Blog

Photographers have a lot to think about when they're shooting weddings. Simultaneously managing relationships, compact flash cards, logistics, picture requests, assistants and gear can become overwhelming.

When confronted with challenges, like video lights, dark venues and unfriendly churches, it can be easy for a photographer to shoot "safe" pictures — photographs that guarantee a predictable result — and miss opportunities for creativity.

When the videographer used his video light to illuminate the bride dancing with her father, it was tempting to stand next to the videographer to use his light as the main light source. Or, I could have increased my shutter speed so the video light was underexposed, and then bounced flash off the ceiling or wall. The trouble with either scenario is that this type of lighting becomes predictable and boring, and is not indicative of the scene as I saw it.

When shooting this situation, the lighting on the bride and her father was intense, so I decided to not fight it, but to allow it to become an opportunity for creativity. I moved into a position where the videographer was behind the bride, and shot this picture with my Canon 50/1.4 at f/1.4.

The resulting image communicates not only the intensely illuminated scene as I saw it, but also communicates figuratively, as the bride and her father were the focus of attention in the room — literally in the spotlight.

Click here to view the slideshow from this wedding.

Many people ask about how we quickly and reliably download our cards during and after shoots.

We use a piece of software called Photo Mechanic from a company called Camera Bits. It's a great piece of software. Here's why:

• You can insert your card in your reader, press one quick key and it downloads the card to one or two folders on your computer or external hard drive
  
• If you plug multiple cards in your computer, you can select all the cards in the ingest dialog walk away from your computer, and come back and they're all done.
  
• Photo Mechanic will rename files if necessary to avoid redundant filenames
  
• We write the camera owner's name to the camera itself using Canon's Camera Window. Photo Mechanic will automatically add the Camera Owner's name to the "author" field of the EXIF data. This is particularly handy when your studio has four photographers.
  
• Photo Mechanic makes it easy to batch rename all the photos after ingestion using whatever naming convention you desire.
  

I can't overemphasize that it's very important to use safe downloading practices as you download your cards to avoid losing data. I address those practices in my previous post called "Why I Can Sleep at Night".

Erin and I recently did a volunteer photo shoot for Flashes of Hope, a nonprofit organization that creates photographs of children fighting cancer and other life threatening diseases and provides these photographs to the families, free of charge. Its mission is to "help the children feel better about their changing appearance by celebrating it! And, for families of terminally ill children, the portrait preserves the beauty, grace and dignity of their child."

The opportunity to create portraits of these children and their families was both a humbling and uplifting experience. For a moment, you feel a little bit of sorrow, but that is instantly replaced by such warmth and joy when you see the bright smiles and charming personalities of these children who, despite their stuggles, exude happiness, appreciation for life and love of their families. We are honored to be able to share our talent with these families and know that the photographs we made will remain an everyday reminder of the beauty and joy of their children and the love shared within their family.

Read more about Flashes of Hope on their website www.flashesofhope.com

My grandfather and I are celebrating milestone birthdays in August. He will turn 90; I will turn 30. It's a bittersweet occasion, though, as he and my grandmother pack up their house in order to move into a managed care residence.

So, our family has been helping Grandma and Granddad sort through the mementos they have collected over the years.
Their basement is a veritable treasure chest of 1950s-era toys. Lincoln Logs, Erector Sets, and Brownie Cameras are arranged in a Teutonic order that would be expected of descendants of German immigrants.

On a recent trip to St. Louis, my sister and I pored over the basement shelves and made an important discovery: a vault of Niesen family photographs that chronicle my grandparents' lives.

As I sorted through boxes of brittle prints, I realized the worth of my find. The value of these images to our family is immense; they are priceless. — The photographs provide a portal for me to know my grandparents from a time well before I was born —. Someday, these photos will enable my children to know their great grandparents.

Everyday I tell prospective clients that there is great value in photography. Our clients' interaction with their wedding photographs will provide an experience that allows them to relive an important day in their lives —. Photographs will give their children a unique glimpse into their parents' lives. The work we produce for our clients will become a foundation for family legacy, and will increase in value over generations.

The print above bears the following inscription: "Eddie, 1929." My grandfather was 13 years old. This is the foundation of family legacy.

When we shot film, the million dollar question was, "Where do I put my archive of original film, so that it is at the least risk of being destroyed or lost by fire, theft, vandalism or a tornado?"

With the age of digital photography, we have the luxury of being able to make infinite perfect copies of our original digital files. With our current workflow, I can sleep at night knowing that if a fire or tornado struck that we could be up-and-running the next day without having lost any images or other digital assets.

It is a lot to manage, when our studio produces approximately one-quarter of a million RAW images (among 4 photographers) in a year. That's about 2,475 gigabytes of data per year.

Here is an abridged version of our digital workflow, in terms of how the images are backed up. We always keep one rule in mind: we ALWAYS have more than one copy of an image, except for when they are on the original CF/SD cards. Secondly, we always keep shot cards in secure pockets in our clothing during a shoot, and never keep them in camera bags. (Camera bags are much more likely to be stolen.) I never let the cards out of my sight and start our workflow as soon as the shoot is over, and before I go to bed that night.

Here is what we do:

1. After the shoot, I download our cards using our laptop onto one of our four "ShootQueue" (80GB Firewire 800 Firelite) Drives. We typically shoot 12-15 cards, for which I have 15 Lexar card readers that I plug into the computer simultaneously. The cards download overnight.

2. The next morning, I start burning a DVD set of the raw shoot. As soon as this is done, the DVDs are stored at Mark & Erin's house, so one backup of the shoot is off-site. It is then safe to reformat the cards.

3. The shoot is edited on the portable ShootQueue drive.

4. Once the edit is complete, we transfer the edited shoot to a server that is in our studio. The server has firewire 1000 gigabyte RAID hard drives. One copy of the shoot is permanently archived there.

5. The portable ShootQueue drive is taken to Mark & Erin's house and the edited shoot is copied onto another server we have there, with identical firewire drives, that are mirrors (exact duplicates) of the ones in the studio.

6. We burn a set of MAM-A DVDs of the edited shoot.

7. Once a month all DVD copies (both the initial set of DVDs, plus the MAM-A DVDs) are transferred for permanent storage in an undisclosed location that is not in our studio or houses. (But I'm not telling you where, for security reasons :)