Amanda & Joe [Engagement]

Blue skies, white fluffy clouds, and Tempe Town Lake. Beauteous. We’re tentatively labeling this set as “to be continued” since we were cut short due to out of control wind. Oy. Anyways, enjoy the lovies:

Rollout.

Here

I wish I had something else besides boredom to blame this on, but I’m afraid that’s all there is to it.

Peace.

ReBlog/Reesers [Family Shoot]

Welcome back folks. It’s been awhile, but I’m finally up and rolling again. Thanks to the lovelies over at State Farm, this Mikerophonity is coming to you straight from my shiny new MacBook Pro’s keyboard. Insurance is by far the best investment I made this year… Err… Last year.

Yup, yup. As you may have noticed, it’s now 2010, which means I should probably look back to this post and give you an update on the resolutions made there [spoiler alert: the results are surprisingly similar to most other people’s]. A new year isn’t all bad news… I’ve got some exciting stuff for your lovely eyes to check out coming up soon. I have my good buddy/Javascript genius Josiah whipping up a spifferific website for me, and a full on rebranding on the way.

I also need to throw up some Scotland shots, the results of my final photo project, and some fun snowboarding action. Needless to say, I’ve been busy.

But for now, I’d like guys to meet the Reesers; a supremely photogenic and fun family that I shot on the day after Christmas. You’ve already seen Brandon and Breanna strut their stuff in their ridiculously cool 30’s shoot. This time, they brought along the rest of the family for the party.

Rollfest.

What Should I Buy?

I feel like that at some point, every photographer has to answer this question. Some of the best photographers I know hate talking about gear. They just don’t like it. I envy them. I constantly wish that I wasn’t naturally such a sucker for shiny things with buttons, but unfortunately for my wallet, I am.

So, moving along…

I get asked multiple times a week questions along the lines of, “What camera do you use?” and “What camera should I buy?” and “What’s your take on the new SuperGlam 5000?” So this is my best attempt to give a broad, general purpose guide to gear (in a completely subjective, Mike-tainted way) that covers as many of those questions as I can.

The first thing you should buy is the new Train album. It’s grand. I personally haven’t bought it yet, but I stream it (Jesus answers prayers through Spotify) at least four times a day. Seriously. It’s glorious.

Warning:
If you don’t want to read any technoblabber, go buy the album and have a nice day. This is where the techie side of me comes out.

My main set up right now consists of a Canon 5DmkII, Canon 35mm f1.4L, and Canon 135 f2L. I could (and probably do) 90% of my work with those three things. The benchwarmers include a Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 EX, a Canon 50mm f1.8 mkI, and a Canon 580EX Speedlite. Memory cards are all of the relatively quick (133x-300x) Sandisk and Lexar variety. I’ve seen far too many cheap cards go bad, so I try and stick to those two brands when loading up on memory. I personally like the Sandisk best; they look prettier.

What’s next on my list? Canon 45mm f2.8 TS-E. I’ll try and scoop one up once I get back to the States.

So now that we got me out of the way, let’s talk about you.

“I don’t currently have a DSLR, but want to pick one up and start taking some better pictures. What should I get?”

Anything. Every camera that Canon and Nikon currently makes will take some absolutely stunning images. You really can’t go wrong choosing any camera between those two companies. While some people are big Pentax and Olympus fans, I generally find that their cameras are a generation or so behind the latest and greatest Canon, Nikon, and Sony equivalents. And while they have a great selection of old-school manual focus lenses, they don’t have the huge range of current autofocusing glass that Canon and Nikon offer. Sony is the new kid on the block, and I think they’re on to something. They’ve come out with some great cameras, superb lenses, and innovative flashes in the past couple years. They’re whole system is still in its beginning stages, and they can’t match Canon and Nikon’s big range of lenses, so I don’t currently recommend them. However, give it a few years and that may change.

Go into a store, and try some cameras out. Go see which camera fits in your hand best. Figure out which one is easiest to operate. Then buy it. For most people’s purposes, any DSLR camera under $800 or so will do just about everything that the one sitting next to it will. Don’t get sold on megapixels. They’re not important. I promise.

If you are really thinking about getting serious about photography, then there are a couple more things to consider. The lower end Nikons (D40, D60, and D3000… maybe even the D5000) don’t autofocus with some lenses, and so I would avoid them. If I were stepping into Nikon and wanting to be serious about my photography, the minimum I’d grab is a D90.

“Ok, I have a DSLR, I’ve been taking photos for awhile now, and I’d really like to step up my game. What now?”

Learn to shoot in manual. Understand what the camera is doing. Be active in determining how aperture, shutter speed, and ISO effect your shot. If you really want to spend money, get a few photography books (I’ve heard that “Understanding Exposure” by Bryan Peterson is a good one).

“Check. Call me the manual master. I’ve got it down.”

Pick up a 50mm f1.8 for around $100. Both Canon and Nikon make them. They are cheap little primes (fixed focal length; they don’t zoom in and out) that are awesome for the price. I still use mine. They are great for teaching you about depth of field, shooting in low-light situations, and forcing you to be creative in your compositions.

“Sweet. I can take good pictures and I now own $918,494,843 worth of photo gear, but my photos still don’t look like yours! What gives?”

You can take great photos, but many times they need a little extra zing to top it off. This is where post processing comes into play. I process all of my photos through Adobe Lightroom and occasionally Adobe Photoshop CS4. Sometimes photos need some extra contrast, more saturation, or some cropping to really make them come to life. For what it’s worth, my “style” of processing usually includes lots of contrast, lots of clarity (or microcontrast), lots of vibrance, and warm colors, sometimes with green and magenta undertones thrown in. Grab a copy of Adobe Lightroom, Apple Aperture, or Adobe Photoshop (either Elements or the real deal) and a good Photoshop book or techie friend and play around a little.

It’s worth noting that shooting photos in RAW format will make a big difference when you process your images. You will be able to tweak the colors, exposure, and noise reduction even more than if you shoot in JPEG format. However, RAW files look much worse straight out of the camera, so I recommend shooting in RAW if you’re going to post process the images. I nearly always process my photos, so I nearly always shoot RAW.

“Gear: Check. Taking good pictures: Check. Knowing how to process: Check. My photos still don’t look like yours. What the heck?”

Duh. I’m me. You’re not. Your photos shouldn’t look like mine! Take photos that know one else sees, and process them in ways that people don’t think of. We call this style. Go get your own.

 

If you guys have more photo questions, email me, comment, text me, face my book, flik my r, twit my ter… Just ask.

Look for Scotland pics tomorrow, they’re all exported and ready to roll.

Peace.

Scotlanding [teaser]

Still traveling through Scotland. Currently on the Isle of Sky. Sick sights, but bad weather, limited daylight and 13+ hours of traveling have left photo ops few and far between. Tomorrow’s our first (and only) full day to just go get lost in Scottishness, so that’ll be fun.

Roll.

No Touchdowns Here

We’ve been busy this week.

Guy Fawkes Day (folks are still setting off fireworks every five minutes). Then yesterday Beth, Kels, Lee, and I went down to the Tate Modern for the night. It was a pretty sweet museum, but I’m quickly discovering that I’m not much of an art person. Slightly ironic since I do the whole photo/video deal? Probably. But that’s how it is.

There were a couple exhibits that I thought were really cool (including one by Andy Warhol), and I definitely enjoyed my time there, but after an hour or so I was ready to roll.

Today we visited the National War Museum, which I actually thought was very, very cool. We only spent an hour and a half there, but I could’ve easily stayed there another two hours. Someday I’m going to have to find a good book on modern (1900-2000) European history  (that isn’t a text book), because I really dig it.

Then after museum numero dos, we headed on over to Reading to catch a “football” match between Reading and Ipswitch. It was a fun time and fulfilled one of my London goals of going to a soccer game while here. Good times indeed.

Rollout.

PS…
Sorry about the video quality. MPEG Streamclip apparently doesn’t compress videos as well as Compressor. Oh well. Also, try not to get motion sick watching it. Let me just say there’s a reason I don’t normally zoom while recording.

Remember, Remember the 5th of November

Today was Guy Fawkes Day. If you don’t know who he was, go watch the first five minutes of V for Vendetta. And then if you haven’t seen it, watch the rest. Because it’s a good movie. Or just be a lazy bum and click here.

But there were fireworks. And it was fun.

Danni said something about liking all the pretty colors in the sky, then Lee made some witty comment about liking grey fireworks, and then we went off on a tangent about watching fireworks in black and white. Thus the reason for the above photo being on the slightly desaturated side of life.

Anyways, it’s late. So I’m gonna go to bed. Or edit photos. Or watch a movie. One of those three…

Peace.

Life at 24mm

Today was a good day.

Kelsey, Lee, Taylor, and I all roadtripped, err… traintripped (?) it out to Salisbury and Stonehenge. It’s awesome being 20 minutes away from Central London, which is a very cool place in its own right, but man the English countryside here is like a set out of a movie. You just expect a horde of kilted Bravehearts to come barreling down the grassy hills any second. It’s just about exactly how you would imagine it.

I’m also still waiting for some “terrible” UK weather that I keeping hearing about. It’s sprinkled on and off in the mornings and evenings, but other than that there’s been nothing but deep blue skies, huge puffy clouds, and brisk 60’s temperatures. Tough life.

Due to my broken 35L, I busted out my old and not-so-trusty Sigma 24-70 to drag along the countryside with me. I definitely need to send this puppy in to be re-calibrated, but I rediscovered my love for 24mm. So it looks like the 24L will be going on my to buy list. Along with the 45 ts-e. And 7D. And 70-200 2.8L IS. Oy. I hate that list. Anyways… On with the show:

And Salisbury Cathedral:

Rollout.

Fording the Ox

Class field trip. Yay.

Two things you should note about this pictures above:

Oxford looks (and feels) like it came out of a Harry Potter movie. They did draw a lot of inspiration in the movies from it, and even recreated Oxford University’s Great Hall for the dining hall in the movies. But even the people, country, other buildings, it all feels like a fantasy land. The whole trip (for our class) was about C.S. Lewis, and it’s easy to see how much inspiration that he, as well as J.R.R. Tolkien, were able to draw from this crazy little college city.

The other thing you should note about my photos is that anything that is in focus past 10 ft was shot with my 135L telephoto lens. Why? Because I dropped my 35L (wide) lens. Now it refuses to focus past 10 ft. Grand. We’ll have to see what Canon UK has to say about that. It made for an interesting shooting day, that’s for sure.

Peace.

Camden

These photos have been chillin’ on my hard drive for about a week now. I couldn’t let them be neglected any longer.

Oxford visuals = up and coming.

Rollout.