What's Wrong With This Picture?

Every now and then, we take a picture that looks too good – almost fake. Now, don’t get me wrong, we do our fair share of Photoshopping. But we use it to enhance images or recreate something that should have happened. Just consider your favorite 2-year-old and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what I mean. But this is different. Take a look at the pic of this little guy and see if you can see what’s wrong.

Places To Go, People To See

Another confession… I’d like to call it research, but I spend entirely too much time surfing other photographers’ websites. I’m addicted. I look at website design, I watch what others are charging, I even try to find out how busy everyone has been. But most of all, I study their shots. I look the colors, I study and try to reverse-engineer their lighting and editing. Recently, my eye has gone straight to the backgrounds.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve complained about the lack of interesting locations around town to shoot. And every time that happens (most of the time right before a shoot), my dear Hal loads me up in the car and we drive aimlessly around town searching for that needle in the haystack; that one golden place that nobody else knows about. Most of the time we go back home empty-handed, I rant and rave that we’ve already used up all the “good places,” and we settle on a location that I’m no longer thrilled about for our next shoot.

Never enough time...

First, apologies. We haven't posted much on here lately, but I wanted to share our latest goof-up with everyone. We were approached by a close friend to do a few shots of the kids for Mom's Mothers Day present. No problem. Quick and dirty, and we would still have time to get everything else done on that already hectic day, right? ...wrong.
As usual, things got messy around my house. We already had a house full of kids, all coming and going different directions, family came in from out of town, we had a school musical to get ready for that night. And then our shoot.
Did we get some cute stuff? Yeah, I think so. But when all was said and done, I missed the boat when it came down to really focusing my attention on our clients that afternoon. Not only did the shoot suffer, but so did everyone and everything else that afternoon.

Lesson learned. We're being trusted (and paid) to do the best possible job we can for people, without interruption. I'm SO thankful that our clients were people we have a "walk in without knocking and help yourself to our food" relationship with, or they would probably never call us again. From this day on, we simplify our busy life on shoot days. We've hopefully done an OK job at making sure clients know that we're doing our best for them, but we can always do a better job...work in progress!

Thanks to Daniel and the kids and MY family for being so understanding! And to "neverenoughtime" - this one's for you...and Hal and I love you too. Hope your Mothers Day was amazing!

Plastic Monkeys?

There’s a perfectly good reason for the plastic monkeys. Let me explain.

In photographer circles, there is a thing called a “365 Project”. The rules vary, but in general the goal is to find, light, shoot and edit an interesting picture and post it for the world to see. Every day – hence the 365. Many photographers take these projects on to force them to think creatively and just get out there and shoot. Last year, we followed Dustin Diaz as he attempted a 365. Many of his images were eye-openers and caused us to rethink how we light and shoot. His work was good enough to win the Flickr Photographer of the Year award. Not too shabby.

...And That Got Me Thinking...

Just this morning, Stacey and I were talking about how awesome it would be to have a dedicated space – a “real” studio, if you will – to shoot in. Open areas, permanently mounted backdrops, dedicated lighting, the whole thing. We quickly moved the idea to dream status. We're a small operation. It's just the two of us and we work from home or on location all the time.

It's not that we wouldn't like a larger, more dedicated space for photography, but this works. Our living room is fairly large with plenty of room to shoot kids, individuals, couples and small families. It has a tall, vaulted ceiling that makes lighting easier and just enough depth for decent photos. We're usually pretty happy with the results. And, of course, it doesn't cost us anything extra per month to operate – a big plus when you're self-employed. But, it's still nice to dream.

A Little Too Late...

Hello, my name is Stacey, and I'm addicted to Facebook (everyone? "hello Stacey"). I could, and have spent hours with my eyes glues to the screen, mouse in hand, feet tucked beneath me falling asleep, just browsing through the profiles. My guilty pleasure is seeing some of the ridiculous pictures people post. Just on my own kids' profiles, you're likely to find a garbage truck with graffiti all over it, Mr. Potatoheads, shoes, and different shaped pancakes. What prompts these I'll never know, but this mindless stuff is everywhere. So why do we take pictures of clocks, toilet bowls and spiders? Because we can. 
 Twenty years ago it was a process to capture those moments we consider important. We had to dig the camera out of the closet, buy film and maybe disposable flashes, load the camera, take the 36-max pictures, head to your local photomart kiosk on the corner, and wait for days hoping you took something decent and they didn't lose or ruin the film. We don't have to work that hard today. With a wallet-sized digital camera, even a cell phone, we have the ability to catch and keep every minute of our lives. 
So why did I, a photographer claiming to LOVE what I do, get caught with virtually no pictures (snapshots or otherwise) of a loved one after his death? I know I would have never conned him into sitting for a legitimate photo shoot, but why did I not keep my little point-and-shoot handy and actually USE it to catch some memories? Who cares if he was always making a goofy face or in the midst of telling me to put that thing away? I should have 1) been prepared and 2) taken them anyway, with the chance of having my camera thrown out the window afterward. I missed this somewhere. Lesson learned...
So for all of you who take the self-portrait with the Zoolander face and peace sign, for all the pictures of what you had for dinner, and even those before and after shots of the duct tape prom outfits you made...keep up the good work. And to those who haven't embraced, time to catch up. There's a whole new world out there called digital photography, and it's just begging to be taken advantage of. You don't have to be a photographer, you just need to be ready to capture a story. You never know how or when those stories will creep back into your memory. 
This one's for you, Dave. RIP

Foggy Morning Fail

Sunday morning started like many mornings. I got up with Stacey grabbed some coffee, saw her off to work and parked myself in the garage for a few minutes to get a handle on the day. As I looked out over the neighborhood, I saw the most amazing fog. It was low and dark and my first thought was that I knew the perfect place to take a foggy morning sunrise picture. But it didn’t exactly work out like that.

Shooting Without A Net

This month marks our first full year as Robertson ImageCraft. We spent the bulk of 2009 meeting and taking pictures of some really nice people, learning and refining our photography skills and, generally, becoming photographers. It’s been an interesting ride so far and we look forward to the challenges and experiences that 2010 holds.

There is one picture (actually, a series of pictures) that kinda started this whole thing. You see, Stacey and I have seven kids and you can imagine how difficult it is to get all of us at a “professional photographer’s” at the same time. One kid is all grown up with her own life now, two are busy high school students and the rest have their own crazy schedules with sports, choirs and music lessons. It’s a little nuts around here sometimes. Anyway, we decided to set up a makeshift studio in our garage and utilize a little photographer’s trick called “North Light.

A New Year, A New Adventure

I've never even had a personal blog, so the thought of having a blog for our photography business really never crossed my mind...until I started really studying the zillions of photographers' websites out there. They're everywhere; full of sneak peeks for clients, videos about an awesome shoot, and the newest addition to the arsenal of equipment...This probably won't be one of those blogs.

The first full-length movie Hal shot was quite the learning experience for him. When it was done, he wrote a 'laundry list' of how NOT to shoot a movie. While he did walk away with some good tricks of the trade, most of them came to Hal by mistakes made and dumb luck.