Fall Leaves and Lens Flare – Lake McBride, Iowa

It seems as though shots of leaves in the fall with lens flare is cliche’, well I’m now a part of that movement with the picture above. I met up with some friends at the dam at Lake McBride in Iowa to take some waterfall pictures as the water level control is an actual real waterfall and not some lame concrete spillway. It was a good time out there shooting the Bronica and some Provia 100F. I took along the D80 just fun and an easier way to meter as the prism on the Bronica makes it hard to read the shutter speed bar. I do need the waist level viewfinder for it, as I mainly used the ground glass on it’s own to compose and focus shots.

Stephen Schaub has a new camera with the help of Matt Abelson – The Cuboid. It’s a really sweet pinhole/zoneplate camera and I want one, but there are a very limited number of them and I’m sure they’re going to be quite expensive. After seeing Abelsons’ setup and the brief tour of the camera in the video posed by Stephen, I’ve decided that I could design and build my own camera, similar to the Cuboid, but won’t be exactly the same. I am an engineer, how hard could it be? I guess we’ll find out as I blog about the adventures with designing a pinhole camera in the shadows of the Cuboid and that does most of what that camera does.

Because I am sick and have stayed home all week (so far) from work, I ended up finding about a new band on MTV this morning that I actually like – Owl City. The song “Fireflies” had a Postal Service feel to it.

The Dog at 200mm

Word has definitely travelled fast and Erica and I are now shooting an informal engagement session tomorrow afternoon for some simple portraits for a newspaper (as the couple will get a full session with their wedding photographer, but want a quick, nice picture or two right now). People have been talking up our work and there are some more prospects on the horizon.

On a different note, I remember reading about Help-Portrait on Zach Arias’ blog. I found it to be a good idea but didn’t have a good idea to execute against. My buddy Ryan posted a thing on the work photography newsgroup about it and a genius idea hit me.

The idea is this: a lot of families lost pretty much everything in the flood 2 years ago and shooting family portraits for them near Christmas Time could give them something to help keep them positive that things will work out while they rebuild or move to a new house. My friends and I have the gear needed, just no location (preferably on the South side of town near the affected area to minimize travel for these families), or money to make prints for the families.

If anyone in the Cedar Rapids area want to donate a large room with a tall ceiling or money for prints, let me know. If you want to help organize and market, let me know too. This seems like a big undertaking for a few advanced amateur photographers who have very busy schedules with day jobs as engineers.

So how does word of mouth relate to my Help-Portrait idea? Myself and who ever helps organize will have to use it to promote the event (December 12 – the international date set by the campaign organizers).

I have a feeling that this would be a cool thing for the community and I hope it pans out.

A Smooth Pour – Lowe Park, Marion, Iowa

It seems as though photography jobs are “pouring” in, after taking pictures at a friends wedding (for fun), one of Erica’s friends sent her a facebook message indicating she had shown the pictures to her friend who mentioned that we should shoot her engagement photos and possibly her wedding. That’s probably a really confusing sentence -> clarification: Erica’s friends friend may want us to shoot her engagement photos and wedding. We’re already shooting my brothers’ wedding next August and that has me on the fence about a lot of things.

I can’t use my film cameras at his wedding because they’re unreliable and in the case of the Bronica, too loud. He’s said he’d buy me a camera as a Wedding/Birthday/Christmas present. Don’t know how rediculous that sounds, but he’s willing to do it. Because of this though, I’m having a mental war over film and digital; I get the feeling that I’ll give up film after getting this camera. The camera I want (Pentax K-7) is $1200 which just happens to be under half of what most wedding photographers now charge for their services, too bad I’m limited to something not that good, so I’m hoping to get a Pentax K20d with the battery grip. Of course, Eric mentioned a Nikon D1x so I’ve been thinking of that too, if I go that route, I’d have to share gear with Erica.

Erica needs better gear if we are going to start doing this more often, her kit lens isn’t great and the flash she is using has a dedicated Pentax hotshoe which doesn’t really work with the Nikon hotshoe for proper control. I found the two Tamron lenses she needs -> 17-50 f/2.8 and the 70-200 f/2.8.

Time for food, I’m hungry, I’m thinking Pancheros…