I just got off my shift at Dunkin's. I can say I didn't want to go back, but it's easy part time money.

I figure having this job will set me in motion to work harder on getting out of this rut. I need to get into a bank job that pays health and money so I can fund my business on the side. That way I can give people what they want the best way that I can.

Right now, all I have is a camera, a dying laptop, and a dying desktop.

I have no car, no health insurance, and no house. I'll only be making $120 bucks a week at Dunkin's if I'm lucky. I've started to book a few weddings. Nothing big so far. It's hard starting out, but I am DETERMINED!!!!! There is nothing that can sway or hinder my determined soul!

Labels: Determined, Dunkins, Rut

We finished moving all of the equipment from the old store to the new one on Elm Street. The Framer's Market has a really nice location now. It's just a few blocks north of Bridge Street.

I'm exhausted, but my mind is running around in circles. :D

I didn't have time to get a DIY ring flash together. Tomorrow I will. I'll be working the old coffee grind part time till I can get a full-time w/ benefits job.

11-6. Yuck! Too early to do stuff and too late to do stuff for a Sunday. Fun, Fun! I'll get some money in to help pay for my business expenses I'll incur for rebranding! :D

I wanted to do a few tests with lighting with my simple desk lamp. First I modeled my brother to see how the light would look. Then I sat at my desk, and I aksed him to shoot me!

Here's how it turned out.



Then I ran it through Photoshop. However I still like the original better (Usually the case).



It looks pretty gruesome, doesn't it? I swear, I don't act in horror films, or dark thrillers.

Continuous lights seem to give more of a cinematic look. For this I used a white light and a white brochure to bounce into my face. Not too bad, eh?

Tomorrow I'll try to put together a ring flash. I'm still waiting for my sync cords. They won't come in till next week, anyways. :D

I want to incorporate that into my brand. The old hollywood style of Bogey, and Brando.

And I want to merge it with the new era of high end Euro pop style. Crisp golden pictures, as well as extreme low key lighting.

That's my plan. Now I just need to get a photographer (or someone) to work with to take photos of me.

Tomorrow I'll be helping my uncle with the move again. my hands are calloused over for the most part.

Aaack! My hands are sore from moving hundreds of matting boards into boxes. That's what moving stuff at a frame shop looks like. More work on that tomorrow and Saturday. Yuck. My hands are still burning.

Now I finally have time to work on my brand (soul searching).

Time to get to work. I've come up with a few ideas.

I know I'm going to need to hire a photographer to get good shots of me in my element. I know I'm going to need someone to video me for my opening page.

It's funny, because when Jasmine said "Keep it real" I didn't know what real for me was... until I made a short list of things I love to do, and things I'm good at.

• I love films! Going to the movies is an altime favorite! I think Film is the ultimate form of expression as an artist. I love directors who are sooo particular about the feel of a film like Kubric, Mann, Burton, and Hitchcock. Those artists are defined by thier films.
  
• Music Videos are the same for me. They are like short films with a huge burst of emotion. It's one big idea, one expressive movement.
• I love dance, and all of the energy that goes into it. It's soo much fun for me, it doesn't matter what type of dance, there's so much energy in the room when people get up and dance!
• I'm good at talking and listening to people. I'm good at sharing with complete strangers. I think it's funny when people are shy, because it's like you only live once, and you might only have one chance to get to know and share with this person. There are so many uncertainties, that you just gotta take chances when you can.
  
• I'm really good at thinking about the big picture. I think that comes from my academic training where we are taught to not only think in numbers about about people and meaning in order to solve problems. I think that's also why I aced my course about social problems.
• I love to serve people. This goes along with the two bullets before hand. Talking and listening on a micro scale, and thinking and solving problems on the macro scale.
  
• I can also be very fussy. Almost a perfectionist. Tuesday night they said something that resonated with me. "The path to perfection leads to procrastination." It's soo true. For a full month I cleaned and polished my resume and coverletter to apply to a job. I tried to achieve perfection, but it only lead to procrastination. They also said "Settle for Great." Which I need to do. Because I am great, and trying to be perfect only leads further away from what I want, which is great.
  
• I have a creative genius. I love to create things such as music, photos, films, and even physical things such as sculpture and DIY rigs. I'm working on building a ring flash! In that sense I'm a techie because I like to know how things work and how to build them.
• I really love being alone with nature. The mornings are so beautiful. The sun breaks over the horizon, and all the building sides are light in soft and warm colours. The end!
  

Ouch. The site is seeming messy. I've got to simplify it and soon.

Unfortunately I can't work on anything today. I have to go and help my uncle at the frame shop. They are moving downtown into one of the mill buildings. I'll get paid a little bit.

I'm seriously considering working with the Showit site application for my website. Hopefully I can incorporate a web form to make it easy for people to book me. The more and more I fiddle around with the CSS, the more I realize that I want to use the application. Matthew Cheung's showit site looks really nice. There's a link to it two posts ago.

I definately want to put video on my site. That will be the first major change. This rebranding process is tough. I need some outside help. Especially for new photos for my site.

Okay, So I've been branding today (and cleaning).

Today I've gotten rid of soo much clutter and things I don't need. And it felt really freeing. I'm off to a good start. Tonight I'm going to keep on working out my brand on paper. I need to free my website of all of the clutter too!

As you can tell I've been doing a few changes here and there. More drastic ones to come tomorrow.

Wish me luck! And thanks again, Jasmine!

Labels: Branding, Clutter, Freedom, Jasmine Star

Hey guys! I had a blast in Boston today. Thanks David Jay, it was really cool to meet you!

I want to throw out a thanks to all of my friends helping me out to be the best I can be and to serve people the best that I can. That means, Thank you Laura Colantoni, Jen Spitzer, Galadriel Spaulding, and more for giving me input. I also want to thank the guys who've been in the business who've taught me soo much lately which includes Gary Fong, David Jay, Jasmine Star, Dane Sanders.

Here's what I wrote down in my notebook when I first got to the hotel.

"Writing a head of time. I met David Jay at 5pm in the Sheraton Lounge. It was pretty cool. He's so genuine and laid back. You can definitely tell he's a California guy.

There are tons of photographers here. Some I've never met. I'm a little scared, and yet wicked excited.

My stomach ache is vanishing as we get closer to the event."


"So I'm here at South Station. Just got back from David's Free To Succeed Tour.

I was remembering a thing that my friend Laura said when she first loaded my new website: "Whoa, for a minute there I thought you got engaged!!"

And that really taught me something. Tonight Jasmine Star and David Jay really hit it home for me. When people go to my website, wanting to hire me, they expect to see me!!! They expect to learn all about me first, and then see my style, my albums, and my price.

Boom! I want to be as honest and genuine as possible.

I wanted to educate brides on how to choose good photographers.

But I forgot one thing. I have to be honest and genuine by opening up and defining myself. That is great education that speaks first.


Jasmine Star was sooo coool! She was great! And she's smart. She gave me so many great ideas to use, and she told me I have to keep it real! So in my next post, I'm going to keep it real by writing about my current situation in my wedding photography business. Because there has been a huge change so far with the website, and more to come!

It was also really cool to meet other photographers. I didn't have too much time to mingle since I had to catch the bus. But I was really excited to meet photographers who are in the same boat as me. I only shot 2 weddings so far, 1 of which I was the official photographer. :D


Here's Matthew Cheung! He's really cool! He lives in Dorchester and works at a community service project place! He has a Digital Rebel (which is smart!) and has shot a few weddings. If you want, you can check out his site!

Labels: David Jay, Free To Succeed, Jasmine Star, Thank You, Wedding photographer

I'm finally playing around with my camera again after working like mad on my website.

What do you think? It's really hard taking pictures of yourself hand-held, isn't it?

School is starting up! But not for me. I've already graduated with a BS in Economics. I'm still out looking for a 9-5 job to keep me afloat until the business picks up. Just starting out can be risky and hectic. And I'm charging below market rates for starters! I'll barely make any money till at least a year down the road.

My brother, Sam, has left for school at Keene State. He's going to be studying computer science!

He's smart and software oriented. I think he'll do well. He started out wanting to do films, but he spent most of his time fooling with software and linux.

I'm Super excited right now!

The website is up, and as you can see, I reformatted my blog and incorporated it into my site! I'm going to have to upload some more images to put on the pages. Other than that, it's complete!

Now I can work on my other business needs.

Write a comment and tell me what you think!

I'm wicked excited for my new website to launch tomorrow!

It will be just in time before I go to see David Jay at his "Free to Succeed" tour in Boston!

I've been scrutinizing over this website, making sure it is completely optimized! The web form works now, to make it easy for people to book me. Also I describe how I work and what you can expect from me on my web page. I figure the more information I provide for people, the better a decision they will make.

I want to serve people the best that I can!

Tomorrow I have to run the text through spell and grammar check, then I have to add tittles and descriptions to each page to make it easier for people to understand what my site is about!

You're going to like the design too! It is smooth! It has a similar look to this blog, but I'm going to redesign this blog (not too much) so you can easily skip to my other pages!

I haven't had any time to upload photos from my camera yet. I haven't even had time to fiddle around with pictage.

Labels: David Jay, Web Form, Website Launch

Have you ever heard of the old tale that yellow Volkswagen Beetles are cursed?

I don't believe in curses or any other form of superstition, however I can see why a yellow bug may be perceived as cursed.

1. Yellow Bugs are very bright and unusually shaped vehicles. They stick out like a sore thumb and are prone to rubber necking on the road.
   
2. Also it is more likely to spot a yellow bug than a black or blue bug on the road and punch the person next to you (maybe the driver) and yell "PUNCH BUGGY YELLOW!!!!" causing a terrible accident.

Rubber necking can also be used for good. If you're business sticks out in a crowd, then people are going to start noticing and considering your services. I'm not saying you have to paint your business yellow. I'm just saying make sure people understand how different your business is from all of the other firms that serve similar needs.

As for me, I'm still working out the website, getting ready to launch in the next week. Wedding Photography and Album design, here I come!

This week I'm meeting up with David Jay in Boston to get some more wisdom about how to better serve future brides and grooms. I'm WICKED STOKED! He's been at it for a while and started in the business with a college buddy right after they graduated. It's so cool to learn from someone who was in my shoes just starting out.

David Jay is a well known wedding photographer. Right now he's spending time helping other wedding photographers achieve more freedom in their lives. I know that sounds corny, but If you think planning a wedding is hectic, think about shooting a wedding every Saturday full time. Most 9-5 career workers have weekends off. The rest of the week is spent going through images and preparing them for the printers and album companies! He has designed and shared a work flow to speed up the process that goes on when photographers are not shooting, in order to serve people the best and fastest way leaving more time for intimate care with the clients!

Labels: Business, David Jay, Wedding Album, Wedding photographer, Yellow Bug

Hi guys! I told you I'd be back!

So I've been reworking my business making sure everything is in the right place. There are soooo many things to think about when you're running a business. It's all put in place so you can serve people as best as you can.

I feel really blessed to get into the wedding photography business. I'm very excited to be able to offer new beautiful products!

This includes a completely custom designed FINE ART WEDDING ALBUM!!! I think people are going to like it. I'm still setting things up, though.

I'm going to be relaunching my website as well! It's going to be great! It's all focused on making things easy for brides!The design was done all by me! I did work for a web design place when I was a student! I've learned best practices, but I never really implemented them, until now. I like to experiment. It's all very clean XHTML with CSS.

The next Wedding I'll be shooting is Molly and Richard's on October 11th! Molly was the first Bride to be to ask me to shoot their wedding. She's an old friend from college. I feel really blessed to be able to capture their special day in an album.

I want to thank Gary Fong for helping me out this week. He's a really cool retired wedding photographer who invented the Cloud Sphere! The Cloud Sphere is the big white plastic thing you'll see on my external flash. It looks a bit silly, but it helps me to make beautiful photographs.

Hi guys.

I know I haven't been posting lately. It's been pretty crazy so far.

I've been overwhelmed with a new business direction and also looking for a Mon-Fri Job.

My computer has been giving me a hard time, and I'm about ready to buy an IMAC!!!!

More on that Tomorrow. I must sleep now.

Goodnight Folks!

I got my 40D back! Now it goes back to ISO 100 in P mode!

How does it look? See for yourself!


Not too bad! I used my 85mm f/1.8 and my close up lens (expensive magnifying glass that screws onto the filter)! The strange thing is, this guy would not budge. I tried to flick the flower so I could get an action shot of him leaping, but no dice.

I'm ready for business now! I'll have some other shots uploaded shortly to my website. I put them on my Facebook if you would like to see the other flower shots.

Hey Guys! I've updated my website recently. I've been doing pretty good about it. I put up the film photos in a gallery here.

I've also posted a paper. I've written about inventing toys, and how to do it while protecting your intellectual property. You can read it here.

You can also subscribe to my postings about the economy here. There are only a few, but they are good reads in my opinion. ENJOY!

Now, I'll remind you that I dropped these photos off at the supermarket, and didn't send them to a nice fancy lab. Here are some of my favorite. The two photos below below were redone in lightroom to bring out the color, blacks, and underexpose it a tad to see the clouds. They were taken with my Canon EOS 630 with a Canon 28mm f/1.8 lens and a circular polarizer. The camera was set to program automatic. The film is Fuji Pro 400H.




Here's two shots from the wedding in very dim light with no flash. Same lens (no Polarizer) same camera, and same film. Not too shabby for a junk lab. I've decided to send my photos out anyways since I'll want to shoot with slides. Any recommendations? I like Eagle Photo in Portsmouth, NH, but they take a while (worth the wait). Their website needs a bunch of updating, though.

Here is an Image I took with my 430EX speedlight flash on my Canon 40D. Notice how the flash was used to show motion in the arms.

I did a review a few weeks ago about the flash unit I have. It said I could post it to my blog easily, but that hasn't been working so well. So here it is copied, pasted and reformatted!

Headline: Great filler! Good Power!

My Last Semester of Senior year, I took a painting course. It was the most expensive course I've taken, and it was also one of the most freeing courses I've taken. It was a traditional painting course with a very keen instructor.

When I first started out, I was still struggling with mixing the paints. Once I got over that, I learned to think with my eyes. Painting is a very cool process where you use your brain to observe, interpret, and take action. But it has to be trained.

You train it to interpret and reproduce not just colors and tones, but also the relationships between each other as well as their place within the whole composition. When I got to the end of the course, my brain mapped out the full color composition of the model, or still setting.

In a way this is very much how a camera works whether it be digital or film. The digital sensor interprets the light and maps it out with meters and paints a digital picture. The same with film. The light hits the film and interprets the light to produce an image. Some films interpret colors, and tones differently than others, like artist interpret the same subject differently. Not so different that it is unrecognizable, however. Here is a self portrait I did in class.

My instructor for that class is Rebecca Litt. Here is her website! Check out the street crowd paintings! They are my favorite!

The gallery on her site is very accessible. I've got to work on mine a bit more. Always working on the site! I wrote a few more pages for the EOS 630 field guide. More to come! Wednesday I'll have more pictures back to show how the camera works in the field!

To wrap things up, this is how you make an effort with your eyes! You need to train them. You can do that by drawing and painting and taking pictures. But you need to think and observe and force yourself to see and make art! If you have the opportunity take a drawing or painting class! I felt frustrated at the beginning, but I will never regret it! Thanks Rebecca!

There are some new Canon Photos I did as well. The Canon is all black, so It doesn't look as cool as the pentax does, but I like it anyways! It's Dark, with glimmers of light to show the structure of the camera.

What's my trick? Natural light! Of Course! The most beautiful light comes from the sun!

You know what camera I used for all of these shots? A crappy 4 megapixel point and shoot! It just goes to show that any camera can take great photographs. The trick is setting it up, or waiting for it.

The photo above is a picture of my mom's film SLR! She got it back in the early 80's for her high school photography class! I took the shot myself! Pretty stylish, eh? It's a Pentax K1000, one of the popular models back then.

I haven't shot with it , and I plan to soon. I need to pick up a tiny watch battery so it can meter. I took it out and cleaned it up. It had been sitting in a deteriorating camera bag for years!

So I didn't end up going hiking yesterday. Unfortunately Yahoo maps gave us bad directions. We ended up in Nashua almost instead of heading onto 101 west to Mt. Monadnock. Oops! There's always next week. :D

Tomorow, I am going with my uncle to see Jethro Tull with Peter Frampton opening! It's at Meadowbrook in Gilford. It's probably going to be awesome.

Yesterday, I did get to go to Rye Beach. I put on sunscreen but I forgot to re-apply it, so I got burned. It was really nice. The water was not too cold, and it didn't rain at all. When I got home I stayed up for dinner, watched Seinfeld and the Simpsons, and crashed in my bed.

I also went to the store to get groceries and drop off a role of film. Hopefully Hannaford's has a good lab. I'll only find out on Wed. It's supposed to be a 2 day service, but they don't pick up on weekends and pick up at 11am on weekdays. So on Wed we'll find out if the prints turn out good and if they do a good job at scanning in film. If not, I'm going to have to find another place. If they do a good job, I've found a great place for my film. Although, They don't seem to do Slide processing, so I'll have to send out or go to Portsmouth (Eagle Photo) for that.

I've been working on redesigning my website, so it's more readable for people. It's white on black. It seems boring, but I think I can pull it off. The website is for everybody.

I'll also try to post on this blog, and my website with the material I write. This blog is again about getting to know me and for me to be honest and open. Look for more to come.