Sharing talent, putting music together with photography at Fairhaven Church in Dayton Ohio
I’m really pleased with some pictures that I took this morning at my church. I have gone to the pastoral staff and volunteered my “talent” in photography for anything church related as one way of giving back. Sometimes if there is something special going on, I take pictures. Children’s choir, Christmas, Easter, Palm Sunday etc. Gradually some of the pictures migrate to the church web site and printed materials.
Fairhaven is a wonderful church. Check out this web site if you don’t have a church home: http://www.fairhavenchurch.org It’s the church you can see the steeple of from I-675 as your go around Dayton and it is located on Whipp Rd. at Marshal Rd.
Here are just a few of the pictures from this morning:
This post will appear on my web site: http://www.photosbypdemott.com It will also appear on my facebook personal page and my facebook fan page along with a post on twitter. I am a portrait photographer in the Dayton, Ohio area specializing in on-location portraits of seniors, families and children. I also have a specialty in equine (horse) photography and will come to your farm or stable for your session. If you like my style I encourage you to follow me in any or all the above mentioned areas. If you are a photographer, I enjoy networking with other photographers both professional and amateur.
Trails End Equestrian Center Barn Door Mini Sessions at DLSC show
These are a couple young ladies that I hope will become the subjects of some of my senior portrait sessions with horses. These are from mini barn door sessions that I took while at the horse show at the Trails End Equestrian Center which is a couple miles down the road from my home.
It’s fun to get professional portraits of kids with horses. At these shows and stables, kids can enjoy horses in a very controlled environment that is fairly safe. Kid’s, children and horses, with great smiles, you can’t beat that.
Sometimes I shoot the local horse shows in the DLSC (Dayton Local Show Circuit). Here are the participating farms:
http://www.trailsend.biz/dlscorgs.html
and the schedule of shows
http://www.trailsend.biz/dlscshows.html
Participating Farms and Stables Listed here. Come and join the fun.
Dancing Horse Farm – Lebanon – 513-933-0343
Greenstone Stables – Germantown – 937-859-1835
The Riding Center – Xenia – 937-767-9087
Shelby Farm – Centerville – 937-886-9230
Stillwater Pony Club – Beavercreek – 937-426-9443
Trails End Equestrian Center – Dayton -937-835-5062
Wetherbrook Farm – Waynesville – 937-885-6328
Whitehouse Stables – Sidney – 937-492-3831
This post will appear on my web site: http://www.photosbypdemott.com It will also appear on my facebook personal page and my facebook fan page along with a post ontwitter. I am a portrait photographer in the Dayton, Ohio area specializing in on-location portraits of seniors, families and children. I also have a specialty in equine (horse) photography and will come to your farm or stable for your session. If you like my style I encourage you to follow me in any or all the above mentioned areas. If you are a photographer, I enjoy networking with other photographers both professional and amateur.
Taking better winter & snow portraits (follow up)
A couple days ago as the big snow was about to arrive here in the Dayton area, I posted about how to take better snow pictures.
Snow is white and bright and it will trick your camera into thinking that it needs to cut down the amount of light coming into the camera. You see cameras are calibrated to average the scene at 18% gray. When you are shooting in snow and most of the scene is white, your camera is programed to make the scene 18% gray. So your camera without a little help from you will severely underexpose your snow pictures. Your white snow will become gray murky snow because not only is it under exposed severely, but because it is underexposed there will be an increase in digital noise (that looks like little specks of various colors sprinkled about the picture).
What needs to happen to make good snow pictures? Most modern digital cameras have a control called “exposure compensation”. If it is in your menu, it will be a marker that can be moved to 1+, 2+, 3+ to add more light or 1-, 2-, 3- to reduce the exposure. With snow, you want to increase the exposure by 1+ or 1.5+ or 2+. This is counterintuitive (it is not what you expect without much thought). But, you don’t want gray snow right? So do it. Now take a picture with lots of snow in it and take a look at the histogram on the back of your camera. The white portion of the scene will show mostly on the right. If the histogram graph shows mostly in the middle, your snow will be gray. If most of the data is to the left your picture will be very underexposed, almost black.
The snow came and I noticed a bunch of dark snow pictures on Facebook and other places. I am sure there are many folks out there, frustrated that their portraits and snow pictures did not turn out very good.
This morning we woke up and saw that there was hoarfrost all over the trees. It was very cold and yet the air had some humidity in it. The humidity frosted onto the branches of the trees as if it had snowed. It’s very pretty. My wife Patty said, “lets go take some pictures of the hoarfrost and the horses. The following portraits are the result of using the exposure compensation adjustment (on my camera there is quick access to the exposure compensation). I tried 2+, but that was a tad too much. When I looked at the image on the back on my camera my over exposure blinkers were showing. I moved it down to 1.5+ and in some cases 1+ and the images turned out great.
Additonal portraits from this morning’s session can be found here: SNOW PORTRAITS
This post will appear on my facebook and my facebook business page. It is also on my web site here. You are welcome to follow my by friending me on facebook, becoming a fan or signing up for email delivery from the front page of my web site.
Surviving as a professional photographer in a down economy
As a professional photographer, I always want to be growing in two ways.
First is to always be improving my photography. In light of that there are several things that I do. I participate in monthly training through PPSO (Professional Photographers of SW Ohio). I am a member of PPO (Professional Photographers of Ohio) and I go to the annual convention in the spring. At the convention I participate in every seminar that I can get my hands on. I also have a subscription to PhotoVision which is a collection of video presentations for professional photographers (Also a bi-montlhly DVD mailed to my home). Communication with other photographers through Facebook and photography forums, email and the telephone is important and I also have several Podcasts that I regularly listen to. Through these involvements I am always sharpening the product and the experience that I provide to my clients.
One thing that I just discovered, I think I saw it on a Twitter Tweet from another photographer, is the Jeff Smith books blog. This particular blog has an email subscription option (something that I always do – I don’t have to login, go searching for a web site or blog, it just shows up in my email box) so I signed up. He just published yet another book for professional photographers, this one on Senior Portraits. Yesterday I went on Amazon and purchased that book and another.
But this brings me to the other way that I think that I and other professional photographers must keep growing. That is to understand your market and current trends that effect your business. Each of the sources that I mentioned regarding improving my photography above also provide education about marketing and advertising professional photography.
Jeff Smith books blog had this post today. In it he was talking about not just surviving, but learning to do well in our current economic climate. It involved changing things up a bit on his senior portrait marketing and packages to eliminate some of the guilt and fear that people are experiencing about spending money. Here is a portion of what he said:
As business people we have to be smarter in this economy. While excessive spending is currently out of fashion, spending on memorable moments with the ones we love is viewed by Americans as perfectly fine. With our seniors, we are marketing more for the mother being included in the session and making it a “lady’s day out” experience. If it’s as much (or so the senior would think) about mom as it is the senior, the seniors doesn’t feel guilty when moms wants to buy the largest package, a wall portrait or additional wallets.
In this changing economy, many seniors that used to expect senior portraits at a premium studio as just a part of their senior year and now having to ask for senior portraits as gifts for birthdays or Christmas. The good new is when a senior is willing to give up a birthday gift for senior portraits the guilt of spending more is lessened. Again this just means as a business we change our marketing strategies to thrive in this economy as well as the next, because when it comes the economy nothing lasts forever!
Just as it is important to always be willing to learn new things with regard to the quality of your imagery, it is important to be willing to learn new ways to package and market your photography to meet the needs and wants of your clients. If you are a photographer friend, I would encourage you to go and sign-up for Jeff Smith’s blog and continue your learning (and being willing to learn) each day.
This blog post appears on my web site: Peter DeMott Photography. It will also appear on Twitter and Facebook on my personal page and my business page. You can follow me using the subscription option or by friending or becoming a fan on Facebook.
HELP PORTRAIT Dayton was fun and a great learning experience for all involved
December 19th was the date for HELP PORTRAIT Dayton. As this was the first time for Dayton and the rest of the country, we had no idea of how many people might show up. Would we be completely overwhelmed? Would there be people waiting out the doors or would we be very slow. As it turned out, we were very slow until after 12 noon. So after three backdrops and light set-ups were in place, and tested we sat about for a while wondering what to do.
After about an hour, we just started to play. First we took a group shot with someone’s fisheye lens:
This is everyone that was there at the time including helpers, photographers, make-up and friends.
I took some more portraits for fun trying out the light set-up and thinking about what I would need to set up the same sort of portrait lighting set up in my country barn studio in the future. We had a white seamless paper background and two black backgrounds. At about noon people started coming in for portrait sessions. First one family, then a couple more and then several more. We all had great fun creating and GIVING the portraits away with no payment expected whatsoever. One father grabbed Jordan Begley as he was about the leave, “Hey, I want to thank you folks for doing this, this is our first family portrait….we’ve never had one and this means a lot.” Jordan came over and shared his conversation with me saying that the oldest boy in the family was 9 and he was so surprised and touched by the conversation.
Well as it turned out we had about, I think 50+ people representing 6-8 different families and since we were by no means swamped, we were able to come up with variations and sub-group portraits of each family. But, the originator of this event suggested that we not publish actual families from the event to respect their privacy.
The following images are portraits of photographers and friends helping at the event before actual families started showing up. The beginnings of some good friendships were started and everyone helped everyone else try out various lighting set-ups and learn more about photography together. Some of us were outside of our comfort zones and it was a great experience for all. THANKS everyone who helped and for all the sharing of knowledge at the event.
The Difference Between Video and Photographs
I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, F Stop Beyond by Host Ron Dawson, and I heard a photographer talking about the difference between video and still images in a way that really caught my attention. The photographer asked, “How many times do you typically watch a movie?” The answer is usually ONCE. If you are really intrigued, you might watch a movie several times, but that would be more unusual than the standard answer of ONCE.
Now, when you look at an intriguing or exciting photograph, how many times might you look at that? 10, 20, 100 times perhaps. If it is a portrait of someone you love you may look at it every day of your life and appreciate it each time you see it. The photographer talked about how photography CREATES AN ENDURING MOMENT. Wow, an enduring moment. What an outstanding way to describe a photographer’s challenge. I’m not just “Capturing an image” or “capturing a moment in time” as many digital photographers describe what they do. As a photographer your goal is to create an enduring moment.
This reminds me of a photograph I took some years back. It was a picture of the finish of the last day of a trek across the state of Michigan on horseback. The riders started at a camp that touched lake Michigan then when they completed a week of 50 mile endurance rides across the state it ended at Lake Huron. The tradition at the finish was to go into the lake with your horse to celebrate the ride. It was great fun to watch as many of the horses had never encountered waves before. One rider’s helper during the week was a grandmother and she was encouraged to join into the fun by coming into the lake with horse and the rider. Two other people helped her to get out into the water (she was very unsteady in the light surf) where the rider was standing with her horse. When they got to the rider for only a moment, they all joined hands and raised there hands in celebration of the accomplishment. I captured that joyous moment in a spectacular photograph.
Several months later, I had an opportunity to watch video recaps of the week including this spectacular moment. Only it was not that spectacular in the streaming moments in video. That spectacular moment was there and gone and there were other moments to view. The power of the moment disappeared in video. It was a small blip and then it was gone. Now I know how to describe what I do with photography.
As a photographer I create ENDURING MOMENTS which can be enjoyed again and again and again by viewers. This is of course not a criticism of motion pictures or video, but it is a significant difference for sure.
Do you have an example of an ENDURING MOMENT; a photograph that can be appreciated over and over and over again?
Kentucky Diehard Endurance Ride at The Nature Preserve at Shaker Village
The weather was near perfect for the Kentucky Diehard Endurance Ride at Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill & The Nature Preserve at Shaker Village just south of Lexington Kentucky. I stayed overnight in an old Shaker Village meeting house before the ride on Saturday November 21, 2009. My room was on the third floor up a very narrow staircase with a latch door and simple decor (except the bathroom which was modern). The room light was a lamp in the form of a candle stick and a dim electric candle light bulb.
This building was about 300 yards from the stable at Shaker Village where most of the riders had their trailers parked. Stalls and running water was available.
The well kept trails were beautiful with rolling hills and taking the riders right past the buildings of the main part of Shaker Village then out into the countryside through meadows and rolling hills. Many areas had beautiful stone fences along the trails. The brochure says there are 3000 acres of original Shaker countryside.
There were lots and lots of smiles throughout this well organized endurance ride. This is a don’t miss ride for 2010.
The gallery is here: Kentucky Diehards Endurance
Learn more about endurance riding: AERC
The gallery is here: Kentucky Diehards Endurance
Photographer’s Styles
It’s interesting to look around at various photography books and magazines and see various styles of photography. It’s very common for newer photographers to try to copy other people’s style. Or, if there is a current trend lots of people hop on the band wagon to try to be popular.
For me, there are things I see that I like and there are things that I see that I don’t like. Skin that is so smoothed that it looks more like a ceramic doll than a human, I don’t like that. I think I am more of a purist. I like people to look comfortable and natural in their portraits. I like to smooth skin and enhance portraits, but I don’t like it to be noticed or take away from how the person really looks.
I’m not opposed to trying new things and stretching and learning though. But, after I try something I consider how comfortable I am with the new look and I keep what I like and leave some parts behind. Learning to take portraits at an angle is difficult for me because there are so many times when being off on the vertical lines is just a mistake that must be corrected. But, I like it an some time it will become more a part of my style.
As you look at my work, how would you describe the style. It’s not glamour although many people I photograph feel like a model as I shoot. I would not call my work “edgy”. I think causual and comfortable or maybe natural might better describe my style. Perhaps connected and relaxed could describe it. I don’t think because it is not “edgy” that it is boring, but I don’t want to use boring words to describe it either. I need your help. Captivating, penetrating, fun, what?
I’d like your input on how to describe my style. What are the right words to use if I were to add a paragraph on my home page about the style of my work. Please add your comment below and give me your ideas. Much appreciated.
HELP PORTRAIT initiated by Nashville-based photographer Jeremy Cowart
I was reading my recent issue of Professional Photographer magazine and on the last page they have a new thing called “good works” where they tell about photographers that are giving back to those in need. The reason that I am posting this here is to pass along the idea to my many photographer friends who may read this blog. I was able to look up Dayton and there are about 4-5 people discussing ideas for Dayton already. I joined that group and I will see if I can participate in what they are planning. If not, my wife Patty suggested that she could find some people pretty easily through her connections as a teacher.
Here is the concept quoted from the first paragraph of the last page of Professional Photography Magazine Nov. 2009:
“Help Portrait has a simple premise–just connect. On December 12, photographers will grab their cameras, photograph people who cannot afford a portrait session, print the images, and deliver the prints to the subjects free of charge. That’s it. Pick a population. Take pictures. Give away the images.”
Here are a couple of links to the Help Portraits web site and some example videos that I found inspiring. This is not about making an event to promote any one photographer and it is not limited to professional photographers. Anyone who enjoys photography can participate in the project. In fact in the one video they show make-up artists and others helping in the project. Watch the videos and consider if you would like to participate.
http://help-portrait.com/#/about
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3BFwgf1f2I&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9tu1XrBn3A
It’s easy to join the NING website to begin to connect with others in your area that are interested in this project. I was able to search for Dayton and found this discussion group already going.
http://community.help-portrait.com/group/daytonoh
Update: The group for Dayton is also now a GROUP on Facebook. If you want to help in any way visit the group page here:
Help-Portrait Dayton on Facebook
