Photography

I hate when I get behind in my blogging. I always feel I have to do a 'what's been up with me?' entry before I can do any 'real' entries. So, here's that entry...

• My 'new' bike (the rusty, old one I recently bought for $2) was stolen. Grrr. I'm going to call Metro and see if they have any bike lockers available before I get another bike.
  
• Gary and I shot a wedding last Saturday. Gary had been the second shooter on a wedding a couple weeks ago, but this was my first. With 30 people in the wedding party, 200 guests, the bride being 90 minutes late, the wedding coordinator walking out 30 minutes into the reception and no organization whatsoever (not to mention me using some new equipment that crapped out halfway through the ceremony), it was truly a trial by fire. Definitely a learning experience. I haven't had a chance to go through the photos (mainly due to the fourth item in this list), but I'm hopeful that some of them will be good. Gary's got a few of his up here.
  
• Shooting a wedding really made me aware of the limits of my current equipment. So, I'm investing in a new camera (a Nikon D200) and some other gear. I'll use the new one as my main camera and the D70 (my current camera) as the second/backup camera.
  
• I've been agonizing over my photo business's website for a couple weeks now. At one point, I was happy with the design, but then I grew bored with it. I wanted something that was visually appealing, but still simple and somewhat minimalist. I've been through two or three variations on the design just in the past week, but none of them really struck me. They all seemed too simple and, well, blah. Tonight, I gave up on tweaking what I had, threw it out and went a different direction. I'm finally (and really) happy with it. Check it out. In related news, I'll probably be adding a blog to it in the next few days.

Yikes, it's been over a month since my last entry. It's been a crazy month with a million things happening. One of those happenings was a family reunion for Cyndi's side of the family. It was held at her aunt's house which is located on a river.

I spent a little while on the second day and took some photos. Here are three that I think turned out alright.

Gary shoots a lot of mountain bike races, and let me tag along to one on Wednesday. It was really hard and a lot of fun and we both ended up with some pretty good shots. I was using some off-camera flash while he was doing some cool panning stuff to make the background blur while keeping the rider in focus. My favorite shot of the night is to the right. It's got a little blurry when resizing. You can see the rest of my shots here and Gary's here.

Cyndi's sister Nicole and her family visited over Memorial Day weekend. One day, I took individual and family portraits of them. With four kids that would all rather be outside in the kiddie pool, it was tough. But, we ended up getting some pretty good shots. I also took some shots of some of the kids on the swing. You can check both out on my family photos site, if you'd like.

Also, on a boring organizational note: Gary and I are killing off 18percent. We both just have too many places that we post our stuff and wanted to consolidate somewhat. So, I'll be posting the good stuff on my flickr stream and I'll continue to post stuff that I find interesting but not necessarily 'good' here on the blog. Of course, family stuff will still go the family photos site.

I'm officially a pro photographer. I had a photoshoot with a high-school senior a week or so ago. It went pretty well and I dropped off a CD yesterday. The family is in my church and I had said that I would shoot him for free since I'm trying to build up my portfolio, but the mom insisted on paying me. So, I'm a pro.