Tiger Energy Services Christmas Party

Hello everyone. This past Saturday I was hired to shoot the Tiger Energy Services Christmas Party. The event went according to plan, as all employees of Tiger showed up and had a good time enjoying the party. It was held in downtown Fullerton and ran for several hours.

I was there for about 5 hours. One hour was spent setting up my strobes and fixing my lighting for the photo booth that was present. I had originally intended for my intern to be there and run the photo booth himself, but since he was unable to, I received great help from fellow photographer, Peter Klemek. He photographed the party guests with the several props that were available to them.

As the night continued, I walked around for the remaining hours shooting as much as I could. Overall, Peter and myself took around 700 photos combined (that's a lot of editing!). Anyway, I had a great time shooting the Tiger employees and would like to give a huge thanks to Mr. Joe Baxter for hiring me to be a part of this great event.

I would also like to recognize the party planner who did a stupendous job, Ms. Brittany Boat. If anyone is looking for an event planner, I would definitely recommend Ms. Boat.

I shot these photos with my Canon 7D and my Canon XSi with 28-135mm and 18-55mm lens. I used a Canon Speedlite 580 EX 2 and a flash bracket to go along with it. As anyone who shoots with a Speedlite would know, batteries die rather quick; therefore, I also used an external battery pack for the flash.

The challenges I faced while shooting this event was a DEAD camera! My 7D died in the last hour of shooting. I quickly changed to my backup camera, the XSi. I had fully charged all cameras and batteries (about 20 of them) before the event and was surprised that my 7D only lasted about 4 hours, even with a battery grip. I'm glad I was prepared with a backup. If I did not have a backup camera...well that would just be unacceptable.

I shot all photos while on Program mode. I switched my white balance to flash and kept my ISO at 100. I'm still editing and watermarking the other photos. I expect to have all of them ready for my client within one week.

See ya and thanks for reading

Jake

Dwayne Mason Photoshoot

FIERCE is the first word I can use to describe my latest client, Dwayne Lardell Mason Jr.

Dwayne is an artist in his own right, choosing to express himself like no other; be it through cable wire around his neck choking him or by wearing speakers with his daily outfits.

We had a photo shoot a few weeks ago and here are some of the photos we got. We shot at Fullerton Train Station and at a nearby playground. I briefly photographed Dwayne weeks prior to our shoot and I knew instantly that if I shot with him, the photos would be nothing less than amazing. Dwayne knows how to work his angles and use himself as an advantage. It was a weight off my shoulders to not have to direct my model. My intern used a light reflector to bounce light onto Dwayne's face and I used a 50mm and an 18-55mm lens to capture the photos.

The above photo is a few stops overexposed and this worried me as I saw the photo on my LCD screen. At photo school, you are constantly taught how to create great photos with the appropriate exposures. I panicked when I saw the photo being overexposed and quickly changed my aperture. However, during editing, I decided to fix the overexposed photo and make his green jacket pop out with colour. This is my favorite photo from the entire shoot. Sometimes mistakes can be the greatest things you make.

The playground idea came to me because Dwayne is a guy who is about 6 feet tall and is height would juxtapose the kids playground. He looked like a giant compared to the children who were playing nearby. haha.

Our photo shoot took about 2 hours and I shot around 180 frames.

I only choose 21.

All in all, I think it was a great shoot. The problems I faced then was the sunlight. It was either too strong, creating harsh shadows on my model's face, or there was not enough of it (it was a cloudy day). I shot all photos on Manual mode and kept my ISO at 100. My white balance was set to Daylight. To find the right angle, I laid on the ground several times, stood on things to get an aerial view and I'm sure my intern was tired of me yelling at him to "FIND THE LIGHT!"

I have another photo shoot scheduled for late December and am shooting a Christmas party this coming weekend.

See ya

Jake