Friday, October 27, 2006

New Blog for Photographers


Let me take this time to announce my new BLOG just for photographers. I made this new blog to go along with the all new Image Doctor site that is in the works. Each week I will post some new tip , Photoshop lesson or some video from one of my photo shoots. Some of the content will be bits and pieces from my new DVD series. This week , if you would like to see how I went from the color photo on the left to the B&W on the right, just see the new blog at
image-doctor.blogspot.com

Hi to Kansas

Everyone in Kansas send me an e mail

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Moving to the Lake House





I am moving to the new lake house this week. I may be a little hard to get in touch with for a few days. There is a lot going on at the moment. The new Image Doctor web site is under construction by the very talented Chris Hayes. He designed my Scottevans.com site and has a whole lot of new things that he will try to teach me.
The new Image Doctor site will be for photographers mostly and have a special section where I can post a Flash movie showing anything from a Photoshop trick to behind the scene's at one of my photo shoots. There will be a new movie each week that will replace the previous weeks movie. There will also be a page for each of my Instructional DVDs and of course a way for you to order them.
But for now, I am sitting in my office with limited production equipment waiting on the carpet installers. I have about 6 wedding albums waiting to be printed but I will not be doing that until next week when I bring all of the printing and production equipment to the lake house. I will have so much more room at the new place. The photos are of what I see out my new office window. And from the dock.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Time for me to Toot My Horn !



I want to start this off by saying that I hardly ever toot my horn. But this weekends VERY SMART bride and groom are very lucky that they chose me as their wedding photographer instead of one of those "Shoot and Burn" photographers. A Shoot and Burn photographer is one that will show up at your wedding, take about 800 or more snapshots "many redundant" and then burn them to a CD and give them to you with no color correction or cropping ect. No Album no page design, just a CD full of photos by a beginner who has the best of intentions but not much experience.
I will set the stage. The photo of the Groom and his Mom was shot next to a hallway at chateau Elan . The same location that is in the photo on the opening page of my web site. The photo of the bride was "RETAKEN" (more in a minuet) in the seats that the wedding guest sat in.
The reason the bride photo was retaken was that right after I shot this photo the first time , some ass wipe snuck over to my camera bag a picked it clean of all the gear that was in it. I lost 2 high end digital camera bodies. A Nikon D 200 with battery grip and 2 batteries and a Fuji S-3 and Four lenses. All Nikon. an 80-200 2.8 12.5 mm fisheye 85mm 2.8 and a 50mm 1.8 and a light disk color balance device.
The strange part is that I was only a few feet away when it happened. I finished shooting the bride and individual bridesmaids photos like the one of the groom and mom in the hall next to the area where the wedding was to be held. That was done with the camera on the tripod. See the photo below.


I took that camera and 80-200 lens off the tripod and put it in my gear bag. I picked up my other D200 (I had 2) and photographed the bride in the chairs with the 85mm 1.8 lens while the bridesmaids were moving to a spot I asked them to go to. Total time about 1 minuet. After shooting the bride I put that camera back in the bag and picked up the other D200 and changed to a wide angle zoom lens , an 18-70mm , and walked around the corner to shoot the group photo of the bridesmaids. The timestamp on the file of the bridesmaids showed 5:35pm and the next photo, a candis of her mom back at the hall location showed 5:36 a one min time span ! While I shot the Bridesmaids some one stole everything left in my bag. INCLUDING all of the images shot on the Nikon D200. The Fuji was a backup camera and had not been used. I quickly searched the area, did not tell the bride ( As to not freak her out) called security and with now about 15 min until wedding time, ran out to the parking lot to scan the scene and to change into my suit. (In the parking lot next to my truck) Cheatu Elan's security cameras caught that but not the theft.
A snappy , snappy, snappy, burn and shoot photographer would have melted down about that time. I did not. The wedding was going to go on . On time and I had to photograph it. This is where experience comes in. You see, I have been photographing weddings for 27 years. Longer than many of my brides have even been alive. Way back in the good old days we shot something called film. We could only bring as much film as we could afford to shoot. It used to cost about $1.25 every time we pushed the button on the camera so we did not blow a lot of shots just to have something to do during a 4 hour reception or on tons of candid photos that we knew would never make it into the wedding album. Snappy snappy snappy photographers do not understand that quality is so much better than quantity.
Another problem that I had was that the stolen Nikon camera had my other two camera batteries in it. And since the camera that I still had was the one I had been using most that day, a good bit of it's battery power was drained. I knew I had to conserve my shots for the very best ones. And I did. Very much to the dismay of the brides sister who felt that I should be in the reception photographing various people while they were stuffing food in their mouths. (I never shoot that anyway) I was across the room when I saw the brides sister screaming at someone on her cell phone. Two hours later when I checked my messages, I found out that it was me she was screaming at. Saying that she did not see me and that I was missing the entire wedding and that she (not my bride or groom) demanded that I be in the room with her. I was, she just did not see me as I was not photographing her or her kids on the dance floor as I had already done and had the shots of them that I needed My cell phone was in the truck, but I wish I had had it and could have walked up behind her as she was screaming and tapped her on the shoulder. Then took her photo. But my bride and groom were great. You can tell they are so much in love. And he loves her even more than golf. And from what I heard from guests, that is a lot.

So Early this morning, I was calling friends to get back up gear , lenses and extra special camera batteries so that I can shoot tomorrow. I will replace about $ 8000.00 worth of gear on Tuesday.

So, how was your weekend ? Please e mail or post. Yeah POST that would be such a nice gesture from the 342 people that have visited this blog more than 10 times each. I do keep track .

Friday, October 13, 2006

Memphis


I did not get to spend to much time in the land of Elvis, but I did get to do a photo shoot in the cold and rain. This shoot was for an engagement photo for a couple whose wedding I am photographing in November. I left Stockbridge on Wed at 8pm after my son's school football team whipped the snot out of the Stockbridge Middle School football team 38 to 8. He played well against his former buddies and even told me that in the bottom of one of the pileups while waiting for all of the other players to get off of them, he had a nice conversation with the opposing team member that he had just tackled.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Wedding Day in New Port





Just a few photos from yesterday. I must be quick as I am off to photograph the Sunday Brunch for this group of people. Home to Atlanta late this afternoon. Appearance at Georgian Gallery tomorrow. My daughters birthday all day on Wed. Then off to Memphis for a photo shoot and some work on the DVD set and then back to Atlanta on Friday for a wedding on Saturday. When do I get to stop ?

Saturday, October 07, 2006

New Port At Night



These are just a few night shots. For you photographers that read this, the techno stuff on the night shots were as follows. The Bridge: 20 seconds at f8.0 ISO 1200. The Mansion : 20 sec at f8.0 at ISO 1200. The Bonfire : 5 Sec at f5.6 ISO 400 with fill flash.

I enjoyed the Beach Bonfire the best. The only thing that kept me from ripping all my clothes off and running into the water with the bridesmaids was having seen the opening scene of the movie JAWS to many times as a kid. I think it was filmed somewhere around here.

Friday, October 06, 2006

Harbor Sailing




This morning I shot some photos at the rehearsal over at Castle Hill. After that we all went on a lunch cruise around Newport. It was cold and windy. The view was wonderful all around.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

New Port , Rhode Island



OK OK OK .

I know it has been a while since I last posted. I get you e mails every day. Since my last written post, I have done the following: Bought new lake home. Started Fall Baseball with my son. Still involved with school Football with my son. The new home is under some minor renovation. New floors , paint, serious yard work. I have photographed 3 off the most spectacular weddings that I have done in a while, and this weekend I will shoot another one.
This weekends wedding is at the Castle hill Inn in New Port, Rhode Island www.castlehillinn.com check this place out.
The photo is of my view of the yacht club at my hotel. I will update all weekend.
The next photo is of the gift basket that that was left for me at the hotel. What a nice touch.