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Images for a Cure: 11 October 2009

30 September 2009

This 11 October 2009 is the Images for a Cure national fundraiser for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. You can participate, by contacting me or other photographers found on the Images for a Cure site and scheduling a portrait session.

For a $40 donation, I'll be offering outdoor portraits of individuals, and for $60, I'll make portraits of small groups. Donations are made online directly to the organization. A session will take 30-60 minutes and for the donated session fee, I'll provide free 4x6 printed proofs or a single free 8x10 print from the session. More options will be available at an additional price.

All the sessions will be scheduled on Sunday, 11 October, and there are only a limited number of slots available, so drop me an email at john@hjsoft.com or call me at 717-871-0871 for details. Thank you, and I hope to see you for the event.

For fellow photographers in the area, I'm looking to recruit an assistant or 2 and another photographer or 2 to share locations. Let me know if you might be interested in signing up. I can also offer a fallback indoor space in case of bad weather.

2008 in Photography

31 December 2008

2008 has been an exciting year in photography for me. I started with a Strobist Meetup in February, and upgrading to a D40 in March, and it's taken over 12000 exposures for me already. The D40 opened the door for lots of new lighting, lenses, and other gear.

I've also gotten all social joining the No Fear Photography group, and photo walking with the Lancaster Photographers group.

While I'm sure I delete more images these days, I've still identified more images this year to be my favorites. Claire even picked a few of these to print huge to give me for Christmas.

My kit has evolved quite a bit. My main lenses are 2 or 3 primes -- a 28, 50, and a borrowed 16, plus a very cheap Sigma 70-300. None of these lenses focus, and only the Sigma meters. I was finding the kit 18-55 lens a bit slow, and my original 55-200VR was too short.

For lighting, I've picked up a couple Sunpak 422D's, a couple convertible umbrellas, and a light stand. These are getting to be so convenient, and I really feel I really have some control of my lights. I've also started using the PVC to hold up my DIY tie-dyed background. I have lots more projects for the 2009.

I've dragged quite a few people into photography, too.

Here are my favorites:

Going back through the images, picking them, and posting them is great fun. I recommend everyone take a moment and do this.

Year in Photos: 2007

02 January 2008

I've had my camera (and sometimes, my mobile) in hand for much of 2007. In that time, the kids and our travels have been my main subjects.

In April or so, the lights got brighter, as I started experimenting with strobes, and over the summer I started stuffing a larger camera bag with some lens adapters, filters, and more strobes around my modest little Canon PowerShot S2.

Even more recently, I've started building light modifiers and trying to get to the next step in lighting. I hope in the coming year to step back and work a bit to develop some style beyond the technical aspects. So I'll see you all out on photo walks, workshops, meetups, and maybe a class or two.

Experiences with the Canon Powershot S2

05 October 2006

I've had the S2 for about a month now, and I must say I'm very happy with it.

The latest gPhoto libraries from Debian's unstable release work wonderfully to pull images from the camera. I had to add myself to the camera group to give my user account access to download the pictures. As soon as I plug the camera in, gThumb pops up and shows me the thumbnails and gives me the option to import the photos. It's very fast about it too, since it's USB 2.0. I'm pleased that I won't need to buy a card reader.

I got about a day of use from my 4-year-old set of 1600mAh batteries. Using the flash destroys those batteries pretty quickly. I've been using a new set of 2500mAh batteries for a couple days at a time, having taken at least 250 pictures on a charge. The charging of the flash seems to slow after a bit of use, but it's still usable.

I read the manual in a couple days and figured out how to use almost all the features. I didn't bother with the odd color swap options, etc. I shoot mostly in aperture-priority mode, but I have played a bit with long exposures too. The camera doesn't do RAW, but I set the image quality to Large-Superfine, so it doesn't compress out any of the detail. Each image is around 2-3MB on the card. I prefer to capture them huge like that and let Gimp save it smaller (200-300kB) after I've finished processing it.

My first large stash of examples are from Ocean City, MD. (The first 10 or so images are camera phone pictures, so ignore those.)

Claire's been doing well with the camera as well. She can just flip it to Auto, and it undoes most of the weird options I've set.

This camera can take lens adapters, so I thought I'd be hitting eBay in pretty short order to buy a 1.5x or 3.0x telephoto adapter lens or maybe a wide-angle. After using its existing 12x zoom, I'm not really feeling a need for the extra tele. 12x is usually plenty for my purposes, and when it's not, the resolution is high enough that I can tightly recrop and still keep lots of detail.

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