Webb, tied the knot

Ok,

This an update post on my good friend Anderson's wedding...The wedding was beautiful and he and his blushing bride Marsha looked lovely!

Remember when I said this;

"Oh! I'm going to the wedding and I am taking my camera, can't help it, I'll try my best not to upstage the offical photographer...Just joking ;-) (but he better be good)" in this article>>

Well...lets just say that, both Andy and myself were glad I was there with my camera. The offical photographer seemed to be a nice guy though and that my friends was his saving grace (just in my book not in Andy's).

ANYWHO...I'm putting up the gallery soon so keep and eye out at flowfoto.com, here is a small preview.

Marsha floating down the stairs at the reception hall


Andy embracing his sister at the reception

BPTT Photography competiton: Update

Just came back from the prize giving ceremony at BPTT. My pops and I, we made our way down. The display was nice they had over 500 entries- fierce competition indeed.

A guy who's work I like, James O Connor founder of caribbeanstockphotography.com was a judge.

There were three categories

• Student
• Amateur
• Professional

and a Student, a girl won the overall best photo prize and won the student category to boot!(You go girl!)

The photo that won the professional category rocked.

Sigh...this was all kind of bitter sweet for me, a merit prize is nice but...you kind of wish you could have done a little better.
AH WELL next time I wont take such a nonchalant approach...

Onto another matter.

My pops with my "meritorious" photo

Me accepting a undiclosed amount of cash...;-) pops took this pic (He did well for an amateur (You can see on the screen there that they displayed the wrong photo...they eventually fixed that.



James O Connor took this photo...drive by shooting "point and shoot" he says, its not focused on me though.

Interesting Pics and the Webb

Ya'll are probably thinking that I spelt web wrong as in the inter-web...WRONG. Webb is actually Anderson Webb, my very good friend of many years and he's getting married tomorrow!! YAAA! Congrats man!

Oh! I'm going to the wedding and I am taking my camera, can't help it, I'll try my best not to upstage the offical photographer...Just joking ;-) (but he better be good)

I'm busy all this weekend and lots of stuff is happening as usual. I got that letter from BPTT officially inviting me to prize giving ceremony so my pops and I will make our way down, I'll give a full update in another post after the ceremony.

Ok now for some random interesting pics taken between March and July this year. I hope me explaining how I took them doesn't reduce the "magic" of the photos.

A dove and baby chick

One of my co-workers absolutely hates the pic because of how the chick looks...I think its beautiful. This was taken out of a window on the second floor of a building. Even though the breeze was blowing heavily and the small tree was swaying the bird stayed completely still.

Camera: NIKON D50
Focal Length: 300 mm
Aperture: 5.6
Exposure: 1/100
ISO: 800

A young Rastafarian man sitting and overlooking Port of Spain, Trinidad

This was taken without the man even knowing, its one of those random walk by and shoot pictures. The man pictured was selling craft items with his friend in a place you call the "lookout" on Lady Young road P.O.S. you can see the Twin Towers in the distance. Fortunately for me I actually spoke to him soon after taking this pic. Cool fella.

Camera: NIKON D200
Focal Length: 70 mm
Aperture: 4
Exposure: 1/1250
ISO: 320

A young boy on the fast ferry

This was taken on the boat heading from Trinidad to Tobago. I was trying to catch a nap and this "small man" was running all over the place making noise. Needless to say when I couldn't beat him...I joined him. I asked his mother if I could take a few pics of him, and she was like "Yeah, sure". So recorded him doing various antics and at the end I gave her my contact, just in case she wanted to get the pics...haven't hear from her yet.

Camera: NIKON D50
Focal Length: 50 mm
Aperture: 1.8
Exposure: 1/1000
ISO: 400

Car overturned on the Solomon Hochoy Highway

Heading to the office at 5:30 am (darn traffic) and there is a deadlock right before the Piarco Airport turnoff. Inching for about 20 minutes and finally get up to the point where I can see what the hold up is. Dont know the story, but this car and a veggie transport van are overturned on opposite sides of the highway...Vegetables EVERYWHERE! Soooo...while in motion I whip out my weapon of choice and shoot away, one hand on the steering wheel of course (Kids don't try this at home).

Camera: NIKON D50
Focal Length: 70 mm
Aperture: 4
Exposure: 1/80
ISO: 800

In with the Best!

In a very short time, through tons of reading and even more tons of practice and some equipment purchases, I've blazed and INCREDIBLE path of development in photography.

Moving from a 3 mega pixel no optical zoom canon A300 to a 10.2 mega pixel Nikon D200 and soon to unto other upgrades, I've got my eye on...well...you'll see. Digital has truly leveled the playing field.
I mean, I've only been at this seriously for a year and a half now (Although I studied photography school, I didn't even get a camera till two years after I left school) , I did my first wedding in February of last year And now I've been accepted to the WPJA,.

One of my favorite images from the Tarin and Lorenzo wedding gallery @ flowfoto.com

For all those who don't know what the WPJA is, its the Wedding Photojournalist Association, an exclusive global organization of highly skilled and creative wedding photographers who do wedding photo documentary. Now I'm in their ranks.

Now my work will be listed, displayed and compete with the likes of Carlo Carletti, Hum Kim and not to mention Ben Chrisman who is my current standard and one of the top ten wedding photojournalist in the world according to the WPJA.

I'm the third in the Caribbean to be accepted and the first from Trinidad and Tobago.

I would like to thank my wife for her support, Jason Reid for his encouragement and everyone who chipped in along the way.

Lastly...THIS ROCKS!!!

Sharp shadows and washed out faces

The thing I absolutely cannot stand about most of the "local" professional photographers (and some not local ones for that matter) is that it seems that they always feel the need to BLAST you directly with the flash. Man, this is not only annoying but its does not produce the best quality pics either.

Now there are times when you have no choice because of the circumstances and you just need to get the shot. There was this one time that I went to a friend's wedding and I just went along with my camera as usual (No he didnt ask me to bring along my camera, he knew I would but that's another issue). The official photographer, a nice lady, blasted them directly with a flash all through the ceremony. Needless to say I was in the background with my primes at a sub 2.0 F/stop snapping away. As sure as night follows day, the snapshots (and they were snapshots) my friend got from the offical photographer had dark backgrounds, sharp shadows and washed out faces, quite horrible.

Jason and Susannah - Flash at 90 degrees with bounce card

The days of conservative shutter releases are gone...no longer are we constrained by per roll development costs, if you take a picture and you don't like it you just press that little button with the trash can icon and voila!!!

So there is no need to guarantee an exposure by an indiscriminate use of direct flash.

So what now. BE CREATIVE SILLY!

Bounce it, diffuse it, gel it but whatever you do make it nice. TRUST me the flash is your friend...if you are nice to it. So to all the upcoming creatives out there, there is a better way, no more washed out faces and sharp shadows.

Merit and Amateur status - Bptt Photo Competition

So I entered the BPTT photography competition after being instructed by a ka-zillion people to do so. I entered as an Amateur because the criteria for professional just excluded me...so what if I do professional work..HA! joke's on them! (Thanks BPTT for your kind consideration and AMPLE for your excellent work ;-)

My entry was not the best of my photos I think, but it did capture the theme of the competition within the guidelines they gave. SO after Driving around with a print out of this picture in my car for two weeks I finally submitted it three days before the deadline.

I didn’t win.

BUT I did get a call saying that I won a special merit prize for my photograph. Kewl.

However, I'm still waiting on my invitation to the prize giving ceremony so its not really official...kinda.

So the photo I submitted is below. I had to submit it with a rationale for why I chose this particular photo, which I think help both me and the judges tremendously.

This is what I had to do:

Travel the country, tour your communities and take photos that capture the “energy for life” of T&T’s people, traditions, landscape and industry.

So you can look at the picture and venture a suggestion or comments to why I might have chosen this one.

Thanks again to all of the ka-zillion people who told me to enter.

Photo Info:
Taken in Tobago at Mt Pleasant Sports Day. Girls race 13 - 16 I think the girl with the grimace was actually winning until the end there.

Camera: NIKON D200
Focal Length: 150 mm
Aperture: 5.6
Exposure: 1/800
ISO: 200

Bye Jase...Sniff*

My VERY good friend Jason Reid is leaving for the US to study this month.

Jason in his hometown in East Trinidad

Why is this important?...well Jason is like my little brother (even though he's older than me, I'm bigger and taller than he is ;-) and we went to Technical School together and he is responsible for me buying my first DSLR and starting on this path of photographic enlightenment.

Truncated version of the story;
He came to my house to show me his new camera, I didn't know what kind it was, but when he walked through the gate and he pulled this shiny, black instrument of beauty out of his bag, the heavens opened and when I held it, the angels began to sing and it was at that point I knew I had to get one. That was in 2005.

Since then we have been working together on various projects together, I call him my photographic wingman. All of the pics of me on my site were done by him (freebie!) When we aren't shooting he does his fine art thing and I do my graphic design thing but we are always connected by similar values and passion.

So do well Jase! I'm here holding the fort till you get back!

Hindu rites - colour and tradition

I was so elated to have the opportunity to document my first fully traditional Hindu wedding.


Ever since I began to research Hindu weddings the thing that compelled me the most was the visual vibrance, the colours of the ceremony, the decor and even the guests. So many different Saris and Kurtas (hope I spelt that right).

One of the major things that a photographer should take note of if he/she is to do a traditional Hindu wedding is that there are many multiples i.e.

• Multiple days of coverage - up to 4
• Multiple locations two or more
• Multiple wardrobes up to 4 wardrobe changes for the bride and groom

So you've got to be prepared.

So I had to follow my friend to Rio Claro, I had never been there before and it was roughly a 2 hour drive away from where I lived, needless to say with my friend in the lead, me having to keep up with him or risk getting lost and his penchant for being a rally driver we cut the time down significantly.

Another thing to note about a Hindu wedding is that there is alot of activity happening away from the actual wedding. Most times there is a whole different set of action happening right outside of where the ceremony is taking place. I discovered (the hard way) that the father of the groom has to directly follow the vehicle that the groom is in on the way to the ceremony location which in a traditional Hindu wedding is usually at the girls house.

All in all the experience was very good and I didn't get tooooooo lost on the way back home.
Looking forward to the other one I have been booked for next month.

you can check out more pics of this wedding @ flowfoto.com

No way baby!

So since last year I've been checking out lensbabies...for all who don't know lensbabies a specialty lenses that work with your DSLR and give you kewl blur and depth of field effects (selective focus to be technical) when you use it.


The only problem is that its not kewl at all...

So I finally bought myself a lensbaby 2.0 with the intention of creating many a dreamy effect at the weddings I would do, but the problem is, it just never happened. Wedding one, it sat in my bag every now and again as I was reaching for my 50mm 1.8 my hand would past near, it never quite made it out of my bag though. Wedding two, same khaki pants (Same thing happpened) and by the time it was wedding three, it hit me..."I ain never gonna use this thing".

Why you ask?

Well for starters, Im a wedding photojournalist i.e. my day consists of fast paced action and capturing moments as they happen and a lens like this just doesn't fit into my arsenal. In a real sense its really only very effective when used in situations where you have time to figure it out.

But if I had to list my grouses they would sound something like this

1. It doesn't communicate with camera so you have to engage in a trial and error for exposure.
2. You need your two hands to use it so no running with you bag shots or propping up yourself at kewl angles (The lensbaby 3.0 has a mechanism to preset so you can use one hand but you still need to be concerned about point .3 )
   
3. Getting the focus right is horrid at first and takes work after for you figure it out on the fly.
4. The apertures are little cardboard like thingys that you have to physically remove with a funny looking instrument and place back in physically.
5. It looks funny on your huge DSLR (frivolous reason)
   
6. Arrrrgh!

So all in all its not for me and set me back $109 US too (amazon marketplace rocks!). I've had it for three months now and its more of an ornament than anything else.

So if you are going to take pics of flowers and lots of bridal portraits you can get one but for any type of photojournalist...no way baby.

Here we Blog!

Whew!

After working on my wedding and couples site for a while I'm so glad to be able to just kick back and blog...yeah right!

Managing a blog is actually hard work and seeing as this is my first serious blog, it has to rock! So I'll be adding in a slew of updates in the near future trying to catch up with myself. So much to say.

So stay tuned and I'll have lots of stuff in store for you.