A Rare Day Off

When I am not shooting, giving classes, speaking to other photographers groups, designing wedding albums or filling out every stupid tax form in the known universe, we play around at the house. We either play baseball or guitar. This photo was taken this evening at about 8pm by my assistant. It is a very rare photo of me. I am sitting on the swing that my grandfather made for me about 2o years ago. My Father, Garen and I put it up the other day and it is just about my most favorite spot on the property. Over the last few days when my eyes would get tired from the computer screen I have picked up one of the many guitars that are around the house and went to the swing to play in peace. I ran electricity out there so I could plug in a small amp. Have you ever tried to mimic the sound of geese honking with an electric guitar ?

When I got home from last Saturdays wedding at 2am I went out there to sit for just a moment and fell asleep.

I will post more new stuff next week. One more thing, my new Instructional Disk Set "Wedding Album Design from Scratch" is now shipping. I will do an e mail about it on Monday, so if you are not on the mailing list, get on it by sending me an e mail scott@scottevans.com

Mini Seminars

This week I am doing 2 mini seminars in Alabama. Last night was in Aniston, Al The folks in the photography group there treated me great and seem to be a well organized group. The title of the show is "Combating the Shoot and Burn Photographer" There were a few shoot and burn folks that came to the meeting that were not members, and I hope that they do not feel as if I was there to pick on them. Although I did point them out several times. For those of you that are not familiar with the term "Shoot and Burn" That is the photographer who shows up at a wedding and photographs the whole thing and burns the photos to a CD for $500.00 and walks away. Most of them have NO training, do not color correct the images or offer any other services such as albums or prints. The resulting photos are often quite horrible when compared to a real photographer. These two young ladies were very receptive to everyone's suggestions and I truly feel that they were there to learn. I hope to see good things from them soon.

Thanks to all the members that took me out for cold beers after the show.

Tonight I am in Huntsville for another show.

State Baseball Championships

This weekend has been a wild one. We started the playoffs on Saturday morning at 9am in Blue Ridge, Ga in the Beautiful N Ga Mountains. It is about 130 miles from my house. It is now Sunday night at 10:45 and we just got in. We stayed in a hotel last night but came home this evening so I can get some work done tomorrow morning. We go back tomorrow for a game at 8:30 pm and will stay the night if we keep winning. Three more wins and we will go to the World Series in Memphis, TN.

Looks like I have some washing to do also.
I promise to have photography stuff up on the blog in my next post. Maybe some game photos with explanations as to how they were taken. I designed 3 wedding albums between games and will be posting them on my video site at http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewalbum.html?bm=79060

Fireworks

This photo was taken from my house looking over towards my office. My office is on the top floor of the building to the left. A fireworks display company did a pretty good show on Sat night for all the folks around the lake. Exposure was 10sec at f11 ISO of 250.

I held a black t shirt in front of the lens between the two bursts.

Portraits

These are just a few photos from a photo shoot of a couple who's wedding I am shooting in the Fall. We spent 5 min at my house shooting down by the lake and then they followed me in to town and we shot for 5 min at a loading dock around the corner from my favorite restaurant.

I was not keeping track of the time but Garen set his stopwatch just to see how long it would take. Total time including travel was 32 min.

So, I set the stopwatch to see how long it would take to download, edit, color correct and crop the photos. Also I timed the retouching and artwork and out put a 20x24 on watercolor paper and then tore the edges to make it look cool. Total time after the photo session was 4 hrs and 18 min. Almost 5 hours total. Over one half of a normal work day for the average person.

I am giving all of these time details so that people can see just how much goes into making a piece of photographic art work. This photo session had the purpose of just making one print to hang at the wedding reception. Imagine the amount of time that will go into photographing the wedding and producing a wedding album that will knock peoples socks off.

Basically what I am saying is that if you really want something different. If you want quality. You have to hire a REAL PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER. The key word here is REAL. Not someone with a decent camera and a lot of time on there hands that will shoot some photos and burn them to a CD. It takes so much more to make something different.

The equipment used in the session was as follows:

1 Nikon D200 with 70-200 2.8VR lens. Lexar Compact flash card. 1 juiced up computer and monitor. Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop software. Epson 9800 printer and watercolor paper. Total value of equipment used was $ 10,500.00

Now I am not saying that the 4 photos in this post are just the best thing in the world of photography. It is just my style of photographing 2 people. What I am saying is that it takes a lot of time and equipment to produce the best results. That is why REAL photography is so expensive.

Does anyone have any comments ? If so PLEASE post them or e mail me.