Road Trip & Reading

As much as I hate breaking a Commandment, particularly one that involves a Holy day of rest, Bethany and I had to do a little work today. Since yesterday was booked and our client only has every other weekend available, we had to make the best of it and take some engagement photos.

Boy, were those photos worth the two and a half hour drive to Dorcas, West Virginia (which is exactly as small as it sounds). The scenery was incredible, our subjects were photogenic and willing to go out on a limb (almost literally) to post for a good photograph.

The last two weekends have been great for shooting. I believe some of my experience is finally starting to pay off. Shooting in manual has been much easier and much smoother this year, which is odd considering I haven't really touched a camera until last weekend.

Most importantly, though, I'm finally beginning to feel more comfortable with posing people and having a little better luck finding those "real" moments in between the poses. Those moments make for absolute perfect photographs if you're watching for them.

Honestly, that was a big part of my gripe with wedding photography. Yes, it's stressful and there's only one shot to get it right. But once upon a time, I was a reporter and I lived for that. No, I've realized that a big part of my gripe is how polished and fake wedding photos so often look. Couples see the "show pieces" that photographers show them and they want photos just like that, yet they don't understand the time and effort it takes to create those shots. It's easy for weddings to become too formulaic and all the same. My goal now is to ignore all that and start looking for those real moments that get looked over too often.

I'd post some photos here to show you what I'm talking about, but our clients haven't seen them yet and I'm not the kind of photographer that debuts a couple's photos by uploading them to the World Wide Web.

It will be a busy week, even though Monday is a holiday. We have to big shoots to process, one of which must be done by the end of the week. I have a ton of fresh writing to do for the new novel since I'm meeting with Heather at the end of the week to discuss illustrations.

And somehow in the midst of all this, I have to find a copy of Patrick O'Brian's The Reverse of the Medal. I finally worked my way  up to The Far Side Of The World and polished it off just a few minutes ago. That ended my initial exploration into O'Brian, since I bought that title along with Master and Commander without realizing that I was buying books one and ten of a twenty-one book series. I just wanted to read them before I watched the movie that, for some inexplicable reason, took parts of books one and ten and made one movie out of them both.

A reviewer wrote that O'Brian was "...an easy taste to acquire and a hard one to shake..." or some such. I have to agree with him. I'm already dreading reaching the final book and I have eleven left to go.

I Don't Have A Short Attention Span...Honest

I really don't get distracted easily. Unless there's something shiny around. Or interesting to look at. Or anything other than what I'm supposed to be paying attention to.

But I don't get distracted easily. Really.

I may have mentioned that this is going to be a busy weekend. We just finished the first of two shoots this weekend, a bridal shoot, and tomorrow we'll be on the road for two and a half hours to travel to a farm in northern West Virginia for an engagement shoot.

Today's bridal shoot took place in and around some nifty little gardens. Gardens, of course, have flowers. My favorite portrait lens is my macro lens, which lets me zoom way in on tiny things. Flowers are a favorite subject. So my bridal shoot had a few little side shots that really paid off for me. This is my favorite from the shoot and one I think that I'll stick in a contest.

I had a rare opportunity last weekend during the triathlon to photograph a hawk in flight, which you'll see below. This time, at least, I was waiting on the runners to return from the first leg of the race, so I wasn't really goofing off when I should've been doing something else.

Cayenne Is Hot...Who Knew?

Last night Bethany and I had a hankering for something different. So we broke into our collection of recipe books and dug up Garlic Sauce with Pasta & Shrimp. Naturally, this required a trip to Kroger.

So we jumped into the car, racing to beat the storm that was threatening to explode at any minute. We picked up the requisite shrimp and fresh parsley and cayenne pepper, which is not something we really keep in the house. Now, a little bottle of this stuff was nearly four dollars. A tremendous bottle of this stuff was $5.39. Figuring we'd need more eventually, we purchased the big bottle.

We made it home about ten minutes before the rain set in, though the thunder and lightning were putting on quite a show, and set to work whipping up dinner.

I should mention here that I've never cooked with cayenne before. I had no idea how hot this stuff is. I should also mention that, unless I'm baking, I tend to guesstimate my ingredients instead of measure. So a bit more than than the 1/8 teaspoon of cayenne (that was called for) made it in to the sauce.

Wow. That stuff is hot. The sauce had a great flavor. But wow. I think I'll measure the cayenne from now on.

Shooting The Moon

It's been quite a while since I've posted any kind of photo, so I thought I'd post one today that hearkens back to one of the reasons I took up photography.

A couple nights ago the Moon was nearly full. I walked outside to get something out of my Jeep and was moved to take a picture. Mother Nature, however, had other ideas and the Moon was buried in clouds before I could bring my camera around. 

Last night the Moon was completely full and there wasn't a cloud anywhere close to it, though over to the east there were some pretty cool clouds being lit up at intervals by lightning. Anyway, I broke out my old, manual focus and f/stop Opteka super telephoto lens, mounted that baby to the tripod and started shooting. The result is what you see above.

As I was typing this, I found my 2x extender to mount to that lens. Maybe tonight, if the storms hold off, I'll attach it and see what happens. I'm thinking that it makes it slightly harder to focus (this lens was made before the invention of auto focus) but it will give me a focal length of 2600mm, which is akin to having the camera mounted to a small telescope. I'll be interested in seeing what results I can come up with.

Of course, I'll post 'em here.