So I bought a Flickr Pro account and have for the past few hours been uploading the photos to a wedding folder. It cost me thirty dollars for a year account which is pretty reasonable, considering that I can now post my entire portfolio to the web by selecting hundreds of photos from my external hard drive and dragging it into the Flickr Uploadr. I don't know why they take the last "e" out of their words.
Anyway this has altered the functions of my other websites. Now my deviantart location will be used for personal things like blogging about my everyday life and posting photos that I took for myself. My flickr site (right here) will be where I post all my photos, and I can link to them from here.
On to business. I recently had a brief portrait session with a nice lady named Lucia to shoot some reference photos for my friend Dan Vogel, co-founder of The Academy of the Southside.
It was a quick shoot because I had a modeling gig to get to. We shot in my living room with an umbrella light. Lucia was seated in an arm chair with a table beside here. Dan had a very specific vision of how he wanted her to look, as he always does when I shoot reference portraits for him. I took about fifty shots because Dan would take a look at them and tell me to shoot a few more. The problem is, they all look the same and not in a good way. She and the table look cramped into the frame and the light looks sickly. Editing was no help. So I've told Dan that I can't let him spend weeks making a giant oil painting from a sub-par photo. I'll be re-shooting that and taking the photos how I see fit. I think when two artists work together on something like this, it's important for all three people (photographer, painter, model) to give equal input. My last shoot for Dan went really well because I told him that I had a lighting style in mind, he told me that he had a pose in mind, and our model was willing to let me shine a light in his face.
What you have there is light painting, one of my favorite lighting techniques. I'm hoping to use this technique on my next band promo shoot. I think it's a fitting style for say, a metal band. More on that subject at a later date when I get a collection of light painting photos set up on flickr. Also expect a blog about the wedding soon once I get this online gallery set up for them.
That's all for now, children. Talk to yinz soon.