Star Wars Parade Float

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Darth Vader and Queen Amidala were a top the Mike Endrizzi for School Board float (www.Mike4MPS.org) in the Minneapolis North East parade. It was a bigger deal than I thought and a hoot to shoot.

Mike went with a Star Wars theme obviously, and several characters actors showed up to get into costumes.

It was a really hot evening to be in a costume too. These folks were drenched when they took off their costumes.

I also learned how difficult a skill it is to hold a camera steady while you try to walk backwards at the same pace as the people walking, or riding in the parade.

Not wanting to leave all the fun to his friends, Mike dressed up in a Boba Fett costume, and rode his bike. He and Darth Vader got lots of cheers from the kids. They would run out to give high fives, and take the Mike4MPS bookmarks that the kids on the float were handing out.

I took a few moments to take pictures of kids both in the parade, and on the sides, but that will be a post for another day.

Kathmandu Within the Frame

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I am pretty excited about this. Probably more excited than I have been in a long time. I am going to Nepal for the first two weeks of October. I have wanted to get to Nepal/Tibet/N India for a long time, and one of three is a great start.

This trip is a photography workshop with 2 great cultural, humanitarian and world photographers: Jeffrey Chapman and David duChemin. I have been following David, and reading his books for some time now. It never seemed like it was a good time to go on a two week trip to the other side of the world, but the desire to go wasn’t just nagging anymore, it was calling. Fortunately for me, (but not the other poor soul) there was a participant that injured their back, and a space opened. I luckily had some early knowledge, and got to think about it for a couple of days, and when it was announced via Davids blog, I jumped.

The goal with this trip is not just to take some pretty pictures. It is a workshop, and with a small group and two instructors, there should be lots of learning opportunities. It should be a good deal different than the previous landscape workshop (DLWS) that I was on, and the weddings I have been shooting, and that is a good thing.

The last time I was halfway around the world, it was Indonesia, and I was a teenager. That was a long time ago. I’ve been to England with Annie in there, but this is different. Indonesia was where I first shot slides on a manual 35mm film camera. Haven’t done that since. Been meaning to look for those and grimace a bit 🙂

Well, I can’t wait. I have three weddings and other stuff in there before that, but it seems both soon and far away. I guess that’s what looking forward to something does for you.

Slideshows on my return.

Thickbox content over flash movie.

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I have been using the ThickBox plugin for WordPress on my site for a while now. When you click on a link, the images are shown in their own window with a darkened background. This worked great until I put together something on another of my photography sites here. At the top is a flash movie (yes, I know I don’t like having a flash movie, I will move on to HTML5 video when I can) and at the bottom are images. When you click on the images you get the same lightbox effect as the plugin. The only trouble was, it was pointed out to me that in IE, the video stayed on top. Oops.

A little searching the internet found the solution. Check out here for the fix, and here for some background on how it works and for other options you have. It is now working as expected. Thanks Steve for pointing that out to me.

RGC Stills and Photoshelter

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Ok, so here are a few stills of the hundreds that I took for the Richfield Gymnastic Club. The DVD’s are delivered, and now I will try to sell some of the stills to the parents. My current site wasn’t really laid out for this,  but I made a landing page that my marketing materials at the club, and an email that will be sent out to the parents that gave one, will point to here.

So, the way to sales, will be through photoshelter. I have recently started an account with them, and will be using their e-commerce site to offer the images for purchase. You can see them here. There are a lot of images there!

There are images from the rehearsal, the warmups, and the main event. It was a lot of fun to shoot. It was also a big editing job with over 3000 pictures taken.

Anyway, I got them edited down, and hopefully there are some images in there that parents would be willing to purchase. Here are a few more. Check out the photoshelter site for more.

Richfield Gymnastics Club Spring Show

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http://www.viddler.com/explore/cwardphoto/videos/1/

I finally have a video up from the Richfield Gymnastics Club’s Spring Show. For this show I took almost 3000 images from the rehearsal to the warmups to the actual event over two days. Some of them were dismissed right away as I missed focus, or body parts, but I had over 2000 shots that I had to whittle down. These are some of them.

What I was asked to make was a DVD, that the club will sell to the parents of the kids. I created 7 videos from images over the event, about a 100 per video. Seven individual songs to create the videos. I then put them together into a DVD with a menu. The one above is not one that I put on the DVD, it has images from all over the night.

It was a lot of fun to make. I shot a bit of video at the event as well that I mixed in with the stills. It worked out well. The club loved the videos that I showed them.

Photos of Mike Endrizzi, Candidate for School Board

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I just noticed that my client finally got his web site up and running, so I can post the pictures that we took of him. (Web, Facebook) This is Mike Endrizzi, and he is running for the School Board in district 1 of Minneapolis.

Mike is a pretty busy guy, and always on the move. He also has a commitment to his family that evenings would be for family time, so he wasn’t going to give me much time. I wanted to bring out a light, and tone down the backgrounds a bit more, but he wouldn’t give me a chance, so we had to go just with natural light.

I think the top image is the one that turned out best. I was able to position him in partial shade, just at the edge of the light that was wrapping around the building. The other two I had to tweak in post a bit more than I would have liked to get separation of Mike from the background.

Another iPad Photo

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I think I may have taken enough of the kid playing with the iPad photos. Just a little down time between dinner and her bath. Here, she is playing a puzzle game called Tozzle. She drags little puzzle pieces around until they fit into place. She loves it.

Bright and Purple vs Black and White

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I asked this gentleman at the playground, (we were both their with kids) if he wouldn’t mind posing for a picture. I loved his hat, beard, and shirt combo. He agreed, after he asked me what kind of camera I had, and if I had a model release. After I showed him the image he said, “nice bokeh.” I was a little taken a back, but turns out he used to shoot movies.

Anyway, the above shot is pretty much what I envisioned, but I thought it would have been better without the blue car that was in the background. I had other shots of him, but I liked his eyes in this one the best. So, I tried it in black and white.

So which one do you like better. I can’t decide. The car is irrelevant in this image, and his features are stronger I think, but I miss the purple shirt.

Then I asked myself, what was my vision for this image. Good question. I knew I wanted his look without a strong background, hence, the shot at f/4.0. Actually, I thought I was shooting at 2.8. My bad. Anyway, I think I like the purple shirt. Maybe I didn’t have a clear enough vision when I took the image. Maybe I am thinking way to much about this.

I still like the shot.