What a weekend

So there it is! The logo that I finally decided on. I had a lot of great advice from a lot of people that I really admire, but in the end I realized that especially in photography, you're selling yourself as much as your pictures, so the name in the thing is kind of a vital thing. I also joined back up with facebook, so if you are so inclined, go like my page, I'll appreciate it :-)

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Joshua-Blaney-PhotographyFilmmaking/183785438362926

I haven't updates since last week! That means I have a bunch of photos to show! Saturday morning I got to go to the Wheaton College football game, and that meant using my work's Canon 7d with a 70-200mm 2.8/f lens! It was absolutely fantastic. The picture from the last post was me using it to shoot video. Since my two jobs that I hold right now are editing and shooting video that's mainly what the football game was about, but that doesn't mean that I didn't get some great photos too. Check it out.

besides finding out that shooting a football game that starts in rain and ends in complete sunshine is kind of hard to figure out settings for, I also learned a great deal about shooting video using 200mm as a zoom, it's really difficult. I'll post here when I finish that video, it should be interesting and I definitely learned a lot. I guess we'll see how the whole thing turns out.

Saturday night was awesome. My friend Whitney was turning 24 and she had a 1920's murder mystery dinner. Armed with my 60d I went to work. I actually wore two different costumes to the party, so I was  a bit sad that I didn't get any pictures of myself while taking the pictures. Such is the life of a photographer I guess. I'll have to get used to that. Anyway, I learned a lot from this as well, namely that I need to get a 24 or 28 mm lens. A was backing into the wall a lot, which wasn't a terrible thing, but I would've liked to have captured more of the feel of the whole party. Anyway, here's a bit of the shots from the party.

Obviously I tried to go for a much more rustic feel, and I think I got the basic point across. I had a lot of fun, and it's a great thing to add to a portfolio. Anyway, that's what I've been up to as far as shooting goes. I'll write another blog here soon as far as meetings that I've had with other photographers and tips that I've picked up through the internet. Till then!

~Josh

Real Fast

Okay, just got to work this morning and a very professional photographer sent me this photo. I look kind of legit in the background! okay, back to work, just thought it was awesome!

Concert (also, help deciding!)

So a couple of days ago I went to Peoria Illinois to go see a band named Paper Route. They're a electornica rock band (That's as close as I'm getting to accurately describing them). Their music video for their hit song "Gutter" was easily one of my favorite music videos from last year, and as well as having just an electrifying presence on stage, they're just a fun group of people

 

Anyway, me and my two friends decided to go, and I was overestimated how long it would take us to get there (I always fall on the "We need to be there early rather than late" side). So, armed with my 60d, I asked if I could take some pictures to pass the time. My good friends Matt and Amber didn't have a problem with it, so I started snapping away.

I really like heavy depths of field, so I asked my friend matt sit a good ways in front of the band as they were setting up for the concert to get them unloading in the background. He was a trooper, and I think I got a really good profile shot of him. Matt is a drummer anyway, so I figured that it would be good to put him in a situation where he looks more at home. It was getting close to the end of the day so the lighting was already at a good angle, everything just kind of came together.




My friend Amber has some really fiery red hair that I wanted to show off. I noticed that the greens in the grass really accentuated Amber's hair, so I had her lay out her hair and shot the color juxtaposition. Overall I think it turned out really great.







Though the band itself has played to thousand of people at a time, apparently the college that they played at had never heard of them, because not more than 60 people came to the show. It didn't really matter, they completely lit it up anyway. The huge benefit as well was that I was able to get super close to the band to take some photos.

I'm a firm believer in being present where you are, so I didn't take more than 25 to 30 pictures of the band.I really want to be where I am spatially and try to enjoy the moment, so I didn't go all out. But it was a great night for photos. One of the interesting things that I learned was that I don't like to use flashes when it isn't absolutely necessary. I understand that you can get incredible lighting shots, but especially in real situations like concerts, it's much better to just use the lighting provided to get the original feel of the concert.

Okay, now I need your guys' help. I'm trying to figure out a logo. I'm switching between just using my name or using the squar3one logo. I like the squar3one because it reminds me that I'm still at the beginning, and it also has a loose connection to the Trinity, but I actually think that my name just seems cleaner. check them both out below and let me know what you think. Thanks guys!

~Josh

Rachel

Hey All!

So, the photoshoot yesterday was for all intents and purposes a success! Rach and I headed out to a forest preserve pretty close to where I work around 5:15. Rach didn't really have any props with her but luckily I had brought some random things that I owned. Overall I was really happy with what I ended up with! It was funny because for a while I thought that I wasn't really getting anything substantial. It's funny what can happen when you actually load the photos onto the computer and take a look at them. I think that I was trying to encapsulate the beauty of the whole place in every shot, which, while being there was way too much to do. What I realized while I was looking through the photos was that each photo held just a bit of the beauty that we saw and found. So, I'm encouraged. I'm going to try and go shooting every Monday so hopefully this will be a more permanent thing (actual photos for a blog). Hope you like em!

~Josh

Probably my favorite picture from the shoot. I thought I hadn't turned my shutter speed up enough when I first took it. What a happy accident.

Equipment

So, one of the first things that I realized that I needed to do was figure where to go equipment-wise from here. To find this out I turned to three people that I really respect in the photography business. The first is Maggie Fortson. Maggie had taken some pictures of a few friend of mine and ended being the photographers for one of my old roommate's wedding. Her photography is incredibly crisp and just visually appealing, and I've really enjoyed looking through her photos on her blog (http://www.maggiefortsonblog.com/).

Anyway, I contacted her a while back, and she normally shoots on fixed lenses, like the 50mm, 1.4/f or the 70-200mm 2.8/f lenses. These lenses are serious business, and they totally get the job done.

These are lenses that I totally want to build up to, but obviously, getting there may take a while as these are really top of the line type of consumer lenses, but it's a great place to know where I eventually want to get to.

The next stop was my older brother Chris' best friend Nicholas Gilskey. Nic has been a family friend for basically like ever, ever since I was born anyway. He's been into photography for a while now and has been shooting weddings since 2005. He's the guy that took this awesome photo of me this last february while we were in Colorado. Seriously, his stuff is great.

So, with the offer of free beers I went out with Nic for an evening just talking about cameras and lenses and shooting styles and the like. Basically, when we got down to lenses, he gave the advice to start small and grow large. He recommended to to eventually get a 24mm and then end with the 70-200mm 4/f canon lens, and after doing some research, I found that in most cases the 70-200mm 4/f with IS (Image Stabilization) actually takes clearer pictures than even the Canon 70-200mm 2.8/f, which is super interesting. Still, he suggested buying off brand versions of those lenses and eventually building upon those till I can get the actual Canon ones. The most interesting thing that Nic told me about lenses though was that he tries to avoid 35-70mm shots as much as he can, mainly because that's what we live real life at. That's what we see when we see the world, and being able to present the world in a different eye is really what can set photographs apart. Then he told me that if I were to only get one lens, it would have to be an 18-135mm lens. He said that if I only have one, you need to get the basics down and shoot the most common, start small, move big.

My last stop with lens advice was Yee-Sum Lo. I met Yee-Sum when I was PR manager for WheatonImprov. Yee-Sum was fantastic for both set photos and performance shooting. More recently she's been working with NBC doing photography for major television shows, she's also going to Grad school for artistic design (I think, Yee-Sum you may have to correct me). Update: Nope, she's getting her MFA in Motion Picture Producing. Same thing? (NO)

Anyway, when I contacted Yee-Sum, she sent me a very basic yet extremely profound email. 

"I honestly just bought the cheapest options and didn't have any problems, just make sure you read the review! So lens wise, I'm getting a basic 50mm, and I shoot with the 18-200mm. Im typically fine with just the latter, but since I got the camera to do movies on, I got the 50mm for that."

It's crazy, because Yee-sum has taken some of the most fantastic pictures I've ever seen, yet she really does just make due with what she's got. It's really humbling, and the thing that I walked away from each of these interactions was the impression that I have a very long way to go, but it should be a fun journey to get there.

Another really funny thing that I noticed about all of these was that I don't think any of the photographers overlapped their lenses at all, they all had very different kits with very different things that they accomplished. I was a little shocked actually, I assumed that most photographers has basically the same gear with slight variations, but this was all across the board, and they all take fantastic photos.

So where does that leave me? probably getting the 17-85mm 4-5.6/f lens and saving up for the 70-200mm 4/f with IM and USM(I've been looking, I know that USM is the quietest type of focus lens, but I don't actually know what it stands for, some type of motor). That way I'll have something that will look really sharp but I'll still be able to build up to something more.

Now, they all did overlap on two very important points. The first it to get the UV lens. the UV lens was originally used to keep out specific types of light into the camera lens (something I suspect happened when I tried to take a photo of my dog Sam) but is primarily used to actually just keep the camera clean. Apparently cameras have a much higher resell value if they have used a UV lens since it was opened, and it's a pretty standard thing to do.

The second thing that everybody told me to do was to edit in Adobe Lightroom. It was funny, because I use adobe After Effects almost solely at work, I've built websites using dreamweaver, when I was PR manager for improv I used Photoshop to make posters, I've made logos for several business using Adobe Illustrator, and I've used the suite in a variety of other ways. It really is just incredible to me how many creative products come out of Adobe. I picked it up a couple of days ago and it really is just as much of a game changer as everyone told me is was. I'm actually considering taking a class, because it's already done so much for me and I really only feel like I'm getting started.

So that's it! I've got my first real photoshoot set up for tomorrow, so I'll be going to do that and digging in with those photos in the next couple of days. But I hope that this has been helpful to at least take a look at what can be used out there. I've picked up a bunch of other random bits of information that I'll throw into another blog in the coming days, but for now I leave you with a photo I snapped of my cousin's daughter Chloe the other day. I used my 50mm lens with the f-stop set to 1.8. Hope you like it!

~Josh