Mistakes

In my younger and dumber days, I took a greatimage from a photographer off of deviantart to use as the header of the blog. I put credit to the artist in text on the side bar and left it as that. Yesterday it all came crashing down with a comment to my last post from the photographer.

Needless to say, I’m ashamed that, since becoming a photographer, I overlooked the simple detail of the header picture of my blog. I have taken the picture down and emailed the artist an apology that he accepted, but realistically he shouldn’t have to. If I put myself in his shoes, I’d be a little annoyed that someone used my artwork without permission.

So I’ve changed the look of the blog and got a theme with no option for a header image as I think that will prevent any further issues.

Cliche’ and Cubes

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.

Word of Mouth

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.