John Flinchbaugh's Weblog

Events for the Photo Site

john — 2010-02-26T06:04:54Z

Way back in the day, when I used to shoot at clubs and raves, I'd always want a way to share the images with the people I'd meet, but exchanging email could be a bit cumbersome or just be a deterrent.

While I'm not out clubbing these days, I'm still often out at various events, so I still need a quick and easy way to point people to the images, so I just added the Event Code box to the photo site.

While I'm out shooting, I can create an event code (from imagination or using my phone), and then write that short code on my business card to hand out. Then it's really easy for someone to hit my site, punch in the code, and get right to the photos on Flickr or in the Gallery.

It's just one of those little things I've wanted for a while, and now I've finally added it.

2009: Photos For Others, Photos For Me

john — 2010-02-18T10:48:25Z

2009 was the year people started paying me for photography, but more importantly, each job was a new experience for me.

I started out a nervous wreck with a good game face to do senior portraits with Bridget in Spring, and then a first-year portrait with a friend's son. Both went fabulously, and I learned that I *really* like doing portraits, and this gave me confidence to pursue my personal portrait project later that year.

My Mom and I approached my grandparents about shooting some environmental portraits, and they readily agreed. Taking an afternoon to talk with my grandparents and get my grandfather to dig out all his shop toys he's collected over the years yielded some of my most valuable experiences of the year and images for a long time to come.

Over the summer, I decorated K-Prep Learning Center when they expanded with images from my Toy Project. Some of those images were made on-site or specifically for display in the classrooms. I still very actively contribute images to the toy project.

I also had a couple people approach me about decorating their homes with some of my previously made work, so I ended up taking some time to identify and think about Fine Art photos. By this time, I started to get the hang of framing and presenting images. It's interesting to have someone acknowledge my images of pretty things -- landscapes and macros.

By Fall, I could try anything, so I signed up to be a photographer for Images for a Cure after hearing about it from a podcast interview. I figured out some session fees (which were donated), booked 2 family sessions, and made some prints -- they trusted me, I got to make some more portraits of which I'm really proud, and the families liked my work enough to buy a good number of prints. Most importantly, I got to practice my craft in a way I would not usually had I not been pursuing it somewhat professionally. I love working with people and making portraits.

The final bit of craziness for the year came when I got to second shoot at a wedding for Steve and Sharon! I got to work on more portraiture and event coverage with a more seasoned wedding photographer in a setting I don't get to shoot every day. The whole event was one challenge after another, but we just ran with it, and had fun. I could not have asked for a better introduction to wedding photography.

I'm not sure what 2010 will mean. It'll be hard to match the pace of last year, and I'm not sure it would be the plan. I'll try to make it more of the same -- portraits, a wedding or two for family and friends, and I'll likely be presenting more work to be sold as fine art. I anticipate learning a bit more about design that happens around my photography -- I have much to learn there.

Why Pursue Photography?

john — 2010-02-09T01:47:18Z

I recently started wondering, "Why am I working my way closer and closer to professional photography?" I love my day job, and I don't need or want 2 jobs, so why am I so driven to pursue this?

The Craft

Practicing and mastering a skill is greatly rewarding, but I can do that without getting paid, so why do I feel like I need to turn photography into a legitimate job? Some of these jobs are really hard work!

Access

It's nice to have the hobby pay for itself (at least a little), but I realize that access has become most important to me. I get access to people and places -- when people see me as a photographer, I'm invited to make portraits or to capture events. I get to decorate people's homes or contribute to a larger project with my images. I get to practice my craft without having to recruit participants, and when I do recruit, maybe people are quicker to say "yes" having seen some previous work. People give me their time and expect good things.

I love the story of the guy who gets into the concert by offering images to the band in trade. He got in, and he got to shoot! (I hate that I can never get a camera into a show.) David Hobby even got into CERN. Sometimes, I just want the chance to shoot a friend or a stranger -- as long as it matters to someone, even if it's just me.

So, here I am, working to promote and price and show my work in any way that makes sense just to ensure that I'll be able to make some more interesting images tomorrow, and to hope they're worth something to someone.

Unloading Some Old Film Gear, Etc.

john — 2010-01-27T05:38:40Z

I've started posting this list around, so I may as well put it here too. I'm looking to sell a few things I'm not using. Offers and trades are welcome.

Nikon EM body ($35)

includes battery, meter works, auto, M90, and bulb mode, tested working.

Nikon FE body ($75)

includes battery, meter works, auto and manual exposure, tested working, very clean.

Nikon MD-12 winder ($45)

will test soon, fits FE and others (not EM)

Spiratone Pluracoat 35-105mm zoom f/3.8 with 1:3 macro, AI lens for Nikon mount. ($40)

Tested on Nikon D90 and D40 for manual focus and manual exposure, clean.

Soligor 135mm f/2.5 AI lens for Nikon mount. ($20)

a fixer-upper. Focuses noticeably short of infinity (to about 30m). I don't care enough to take it apart yet. Very clean and reasonably sharp at f4 in distances it can focus.

Promaster Spectrum 7 28mm f/2.8 wide angle lens for Nikon mount. ($15)

works fine, but front thread is dented, so no filters will mount.

Sigma 70-300mm DG f/4-5.6 with 1:2 macro for Nikon mount. ($80)

AF/AE on Nikon with AF motor in body. Clean, hood, box. I always used it at 300mm, so I replaced this with a 300mm prime.

Nikkor 50mm f/2 AI MF lens. ($60)

MF and ME on my D90. Very clean and smooth. I almost want to keep it, but I already have a couple 50 f/1.8 lenses laying around.

Birthday Party Portraits

john — 2010-01-12T04:05:37Z

A couple weekends ago, I setup a sort of photo booth for a kid's birthday party a couple weekends ago. With Claire's help, I shot nearly 30 quick portraits, processed them, and printed the 4x6 copies on-site to be used in a crafty framing activity.

To make the project work, I recruited Claire to give me a hand talking to people and printing, and I picked up the cool little Selphy CP770 printer. We setup a backdrop and a few strobes to give me some options while shooting, but I shot most of the portraits with fun angles requiring the kids to sit or for me to stand on the chair. I also mixed it up a bit with some more normal portraits.

Some people seemed convinced that I could have used a second printer, but that's just because the printer was the boring part to watch. The real bottleneck was my trying to switch between shooting and processing, since I was the only one who could do it. Next time around, a second photographer would make it easier -- I'm too much of a control freak to let suggest that I should shoot and let someone else process, though it's a really the most efficient way to split the work.

The whole thing was a great challenge, especially in managing time, but I love how it came together in just 3 hours. I also shot a few group shots, but those didn't need to be delivered right away.

Canon Selphy CP770

john — 2010-01-08T19:19:27Z

A paying job is always a good time to shop for new gear, right, so I picked up a Canon Selphy CP770 dye sub photo printer for a birthday party photo booth project.

Amazon/Adorama had the best price by far, plus it's a generation or two old, so I ordered one weeks before the job. It arrived quickly, but I couldn't get the screen to light at all. After some slow communication with Adorama (holiday rush, I guess), I made arrangements to return the first one and ordered a replacement printer right away.

This one worked wonderfully on its most basic settings. The option to "Show Info" with the photos caused the printer screen to show a question mark instead of the image, so I disabled that. The "Image Optimization" option also did a surprisingly good job of normalizing my images, which is good for general use. In the end, though, it removed the moody shadows and contrasts that I intentionally included in my test shots, so I disabled pretty much every option and ran it in its most basic mode. I like control.

The dye sub cartridges and photo paper packages are pretty convenient, and the color reproduction came out as I expected. New supply packs include 4x6 photo paper and dye sub cartridges. A pack for 108 prints seems to be about $30.

I'm expecting that these dye sub packs don't "dry out" or anything like that, so I'm hoping this printer will be worth having, unlike any inkjet printer I've had in the past.

Once it's all assembled and powered on, I just copy the processed photos from the computer onto an SD card, pop it into the printer's built-in card reader, and tell it to "Print All Images", or pick them individually.

Claire finds it easy to use, and Paige already has her eye on this thing. I'm sure she'll be using it soon.

A Week with the Nikon D90

john — 2009-12-02T12:41:11Z

Someone on the non-metering lens Flickr group asked for notes on switching from a D40 to a D90, and given the non-metering context, I felt particularly qualified to answer. Here's a copy of my response:

I switched to the D90 a week ago after my beloved D40 went into a creek. I've found with all my ME/MF experience of my old prime lenses, I could pick up the new body pretty quickly. The extra buttons are nice to have, but many of those added buttons are useless too -- metering modes, focus modes, etc.

I chose the D90 over the D5000 for the better viewfinder, though it still only has the green focusing dot , upon which I continue to rely. The D90 viewfinder *is* pretty big and bright, so I expect it *is* helping me focus a bit. I did see some missed focus that surprised me in my first day out with the camera, but I seem to have adjusted by now -- I'm not sure what was going on there. It may have been the switch to my backup 50mm Series E which caused it -- my first one went in the creek the previous week.

Chimping on the new LCD led me to under-expose my photos quite a bit initially, because the display was so bright. Once I backed down the display brightness, and started to use the nicer histogram displays on the big D90 screen, I was exposing well again.

I did stumble upon one non-AI Nikon lens that I have laying around which I can't mount -- a 55mm micro. I had never really used it with my D40 either.

I ended up using the same raw processing software (rawstudio on Linux) and even the same camera profile I used with my D40, and the look of my photos is the same as with the D40.

Photo processing is a bit slower having to work with twice as many pixels, but the good news is that I'm finding I have to run noise reduction much less frequently! ISO 800 is looking quite nice.

Check my photostream, and you may not be able to quickly notice the switch to the D90.

My only reservation has been giving up the D40's faster flash sync at 1/500 sec. The D90 only does 1/200 sec, so I anticipate having to pump up my strobes a bit next time I shoot with them outdoors.

Emergency Camera Upgrade

john — 2009-11-24T21:08:03Z

An emergency upgrade is still an upgrade, and that'll be a Nikon D90 for me.

We went hiking on Saturday at Tucquan Glen, and I started out the trip with a photo of some interesting fungus, then dropping my D40 (and a 50mm f/1.8) into the creek as I tried to cross on a log with the kids.

I bent over to reach something, and the camera strap slid off my left shoulder. Claire and I both watched this happen in slow motion, but often the camera strap is clipped in a carabiner on my bag. We watched in slow motion as the camera slid and kept going -- either of us could have grabbed it, but didn't -- and it plopped right into the creek and rolled once in the current.

Claire stepped in real quick and grabbed the camera, but it was soaked through.

It's been drying for a couple days, but it still just beeps and freaks out when I try to turn it on, so I don't expect much from it.

After having borrowed Stacey's D90 for an evening, I've ordered a D90 to replace my D40. It should be a very nice upgrade, but I really wish I didn't need it. I'm going to miss the quiet, little D40 with its fast flash sync speed, but somehow, I think I'll be fine.

Images for a Cure Shoot #1: The Warner Family

john — 2009-10-29T00:03:24Z

In support of Images for a Cure this year, I scheduled 2 family portrait sessions. I'm a very enthusiastic amateur photographer, so I've not done many portrait sessions previously. So as not to scare people away, I sold my sessions as 30-60 minutes, but with equally enthusiastic clients, we found we could shoot much longer!

Sunrise with the Warner Family

Beth works in my office, and she's a breast cancer survivor...well, surviving -- our photo shoot was 6 days after her surgery! She's ready for a bit of radiation next. When I first emailed around the office about Images for a Cure, she contacted me right away about doing the shoot -- I had intended to ask her to do a shoot if she hadn't beaten me to it.

Beth came to the project with all sorts of ideas of dressing her family up in all pink and all that, so I also ran out and picked up the lightest, pinkest cloth I could find to let flow through the photos as well.

When the morning of the shoot came, we all met in at the John Wright Store in Wrightsville and headed over to the south side of the Veterans' Memorial Bridge to start out. Being on the south side of the bridge let the gorgeous morning sun light the bridge, water, and sky for our background.

There was a wooded trail nearby, and the sunlight dappling through the trees seemed like a good idea to me, but it offered some challenges, so we didn't stay there long. We got a few good shots there.

In just that first spot, we pretty much used our hour allotted to the session, but everyone was getting comfortable and wanted to see the other locations, so we didn't even think about stopping. The more "urban" setting up the street nearer the Donsco buildings was the next location on my list. Ben was really interested in having everyone hold him in a photograph, so I decided we could make that happen pretty easily in this setup. He looks quite pleased with himself.

To end hour two of our shoot, we hit our third location at the little gardens near the John Wright Store. The sun was getting pretty high and bright by this time, so my first shots taken on the sunny side of the garden didn't come out well -- everyone was squinting into the sun, so we turned it around 180 degrees and shot with the sun and gardens behind the family. This is where we took the opportunity to theme up the shoot: everyone got into their pink t-shirts, and I got out the flowing pink cloth to float in the wind. In reality, the wind was too still to blow the cloth around as I had envisioned, but we managed a few tricks.

Our very last location was across the street near the old kilns. Here we kept the pink theme and lined the men up behind Beth.

After 3 hours, Rich was still coming up with ideas for images, but it was time to pack it up. Everyone had had a good time, but breakfast was long overdue, especially for the boys.

PhotoPlus Expo 2009

john — 2009-10-26T18:26:20Z

Claire and I checked out the PhotoPlus Expo in New York City on Friday.

The bus packed full of the area's photographers left Lancaster at 6:30am, and we got into New York at about 9:30am. The expo floor didn't open to us until 10am, so we made the short walk to kill some time B&H Photo.

B&H

I don't really have a current shopping list, so I wasn't going to bother going to B&H on this trip, but it served to kill some time. I glanced around their lighting gear and gadgets and then wandered upstairs to the regular camera gear. I could have maybe thought about a tripod, but they're just more expensive in general than I care to spend at this point.

We returned to the conference by 10:30am, but my general disinterest in new gear continued.

Nikon

Nikon had a line up of D3 bodies and long lenses right inside the doors, so I played with one of those for a moment. I think they were the 200-400mm f/4 lenses. There was surprisingly little difference between 200 and 400.

Nikon also had a huge line-up of attendees waiting to register for some give-aways and to get a little Nikon lanyard. I didn't bother with that.

LensBabies

I found the LensBabies stand, and played with those for a few moments. The Composer, with its focus ring, is really easy to use, and I found the old Muse would be sort of tiring to use -- I really needed to the spring-loaded lens element pretty hard to focus. If I were interested in that look, I'm pretty sure I'd pay the extra for the composer. In general, though, I don't really appreciate the LensBabies effect.

Sigma

Sigma had a huge display with lots of stellar examples of photos shot with their lenses. It was cool to see the crazy-huge, bazooka 200-500(f/2.8)/400-1000(f/5.6) lens, but it wasn't mounted to play. The 300-800mm f/5.6 was mounted, though, so I played with that a moment. It seemed quite sharp, and I guess the camera was running at a pretty-high ISO, because it was performing nicely as I shot across the expo hall.

If I buy any more lenses, I should probably have a look at some of their APO glass. My really cheap 70-300 isn't great, but it's been useful, and sold me on the 300mm focal length. I'm not sure why, but I've always liked Sigma for some reason -- I guess it's the hope of actually being able to afford lenses with high-end specs, even though I've not yet bought any of those really high-end Sigma lenses, yet.

California Sun Bounce

I snagged a Strobist OCF magnet at California Sun Bounce -- the first person I asked didn't know about the magnets, but one person did, and he grinned a little as he dug one out of an unmarked envelope for me. In retrospect, I should have tried to handle their gear a little bit -- I've always seen those demos and ads with photographers holding these huge reflectors one-handed over their heads while shooting with the other.

Wedding Albums

After about the 3rd album-maker booth, I started paying more attention and gathering materials -- the albums available now are *really* nice with cool papers and layouts. Claire convinced me that some of these services could be useful (since I can't design my way out of an ugly paper bag).

MPEX

MPEX had lots of Strobist gadgetry for sale, so I contemplated a bunch of stuff, but in the end, I only purchased the little Rosco Strobist kit of correction gels -- my current batch of CTO gels are getting a bit worn, and these were in convenient little case. The slick Honl grid spots and gel mounts are still too pricey for me, so I passed them up.

Software and Books

There were lots and lots of software vendors and book publishers. I tried to glance at the books, but nothing caught my eye. The prevalence of software was *especially* disappointing, because, obviously, I'm immune to any attempts to sell me software in my full Linux workflow. No crazy filter or effect pack is going to be of any use to me, and I can only spend so much time reading about Adobe products and mentally converting the instructions to Rawstudio and Gimp.

I do sort of like magazines, but the stand that looked like it was giving away copies of Popular Photography were only giving them to people who signed up for a subscription right there. I would have preferred to check it out at my leisure, so I just put it down and walked by.

2 Hours Later...

After 2 hours on the floor, Claire and I grabbed a cab, headed for lunch (at Mercury Bar), and checked out more of the city.

We searched out the NY Public Library, and we just sat around there for a bit. I mounted up my 300mm lens and shot people for a bit, especially other people with cameras, and Claire read a bit. (On the expo floor, every time I'd stop to look at something, Claire would step back and start reading her book. She was very patient.)

Claire had said, "It would be cool to go ice skating", but we figured it was too early in the season. When we stumbled upon Rockefeller Center, we indeed found ice, so we set out skating for about an hour -- Claire was very happy, and I took many breaks to take some photos (to prove that we were there, and that's what I do) and to uncramp my feet.

At about 4pm, we found it really hard to get a cab, so we ended up briskly walking the 2 miles back to the conference, grabbing a drink, and hopping back on the bus.

As I had been assuring Claire it would be, it was a great day with or without the expo.

Photos are in the gallery.