Quick Hit Monday On Tuesday: 3 Webcast Re-Broadcasts Coming Your Way!

Good Afternoon Everybody,

We got in pretty Sunday night from our PhotoPro Network Summer School and got a pretty slow start on today having been going nonstop for the last three days in Louisville, Kentucky.We had a great time.  Let me give you a quick recap below.

PhotoPro Network Summer School 2012 Recap

We had a great crowd this past weekend at our PhotoPro Network Summer School. We had photographers from six states attending, including my good friend, Frank Wilson and his friend Derrick, traveling all the way from Jackson Mississippi – nearly 600 miles away. Turns out Frank won the award for most miles traveled to get there and took home one of the door prizes for his efforts  – Way to go Frank and Derrick!

Missed Opportunity For Many

It still amazes me that more photographers don't take advantage of some of these wonderful learning opportunities taking place around the country. For 2 1/2 days of terrific photographic inspiration and instruction, at a cost of only $89, you would think that people would be “chomping at the bit” to attend.

Unfortunately, I think too many people think they can get their education free from the Internet. But in doing so, you really miss out on the personal interaction with instructors, the inspiration that every instructor brings to the program, and most importantly, the camaraderie among all the photographers that attend and participate at these kinds of photographic events. Anyway, sorry to be on my soapbox, but I've been going to seminars and workshops for many, many years  and I just don't see any better way to learn than the up-close-and-personal interaction with the guest instructors.

Print competition was a great hit!

This year we had over 60 photographs submitted in our Digital Image Review.  We broadcast the image competition LIVE so look for rebroadcast here at DigitalProTalk probably within the next week. Once again, I don't think there's any better way to learn how to improve your photography than by participating in a digital image competition and hearing the judge's comments. Not only does it change your image perspective, allow you to gain many new insights from qualified judges and become inspired by the other photographers’ creativity that you see.  Watch for the re-broadcast….coming soon!

By the way, this summer's winner  was a print entitled "Dancing In The Rain" by Jason Higdon. Jason took home an onOne Perfect Photo Suite 6.0 for his efforts. Way to go Jason!

Inspiring Landscape Program By Jim Goldstein

After the print competition wrapped, we went LIVE with Jim Goldstein's outstanding landscape program. This presentation had everyone inspired and mesmerized for the entire 90 minute program. I've known Jim’s work for a number of years and am constantly amazed by how beautiful it is.

What was most amazing about his presentation this past Friday were images from a new project he's been working on. The new project has him photographing star trails over the desert. The images he presented were absolutely amazing. I populated part of the post with a the few of the audience favorites.

I asked Jim if we could re-broadcast this webcast as well and he was very gracious to oblige. So, look for that post, as well. I can't wait for you to see his wonderful images, listen to his inspiring presentation, and just be enthralled for the entire 90 minute presentation.

Social Media Made Simple! 

At nine o'clock Saturday morning we all re-convened in the large meeting room for A.J. Wood’s fabulous Social  Media Marketing program. A.J/ was our special guest last year and was such a hit we asked him to be part of this year’s, via the internet,  program too.

A.J. phoned in his enthusiastic, super informative  presentation on social media marketing. Last year when A.J. gave his program Google+ and Pinterest weren't even on anybody's radar yet. This year's presentation was a complete revamp of last year's presentation with heavy emphasis on Facebook's new features and great information on how to get the best use out of Google+ and Pinterest.

I ask A.J. if he would mind if we could rerun his webcast at a later date and he was again so gracious to oblige. Stay tuned, A.J.’s Social Media webcast will also be posted within the next couple weeks. It's another presentation you won't want to miss.

Speed Lighting with Nicholas and Eric

After A.J. completed his program, my good friends Nicholas Viltrakis and Eric Cameron put on a razzle-dazzle presentation  showing the very practical and creative side of speed-lighting. The audience loved their program. They are fun, knowledgeable, sharing tips and techniques for the everyday photographer as well as reviewing nearly a hundred creative images.

Fashion Photographer Extraordinaire!

Another one of the programs that was an audience favorite was the Fashion/Lifestyle presentation by Lou Freeman – Lou is short for Louise, BTW.  She has worked with the best of the best in the fashion industry – the best clients, models, and projects.  She had a long run at Playboy Magazine shooting 597 assignments for them over her long tenure with the magazine.

Lou’s program gave us a taste of that kind of world – a world many would like to aspire too.  Like wedding photography, she says that photography niche has gone through many changes too.  Regardless, her program was about her images and the back story surrounding those images – amazing work!

 

In the second half of her program we set up a LIVE photo-shoot with her beautiful model, Tamara, and Lou shoot tethered into Lightroom 4 giving the audience the instant gratification they wanted as Lou worked her fashion magic with Tamara. 

BTW, Lou will be presenting again at our much larger PhotoPro Expo 2013 next year – details to come.

Everyone Loved The Summer Shootout!

One of the highlights of our summer conference is our Summer Shootout. We have four of our top instructors come together for the event on Saturday evening. We divide all of the attendees into four groups. Each group gets to spend about 30 minutes with each of the instructors.  Each instructor shares their talents, creativity, and knowledge with each of the four groups. After 30 minutes the groups rotate onto the next photographer and so everybody's has a chance to sample the talents and inspiration of all four of our world-class trainers.

Not only do the instructors demonstrate great lighting and composition but, many will even give the class an opportunity to shoot the models using the lighting set ups so everyone that participates gets a chance – to add images to their portfolio. This is Ty and Shannon Fisher’s group you see in the photo on the right.

It's amazing what our trainers find to use as backgrounds. Lou Freeman, one of the favorite instructors at this year's summer event, found a back wall of the hotel that was kind of secluded. That wall contained wall decor that looked to me like sea urchins.

Lou knew right away that she had found the perfect place for her training sessions. In her mind she had visualized already how these compositional elements would play into the background and how she could add her own creative touch with special lighting to capture some very unusual images. One of her favorites, straight out-of-the-camera is featured below.

It was definitely a long day Saturday with many arriving about 8:30 a.m to get a front row seat. We wrapped at 11:00 p.m. just after a few appetizers the Summer Shootout  review from all the instructors sharing their favorite images. PhotoPro Network supplied the appetizers and refreshments and I think everybody really appreciated the treat.  Like I say, where can you find such a deal for only $89? The answer would be right here at PhotoPro Network;~)

After a fairly late night Friday and a very long day Saturday, we all reconvened back at the meeting room at 9:00 a.m. sharp Sunday morning. Jason Lykins was our special guest for the Sunday morning program. He wowed the audience by revealing the dark magic of Adobe's newly released Photoshop CS6.

I also presented a short 90 minute program on all the latest, greatest features of Lightroom 4. The audience really enjoyed the “Geek technique” portion of the Sunday presentations.

The New Young Guns Take Us Home 

After a short break for lunch, Ty and Shannon Fischer, two talented photographers  from Springfield, Ohio took the reins and had the audience locked to their seats until they completed their program at 4:30 in the afternoon. 

Ty and Shannon are cut from the cloth of that new breed photographer – early-to-mid 30s – creating contemporary images, growing their business yearly by double digit percentages, and are really making their mark in the world of photography.  They've been in business for five years and just opened their second studio location only two weeks ago. They've grown their operation into a quite successful enterprise by using all the best promotional marketing techniques available and also producing some outstanding imagery.  With so many people complaining about their dollar averages going down the drain, it's programs like Ty and Shannon's that are not to be missed.

After congratulating the both of them on a great job, Ty makes the comment back to me. He says, “We've just been learning from all you guys and the other great photographers whose programs we attended and are just putting into practice what they teach.” “Why invent the wheel,” he says. Once again a vote or why we should all attend these programs whenever possible.

Even though the days were long and many of us did not get to much sleep, it was a great weekend. On both Friday and Saturday evening after all the programming wrapped, you could still catch a couple of dozen people in the hotel lounge continuing to share their ideas with each other, but even more importantly, it was also about making new friends. The whole experience of a weekend like this is a wonderful  learning and growing experience that every photographer can benefit from.  I sure hope to see everybody again next year.

Secrets of Telephone and E-mail Sales Technique. – How To Become A Booking Wiz In Only 48 Hours!

Hey gang, that's going to be our topic of discussion at Wednesday’s webcast coming up tomorrow at 3:30 EST.  Charles Lewis and I have been friends for a many, many years. In fact, he's the one who gave me the “kick in the pants” I needed many years ago to get my business pointed in the right direction.

I've recently presented a couple of webinars and interviews with him for his web audience and he offered to return the favor for my DigitalProTalk readers. I sure didn't want to pass up the opportunity so we scheduled our sales and marketing webcast for Wednesday, July 17th – tomorrow. It should be quite a lively event with a lot of good information. Here is the registration link to all the info.

I think most of you should have received an e-mail and an invitation to attend – it's free! But, if you haven't you can hit the link right here  and get all the information for Wednesday's program. We're planning a 90 minute webcast and will be taking questions from the LIVE listening audience. I'm really looking forward to hearing Chuck's program, I hope you'll join me.

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Hey gang, that’s it for me today. How about I see everybody again tomorrow for another episode of our ongoing wedding series. I've actually got a few episodes in the works so stay tuned. It's turning into a much bigger project than I had anticipated but I think you really enjoy it.

Everybody have a great rest of the day and I'll see you soon, David

"I’m Ready For My Close Up, Mr. DeMille"

"I’m Ready For My Close Up, Mr. DeMille"
© David A. Ziser

The style of the bride’s hair and that direct look back into the camera is what inspired my title for this image.  I paraphrased from Gloria Swanson’s line in the movie Sunset Boulevard, which was directed by Cecil B. DeMille. (Whoops! Billy Wilder)  Cecil was the director In the movie.

This is another photograph from the wedding we recently photographed in Northern Michigan.  I only wish I was the one who captured the photograph.  This is actually one of LaDawn’s images – and she says she hates to shoot.  What, getting images like this!!!  I think it’s just beautiful.

I was working other aspects of the coverage and LaDawn, while helping the bride and the girls get organized with the wedding preparations was shooting the occasional candid of all the activities.  She has a way of engaging the clients that results in wonder (and beautiful) expressions and images. This is one of those times.

She also knows that the portrait will look best with the light crossing the subject as it does in this image.  ( I guess I had a good teacher!)  Lighting was all natural with the light coming in from a sliding glass door camera right.  The light colored walls offered a simple yet pleasing background for this beautiful portrait.

The way LaDawn caught that great expression is what makes this image work for me.  The fairly shallow depth of field also softened the background even more bringing the viewer’s attention directly to the bride’s beautiful (and surprisingly sharp) eyes.

I tweaked the image slightly in Photoshop and Lightroom 4 to get the B&W tonalities where I wanted them.  I just love this image as a black and white too – it just forces you to look directly back at the bride’s eyes. I love it!

Camera specs: Canon 7D fitted with 18-200mm lens at 200mm, F5.6 @ 1/80 second, ISO 2,500.  Enjoy!  -David

"Little Boy Blue"

"Little Boy Blue"
© David A. Ziser

This image was made during the wedding rehearsal of the wedding I was photographed in northern Michigan just a few weeks ago.  I just love roaming the grounds looking for great guest expressions that I can catch with my camera. The children are always favorite subjects for these candids. This little boy, the ring bearers for the wedding, had just arrived with his sisters and mom and dad.

He was a little shy and even when I pointed my camera in his direction, he really made no move at all to avoid camera. His simple, soft, gentle, innocent look back to the camera was exactly what I was looking for.

The lighting was perfect.  The light was coming in from through an open door camera right. The lighting ratio was perfect and the expression was natural.  I zoomed in for a very close cropped image of his face and fired away. In the very short amount of time that transpired get this photograph – only seconds – I believe I captured a timeless image of this very young boy, the ring bearer.

I tweaked the image slightly in Lightroom 4. I adjusted a few of the scene’s tonalities and added a slight vignette to focus the viewers attention even more to this young boy’s face. I also used the “adjustment brush” in LR4 to tone down some of the areas around his face to even more effectively focus on those beautiful facial features and big eyes.

A quick trip to Photoshop to finish up some facial retouching and some eye enhancement gave me the finished result. I think that when you consider the candid nature of this photograph and then view the finished result, it is very exciting and rewarding to pull off a striking image in a very short amount of time. To me that's part of the magic of this profession and it's one of the things I thoroughly enjoy accomplishing for my clients.

Camera specs: Canon 5D Mark III fitted with Tamron 28 – 300 mm lens at 184 mm, F6.3 @ 1/200 of a second, ISO 6400.  Enjoy!  – David

The Ziser Wedding Series: Experiencing The Complete Wedding Weekend – Part 3

Good Afternoon Everybody,

I can't believe it's Thursday already. It seems like the week is flying by. I think a large part of that has to do with the fact that we have a lot of projects were working on at the studio. LaDawn's been VERY busy getting a couple of client orders out and editing our recent weddings. And, I'm busy with wrapping up the loose ends for this weekend's PhotoPro Expo Summer School, getting closer to completing the book, and keeping blog posts coming your way.

That said, I'm still pretty excited about my new wedding series that I began sharing with our DigitalProTalk readers on Monday. Today will be the third installment of the series. One thought I had as I was putting this post together was that I wanted this series to be a more extemporaneous collection of my thoughts and my observations of the wedding over the three days we photographed the event. For me personally, I want to share with you the simplest of the details to the more complex challenges we faced over the weekend. Today's installment is just the beginning of the series narrative that I'll be sharing with you over the next few weeks.

So, let's get right to it.

Experiencing The Complete Wedding Weekend – Part 3

Checking in with my clients:

Whenever I'm doing a location wedding, I always like to check in with the clients upon our arrival.  Our two day drive had us landing at Frankfurt, Michigan late Thursday afternoon. With all the gear we packed, (better come prepared - safe not sorry) it was quite the chore to get everything unloaded into our hotel room and organized for the long weekend.  Once we were settled, I gave the client a quick call to let them know that we were in town - we made plans to meet at noon at their home the next day, Friday.

The first meeting with the client:

After we arrived at the family property and parked the car and there were lots of cars – as they were having a little pizza party with a lot of family members and friends. I carried my Canon 5D Mark III over my shoulder with its Tamron 28 – 300 mm lens attached. I wasn't really planning any kind extensive shoot for our visit but did want to be ready to record whatever caught my eye in our short visit with the client.

The first thing we noticed was the sign “Welcome to Crystal Lake Were Unabashed Merriment Abounds.” As I mentioned in a previous post, this was a common theme throughout the whole weekend so I quickly grabbed a photograph of the banner.

After being invited into their home and making our hellos I spotted a beautiful bouquet sitting on a cocktail table in the family room. The bouquet, let's call it the weekend bouquet, was carefully hand assembled by the bride's mother. Each ornament of the bouquet represented something special and had special meaning to the bride and her mother relating to memories as the bride was growing up. I took several photos of the bouquet and a few close-up photographs as well.

Setting the scene:

Next, I wanted to show the family property. These are just sort of reference photographs that I may choose to use as backgrounds or as scene setters in the overall presentation wedding coverage. As it turns out, I ended up using a number these photographs as background images for the title slides for the special slide program we presented for the client over the weekend.

Meeting old friends:

Even as we were wandering around saying HI to the family and their guests I noticed over my left shoulder that the bride was surprised and extremely happy to see two friends who made it in for her wedding weekend. I quickly excused myself from the conversation I was having and shifted into action to capture the the bride greeting her friends.

For me, it's about capturing the expression – the big smiles and hugs that friends share with each other after not seeing each other for quite a while.

I wasn't really there to photograph the pizza party but I was happy that I had grabbed a few photographs that I thought I might be able to use elsewhere in the final presentation.

It's rehearsal time:

The rehearsal was to take place later that evening with all of us meeting at five o'clock at the country club on top of a mountain overlooking Crystal Lake and Lake Michigan. The building was quite beautiful and the vistas were amazing. Once again, I took a few images just to set the scene for where the main wedding was going to be taking place. These two images also note the beginning of the weekend's festivities.

I’m pretty much “hands off” photographically speaking when photographing this kind of event.  My main goal is to photograph the people just being people. I want to show the family and the friends interacting with each other. I want to show everyone having a great time.

The wedding rehearsal is usually a time when families and maybe even friends are coming together that haven't seen each other for many months and sometimes even many years. The expressions that we can capture during those moments can be a wonderful memory for the bride and groom as we put their finished collection of images together.

As I’m moving through the crowd, I'll always take what I like to call coaxed candids. These are candids of groups that's happen to be standing around visiting with one another. In our first photograph below we see the three guys, friends of the groom,  just hanging out. I quickly call for their attention and get a simple photograph of all three of them.

The same is true with our next photograph with the groom's mother in the center surrounded by her sisters. You always have to show the cast of characters in these coverages. I'm trying to keep my lighting and the photography as simple as possible. The main goal is to capture the people, know the main characters for the big event and show natural responses and expressions.

In our next photograph we see the groom's father on the right and his brother-in-laws on the left. I have to admit, for me it was quite a surprise and thrill to see the gentleman in the middle. We have been good friends for over 25 years here in the Northern Kentucky area – he is a wonderful local attorney and good buddy of mine. 

When he first saw me and called out to me, I looked up and was surprised to see him in northern Michigan at my wedding.  We both thought what a small world. Here we are 900 miles away in a very rural part of northern Michigan and bump and into each other on this wedding weekend. It turns out his wife is the groom's aunt. We had a good laugh and a nice visit over the next three days.

Capturing the details:

In the various conversations I had with the bride and her family earlier in the day, I discovered that the bride made the dress she was wearing for the rehearsal evening out of her mother's wedding gown.  That means, photographically speaking of course, that it's important to capture the dress details. And, one of the details included the appliqué from her mother's wedding gown which the bride was wearing in her hair that evening.

It's important when having your conversations with your client that you make note of these very small details and be sure that they become part of your coverage for the wedding event. It's all about paying attention, not to just what's going on around you, but also to the nuances of the day that could go overlooked by the casual observer. But, should never go overlooked by the main observer – you, the photographer – who has been charged with capturing all the nuances and subtleties of the day.

Show all the beautiful people:

Look at the next image below. This is a photograph of the two girls the bride gave such a warm welcome to earlier in the day. I saw them sitting there enjoying each other's company and pointed the camera in their direction.  They stopped their discussion, looked back at me and smiled.  I clicked off the first photograph – and it’s underexposed of course because of the strong backlighting. As you can see the challenge in this situation was extremely strong backlighting on the both of them. I wasn't using any on-camera flash but I still knew I have to get a decent exposure in the final image.

This is one of the challenges as an event photographer we face when doing candids in constantly changing lighting situations. After looking at my first image I saw that I was severely underexposed. I quickly made an exposure adjustment exposing the next image about a stop and a half more than the first captured image.

As you can see I got a better image with great expressions.  This is exactly what I try to do when photographing these candid events. A few simple tweaks in Lightroom to bring down the highlights and add a touch of vibrancy to the colors finishes the photograph.

Don't forget the kids:

I knew that there were going to be a lot of kids at this wedding. As I recall from our previous conversation, we had a total of three flower girls and one ring bearer present for the wedding.  The children were at the rehearsal too and I learned an important lesson a long time ago. Always capture great photographs of the young kids.

I zoomed in closely on the little ring bearer cropping tightly to just see the very soft, gentle expression on his face. The natural light was coming in from camera right which gave me the exact lighting I wanted.  See my Image of The Day post above.

Next I turned and spotted his sister. Once again I zoomed in close and captured this soft, gentle expression of her as well. Both images I think will be favorites.

Next the bride wanted a photograph of the kids and quickly kneeled down between the both of them and asked me to take the photograph. Once again I was NOT using on-camera flash and fired away.

A quick look at the back of the camera told me that because of the strong backlighting  I was severely underexposed again so, after making a quick exposure adjustment – shifting exposure to plus 1 2/3 stops – I shot away a second time and got this quick candid photograph of the bride with her two nieces , the remaining two  flower girls. The lighting isn't perfect but the expression sure is and that's what's most important in capturing photographs like this. They are candid images, not formal portraits, that need to be captured quickly and without much interruption. 

I could review several more photographs and burn through several more words on this post but let’s not.  Today I just wanted to give you an indication of my thinking and my technique when photographing this event. It's not about creating these dramatic photographs of the bride and groom - it's mostly about capturing the real emotions and the real expressions of the principal players of the wedding weekend.

In my follow-up post on Monday I'll share with you some more photographs I captured during the actual wedding rehearsal. We were challenged with extremely severe lighting conditions that I'm glad we had a chance to evaluate during the wedding rehearsal. We were going to be faced with the same conditions the next day, during the actual wedding, and I knew I needed to have a game plan in place to be sure I got the optimum result.

Plan to stop back and read the next installment of our wedding series. I hope you enjoy.

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Hey gang, that's it for me today. We’ve still got a few more loose ends to tie up before we head off to Louisville, KY for our PhotoPro Expo Summer School.  We push off tomorrow around noon and the start of an exciting and very full weekend.

Don't forget, keep your pixels smiling.

Everybody have a great weekend and I'll see you soon.  – David

"Crystal Lake Beauty"

"Crystal Lake Beauty"
© David A. Ziser

This is just a simple classic wedding portrait of the bride and groom on the shores of beautiful Crystal Lake in northern Michigan.  This was the location of a second home for the bride’s family, a favorite place for the bride as she was growing up, and she decided the perfect location to have her wedding just a couple weeks ago.

My job was to capture the beauty of the location and try to bring a few of those childhood memories back for her as she viewed her wedding images.  We only had a few minutes to capture the photographs so I chose the widest optic I had in my gear bag to capture this beautiful landscape.

My plan was to keep the composition simple and symmetrical and focus primarily on Crystal lake’s beauty.  As simple and straight forward as this image is presented, I think it captures the spirit of the client’s intent.

The real challenge was getting the light on the subject’s.  I had my assistant, LaDawn, reach the strobe into the photograph so I could get enough light on the couple.  Yes, in the original photograph, you could clearly see the strobe and monopod extended into the scene.  A little Content Aware Fill CS6 magic solved the problem, thank you very much ;~)

I know the bride and groom are quite small in the composition, but that was not a big issue for me as I had several closer images of them.  This photograph was supposed to be about the lake, the view she and here family have loved for many, many years. As you can see, I certainly hope I was successful.

Camera specs: Canon 5D Mark III fitted with Sigma 12-24mm lens at 12mm, F11 @ 1/250 second,  ISO 200.  Enjoy!  -David

Creating Cool Slide Shows Part 1: Making The Images Look Good!

Good Afternoon Everybody,

I can't believe it's already after five o'clock this afternoon and I'm just getting to the blog post.  It has been quite a busy day getting things queued up for the Photo Pro Network Summer School happening this weekend in Louisville, Kentucky. Unfortunately, I've been behind the eight ball for most of the day with a super busy schedule. I still wanted to get the blog post up as promised and then I need to get back to my day job.  Here we go.

Creating Cool Slide Shows Part 1:  Making The Images Look Good!

I had planned for today's post to cover any and all aspects of creating a slide show for your client for the wedding day presentation but, once I got underway, I found out that it was going to go much longer than expected. So, what I plan to do is break the post into two parts. I'll get part 1 up today and then I'll get part two posted in the next few days.

I mentioned in Monday's post, when creating slide shows for our clients, many times we have to use of photographs that the clients have on hand.  The quality of these photographs can range from quite good to the far other end of the spectrum - you get my meaning here. What I want to do in today's video is walk you through some of the Lightroom 4 techniques that I use to bring out the best in all the photographs  that I've copied.  I discovered by using the full range of tonal controls in Lightroom 4 I'm able to resurrect a decent quality image, most of the time, with the procedures I'll discuss today.

Check out the video below to see what I'm talking about.

That wraps Part 1 of the process. I'll plan to get the second part completed just as soon as I can. In the second installment I'll discuss how we lay out the images, how I create the title slides, and how we present a slide show to my clients at their event. I sure hope you'll tune in.

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Hey gang, that's it for me today. I am way behind schedule today and I need to run. Have a great rest of the day and I'll plan to see everybody soon.

Adios, David

"Some Enchanted Evening"

"Some Enchanted Evening"
© David A. Ziser

This is an image later in the evening during the rehearsal dinner of my recent northern Michigan wedding. The restaurant’s location was just perfect to enjoy the beautiful setting sun over Lake Michigan. The crowds had pretty much disappeared from the beach this evening – those that were left I removed with the content aware tool in CS6 ;~)

 

The setting sun was working it’s wonderful cinematic magic on the horizon. I thought to enhance that cinematic sunset magic by making an HDR exposure of the scene – this is my result.

I feel that the new HDR features and my Canon 5D Mark III camera combined with the beautiful view of the setting sun gave me a beautiful image that truly does capture the feeling of the image’s title above.

 

In the original photograph I thought there was just a little too much space between the trees on the left and the umbrella you see in the foreground on the right. I took the image into Photoshop CS6 and used the “Content Aware Scale” feature to reduce that space just a bit and get the proper visual balance I was looking for in my final composition.

Going back into Lightroom 4, I tweaked the vibrancy, clarity, and saturation sliders just a bit to get the finished result I was looking for. I think the simplicity of this composition, the beautiful, rich, contrasting colors, and the peaceful, serene nature of the image make for a great landscape image.

Camera specs: Canon 5D Mark III fitted with Tamron 28–300 mm VC lens at 28mm, F6.3 at 1/50 second, ISO 400. Enjoy! – David

The Ziser Wedding Series: Experiencing The Complete Wedding Weekend

Good Morning Everybody,

I sure hope everybody had a great weekend was able to stay cool in whichever part of the world you're from. Our temperatures in my part of the world were hovering in the low 100s and, I have to tell you, most of us were trying our best to try and stay cool. 

But in spite of the heat, another very cool thing happening in our part of the world here in Cincinnati, Ohio was the fact that we were playing host to the World Choir Games. The World Choir Games is the Olympics of choral music. It is an event that brings together hundreds of choirs from around the world performing and competing in various venues throughout our lovely Midwest Ohio River valley.  This is the fist time the event has been held in the USA so it’s quite the big deal for our part of the country.

There are so many choirs in town for this giant event that many choirs have been giving free performances throughout the city. On Saturday I heard that one performance was taking place right down the street from us, in Northern Kentucky, in a beautiful setting above the Ohio River overlooking downtown Cincinnati, OH.   In spite of the 104° weather, I grabbed my camera and headed out to record the event.

It was quite a treat. My favorite choir performing at this presentation was the Melodia Choir from near Moscow, Russia. Their performance was tight, enthusiastic, and par excellence. In fact, they received three standing ovation's from the crowd that had ventured out in the sweltering heat to see and hear them perform.

It really was HOT!  As I wandered around the venue in the hot, direct sun, I don't ever remember my camera feeling that hot in my hands. It wasn't so hot that was burning my fingers but, I have to tell you, that black camera body was darn hot!  Anyway, my heart went out to the young people in the choir who were there in full dress attire performing for 30 minutes in a blazing 104° heat.  I love how the translator introduced one of the songs – it was about winter she said, the Russians’ favorite season of the year. Upon making the announcement, the entire audience giggled as beads of sweat poured down their brows.

As a side note…. it was later reported that neither the Russian choirs or the choirs from Ireland have ever experienced the extreme temperatures we have been having in the Midwest. They considered it just part of their travel experiences!

In any event, once the music started and you caught the enthusiasm of the performers, the effects of the heat quickly disappeared and you reveled in the musical miracle you were hearing and seeing before your very eyes.

The Choir Games are scheduled to go on through next weekend and I’m excited to see if I can catch a few more performances before the end of the event. It’s well worth it fellow Cincinnatians!

The Ziser Wedding Series: Experiencing The Complete Wedding Weekend

Today I’m beginning a new series entitled “Experiencing The Complete Wedding Weekend”. In this series I plan to walk you through a day-by-day synopsis of my recent experience photographing a fabulous wedding for some of my favorite clients which took place in northern Michigan two weeks ago. I’ll try to walk you through every nuance of that entire experience from the preparations we had to make before our arrival into Frankfort, Michigan and then the play-by-play for each of the three days, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, that I photographed the event.

I'm going to try to keep these reads fairly short so that you’ll not lock yourself to your computer for hours every morning trying to follow along. I'm also going to break the series into about 12 sections.   So, I hope you'll stick with me over the next several weeks as I share with you one of my favorite weddings. Here we go...

Part 1:

Do Something Special For Your Clients

When I photographed the bride's brother's wedding a little over a year ago in Phoenix, Arizona, I volunteered to put together a short slideshow of the couple showing the good times when they were small children through the present day when they were enjoying each other as an engaged couple. The presentation went over quite well last year and the clients loved the results. We eventually made three Hi-def DVDs for both set of parents and the bride and groom to enjoy on their big-screen TVs.

I offered to do the same for Genevieve and her fiancé, Kevin, for their upcoming wedding too. In today’s post I'm going to cut to the chase and give you the quick play-by-play on how to put together a slide presentation for your clients.

Organization Is Key –

This is how I did my best job to keep things somewhat organized for the project.

One - I asked the bride and groom to gather their childhood images from all the family albums that they could get their hands on. That’s my bride missing the tooth in the image on the right.

DAZNOTE:  This is also an image I made for the family over 20 years ago when I was just starting my business.  They still enjoy those family albums I created for them even today. 

Two - This is an important step. I asked him to arrange each of those photographs into year-by-year order allowing me to photograph the entire sequence without much confusion or guessing of the correct time-line.

DAZNOTE: It's important that the client does this for you because, no matter how good you are at guessing ages, you'll never get 100% of those images in the proper time sequence.

Three - The amount of photographs is important that your clients select. I found that a good number for these growing up photographs  should include no more than about 100 images each. I know at first glance it sounds like a lot but, when you consider that they're going to be presented in the slideshow with about a 2 or 3 second duration, it's really not long at all.

It's interesting to note that sometimes you'll have more photographs from the bride's side than you do from the groom's side or visa-versa. That seemed to be the situation for my couple this time. Nevertheless, with some additional discussion with the groom's mother, we were able to equalize out the number of photographs for both the bride and groom in the show.

Four – One of the main considerations when putting the shows together is a fact that many of these images are already bound and included in family albums and scrapbooks.  It's sometimes difficult to remove these images without doing damage to either the photograph or the album. In this situation, I asked the bride and groom to attach Post-it notes to their favorite images with the sequence number of that image noted on the Post-it note. I just pull the Post-it note, make my copy and replace the note in case I need it for future reference.

DAZNOTE: When working with both loose images and family albums/scrapbooks, it's best for the bride and groom to use Post-it notes to sequence each and every one of their 100 images – even the ones in the albums. That way, when you collect all of those images, both in albums and loose photographs, you’ll have an easy way to keep them in order when you make your copies.  Let me assure you, that with a little organization in the beginning of the project, you can save yourself all kinds of headaches in the post production. Remember, the project’s success is the result of your joint efforts – you and your clients - to bring the show to it’s full and exciting conclusion.

Five – Okay, now you have all the “growing up” photographs of both the bride and the groom easily organized. Next you want to get a series of fun photographs of both of them as a couple like this one of them “hamming it up” on a trip to England. The cool thing about that, at least today, is a fact that many people have lots of much more easily organized digital images that they can share with you.

To reiterate, the “growing up” photographs are going to be older family snapshots from family albums and scrapbooks. The couples photographs, most of the time, will be the digital variety which makes it much easier to organize.

I asked a couple, once again the put together about 100 images of both of them together organizing those images from their first days together to their most recent days together. The problem of sequencing those images with Post-it notes, as we did in the earlier collection of images, mostly goes away since most of images were time stamped when the digital images were created.  That means that they sequence themselves from oldest to newest.  With these “couples” images in their own separate digital folder, it’s easily  for me to combine these with the two earlier sets of both of them individually growing up.  Hey, if we still need to make some additional copies from snapshots, it’s back to the Post-it notes for those images.

Six - If the couple hasn’t done so yet,  I suggest that we do an engagement series of both of them as the wrap-up images for their couples section. That way, I know I have the most recent images of them which provide a dramatic and classy wrap-up to the slide presentation I'll be making for them.

DAZNOTE: For my Michigan couple,  they had a friend of the family, a very talented photographer Hannah, who created a wonderfully fun and creative collection of images of both Genevieve and Kevin simply enjoying each other. The theme was the Gatsby look complete with antique car.  It was a great series that provided the amazing conclusion to their slide presentation. 

That pretty much covers the organizational side,  collecting and organizing the photographs, of the slide show presentation. I'm going to tell you right off - sometimes it can be a challenge to get all of these images organized but, with a little effort, you can put together a collection of about 350 images that will result in a very impacting slide presentation for both families on the wedding weekend. 

Since I'm already way into my daily 500 word limit for the series, I’m going to ask you to tune in again tomorrow where I’ll discuss in our Technique Tuesday episode how to handle the post production work in building the finished slideshow.

Making good copies of many of these less than professionally taken images, although not daunting, can still be challenging in finessing the best photographic results for your slideshow. Tomorrow I'll show you a few Lightroom tips and tricks for some of those less-than-perfect images. Also, I’ll discuss image resolutions and organization in getting the final slideshow completed.

I hope you join me again tomorrow for the rest of the story.

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Hey gang, that's it for me today. I'm still pounding away at my book – about 45,000 so far and I’m still slightly behind schedule.  I’m also still working on our PhotoPro Expo Summer School coming up this weekend in Louisville, KY.

We got a smaller crowd than usual coming so I hope if you're in the area you’ll consider stopping by and being part of the festivities. Once again, you can get all the details about this upcoming weekend event right here.

We've got one heck of a lineup and one heck of a weekend planned. The cost of admission is super reasonable $89 – not bad for two days of programs. You can register right here online or, give our Executive Director, Randy Fraley a call at 606-571-1908. Randy will be happy to give you all the details and be sure you have a seat reserved for the the weekend. I sure hope to see you there.

Have a great rest of the day. It looks like it's going to be a cooler one so enjoy it and I'll see everyone sometime tomorrow.

Adios, David

Announcing my 2010 Success Collection! http://digitalprotalk.blogspot.com/2010/05/announcing-my-2010-digital-wakeup-call.html

"Making A Forth Of July Exit"

"Making A Forth Of July Exit"
© David A. Ziser

This image is one of the last images I made during this past weekend's wedding. Just like her brother's wedding a little over year at ago, the bride decided to make the grand exit with her groom with sparklers a-blazing. Everybody was holding the extra long, giant size variety which  would assure that the sparklers would stay lit for the entire exit.

This can be a tricky photograph to set up. The reason for that is twofold. First, I want to be sure that I record the sparklers adequately.  Next, I always like to add the back-lighting to the scene which just adds a greater sense of the dramatic to the scene.

I had my assistant, LaDawn in this case, hold my Quantum strobe which was set at 1/4 power. Next I figured that I could get by with a higher ISO and chose 6400 ISO. I figured that high ISO would easily capture the sparklers for my exit photograph. In retrospect I'm thinking maybe the power setting on my backlighting was a little harsh but, I went with it anyway and this is a photograph that we got.

I think it captures the spirit of the event perfectly – the bride and groom full of excitement heading off on their honeymoon. The sparklers also echoed the upcoming Fourth of July holiday which was only a few days away. All in all, I think it makes a great wrap up photograph for a terrific wedding coverage.

Camera specs: Canon 5D Mark III fitted with Sigma 12–24 mm lens at 12 mm, F6.3 @ 1/80 second, ISO 6400. Enjoy! – David

Technique Tuesday On Thursday: Fast, Easy Event Lighting – Part 2

Good Morning Everybody,

After 7 days of being on the road and 1450 miles of driving (traffic jams included) we arrived safe and sound mid-day yesterday and are happy to be home after our seven-day adventure.

I can't believe it, the seven days the time has flown by and it sure feels like we got a lot accomplished in that short amount of time. The highlight of our travels was a three-day wedding that I photographed in Frankfort, Michigan.  Don't forget look for my upcoming wedding series that I mentioned on Monday of this week.  It is scheduled to begin first thing Monday morning next week.

Hey gang, we just got back and already we got lots on our plate.  Let's get right to today's post.

Technique Tuesday On Thursday: Fast, Easy Event Lighting – Part 2

Two weeks ago I posted a lighting centric Technique Tuesday. You can find that lighting post RIGHT HERE.   It was a big favorite among our DigitalProTalk readers. Because of a new high ISO cameras I was able to change up my lighting techniques a bit at a recent wedding reception.  The new lighting technique gives me a tremendous amount of versatility in capturing the reception candids these days.

I received a few comments and emails from several of our DigitalProTalk readers asking me how I would change up the lighting set up in a smaller space. Well folks, that's exactly what happened this past weekend. I was working in a much smaller space and didn't have the benefit of second-story balconies in which the place my lights.

The cool thing this weekend was that my technique was exactly the same as two weeks ago. I chose to use one eight-foot light stand and one taller, 12 foot light stand. I attached my Quantum T5d flash heads to the light stands with each was powered by the Quantum Turbo 3 power packs.

Because of the high ISO capabilities of my Canon 5D Mark III, I was able to use ISO 1600 for all of these candids. This allowed to set the power on my Quantum strobes to only 1/16th power. At 1/16 power I was getting nearly instant recycle time from my strobes for the fast paced wedding reception.

The fact that I was only dumping 1/16 power also meant that the strobe batteries only depleted about one quarter of their charge by the end of the four hour reception. In essence, I could've photographed a 12 hour event and had plenty of "juice" in the batteries to finish a day-long shoot.

Less Powerful Shoe-mount Strobes Would've Worked Too

Let's put this in perspective for the shoe mount flash shooters. Most shoe mount flashes run around 60 W seconds except for the more powerful Nikon SB 900. Given the fact that most of these shoe mount strobes are 60 WS and, considering the fact that I was only using 10 WS of power coming out of my Quantum's, means that you got plenty of fire power in shoe mount flashes to pull off the same feat. You could literally shoot your shoe mount flashes at 1/6 power equaling the 10 WS output from my Quantum firing at 1/16 power, and still get plenty light on the scene.

Why not follow along with me on my video tutorial below.  I want you through exactly how I set everything up, how I covered the various locations on the dance floor, and got a great coverage at this past weekend's event.

You know folks, technology has only made our gear cheaper, faster, and better. Technology has given us more opportunities than ever before to do the best job possible for our clients. That's why I find it extremely frustrating when I hear so many photographers taking the easy way out on wedding and event coverages.

For me, it's always about the difference making a difference. It's always about raising the standard on the types of imagery we can produce for our clients. It's always about giving the client the absolute best that we can achieve with our technology, craftsmanship, skills, and creativity. I certainly hope that all of our DigitalProTalk readers will consider this with all your upcoming events and continue to give your clients the absolute best – it's what they deserve it anyway.

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Hey gang, that's it for me today. Yes, I know, I've been gone for about a week which means that there is once again a lot of things on my plate. To be honest with you, I'm trying to get full point in my life where my plate isn't so full all the time.

Today I've got to get back to the book since I've laid off of it for about seven days and I'm slightly behind schedule. I'm planning to use the next few days and this coming weekend to get caught up.

In a few more weeks I'll be putting a little more polish on the book and hopefully be able to share with you a few excerpts from my efforts. Every day, it seems I get a new idea on how to make this book more interesting and an exciting read for not only all of our DigitalProTalk readers but for all photographers out there shooting.

So, have a great rest of the day and I'll see you soon.

Adios for now, – David

"Mysterious Lake Michigan"

"Mysterious Lake Michigan"
©David A. Ziser

I captured this image yesterday as we were heading south out of the upper reaches of Sleeping Bear National Seashore.  We were told that just last year the area was named as one of the most beautiful drives in the country.  The sights were amazing to behold.

Pulling off at one of the popular overlooks, it was just amazing to view out over one of the most amazing vistas we had ever seen.  We were standing on one of the highest sand dunes on the Lake Michigan coast looking out onto this vast sea of water.  My first impression was that what I was seeing looked even larger than the ocean.  The breath and the depth of the vista was absolutely amazing!!!

I noticed small land masses in the distance punctuated with variations in the water’s surface that when I zoomed into them cropping off the vastness of the water, these land masses took on a very mysterious look.  The long zoom of the lens and the variations in the atmosphere played optical tricks on the scene that, for me, gave it a very cool look.  This is one of my favorite views from yesterday's shoot.

Camera specs:  Canon 5D Mark III fitted with 28-300mm lens at 300mm, F14 @ 1/1600 second, ISO 500.  Enjoy!  -David

A New Series Coming Your Way!

Good Morning Everybody,

I have to tell you that since I last checked in a lot has happened.  Good things of course, and I can't wait to tell you about them.  In fact, just check out a few of the images accompanying this post – way cool!!!  It was last Thursday when I was pretty fired up and left you with a Business Day Thursday post to think about.  For LaDawn and I, we set out for the rest of our trip northward looking forward to a great weekend and wedding celebration. All of that has transpired exactly as I expected.  We had the opportunity to work with some of my favorite clients over the next three days, at some beautiful locations and captured some amazing images. 

Over the weekend I've got a great idea I want to tell you about today.  The entire wedding weekend was a blast, photographically speaking.  Each day of our three day shoot had me reaching deeply into my photographic "bag of tricks" to be able to give the three day coverage it's best result. Because of the constantly varying lighting circumstances in which we were working, The solutions were as varied and creative.

Instead of spending a quick few minutes each day this week just throwing up highlights from the weekend, I thought what I would do instead is take you with me on this past weekend's photographic wedding journey.  I want to share with you the challenges and tribulations of all the nearly 25 hours and 100 gigs of data we devoted to this fabulous weekend.  I think you'll enjoy the trip.

The Is One Small Hitch Though

After spending three glorious days in the coolest part of the USA, average temperature about 82 degrees for all three days, we looped the top reaches of Michigan and today continue heading south into the the great. HOT Midwest ;~) 

The wedding festivities kept us so busy that I have had little time to devote anything else.  My book has been on hold since last Wednesday – YIKES!  I’m 10,000 words behind!!!  And readying blog posts has not been even a remote possibility on my radar.  So today I'm giving you an update on my plan.

After leaving Northern Michigan yesterday we are "holed up" in a Quality Inn, I think in West Branch, Michigan just south of Grayling, Mi.  We pulled in last night about 10:00p.m. and we're whooped.  It's a little after 8:00 a.m. this morning and we need to hit the road in a short time - we are catching up with friends later today.

So, here is the plan the next few days.  I'll plan to check in with you and give you trip updates and share a few wedding weekend experiences with you as we continue to travel south eventually landing back home on July 4.  Time is going to be very short so you'll have to bear with me.  The good news is that when I begin the "Share My Wedding Weekend Series", it will be well worth the read.  To rush it out now does a disservice to you and me, because of my time constraints on giving you the full story.  I still haven't even had a chance to download the over 100 gigs of images to my computer - I told you it was a great shoot :~)

The series will describe my entire creative process under every shooting situation, and there were many. And give you insights into the creative decisions I made along the way that resulted in a complete wedding coverage that I think was one of my best ever.  Look for the first installment later this week and to continue for the next several days.

On that note gang, we need to hit-the-road so try to stay cool and I'll be checking in with you throughout the week as we continue our travels south.

Have a good one and I'll see you soon,  David