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