Unbecoming Levity

Oh Yeah. I Have a Blog.

Abacquer — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:58:54 -0400

What I don't have is interest. There's a lot going on in my life, and I'd rather get on with it than write about it. Besides I doubt anybody really wants to read about it. So I've been neither writing in my blog, nor really reading the blogs of others. I check in on Aces Full and Pandora's Tea Room every now and again, but that is pretty much it. I post on MOTL every now and again, but not too frequently now that the werewolf games were cancelled due to people taking them too seriously.

What's been occupying my time is my photography business. It seems to be picking up, which is great, because I simply love this work. I did a school dance in February, and a photoshoot for an aspiring actor. In May I did a costume shoot for a dance school which is the first shoot I've done where I can unequivocably say that I made pretty good money.

June's been hopping. I did a graduation shoot for a relative (no money, but I did some networking at the school while I was there that might turn into business), and a graduation party for the same relative. This past Thursday night I shot the dress rehearsal for a stage production of a dance interpretation of Peter Pan. Friday night I shot the eighth grade dance of a middle school in southeastern Massachusetts. Then Saturday I shot the 1PM and 7PM performances of Peter Pan (42 Gb of pix in one day... yowza!)

I wrote about this a little bit on a message forum, so I figured I'd share that here.

June 12, 2009 11:01 AM

Last night's shoot went well but I am exhausted. I took a chance and produced a 36" x 24" (poster size) print of the main cast (with some added text) and it came out GREAT. I was amazed. I expected at that size the image would be very fuzzy--you know "stand a few feet away and it will look fine". Nope, it was nice and sharp. About 90 minutes of post production and cost about $50 to print, and I gave it to the dance school director as a gift.

She went positively gaga over it and hung it immediately as a poster for her show. The kids loved it too.

Of course I had a couple totally unrealistic parents come up to me after the show asking if I "had any extras" or would "give them one". "These are quite expensive to print. Of course I can have one made and shipped to you but it would cost $100." "Oh forget it then." LOL. It's so hard to make money in this business unless you are doing weddings or products. For the costume shoot I spent 8 hours shooting, and 50 hours in post production. My total profit after printing and shipping was $800--that's $13.75 per hour and no matter what price you charge people think it's too much.

Anyway the dress rehearsal shoot went great, apart from the 580 EX burning though batteries like there's no tomorrow. 4.5 hours of shooting, 1,105 pictures, 30 batteries eaten. I picked up a digital frame and loaded it with a bunch of work I've done over the last couple years and set that up next to the fliers--that got some attention. I had a number of people come up to me after the show and tell me how much they loved my work, which is always nice. We'll see if they still love me when I raise my prices next year.

So tonight I have a middle school dance to shoot, and then tomorrow I have to shoot the performances that I went to the dress rehearsal for. Busy few days!

June 13, 2009 1:55 AM

Tonight's Middle School Dance shoot was exhausting but fun. These kids were different that the kids at my daughter's middle school--they were a lot stiffer... nobody danced for like the first 90 minutes. I was like WTF? Heck I wanted to put the camera down and dance myself. The DJ was great, all the tunes were current.

This was an 8th grade dance and soon the kids will all be going off to different highschools so there was a lot of emotionality... a lot of kids were crying toward the end... that doesn't exactly make for a nice photo.

Kids at my daughter's art school are also more hammy for the camera, these kids pretty much constantly ducked and hid whenever the camera showed up. This behavior drives me nuts, I'm being paid to shoot the dance, these kids are bawling that they're not going to see their friends again, and they're not going to have pictures of their friends to remember because they're too busy responding to the camera in the way they've been trained to respond "ooh don't take my picture I look ugly". You just want to say "Jesus, grow up already." Sometimes I say to them "this may come as a surprise, but we can all see you... we already know what you look like." No matter, I just switched to the 200mm and shot long... you get nice closeups that way and the kids don't know who is being photographed.

All in all I think it went well. Two big shoots tomorrow... man am I beat.

June 13, 2009 9:44 AM

Fell out of bed about 8:20... showered, shaved, and will be heading out for the third and biggest of this weeks three shoots. What an exhausting time this has been! No flash today ('cept before and after) so I shouldn't need a frickin' gross of AA batts...

June 14, 2009 7:37 PM

Yesterday's shoots were positively EXHAUSTING! But I think it went well. At the end of the afternoon performance I knew I was in trouble tho... I had shot 20+ Gb of pictures, and I only had 22 Gb in CF cards with me. I had time before the 7PM performance so I went to best buy and purchased another 20 Gb of CF memory (1x 8 GB, 3x 4 Gb). During the second performance I shot the entire remaining 22 Gb. For the after photos I had to switch from RAW to JPG, and pull out my old "emergency card"--a 512 mB card that I've often questioned why I still carry it. Thank heavens I had it!

But 42 jigglebytes in a single day is some outrageous shooting. About 3,500 pictures. Sorting through this is going to be fun. Lightroom is chewing on them now and probably will be until tomorrow.

Emma was able to perform as Peter Pan, which was nice, though she had to hold back and give a slightly more subdued performance to prevent further injury to her ankle. It was nice seeing her dance at all though.

The "movie poster" was a big hit. About 700 people filed past it and every time I went out into the hall to shoot candids there were people looking at it and my digital frame (yay!). The thing I liked best was when I caught the dancers looking at it, they really liked it and it made for some nice photos. Have I mentioned how much I love this work?

I got more compliments and requests on Saturday, some people looking to buy the poster print. I added it to the show gallery and enabled large format printing options (and T-shirts, which my lab has begun to offer).

So now begins the long slog of post processing. But with so many pictures to choose from I should be able to come up with some that are sure to please. And the post work should be hella easier than the costume shoot was.

Gonna be a lot of busy nights tho... but not today, today I am recuperating... 12 hours of driving over the last 3 days, getting home every night after 1 AM, sore as heck from shooting...

(Good news, I had two orders today from earlier galleries. Yay! Only $70 but I'm taking it as a good sign.)

Wow am I beat. But it's a good kind of beat, when you feel like you accomplished something.

On a quick run through the performance photos I found a nice little series. Peter Pan was not on a wire, so she got about by making beautiful acrobatic leaps. I managed to snap a series of leaps (on the tail end of the leap as she was coming down) as she leapt around the dancer playing the part of Wendy Darling. In the series it looks like Peter is flying... Sweet!

Election: Morning Photos

Abacquer — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:48:34 -0500

The photos are up! Here's my polling station at about 7:15 AM this morning. I vote in precinct 2A so I signin on the right side of the room. Click the photo to see all photos I've taken or will take today.

Business Website Updated

Abacquer — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:58:41 -0400

Well I spent this afternoon making some more updates to my business website. I incorporated a few more images and rearranged the order of the images on the thumb bar at the bottom of the page.

I also added arrow buttons to allow the user to manually rotate through the thumbs, and also set the thumb bar to auto-rotate if the image currently displayed by the slideshow doesn't appear on the thumb bar.

One invisible but important change was to set up timely preloading of the images such that there shouldn't be a big wait for individual images to load, but also no big wait up front. Basically the page now loads an image, and schedules the preload of the next image a few seconds later, long before the slideshow will automatically display it. In this way, the next image is loading while the user is viewing the current image, and should avoid delays.

If the user dorks with the thumb-bar the preloads and slideshow are cancelled and rescheduled to be further out. Theoretically this should prevent the user from being interrupted while working the toolbar with annoying delays or images loading.

Briaver and the Lynneaputians

Abacquer — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 21:29:08 -0400

So my friend Brian had an idea for a fun photo he wanted me to create for him. He wanted to be Gulliver of Gulliver's Travels, tied down on a beach by the Lilliputians... all of whom would be played by his wife Lynnea.

I originally wanted to shoot this on a beach (as per the original idea) but the lake in Chelmsford, MA that we were relaxing at didn't afford a beach with a suitable layout for the shot. So we instead did it on a nearby grassy knoll.

First we "bound" Bri by encircling him over and over with a thin twine. Then I helped him lie on a slightly raised knoll and lay flat before him so that the camera would be angled up to make him appear bigger. I said "imagine there is a six inch high person standing on your chest lecturing you" so that he would look in that direction. That was the first shot.

The subsequent shots all featured Lynnea using the thickest rope I could find on short notice as a prop. Bri would stand out of shot (typically on a footstool) and hold the rope while Lynnea would pull on it this way and that.

After recording about a dozen different poses, we did the lecturing pose, and then I shot the "sitting on the toes pose" when Lynnea was just relaxing on the stool. I thought the pose would come in useful and as you can see it did.

Shots were all done by daylight, no flash. EOS 5D with the EF 24-70mm 2.8L lens, which is the widest I own.

Then, after some cleanup in lightroom, came the hours of photoshop work to carefully clip Lynnea out of her surroundings in various pictures and edit her into this one at reduced scale. I thought the grass, which to a Lilliputian should be knee high at least, would be a problem, but it turned out that just using a gradient transparency on the ends of her legs (or whatever was closest to the ground) worked fine unless you look really close.

Things I would do differently if I shot this again:

I really need to get a chromakey backdrop for shoots like this. I shot Lynnea against a grassy green background, but that was not uniform enough to make clipping her out simple... it was fun, but it was a LOT of work.
Lynnea had been swimming prior to the shoot, and threw on a pair of pants for her poses. But in each subsequent pose water slowly seeped through the material and created spots in various places. I was mostly able to edit those out, but it was additional work.
Get thicker rope, or simply edit the rope out altogether and use the twine. The size difference between the reduced rope and the twine bugs me a little.
A beach location with a nice uniform ocean background would have made for easier editing.
I would have backed off a little more when shooting Bri. At 4x6, 6x9, or 8x12 the photo is fine, but at 8x10 the ends get clipped. That was just dumb on my part... to produce an unclipped 8x10 print some edits would be required.

All that said, I am really pleased with how the resulting image came out. And more importantly, my beloved friends Brian and Lynnea are happy with it, which is really what this was all about. Doing something nice for people I hold very dear in my heart.

Love you guys, glad you liked the photo!

What's With That Big Glowing Ball in the Sky?

Abacquer — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 09:36:06 -0400

Oh I remember now... that's the sun! I saw that the day we left to go on our vacation here in Rainland. How nice that it has decided to grace us with its presence... on the last day. Well I'm not going to be cynical today (I mean, after this point). Clark's Bridge was a bust yesterday... rain dumping down and you have to pay to get in to the tourist trap it is ensconced in... a veritable fortress of phony, brightly-painted, dreck. So I'm not going back there. But maybe I can get to the Flume Bridge today. We'll see. Either way there should be something to shoot.

Unless it starts raining.

Okay, starting from now, I mean...

I Can Haz Internet?

Abacquer — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 09:43:22 -0400

So yesterday I was exhausted in the morning. I had fallen asleep about 10 PM the night before and then woke up around 2 AM. I was excited to be writing about Mara and Kennis again, and when I woke up I went back to work on it. By 7 AM the chapter was nearing completion but I was utterly wasted. So toward the end it got a little rushed but all in all I was satisfied.

It also looked to be the only day we weren't going to have rain. So needless to say the fam was up and about by 8 and looking to go out for a day hike. But I was so not up to it. So I slept on the couch while they went out and had fun. I woke up around 1:15 or so, and trekked to the information center in Thornton where there was a public access internet terminal. The wifi on this old laptop is fried... so I need more than an access point.

When I got there two people were coming out, a man and a woman, and the man was saying "well ya, I could have checked that if I could have gotten on the computer." That didn't sound good.

Once inside I noticed a teenage girl was on the computer, so I decided to kill some time and asked the person on staff for information about local architecture that I could shoot. He recommended a list of covered bridges starting with the Blair Bridge. I had already shot the Blair Bridge last year, but thought it would be nice to try again with the 5D. Plus I had an idea for something new to try, and even had the necessary lens in my bag--fisheye shots from inside a covered bridge. I thought that would look really cool.

We talked for about 20 minutes. When we were done the young lady was still using the computer, so I said, quite clearly from about 3 feet away. "Thank you sir, do you mind if I wait here for a bit? I need to use your internet access." The staff member said, "Sure no problem." The young lady glanced up at me and then went back to what she was doing.

I had brought my Kennis and Mara story with me, all preformatted and ready to post. All I would need to do is copy and paste it into a window and click a button. Then I wanted to check my mail, respond to any comments on my blog or flickr, check twitter and post a tweet about shooting bridges, and then I would be on my way. I figured it was about 10-15 minutes of time on the computer. So I sat in the chairs provided to wait. These chairs are situated immediately behind the computer, which is probably not a good idea because it means you can see whatever the person using the computer is doing.

And in this case the person using the computer was on MySpace. I realize it is a public access terminal, and nothing I was going to do was any more important than poking about on MySpace. That wasn't the problem. The problem was this young person was posting comments on MySpace pages and then waiting for responses to be posted. Or rather, hoping responses would be posted. She would check her incoming MySpace messages, and then scroll up and down, up and down, up and down, on her MySpace page, continually refreshing it, to see if she had gotten a response. After a few minutes of no response, she would click on one of her friend's pages, post a message there, and then return to her page and scroll around waiting for responses. This is clearly not the way such a resource should be used, you get on, you do what you need to, and you get off. If you are going to just wait around for messages to be posted, you let other people on and get back on when they are done.

After about 15 minutes she got bored scrolling around, so she went to YouTube to watch videos of kittens playing with toys. After 5 minutes or so of this she glanced back at me, at the time I wasn't looking exactly at her. I was looking a little to the right, sitting forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped, and clearly doing nothing other than waiting. I think it occurred to her at this point that it was obvious she was just fucking around with the PC, so she had three options: (1) get off and get back on later, (2) do something other than simply kill time, or (3) try to make it *look* like she was doing something other than kill time and hope that I would give up and go away... like the people before me had.

Guess what option she chose? She turned back to what she was doing and opened a new browser window. The home page was a New Hampshire tourist information page, so she clicked around and pretended to read information about local attractions that she probably would not be visiting. And then, about once every 30 seconds or so, she would switch back to the browser window containing her MySpace page, refresh it, look for new messages, and then minimize it and go back to pretending to read tourist information. Occasionally she had a message, but most of the time she didn't.

I was not going to be bested by this kid, so I remained where I was. I figured I would wait until she looked at me again and if she did I would ask her how long the wait was going to be. I figured I could offer as a consolation that it would take about 15 minutes for me to take care of what I needed to post.

It took another 10 minutes or so before she looked at me again. By now I had been in the information center for almost an hour. This time when she looked at me, I made eye contact with her and made clear from my expression that I was not going to leave.

"Are you waiting to use this computer?" she asked.

Gimme a break. She knew I was waiting. Still I just wanted to get on, so I gave her an out.

"Yes. I need access for about 15 minutes."

"Um, okay, I'm almost done I just need 2 more minutes."

Yeah. Two minutes so you can post a message to whoever you are yakking with on MySpace to let them know you need to get off the computer and you will be back in 15 minutes.

"That's fine thanks."

After about 5 minutes she shut down her MySpace page.

"Ok all set."

"Thanks. I'm just checking my e-mail and posting an article. I should be done in 10 to 15 minutes, and then you can get right back on."

"Okay, thanks." And then as she left "I'll be back in 15 minutes."

She was just letting me know not to take my time. Now if I had been an asshole I'd have sat there and waited for her to get back, then watched videos of kittens on YouTube. But I actually had things I wanted to do that day... and should have long since gotten started doing them.

It took 10 minutes for me to post my material, check my mail, and respond to my messages. And then I left. No kid in sight outside.

But I'll be returning today to post this article, upload 5 covered bridge fisheye-pix to flickr, and check and respond to mail/comments. And of course to minimize my time on the PC I have prepared everything in advance. Should take about 10 minutes again. I wonder if I will have the joy of waiting for her again? My plan this time is to show up at 9 AM. I got the sense this young person doesn't do 9 AM.

The fisheye pix came out nice BTW (1 2 3 4 5). When I get home I'll be able to do some proper post processing. All I have here is IrfanView, which doesn't do well with Canon RAW files. 100% chance of rain today, but it is 8:22 AM and nothing has started yet. So I am probably going to at least *try* to shoot some covered bridges today. Wish me luck!

Watching Ants

Abacquer — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:04:49 -0400

Yes I know, first I'm writing about the likelihood of contacting alien civilizations, then I'm talking about immortal humans who have sex for three days straight and write books in their sleep, and then about creepy flickrites, and now I am writing about watching ants. You don't come here for consistency.

I was leaving my office around lunchtime the other day for a brief walk. The front of the building has a raised garden with some azaleas and a really nice looking stone wall bordering it. As I walked out I noticed the wall was swimming in tiny black ants. Not the big ones you see wondering solo, but hordes of teensy ones. Usually that means that a tasty food item has been discovered and the colony is out to disassemble it and carry it back. I could see where the ants were clumped up, but didn't notice anything there that I recognized as anything ants would want to eat. But I figured maybe somebody had spilled a soda and they were gobbling up dried sugars right off the rockface. I went off to my walk and didn't think any more about it.

Later that night when I left work, I glanced at the wall and noticed the big cluster of ants was still there, but it had moved a few feet to the right. Again no food was evident. Just ants in a big tangled mass. So I leaned close to peer at them and noticed that ants were bunching up around other ants, and apparently biting each other. Other ants seemed to be carrying away dead (or dying ants). I leaned back and noticed that unlike a typical feeding situation where you see a river of ants leading from the colony to the food and back, this was the meeting place of two rivers of ants. One from one crevice about 5 feet to the left, and another from a crevice about 4 feet to the right.

That's when I realized I wasn't watching a feeding frenzy. I was watching a war. It was an epic battle between two colonies of ants that had both claimed this rock wall as their territory. Thousands upon thousands of ants continually poured from both crevices, and converged in the center to engage in a massive melee. It was mesmerizing to watch the supply lines bringing in fresh ants as the wounded or the dead were hauled away (presumably as food). They moved in tides and complex whorling patterns as they made war... it was so intricate it was actually mesmerizing. I checked my camera bag but I had neglected to bring ANY macro lenses with me that day, or I would have had pictures of all-out insect warfare and abject carnage to upload to my photostream.

It made me a little sad to think of these ants fighting for hours over a few feet of turf. After 15 minutes I suddenly realized the time and made a mental note to bring my macro lens to work today.

But when I arrived this morning, the battle was over, and the battlefield had been swept clean. Had I not noticed it, the day before, I never would have known it had happened. In my inner thoughts I could not help but make the connection between the affairs of the ants and the affairs of humanity. In 100,000 years, if humans are still here, what great battles and wretched suffering of ours will have passed into the unknown? Will we forget World War 2? Will we forget the Holocaust? Will we repeat it? Big thoughts from the tragic ant war of June 25, 2008.

Creepy

Abacquer — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:02:00 -0400

What is it that prevents some people from realizing when they are being creepy? I recently uploaded some photos to my flickr photostream from a birthday party I attended. Then later I was tooling around in the Fitchburg Photo Pool and saw some cool architectural photos, so I left a comment telling the photographer I thought the shots were nice.

Within minutes I had three e-mails. The first was flickr informing me that the photographer had added me as a contact. The second seemed nice enough, the photographer wanted to talk about other landmarks that were good to shoot. The third seemed a little peculiar and forward for someone who doesn't know me from dirt:

"Hey how do you know that girl XXXXX in your photostream? She's a real knockout!"

So I responded about Fitchburg landmarks, and on the second item, remarked just that she was a friend of a friend, and that she was very photogenic.

Within minutes, two more e-mails. More chatting about landmarks and camera gear as well, and the second:

"Man is she cute. Hmm."

So I'm getting a little weirded out by this dude. I mean, if you are friends with someone it's one thing to compliment someone they know once, but if you barely know a person it's kind of creepy to do it repeatedly. So I decided I didn't really want to keep talking to this guy, and chose not to respond.

A few minutes later, another e-mail comes along:

"Do you think she would let me take some shots of her sometime?"

Yeah. That will happen. She's going to pose for some stranger on the internet because a friend of a friend photographed her at a party. Who asks a question like this of someone they barely know? I have a terrible time just asking people I do know if they will pose for me.

Any way, I really didn't want to talk to creepy dude any more, I knew if I called him on it I'd get assured up and down that his request was completely innocent in nature. As if it is quite normal to ask strangers on the internet if you can photograph their friends. I mean seriously, if you are THAT desperate for models, there are places to go (http://www.modelmayhem.com/). So I just blocked him... that will be the end of that, thanks.

I generally think it wise, when someone adds you as a contact on flickr, or favorites one of your photos, to check their profile and see what groups they subscribe to, and to also check their favorites. It's usually quite clear when they are using flickr for something other than an appreciation of great (or even mediocre) photography. If you see anything that looks creepy, it's probably a good idea to block them.

Creepy dude didn't have any bizarre group subscriptions or prurient favorites that I could see, but his behavior was enough to warrant the block IMHO. The only thing his profile had to say about him other than a laundry list of his gear was that he was "Male and single".

Call me "Male and unsurprised".

Making Product

Abacquer — Tue, 27 May 2008 09:08:44 -0400

Well, I spent my spare time last week working hard on the photos from the dance recital. All in all I was happy although many of the images were too blurry to use. The problem was my shutter speed, it just wasn't fast enough, but I am still learning. On Saturday I shot a play in a dark restaurant and got much better looking images by pushing up the shutter speed. Gotta get to work on those images next. All unpaid work of course, but I continue to hold out hope that good things will happen if I keep trying and keep talking to people about what I do.

Never heard back from the director of the dance recital, but I'm not too surprised. I don't think anyone has ever called me back after an initial contact. I have gotten e-mails from some people to say they really like the photos I took for them (for free) but sometimes not even that. People are busy, and I think most don't realize the amount of effort that goes into making a good photo. Anyway, as I promised the director of the dance recital, I put together a set of discs containing the best images from the show and have sent those off to her today along with a letter requesting her permission to post them on my business website. For the amount of work put into this production, I hope that she at least calls me back, even if it is only to say "no". Click these thumbnails to see the letter and the CD's (dancers faces are obscured):

The problem here is that (for both the recital shoot and the play shoot and probably just in general) the groups that put on these productions already have a photographer. From what I've seen so far though, these "staff photographers" shoot posed shots backstage, as opposed to shots of the actual performance--I suspect because it's hella easier to get a really nice shot in a controlled environment than it is actually during the performance.

After I shot the play this past weekend, one of the actors' parents caught a glimpse of some of the photos on my camera and immediately asked if she could buy a CD of the pictures... so hopefully something will come of that. I also talked to the people who ran the play--they pretty much immediately told me they had a staff photographer, but when I showed them a few of the pictures in-camera they seemed really impressed. So I'll spend another week churning through those pictures and hopefully something will come of that. We'll see. No expectations.

Watching Street Photographers at Work

Abacquer — Thu, 22 May 2008 18:39:13 -0400

Street photography isn't really my thing, but I try to do it from time to time. The problem I have is that I am very shy about taking pictures of people without their permission, even though by and in large, I have a right to do so in public. I find if you get permission, the subject changes and loses the look that drew you to the photo in the first place.

This is why I am always amazed (or cringing) when I see real street photographers at work. I am just not as brave as these guys:

(video) Joel Meyerowitz On Street Photography

(video) WNYC Streetshots: Bruce Gilden

More Unpaid Work - But Perhaps Something Will Happen?

Abacquer — Sat, 17 May 2008 13:03:48 -0400

My canoe outing pictures were apparently a huge hit. I asked my wife to deliver the following message to the teacher: "I'm glad you like the pictures, and I would appreciate it if you could put in a good word with the principal about me making them available to the parents on my business website." No further news on that front.

I shot another dance recital (this time at Dartmouth Middle School) last nite. I really need to carry more CF cards, things got tight toward the end of the program. Apparently 8 Gb of storage isn't enough for an intense 2-hour shoot. Shooting was so-so--the auditorium had no photographer's booth and was pretty much wall to tall audience. In addition the stage was low and the sound and light crew sitting in front of the stage had their heads blocking the view of the dancers. The light stands stood in front of the stage, as did the speakers and floor lights. All in all trying to shoot in the room was a nightmare. I spent a solid two hours squatting in the aisle between the front row of seats and trying to dodge the optical obstacle course between me and the dancers.

So a lot of my shots were not keepers, but I did get some really nice shots and I think after the post processing I'll have 100 to 200 decent photos. After the show I talked to the producer and she seemed (a) very friendly, (b) somewhat receptive, and (c) really busy. But I managed to explain to her that I have a business website and would be willing to host my photos of the event so that parents could buy prints, and that I would be willing to give her copies of the pictures for free. She didn't commit either way but did take my card and said she would contact me on Monday. Hopefully I'll hear from her and maybe get my first gallery of photos for sale up on the Sagewood Site.

Other work - I was asked to shoot some staff photos for my employer. Technically, I guess you could say this is paid work, since I am salaried, but I'm not choosing to call it that. It was an opportunity though to test my mobile studio set up. I pretty much had a conference room set up with standing lights and reflectors in about a half hour and then shot sporadically over the next 3 hours. It was actually a pretty small shoot considering the number of employees who had to be photographed (about 20 or so), but the good side of it was a lot of my coworkers got to see me working and the equipment I was working with and it helped (I hope) to drill home the idea that this isn't just intended to be a hobby.

I do have one coworker who has asked me to shoot some family portraits for her (she's trying to work out a date) and others who have hinted that they might be interested. We'll see if any of that pans out.

Getting Off the Ground...

Abacquer — Sun, 04 May 2008 23:19:46 -0400

So yesterday I was photographing a first communion ceremony and passing out business cards. On Thursday I photographed a school canoe outing. Two more unpaid engagements under my belt. I've been joking with Patty that I'm rapidly becoming an unpaid success.

But I need the experience so I don't mind so much, and I've been pretty much on my own trying to figure this all out. I have been taking scads more pictures than I have actually uploaded to flickr, mostly because the people depicted haven't given permission for me to upload them, so what I can upload is limited. The experience shooting and working with subjects has been great. Now I'd like to experience getting paid.

For the short term (maybe the next couple years, maybe longer) I have decided to sign up for a turnkey service which will allow me to put my photos in web galleries where people can order prints. Since these galleries can be password-protected for security, I'm currently negotiating with a local school who has had me in to shoot four of their events to let me put these events up in secure galleries so that parents can buy prints.

I chose Exposure Manager to be my turnkey service after comparing and contrasting several such services. Since I'm kind of not feeling well today and wasn't going out anywhere, I finally signed up and then went back to beef up my languishing Sagewood Studios website. It's still unfinished of course, but it looks better than it did. Assuming people start hiring me for portraits and other work, I will be able to get a better handle on pricing and so forth and put more information up there.

There's a link there to a "test gallery". Ultimately there will be links to real galleries, but you can click the link if you want to see what a typical Sagewood Studios gallery will look like (the password for this gallery is "test"--obviously not secure at all... I just chose that password so I can demonstrate how the security works). The turnkey service automatically watermarks my photos to keep people from just copying them off the website, and lets me decide what products will be available, and how they will be priced. The service will process the orders and handle the printing and shipping direct to the customer. After the printing and shipping is paid for, they take a percentage of my profit in exchange for providing the service (plus an annual fee) and cut me a check at the beginning of each month.

If it works out, I may contact other local schools and see if they have any interest in having me photograph their events. We'll see. As far as being hired outright I have at least one serious lead from a coworker who wants me to do a family portrait for her and is willing to pay. That's something at least. Start small and all that.

Anyway, I'm staying positive and I'm loving the shooting.

Mister Clean Mouth

Abacquer — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 14:24:34 -0400

So last night I went to bed with a "sippy bottle" of fruit punch on my bedside table. Sometimes I wake up at night and my mouth is really dry and I like to take a sip of water or juice. Also sitting on my beside table is a squeeze bottle of hand sanitizer.

You can already see where this is going can't you?

At about 4 AM this morning I went from "half asleep taking a drink" to "wide awake what the fuck is THIS".

What followed was a jog to the bathroom to spit out the small amount of purell that was in my mouth followed by extensive rinsing--that's some nasty stuff to have in your mouth. Then I had to go downstairs and get on the 'net to find out if I was going to need to call poison control--I didn't really think I would need to but just in case. Within 15 minutes I was back in bed, sipping fruit punch and going back to sleep.

And the hand sanitizer was moved far away from my drink and out of easy reach.

So for once in my life, I really was Mister Clean Mouth.

Of course I overslept this morning, and was late getting to work. Had to order a birthday cake and call my Mom's financial advisor, as well as prepare for a shoot I have tonite--doing another school dance, again for no pay. I'm rapidly becoming an unpaid success. :-/ Ah well, experience is good, and truth be told I really enjoy taking pictures.

Lens Cults and The Isoceles Field

Abacquer — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 19:14:59 -0500

So early this morning I couldn't sleep and I ended up writing an article on flickr in one of the many "what lens should I buy" discussions that goes on there. I have noticed, in my days on flickr, that certain pieces of equipment and certain techniques have a following, and often get recommended simply because of the following rather than because the equipment/technique is actually suited to the purpose of the person asking. In an effort to supply a counterbalancing opinion, I found myself in need of trigonometry.

The Argument

One such "cult" item is the "nifty fifty" (the EF 50mm f/1.8) lens made for Canon EOS cameras. It is very sharp, very fast, and very cheap ($80). If you are on a tight budget (or even if you aren't) it makes sense to have one for your EOS camera unless you have a better 50mm prime, or don't need a 50mm prime.

While I will not argue that it is probably one of the best value-for-money lenses, it is not versatile at all, and yet it seems to get hailed as a magic-bullet lens. I regularly see people making claims like "it never comes off my camera". And after having used it myself, I can only conclude that these people shoot one type of thing and one type of thing only, or it never comes off because they don't own any other lenses.

There is a certain love affair with the 50mm focal length because it was the standard focal length for 35mm film for decades. But in the age of digital SLR cameras, things are different for the less expensive consumer DSLRs. These DSLR's tend to use an image sensor that is smaller than 35mm film. The APS-C style sensor, or crop sensor, does not render the entire image cast by a standard lens, but only a smaller piece in the center. This results in an apparent magnification factor of 1.6. Hence if you put a 50mm lens on a crop-sensor camera, it's like working with an 80mm lens (50 x 1.6 = 80). The end result is a smaller-than-expected "field of view" (FOV).

On an old Canon 35mm film camera, a 50mm lens has a FOV of 46°. But on a crop-sensor camera the FOV is a hair under 29°. This loss of over a third of the FOV means that on crop-sensor cameras the EF 50mm f/1.8 lens has distinct limitations as to how much you can fit in the frame.

Fortunately, on my EOS 5D the 50mm behaves as expected. Because the 5D is a full frame camera, its sensor is the same size as a 35mm film frame. So I get 46° out of my EF 50mm, just as nature intended.

The "nifty fifty" on crop-sensor cameras is often described as a "portrait lens". With the crop factor, the 50mm lens behaves like an 80mm lens, and 80mm is ideal for portraits. But if you want to shoot anything larger than a head-and-shoulders portrait with the EF 50 1.8 on your Rebel XT or 30D, you'd better have a lot of room behind you, because you are going to need to back up... a lot.

But how much?

The Trigonometry

Well that's where the trig comes in (you can skip this section if you don't want to see how I figured it out). In order for me to say how much, I needed to be able to reliably compute the distance necessary to view an object of a given width. But how? I started by drawing a diagram like this one:

V is my viewing angle. Okay it's not 29° (or 28.98333° which is the actual FOV of the nifty fifty on a crop sensor), but close enough. The legs of the triangle extending out from V represent the edges of my FOV as the distance to the subject (marked by the dashed line, d) grows. The base of the triangle (marked as w) is the width of the field of view at the distance d. Basically this is a representation of the wedge or cone of that falls within a particular FOV, in this case 30°.

I can pick any distance I want for d, but what I really need is a way to say what d should be to accomodate a subject of a certain width. In other words, to fit a subject 10 feet wide in my viewfinder, how far back do I need to stand with the nifty fifty on my EOS 30D camera? I supposed that given a formula for that, I could solve the formula for the width so that one could also compute the maximum width viewable given a distance.

The triangle depicted above is an isoceles triangle, as both the legs are the same length, and consequently the angles where the legs meet the base is also to the same. I spent some time looking online for computations for isoceles triangles, but what I was looking for didn't appear (namely, given the length of the base, and the angle of the peak, what is the height or altitude of an isoceles triangle?)

I studied trig over 20 years ago so I remember very little of it, but I did remember there were a lot of simple equivalences for right triangles (that is, triangles where one of the angles is 90°). And I realized while looking at my diagram that the line I had drawn to represent the distance, bisected V and split the triangle into 2 right triangles, each of which looked like this:

Bisecting V gives me a 15° angle (V'), and a base width exactly half of what it was before (w'). So if I could take a given distance d and come up with a formula for w', then I should be able to solve that formula for either d or w', keeping in mind that V' is V/2 and w' is w/2.

Doing a quick check online I found the two rudimentary trignometric equivalences for right triangles: for either of the angles other than the 90° one, the sin of that angle is equal to the length of the opposite side divided by the length of the hypoteneuse, and the cos of that angle is equal to the length of the adjacent side divided by the length of the hypoteneuse. Here are those equivalences for the right triangle above:

Sin V' and cos V' I can get with a pocket calculator, and I'm going to pick a value for either d or w' and solve for the other. I can solve the equation on the left for w' [w' = (sin V') * h] and I can solve the equation on the right for d [d = (cos V') * h], but both of these solutions require me to know what the hypoteneuse of this triangle is.

But in order to get w' from d or d from w' I need to do more work, mostly because I am not going to know what the hypoteneuse is. I'm only going to be starting with either V' and w' or V' and d. So what I need to do is solve one of the equations for h, and then plug that into the other equation. That should give me a formula I that I can use to solve for either d in terms of w' and V' or w' in terms of d and V'. So I picked the equation on the right. Solving that for h gives h = d / (cos V').

So I should be able to substitute d / (cos V') in the equation on the left, like so:

Now I'm good. I know what V' is, I can get sin V' or cos V' from my calculator, and I am going to pick either d or w'. So now I can solve for either one, like so:

Done, right? Well, yes, if I want to know what the appropriate distance is for half the width of my subject using a lens with half the field of view. Now I want to substitute in the equivalences that w' = w/2 and V' = V/2. In the equation on the right that will put w/2 on the left of the equal sign, so I will multiply both sides by 2 to solve the equation for w. That gives me:

Okay they probably aren't the cleanest formulas in the world, but they work and let you get the height of an isoceles triangle from its base width and peak angle, or vice versa. Using these formulas I could handily compute the needed distance for a given width in a given field of view, and this allowed me to present something more concrete than "gee whiz, that EF 50mm 1.8 is awfully confining on a crop sensor camera."

Back to the Argument

So how confining is that nifty fifty?

5 feet wide = 9.7 feet away
10 feet wide = 19.3 feet away
15 feet wide = 29 feet away
20 feet wide = 38.7 feet away
25 feet wide = 48.4 feet away

Pretty confining! If you are trying to capture 3 people sitting on a couch which is 8 feet long all in one shot, you need to stand 15 feet 6 inches away. Better have a big living room, or one where there isn't a TV 10 feet from the couch. Or maybe if you moved the couch outside... that would be cool for an album cover, but for Aunt Bea, Uncle Joe, and Granny, it is probably less so.

Working with the EF 50mm f/1.8 is a good exercise though for learning how to push a lens to do what you need, and it's plain old good exercise, because you're going to be backing up a lot. You can get that 8 foot couch in shot if you shoot from an angle, but then you will need to stop your aperture down to widen up the depth of field so that everyone will be in focus... which means you can't shoot low light anymore so you might need lamps or a flash. Or you could give up on that shot and shoot the people individually.

Or, you could simply not get the EF 50mm 1.8 in the first place, if you are not planning to shoot primarily portraits. If you want to consider the traditional FOV that the great 35mm film artists shot with, you need a lens that gives a FOV on a crop-sensor camera similar to a 50mm lens on a 35mm film camera (i.e. 46°). The closest bet would be a 28mm lens, like the EF 28mm f/1.8 or EF 28mm f/2.8. These have a crop-sensor FOV of 47.25°. With one of these lenses the width to distance figures look like this:

5 feet wide = 5.7 feet away
10 feet wide = 11.4 feet away
15 feet wide = 17.1 feet away
20 feet wide = 22.8 feet away
25 feet wide = 28.6 feet away

Much more reasonable. And quite interesting how the distance to subject is almost the same as the width of the subject. No surpise that the 50mm lens became the standard on the cameras of old.

Christmas Day

Abacquer — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 19:35:57 -0500

Our Christmas Eve was a late one, with Lynnea finally in bed my wife and I wrapped gifts until the wee hours. She was very tired because she had been traveling all day, and I was in a lot of pain because I'm having trouble with some oral surgery I had done recently. But we finally finished by like 3 AM.

However, every Christmas morning I always want to get a shot of my daughter Lynnea as she sees the tree for the first time, and also a shot of the tree with all the presents piled around it, and each year my daughter sneaks down early before I can get up. Heck last year, when I got down, she had pulled all the presents out from under the tree and sorted them into piles by recipient!!! So much for getting a nice photo! :-/

So call it proactive discipline, but this year I sealed the entrance to the downstairs with wrapping paper and put a sign on it telling Lynnea to go back to bed and wait for us. To no avail... she was too keyed up about christmas and tore the paper while trying to squeeze around it so she could peek at the gifts. However at least this time she didn't move anything and came back upstairs and harassed us until we dragged our exhausted asses out of bed at 7 in the morning.

Money's been tight this year so there were almost no gifts for Patty or I, which is okay, we don't really need anything. Pat asked only for a Nintendo DS Lite--she had picked up some "braintwister" type games for the DS and she wanted to have her own DS to play them on. Me, I got a copy of Understanding Exposure by Brian Peterson, the xbox 360 game "Mass Effect", the ridiculously bad horror film "Black Sheep", and a replacement for my copy of the film "The Eye" which was damaged when I loaned it to someone.

Lynnea had a blast and tore into the presents with gusto. And we also had another visit from our friend the cardinal and I managed to snag a few shots of him. Then it was off to my sister Donna's house for a Christmas meal and an afternoon watching Pirates of the Carribean 3.

All in all, not a bad christmas, except me having to pop tylenol with codeine all day to keep the pain manageable. *sigh* It's always something.

Anyway hope you all are having a happy holiday season, and I wish you all the best in the new year.

Samantha's Big Day

Abacquer — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 00:20:08 -0500

Back in the ides of December my niece Samantha had a big day. She performed in a Christmas-themed dance recital with her dance troupe and then went home to have a birthday party. After the party she went back to the stage for an encore performance with her troupe. It was an important day for her and she was really keyed up, but did an excellent job during her numbers onstage. Way to go Sam!

My sister-in-law Kris, Sam's mom, asked me to come to the recital and party to take pictures. I packed some equipment up and made the long trip with equal shares of nerves and anticipation. During the trip down Kris phoned me and let me know that the director of the show wasn't keen on photographs being made. There could be no flash, and I could not stand close to the stage--she was concerned I would distract the dancers and block the views of the other patrons, which doesn't give me much credit but I could understand her concerns. More annoying was that I would not be able to use a tripod (so as not to be distracting).

So the tripod stayed in the car and my nerves got worse. How dark would it be? Would I be able to shoot anything decent at all? Would Kris be disappointed?

The answer to the first question was pitch black. The stage was lit dimly but the room was black as black could be. I went over my lens options and eventually settled on the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS. I had both the 35mm 1.4L and 85mm 1.2L with me, but I was nervous about confining myself to fixed focal lengths given the admonitions I had received--I didn't want to be moving around a lot. Fortunately I spotted a place to the side of the auditorium where I would be out of the aisle and not blocking anyone. I asked the person collecting tickets if I could stand there quietly and shoot and she said "I don't see why not."

So I cranked my ISO wayyy up (most shots at 1250 or 1600, a few at 1000) and took a boatload of shots. The angle was less than ideal. I really needed to be in the center aisle (and on a tripod!) Despite all this I managed to snag a few dozen really great shots (IMHO). Choosing the zoom was definitely the right idea... it gave me a lot of needed flexibility.

Afterward I got to meet the show's director and the first thing she said to me was "Was that you taking pictures out there with the flash?" I assured her that was someone else and pointed out there was no flash on the camera. Then I offered to get her copies of the pictures and she seemed agreeable.

Then the 70-200mm came off and the 85mm went on for portraits of Sam at the venue where the show was held. Then it was back to her house for her birthday party where I shot over a hundred pix of her and her friends, using both the 85mm and the 35mm primes.

During the following week in rare free moments, I post processed the photos heavily in lightroom and photoshop, and prepared a CD for both my sister in law, and the dance troupe director. The CDs included my business card and a text file discussing the shoot. Hopefully the dance theatre director will be pleased with the shots and decide to contract me for future work. That would be nice!! I did hear back that Kris *loved* the pictures, and that she gave her permission for me to share pictures of Sam on flickr, and on my business website (which very much bare and under construction), and that definitely warmed the cockles of my heart.

Sadly I don't have permission from the parents of the other kids at Sam's party, or the other dancers during her show, so I am limited to sharing just pictures of Samantha, but that's okay, in my eyes she really was the star of the day. I suspect if you check out the photos you'll agree. Click the image above to check out the photoset in my flickr photostream.

Happy 11'th birthday Sam, and bravo for a terrific show!

Unclear on the Concept

Abacquer — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 17:20:49 -0500

So some new photographic toys showed up from B&H PhotoVideo today--having completed my wedding kit (no one is more amazed than I) I still had a little left over from my MTG collection sales, and decided to order myself some "fun" photo equipment which is not strictly for the business I am trying to get off the ground.

When I went outside to meet the UPS guy he was sort of stalking around angrily in front of my house because I didn't answer the doorbell quickly enough. UPS, unlike FedEx and other delivery companies, does not do defacto signature delivery, they would just rather drop it on your porch and go. So when they have to get a signature, the driver tends to get annoyed. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is tough noogies. I'm not about to let thousands of bucks worth of equipment just sit on my front porch because UPS dude can't be bothered to wait a few seconds.

But I digress. So anyway I went out on the porch and he UPS guy spotted me with a relieved look and said "Oh hi, sorry, they want me to get a signature on this for some reason," and proceeded to throw my box of lenses and harddrives onto the porch. I looked at him like he was astoundingly dense and said "Yeah, they want a signature because its fifteen hundred dollars of extremely fragile equipment, imagine that."

Believe it or not, this didn't register. "Oh," he said, glancing at the corrugated box, "well it looks like it's in good condition."

No thanks to you, chucklehead. I thought as I wordlessly signed for it and took it in the house.

I haven't opened it yet, but I'm going to raise hell if it is damaged. You would think that the requirement of a signature on the delivery of a big box implies that perhaps whatever is in it should be treated with care. If you were inclined to think, that is...

Picture above is of Patty shoveling the front walk (yes I helped, I didn't just shoot photos!) Lot of nice photos from these recent snows we've had. Here are a few of my faves:

Happy Hallows E'en!

Abacquer — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:36:09 -0400

From all of us here at Unbecoming Levity...

Tastefully Simple?

Abacquer — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 10:42:46 -0400

Sometimes interesting packaging strikes me as good photo material. I like these colorful tins and boxes, and the design of them. But what strikes me as funny is the name "Tastefully Simple". When I think of tastefully simple, I think of simple things like, oh, a fresh picked apple. Or maybe a saltine with a little cream cheese on it, or a nice piece of pita bread. A "key lime cheese ball" is not exactly the first thing that springs to mind.

"Wow I'm in the mood for a simple snack. I don't need any fancy oreos or chocolate chip cookies or fritos. Just something quick. I know! A delicious key lime cheese ball! Just like Mom used to make."

Of course then again, what in the world would you possibly put on your key lime cheese ball? What goes with that, uhhh, flavor? (And it ain't Vanilla Bean Chiller, I'll tell you that right now.) I mean a saltine or Ritz cracker you can put just about anything on. But a key lime cheeseball? What are you gonna put on that.... chives? So in fact it is quite deceptively simple after all.

So maybe they should have called it Deceptively Simple Key Lime Cheese Ball mix. I'll bet some marketeer is kicking himself in the Prickly Pear Cooler for not thinking that winner up first. What do you think?

EDIT: Well this article, intended as a joke, sure has gotten a lot of Tastefully Consultants to show up and talk up their product. That's very nice but this isn't the "Tastefully Simple Blog". Enough already. Comments are closed on this article.

I am Loving This

Abacquer — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:48:59 -0400

This occurred to me today when I took a few minutes after work to do some shooting at the local cemetery. I am loving every minute of this. I love being outside, smiling at passersby, and looking for that special rectangular region of what I see that will make people go "wow!" Even if as a photographer I never make a dime, it's been worth it to get some nice gear and get back into it.

That said, I have had one "gig" so far. I was asked to shoot a school book fair. I had difficulty because of the lighting, but I was reasonably satisfied with the results. Nobody has gotten back to me about the pictures though, so there is no guarantee that they liked them. But I handed out a crapload of business cards and enjoyed myself, and that's what counts.

I've been bitten by ticks, gotten cold, hot, sore, and exhausted while out shooting but I've loved it. And every now and then I bump into another photographer out looking for that "magical frame". One time I climbed a huge hill in a local cemetery to shoot the sun rising over Fitchburg, only to discover I was not alone... there was another photographer up there! We had a great time chatting and shooting, and yep, he got one of my business cards. A couple weeks later I was in the same cemetery, and while I was standing there lining something up with my excrutiatingly pricey gear, I suddenly found myself being approached by a man wearing a tie and a gun holster on his hip. That was pretty unnerving but I figured if he was a crook out to steal my camera he wouldn't be wearing a tie (isn't it bizarre that I should find the presence of a tie makes someone seem trustworthy?) Turned out he was a local police officer who wanted to know what I was doing in the cemetery. I thought it absurdly obvious, but seeing as how he had the gun, I explained I was taking pictures. He explained that someone had vandalized the revolutionary war cemetery in Fitchburg the day prior, so the locals were nervy about people hanging out in the graveyard. And yes, he got one of my business cards too!

After spending time experimenting with stage one of my pro kit, I came to the conclusion that the 24-70mm lens was plenty wide enough for my needs... 24mm on the full-frame EOS5D is wider than 18mm on the crop-sensor EOS400D, as peculiar as that seems. So I didn't see an immediate need for the EF 16-35mm 2.8L, and thusly excluded it from my plans. I replaced it with the amazing EF 85mm 1.2L portrait lens. Last week I reached a point where I could get Stage Two, and now that I have the 85mm I'm certain I've made the right choice. It takes beautiful portraits.

Planwise, I'm now on the long road to Stage Three. No expectations about getting there any time soon, but hopefully before November is out. In the meantime I *may* be getting a paying gig at a local school that wants some work done at a holiday event they are having. Gotta plan that one out.

Anyway, things have been busy, and yes I've not been blogging, but only because I am doing what I love. Which is what matters. I'm turning 40 this year... if I haven't figured that out yet, will I ever? Love to you all, hope you are well.

From Bulk Comes Bilk and EBay Wants Your Money

Abacquer — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 19:21:12 -0400

I've been so busy with work and trying to sell cards that I haven't had time to do much photography. I did get some great pix in Hyannis a couple weeks ago and some more good stuff at a reception for a christening I went to last weekend, but I haven't had time to photoshop the photos, clean them up, organize them, and so forth. It's just been either work or eBay the last couple weeks. Here's one picture I took (at the office, of couse). Somebody in my building went out and got one of those "Dream Cruisers". Isn't it gorgeous? Wow.

On the eBay front I continue to sell and sell. Part of my unlimited set is gone now, and I've gotten the right price for it, and I continue to identify rarities or obscurities in my collection and put them up for sale. I am happy to report that I am at 90% of stage one and expect to make it there by the end of the week. Cool beans!

But I have learned one important lesson about selling. Selling in bulk may allow you to ship more product, but it definitely costs you money. I sold a set of 8 revised dual lands back on the tenth of September for $122.50. In preparation for the end of that auction I got another 7 dual lands together and was prepared to sell them as a batch. But I decided not to. As an experiment I decided to sell the 7 duals as individual auctions (here they are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). They went for a total of $139.60.

Sold as a batch, they went for $15.31 apiece. Sold individually? $19.94. That's 30% difference!!! Viewed from that perspective it makes sense to sell individually unless you have a very small market (say you are selling on a table on your front lawn... maybe a couple dozen people swing by and look at the items, chances of selling them all individually are remote.) But on eBay the market is huge, millions of potential buyers, so go for it right?

Well there *are* the eBay fees to consider. eBay will charge you for absolutely anything you can think of and plenty of things that wouldn't even occur to you. Back in the early days of eBay there was a listing fee and a sale fee. The listing fee used to be 30 cents. That was it. Then if the item sold there was a sale fee which was this sliding scale thing that was very complicated but generally worked out to about 4% to 5% of your sale. Nowadays everything costs money. No longer is the listing fee flat, but it is based on the minimum bid of your auction. If your minimum bid is a dollar, the listing fee is 20 cents. If your minimum bid is $49.99 your listing fee is $1.20, and if your minimum bid is $59.99 the fee is $2.40. As you can see the fee is determined inside some sort of bracketed structure. Want to add a reserve price? You'll be charged 1% of your reserve price. Want to add a buy-it-now price? There's a fee for that. Want to schedule your auction to start later in the day or later in the week? There's a fee for that. And so on and so on and so on. Sale fees aside, eBay takes a hefty chunk out of you up front just for listing the item. To the point where it makes no sense at all to sell anything for under say, 5 dollars. Ebay will simply eat so much of it that it becomes pointless to sell it.

And of course once your item sells, eBay charges you for a percentage of the sale price, this you would pay no matter how many items you are selling, but the listing fees are paid for each item. My listing fees for the first dual land auction was 30 cents (I had no minimum bid, no buy it now). The 7 individual auctions cost 40 cents apiece to list (probably because I set a minimum bid of $9.99, otherwise it would have been 30 cents). But that is $2.80 to list 7 individual items instead of 30 cents to list one.

Then come the PayPal fees, which generally work out to about 3.5% of the sale price but which have overhead costs causing them to be at least 30 cents as a minimum. I read an amusing story about a guy who overcharged his customer about 90 cents for shipping, and offered the customer a refund via PayPal. So the customer got sixty cents. Ouch. For items worth about $20 each, the overhead is not really all that relevant, but it would be for inexpensive items. The PayPal fees would be easier to stomach if PayPal wasn't owned by eBay. Yes, that's right, you pay eBay to list your item, you pay eBay to sell your item, and you pay eBay to collect the payment for the sale of your item. Yeesh. And, to make it even more annoying, PayPal fees are instantaneously applied to any cash transferred, but eBay fees are simply billed to you at the end of the month. That way, PayPal can charge you a percentage off of the $100 you were paid, instead of the $100 you were paid minus the eBay listing and sale fees. I hasten to point out again that PayPal *is* eBay. Double dipping anyone?

After correcting for eBay listing fees, eBay sale fees, and eBay PayPal fees, the group lot went for $14.20 per card, and the individual lot for $17.80. That's still a 25% improvement in price, even after being ~~robbed~~ charged for eBay's fine services. Altogether the 8 auctions sold for $262.10, which isn't bad, even if eBay took $23.92 in total fees. My state government charges 5% in sales tax. eBay? 9.13%. Yikes!!!

So from now on I'm going to sell individually and try not to think about the fact that I might as well just set every tenth item on fire since I'm not going to end up with any money for it.

End of an Era

Abacquer — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 11:39:47 -0400

Well, after years of collecting, I've finally begun selling off pieces of my Magic: the Gathering trading card collection. The collection is enormous, and I'm hopeful that I can wring enough cash out of it to get the camera gear I feel is necessary to start attempting to supplement my income. Wish me luck!

Always in My Heart...

Abacquer — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 07:40:37 -0400

Many years have come and gone since we held hands and walked,
Along the shore, bare feet on sand, and of the future talked,
Of days when we would marry, of days when we would be
The parents of a cherished child, of our eternity.

Life has not always been kind, to us, 'twixt then and now,
And though I'm oft preoccupied I've n'er forgotten how,
We walked a beach, and gathered shells, and spoke of things to come,
How at your glance, or touch, or sigh, my heart would surely drum.

The pages of our love may yellow, our rose may wither dry,
As youth becomes a memory, and older age is nigh,
But the essence of that joy remains, though it may hide from sight,
My heart still holds a light for you, and it still burns as bright

As the day you first took my hand and we strolled by the sea.
You are now as you were then, the only girl for me.
And so my love, old age will come, and work on us its art,
But that one thing will never change, you're always in my heart.

And so I hope our lives stretch long into our golden years,
Through stages in our daughter's life as each new one appears,
For there are other beaches, and rippled lengths of sand,
That I would like to walk with you, together, hand in hand...

Happy sixteenth anniversary, honey.

Love you,

--C

The Experiments Continue...

Abacquer — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 23:37:10 -0400

The 24$ Pentax K-Mount to Canon EF-Mount adapter came in the mail today, and when I got home I took out Dad's old Chinon CE-4 camera, removed the Chinon 50mm 1.9 lens and attached it to my 400D using the new adapter.

It would be an understatement to say that I am impressed with the results.

What a terrific piece of glass this is! If you go on eBay you can buy this very lens for under twenty bucks and yet it takes amazing pictures! My friends, if you have been considering getting a DSLR but have been put off by the price of the glass, and believe me, there's a lot to be put off by, and you don't mind setting the aperture manually and focusing manually, you may definitely want to consider old manual lenses on a new SLR body.

As for me, well I already have a fast 50mm prime, but I really wanted to see Dad's lens in action again. I was not disappointed.

Frankenstein's Lab

Abacquer — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 14:58:18 -0400

As you might recall I decided to sell my old Nikon gear off to Adorama and parlay it into new lenses. Over the phone Adorama quoted me about $250 for my Tamron lens, and $200 for my 28mm Nikon lens. The camera body is now worth a pittance (like $30), and there was the 400mm Sigma telephoto which they wanted to examine before giving an estimate on, but I was expecting at least $100 for it. It was never a great lens but it wasn't total junk either, and it went for $600 when it was new. So for the whole kit I was expecting $500-$600.

Upon receiving the gear Adorama took over two weeks to get back to me and then (after I chased after them for a couple days) offered me $175 for the entire kit. I could see from looking at their own used equipment inventory page that they would sell the Sigma alone for almost $400. Yeah. So like, um, no. I told them to ship it back to me on their dime. They offered $200 if I would consider trading it in on a purchase, but I wasn't biting. I was planning to finance my 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS lens with this old kit, but given that the new lens was $550, if I ditched my entire Nikon kit at their offer I'd STILL be $375 short. Not worth it.

Instead I sold my MtG Online account which had a pretty decent collection of virtual cards in it. I got $510 for that and that ended up financing my telephoto lens (with which, I am totally in love.) Meanwhile the Nikon gear came back and got stacked next to my old camera bag, into which I had stored my Dad's old Chinon gear, which my Mom had given to me. Dad's gear included 2 lenses (of which one is infested with fungus and therefore history) but combined with my old Nikon gear that is four lenses that once took beautiful pictures:

Nikon Nikkor 28mm f/2.8
Tamron 90mm f/2.5 (for Nikon)
Sigma 400mm f/5.6 APO (for Nikon)
Chinon 50mm f/1.9

Nikon cameras for ages have used the Nikon F-Mount. In fact the mount was introduced in 1959 and is still in use today (though it was extended when autofocus came on the scene.) So as long as one is prepared to use them in a manual fashion, one could attach lenses 1 to 3 to a modern Nikon and go... no additional equipment necessary. Many camera manufacturers created completely new mounts when moving to autofocus, to howls of disapproval from customers who had invested in lenses, but not Nikon. The other notable exception is Pentax. The K-Mount was created in 1976 and is still standard on Pentax cameras. I bring it up because the Chinon CE-4 uses an old K-Mount which means lens #4 in the above list should fit on any modern Pentax camera, although it would probably only function in a manual fashion.

So I began to wonder if I could find adapters that would let me use these lenses on my Canon EOS 400D. People have been saying for awhile that it is not possible with Pentax K-lenses, until a working adapter was invented awhile back. But for Nikon lenses the adapters have been around awhile and are available cheaply, so I picked one up from an ebay seller in China for the hefty sum of $7.99 (plus $8.01 shipping) and it arrived the other day... and I spent a couple hours playing Dr. Frankenstein, attaching old dead lenses to my EOS 400D.

Nikkor 28mm f/2.8:

I only tried a few shots with the 28mm. I was surprised by how hot the colors were from this lens. I can tell it is a good one and with practice I should be able to get some nice pictures with it. This is one I'd like to throw on the camera and just go out shooting for awhile with it. It was fairly wide, and therefore I could stand comfortably close to my subjects while shooting with this lens.

Tamron 90mm f/2.5:

The colors out of the Tamron were also very hot, though not quite as hot as the 28mm. This and the Sigma are the only large primes I've ever owned, so they take some getting used to. I found that the body of the lens isn't in the greatest shape, the focusing wheel would sometimes slip and turn a little on its own, so I sort of had to hold it in place. I really took my time with this lens and did a number of shots. I did notice a lot of flaring (I was shooting without the hood) so I don't know if the lens has an internal issue, although I did a long exposure low light shot that came out looking just fine.

Given the slippery focus, I don't think I'd use this prime too much in the field, but for still life at home where I have a lot of control it still can produce nice pictures. I'm willing to bet I could send it out to be cleaned and have the focusing ring tightened up. I may try that... the picture quality is definitely worth it.

Sigma 400mm f/5.6 APO:

As expected this beast was the touchiest of the three. If I ever end up getting that EF Canon 100-400mm someday, this lens will end up on eBay. I need to do a head to head test with the 70-300mm I own at some point, but I'm willing to bet the newer lens will win.

At 400mm the lens magnifies hand shake extremely, and it was never a very clear lens in the first place. But I found if I baby it enough (and use a tripod) I can still get some very nice shots out of this lens, like these pretty magenta flowers here which required a half-second exposure even though it was a bright sunny day. Granted, they were in the shade... but a half second???

All in all it was a successful experiment. I'm sure I will use the Nikkor 28mm and the Tamron 90mm on my EOS 400D. The Sigma... maybe, I need to experiment with that one some more. This was pretty fun, and it was nice to see these lenses in action again. With no electrical contacts the lenses were strictly manual... manual focus, and aperture had to be set manually as well using the controls built into the lenses. As far as the 400D was concerned, there was no lens on the camera when I took the test shots you see above.

One note about the adapter though, it is extremely thin and getting it on and off is tricky. It's probably easier to just buy one for each Nikon lens you are going to use and then simply leave the adapter on the lens (note, you'll need to buy a lens cap for each lens you do this to... once the adaptor is on, the lens cap that came with the lens won't fit.) I've ordered both a Pentax-K adapter for my Dad's old Chinon lens and an M42 style adapter for possible future use. (There are some really high quality lenses out there which are made to fit the M42 screw-mount, and they can be had very inexpensively. I think I may want to try some of those one day... the Carl Zeiss Flektogon 4/20mm springs to mind as does a bunch of Takumar lenses.)

Wedding Gear...

Abacquer — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:00:00 -0400

So while sitting around yesterday trying to work from home, aching and dealing with my swollen face, I considered the sort of kit I would need to take quality wedding/portraiture photos.

It occurred to me that if I had 10 grand kicking around, I could put together an amazing kit for doing wedding photography and portrait work. In a moment of idle dreaming I listed it out on Amazon using their "Listmania" service. You can see it in great detail here. I don't see how I could come up with that kind of dough unless I sold off my collection of Magic: the Gathering trading cards. It probably wouldn't get me all the way there, but it might get me far enough along to build a useful subset of the gear.

A serious wedding photographer brings a spare camera body on a job--both because the primary camera could break down, and also because it can make switching between lenses much quicker, so I would want a more serious body to be my primary camera and my XTi would be my backup body. Then I would need a couple high quality zoom lenses and a flash for the new camera. That would be the basic wedding kit.

Basic Wedding Kit
EOS 5D 12.8 mpx Camera	$2,643
EF 24-70mm f/2.8L lens	$1,139
EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens	$1,699
580 EXII Speedlite	$430
TOTAL:	$5,911

In order to do serious portraiture these lenses plus those I already own would probably suffice, but there is a little more equipment I would need for portraiture, and there is at least one additional lens that would be nice to have for the wedding work, and some flash enhancements that would be good for both:

Stage Two
EF 16-35mm f/2.8L lens	$1,449
Botero #035 Black Muslin	$129
Impact Support System	$99
Pony Spring Clamps	$8
OC-E3 Flash Cable	$75
Gary Fong Clear LightSphere II	$49
TOTAL:	$1,809

The 16-35 lens gives me serious wide angle capability for large family shots (not unusual for weddings) and I can use it for landscape work when I am shooting for pleasure. The muslin backdrop, support system, and clamps would be necessary for decent portrait shots, and ultimately I would probably want a few varieties of muslin backdrop, but for starting out, basic black would be fine. The OC-E3 would allow me to separate the flash from the camera and hold it overhead or mount it nearby, and the LightSphere would let me diffuse the flash for softer lighting. Stage two brings the total pricetag to $7,720. This would be a solid wedding/portrait kit.

The only thing lacking is an even longer lens for very special sorts of situations, and a quality backup lens for the XTi body if I am ever shooting with an assistant and we both need to be in the most common shooting range (20's-70's) at the same time. That's where stage three comes in:

Stage Three
EF 100-400mm f/4-5.6L IS lens	$1,410
Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens	$379
TOTAL:	$1,789

The 400mm L glass with image stabilization should provide the last conceivable bit of reach necessary for weddings and I suspect for most weddings it wouldn't be necessary. However it would be a solid lens for wildlife when I am not shooting weddings. The 28-75mm Tamron gets a lot of respect despite the brand and the price, and as a backup lens on the XTi body, that would be fine. This brings the total pricetag to $9,509 and gives me enough glass to do almost anything I want. Yes, there's no extreme length lenses (> 400 mm) but I can't conceive of a use for such lenses that could justify the expense.

The glass listed would cover me for macro, wildlife, weddings, landscape, low light, sports, and portraits (especially when you include the 28mm, 50mm, and 90mm primes I already own). Looking toward specialty landscape and architectural photography, the only other thing I can think of that would be "nice to have" would be a fisheye lens and a perspective-correcting lens. That would be the "bonus stage":

Bonus Stage
EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens	$580
TS-E 24mm f/3.5L Tilt-shift lens	$1,099
TOTAL:	$1,679

The fisheye lens lets you squeeze a lot of lanscape into a single shot by giving the shot a spherized look... here's an example taken with the EF 15mm fisheye. A tilt-shift lens is a strictly manual focus lens that allows you shift the focal plane in order to correct the perspective and distortion that often results from shooting tall structures from relatively nearby with short focal length lenses. Here's a sample shot with the TS-E 24mm. Anyway this would put the pricetag at $11,188, but what a killer kit this would be!! Ah well... if I win the lottery someday... fun to think about I suppose.

If I sell off my MTG collection and save up my pennies for awhile, the basic wedding kit becomes a distinct possibility. I'll be devoting some serious thought to that over the coming days.

No Photos Today...

Abacquer — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 21:19:26 -0400

I couldn't go to work today... nor could I shoot any pictures or do much of anything because I had oral surgery yesterday.

This shot was taken with my 1.3 megapixel VerizonLG camera phone yesterday after the surgery which took about 90 minutes. I felt as awful as I look here... doped out of my skull and with bloody spatter on my cheeks and chin. Yechhh.

I'm on percosets right now and feeling pretty crappy. My face is very sore.

You may or may not know that I had 19 teeth removed back in May and was fitted with dentures. Unfortunately as a result of that surgery I ended up with a fistula in my right upper jaw that went up into my sinus cavity. As a result unless I was careful, there would be communication between my mouth and sinuses of food or fluids. I discovered this one morning when Listerine came out my nose while I was washing my mouth. (Ow!)

We had hoped the fistula would close itself over time, but it didn't happen. So yesterday once they knocked me out, they sliced open a flap of gum tissue, laid it across the opening of the fistula and stitched it down.

I haven't taken the dentures out since, it's just too sore, but they are discolored so I know they are full of blood and need to be cleaned soon. I'm nervous about removing them because I am so sore and the surgeon said I am only allowed to take them out for short periods--I can't take them out when I sleep for a week.

I also can't bend down low for any reason or my gums start to throb. So this has been fairly rough and it has been impossible for me to do any shooting today. I might try to do some still life later if I can, but I wouldn't expect anything today.

I've Handed Out My First Few MOO Cards!

Abacquer — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 01:28:11 -0400

I drive by this gorgeous yellow mustang every day on my way to work. I've always wanted to shoot it. Today as I passed by I said, "That's it. I'm going to find the owner and get permission to shoot this car." So I turned around and went back to where the car is parked, went inside the commercial building, and wandered around asking for the owner of the yellow mustang.

One of the offices turned out to be a clinic of some sort, and when I mentioned that I wanted to photograph the yellow mustang, the ladies working the desk got a smile on and called out to one of the doctors there, who was preoccupied and didn't respond immediately. They confided to me that she loved the car.

It was the moment I was waiting for, I broke out the MOO card I had selected for the owner of the vehicle, the one featuring a picture of a portion of a classic turquoise Bel-Air, I figured that might appeal to a car lover. I handed it to one of the ladies at the desk and asked if she would give it to the doctor. She stared at the picture for a moment and then said to me "what is it?" "It's my card, the contact information is on the back."

The other receptionist said "do they all look like that?" And I responded that they were all different, and held out a small stack and fanned them out. This immediately drew some oohs and aahs (I was sort of surprised by how much they liked them) and I said "you can each have one if you like." They took the three daisies picture and the Washington Street at night picture.

The younger woman asked "what do you charge?" I wasn't really prepared for this question, so I just gave an honest answer. "I'm still learning, so right now I don't charge at all."

At this point they managed to capture the doctor's attention and she came over and I told her how much I wanted to shoot some pix of her mustang. She seemed pretty tickled, especially when I told her I would be happy to e-mail her the pictures. She joked with me that I had picked a bad day since the car was dirty, but I told her I could clean up the dirt in post processing.

Turned out I needed to do a LOT of post processing... the car really was somewhat dirty, but it was worth it. She came outside with me while I took my shots, and even put the convertible top down for one. Some of the shots didn't come out, but I was able to come up with four that looked good. I hope she will be happy with them.

All in all, not a bad morning, and it seems like the MOO cards got a lot of attention and interest. So that's a good thing. Will anything come of it? One can only hope. In the meantime, I'm going to continue handing them out whenever it seems appropriate.

Saving the Sky

Abacquer — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 10:45:23 -0400

I really need to learn how to use exposure lock on my camera, then I might not need to do this to my pictures in order to get the sky to look properly exposed. I suppose this would work better if I shot at the waterline instead of above it, but that wasn't possible in this case, and this modification was an afterthought. Maybe today at lunchtime I can get out and experiment with exposure lock for a few minutes.

Took this shot while in the (now public) portion of Devens, MA, and contemplating the sacrifices of our military for our nation. It's a sacrifice we should never squander. I feel so badly about supporting the Iraq war these days when I think of all the lives lost in it, considering what we've learned in the meantime. I refuse to "update my rhetoric" and take to heart all the new excuses for our presence there. I was lied to, but I refuse to lie to myself. I couldn't call myself a patriot if I did.

Of Dreams and Torpedos...

Abacquer — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:17:45 -0400

Many years ago (I was estimating '92 but actually it was around '97), I hatched a dream of becoming a photographer, perhaps a wildlife photographer because I was so into bird watching. I was doing software for a living, and though I was pretty good at it, I wasn't getting the satisfaction out of it that I once had. Friends I discussed the idea with encouraged me to pursue the dream, and so I started researching the equipment.

On line discussion fora were not as prevalent in those days, back then USENET was the place to go to ask questions. (When Google first appeared, once of the biggest deals about it was the ability to search USENET newsgroup postings... now that functionality doesn't even appear on the main page.) So it was on USENET that I began to do my research. I noticed a lot of messages from people getting started in photography and wanting advice on what equipment to buy. And I noticed anyone professing a desire to become a professional would receive at least some discouraging messages along the lines of this industry is very competitive, and it's very hard to make a living doing this, and various other messages that basically amounted to you will probably fail, so don't get your hopes up.

One of my initial forays received a few of these sorts of messages. At the risk of reliving a dream that died, here's a link to my original query on rec.photo.technique.nature. And among the positive responses, there were a couple less positive ones:

...there's some chance you can supplement your income someday, but if that's a primary motivator, better to take a course in
becoming an auto mechanic where you can get $60 an hour for labor...this field is ultra competitive and over saturated with very talented people who love what they're doing, work for nothing or close to it, and turn out fantastic images by the ton...anyone who NEEDS to supplement their income would not choose this as a way to get that done quickly. it just doesn't happen that way. i don't mean to insult your abilities or anything, but i do believe that you've really got this figured as being much easier than it really is...

...You need to learn the basics before you do anything else. And not to discourage you, by all means pursue your passions and dreams, but what the publishing world really doesn't need now is another 'great' photo of that bear or moose. You will find that taking great photos, and selling them are two entirely different things. Unless you are a prodigy of some sort, it will take you years of hard work and learning before you will even be capable of matching the quality of work that the industry is already inundated with, so start with learning and mastering the basics before moving on to the 'big game,' and in the meantime start saving your $$ for those big lenses. Once you do produce publishable quality work, your skills and talents at marketing will be more important than your photographic skills, even if you are only trying to 'supplement' your income...

Messages like these left me very discouraged when I started trying to become a photographer and I began the journey with a used Nikon 8008s 35mm SLR expecting to fail. After only a couple months of dealing with the exorbitant cost of film developing, I did indeed give it up. I just couldn't afford it. But the dream of becoming a photographer never went away, and resurfaced a few years later when I purchased a used Konica Q-M100V digital camera which took appallingly low resolution pictures.

Eventually I graduated from the Konica to a Canon Digital Elph S500 PowerShot, still a point-and-shoot, but it took better quality images. Now 10 years later, I've come full circle and have gotten an SLR again, but a digital one this time. And again I am nurturing the dream of becoming a photographer full time. So (almost on impulse) I ordered the MOO cards depicted above to use like business cards as I begin trying to turn that dream into a reality. Maybe nothing will come of it, but this time I feel a little more urgency, as I am now pushing 40, not getting any younger, and very conscious of my mortality. I've already come a lot further this time than last time, and I hope to go further yet.

I was kind of stoked when the MOO Cards arrived... like my Dad, I am excited by possibilities. So I posted the picture you see at the top of this article to my flickr photostream, and let slip that I was thinking of turning pro. I received two comments. One from my best friend, James, and one from an online acquaintance I met on flickr. James, being a friend,wished me luck in a manner I know was heartfelt. The other person?

You better find another way to earn a living. None makes money being a photographer these days, unless you intend to do weddings.

I give this other individual the benefit of the doubt, but, what is it with torpedoing people's dreams? Is this a common occurrence? Is it just that other people have pursued a dream and it hasn't worked out and they want to prevent others from experiencing disappointment? I thought about it for a long time. Then I heard my daughter come downstairs and called her into my study. We had the following conversation:

ME: Do me a favor. When you get a dream for what you would like to do with your life, don't ever let anyone try and talk you out of it.

HER: What did you read online?

ME: Huh?

HER: Usually when you talk to me about something serious like this, it's because you've read something online that offended you.

Smart kid, huh? So I told her about how right after she was born I began trying to become a photographer, and how some people had discouraged me, and how I had let those discouragements color my thinking. And yes I had found some of those original comments online and had just received another. I told her that it is a two way street, that people can try to talk you out of your dreams, but only you can let them do it. I think she got the message.

And as for me? I have nothing against shooting weddings. I think I would like that. When I went digital, I started shooting portraits and discovered that I love taking pictures of people and particularly faces, and went a little nuts doing so. So if I get to the point where I feel competent enough that I wouldn't produce crappy photos, weddings would definitely be something I would want to do.

And as for the guy who encouraged me to become an auto mechanic instead? Well his business website (started in 1997, btw, same year I posted on usenet about my interest in wildlife photography) hasn't been updated since 2000. So maybe he was experiencing difficulty in pursuing his dream, and that motivated the comment he made to me. I also note from his website that he seems to have rejected digital photography. Interesting.