Upcoming excursions

Husband and I like, no let me reword, we love love love to off-road. There is nothing better than the free spirited play on the beaten path, but more so off it. Our motor's thunderous call of sound is created by nothing less than the adjustment of your ankle bringing about the utmost childish behavior in myself and similarly my fellow off-roaders. We continue the childish behavior at every stop with whitty banter between fellow "team mates" because lets face it, its a race every where we go and we are on team Maverick!!! We trace the trails with swiftness and precision, race through the whoops at Ricky Bobby speeds, and when we look into the face of a rocky hillside instead of feeling limited and intimidated we move forward in 4wheel low and deface that rocky pile in our quest for the top. Is it this glorious? Absolutely.

At the end of the day we all meet up at camp having left clean and pretty and arriving as filth mongers dirt stained from tip to toe with a smile! The girls begin dinner, traditionally a buffet style meal serving the masses, and the boys light the camp fire, by light of course I mean with .25 gallon of race gas and a pile of wood that would make an Alaskan jealous. The night continues with music, stories, air guitar (not kidding), great food, and amazing company. For these reasons we love off-roading and our passion for it has been seared into our little oil filled hearts.

This weekend we will be enjoying this crazy addictive sport in Barstow for the High Desert Charities Poker Run sponsored by Slash X Cafe. Between races... er... of course I mean poker runs... I will be taking a slew of photos of members of this race! I'm looking forward to meeting as many of the charity contributing members of our sport I can, and fingers crossed they bring some off-road photo business! Being in the desert I hope to luck out and get some amazing sunset photos, purples and pinks are the best and most memorable sunsets. Photos to come, but in the meantime here is one of my favorite sunsets to tide you over.

Short and Sweet

Juggling life has become more time consuming lately, I have fallen to a once a week posting and this week's blog post will be short and sweet. No tutorials, NO! No advice, NO! Nothing but a photo I'm particularly proud of , and a few words.
Travel should be a paid job,  and I would be rich LOL! I love to travel, who doesn't? The air encompassing the travel spot is always full of sweet smells of new food to try, new adventures to be had, and in this trip's case the pending weather doom and of course cow poo.  In our mad dash to visit all members of the family located within the entire state of Texas (yes, I said Texas!) and southern Oklahoma I got to take some shots of things that aren't traditionally seen in the desert. Feeling more and more confident in my progressive skills I am taking new directions with my photos, and the payout is fulfilling. Maybe one day Ill actually frame one of these:) Its a photographers curse, BARE WALLS! Not kidding.
If you haven't checked it out yet, please make a trip to my site PerformancePixels.net. I am a bonafide motorhead and love the action of all things that rumble and speed to ridiculous digits in the fastest way possible (thanks dad ;)) Born to a family with lead feet I continue the tradition that is Ames. Though, I am not just a action/sports photographer, I have done several weddings and more recently senior photos. I'm always looking to expand my clientele base and would be interested in discussing any work you might need. Next week we are off to the Barstow Slash X Poker Run in the CanAm (and we are gonna KILL IT!), the trip should produce some interesting blog postings and photos, stay tuned!
Keep on walking,
V

Song of the edit: "Heavy" Florence and the Machine

Where does the time go?

Where does the time go? March 23rd I did some senior shots, of course this job happened to be the weekend before our big Texas trip leaving no time to edit before we left, here we are nearly three weeks later and I have finally completed the task. Really? Three weeks? WOW! Thats the expectation of a very slow wedding photographer or one with a gigantic team of editors, but not of a senior photo session (as I type this i'm smacking my own hand saying "bad photog, bad, bad, bad"). Why the sudden influx of items to take up all my time? I pondering this question and when coming up with nothing I realize... there isn't a sudden influx... there is just the same old stuff taking my time and making me unavailable. Sure I work a 40 hour weekly traditional job, a secondary twice a month job, and am taking 6 credits via online and in class school, but that never stopped me before. In considering all my frustrations and deciding how to better manage my time a light bulb enters the brain, learn how to improve your daily tasks, your daily workflow. Yes, of course! I preached to know your photography equipment better in my last blog post, now I just need to be more efficient in the equipment I use on a daily basis! Today's topic, learn your equipment and developing a more effective working process, which can be applied to anything however I will be relating it to photography processes.

1. Learn your equipment (again)! this time, learn the things that make you more (or in my case less) effective. In the photographic process this starts with the camera (see previous blog post), and it also includes your computer/workstation. While I feel I am a master with my computer, it has been giving me grief lately! It thinks when it should be processing and doing things, and it loads programs when I should already be up and running. This is unacceptable! Resolution? I installed more RAM memory. Simple, cost effective, and self installed (yea, I'm a little techie!). I went from 5mb RAM to 12mb RAM for $70! This is the equivalent of dropping a V8 into a Corolla, lots of bang for your buck and guess what? Computer efficiency is up 240%. SUCCESS!! This thought and suggestion can be applied towards anything, make yourself more efficient by learning how to better use your equipment, and if its not efficient enough fix it.

2. Workflow reorganization. Now, photography workflow can be quite specific a task, however a good workflow is necessary to be effective with any task. I have realized my workflow is all over the place, I start one place, see something shiny and flock to it, lose three hours with said shiny thing, then have to start all over again trying to figure out where I left off. You can imagine my adventures with trying to gain control over my clearly hyperactive brain, I begin to get frustrated in trying to figure out where I left off... the frustration grows into anger... and anger leads me to just throw out all my work and begin again. True story, this happened just last week. Start with your most basic process first, and move your way down to the more specific detailed tasks sticking with the original item/chore/project until you are 100% complete. For us photog's this process should look something like this (and its nearly midnight, I might be forgetting a step):
1. Uploading photos from the camera, and reformatting card immediately (in camera) after ensuring upload is complete. This eliminates in field stress of "Shoot, have I uploaded these photos yet? Can I use this card or not??" Which also happened to me, during the senior photo shoot and again during our Texas trip. DUH moment!!
2. Rename the folder holding the photos to reflect the job
3. Tag the photos with people and subjects for easier future reference and search-ability
4. Creating a "100% Edited" folder within the project folder
5. Culling, the process of going through and deleting the hideously wrong photos
6. RAW processing, if you dont shoot in RAW we need to talk
7. Begin photo edits, first in folder to last. I promise you, this is something that I had to force myself to   do!! I always want to edit and process my favorites first then I forget which ones I have already edited and then end up editing them all over again jumping all over the place! Oh the hours I have lost!! If you are like me save yourself the trouble and edit in order!!!
8. Save edited photos to the 100% Edited folder. Yes I'm a victim of an itchy clicker finger... I get excited when a photo is done and my itchy clicker finger clicks "Save" instead of "Save As" and then I proceed to overwrite my "digital negatives" which is never a good thing. UGG!
9. Once all photos are edited post them online to your site, only do this when they are ALL completed. I learned this the hard way this week, you lose interest in the secondary and third set of uploads which means you lose sales. Make your clients wait til you are 100% done. If you want to give a teaser photo to entice interest that is A-OK, but just one!

Like I said, its nearly midnight and I just finished with an Anthropology paper so I might have missed a few steps in the workflow but you get the idea.

In the last week I have had one photo really grab my attention, its one from the senior photo session mentioned earlier. This girl is gorgeous, which helps my photography look amazing:) Have a great week, and keep on shooting!



 

How to stand out in the crowd.

Over the past blog-less week I have spent my time visiting Texas, and was it a busy mini-vacation! In 4 days we put 1100 miles on the rental car, dined at fine roadside bbq joints several times, stopped to smell the roses in six cities while completely ignoring the flowering plants growing in the cow patties of shanty towns we decided not to invade with our ever exuding city slickness (by this I mean having all of our teeth, wearing shoes, and shirts!). We visited with four Austin Ames' (my family), met 30 of my husbands near, distant, and grandfathered in family members, and am pretty sure we were dosed with some of that hillbilly Sasquatch fearing fever during our night "Hide and Go Jeep" game at Uncle Joes! What a efficient and excellent trip!
During the trip and all the meet and greets I found that two of husbands family members were photographers, one of which has a budding wedding photographic business and the other more of a holly hobbyist. I pondered this thought, 3 in 30 people or 10% of the population is into photography. If this small sample of the population holds true for the larger picture, this would mean an estimated 31 million of the current estimated population (compliments of the US Census Bureau July 2012) is into exactly the same hobby and business as I. Kind of a petrifying thought actually, 1 in 10 people are self proclaimed photographers. This leads to further thought process... how does a new photographer, seasoned photographer, or even senior photographer combat a quickly rising population of photographers? Two words, YOU DONT! I have learned so much these past few years from other photographers, its amazing the things classes and tutorials dont teach you. Real life experience with real life photographers teaches you invaluable things, here are some of the invaluable ideas I have learned:

1. Never underestimate yourself, or anyone else for that matter. You never know how experienced, or inexperienced, one is.  By not assuming I am more experienced that anyone else or know more than another photographer I am eliminating the biases that come with that ignorance. Everyone can learn something from other people, even if it is as small as a change in point of view, or if it is as magnanimous as understanding depth of field.

2. Never assume just because you have taken a class you understand the principles taught in that class and can make them work in a real life situation, I have proven this fact so many times to myself with ruined photos! Nothing beats practice! You can memorize every word in a book but without putting your new found knowledge into action its useless and usually unmemorable.

3. Find what you are good at, what you love, or what you have the "eye" for and be the best you can at that thing. I am an excellent sports photographer, and more recently a landscape photographer. Being good at these types of photography is my specialty, can I do wedding and portrait photography? Sure. Do I want to? Not really. Do I make exceptions to my rule for special people? Sure. Do I turn down work because of lack of experience in that field? Yes. Do I mind turning down the work? Not really. Are other people more experienced than me in these areas? Absolutely.  Knowing your own limitations is not the same as underestimating yourself, learn your difference.

4. Learn your equipment. You cant pull off the shot you want without knowing every single button on your camera. The sun might set quicker than you anticipated, you need to know how to get that same shot with half the light. The shutter you have selected might not be fast enough, you might need to change it in an instant to not miss your opportunity. Or the background might not be appealing, learning how to blow out the background in a split second might be the only way to save the shot. These are some of the real life in-field situations you will be faced with, and if you cant change that setting you cant get that shot.

5. Continue your education. I found a local Meet-Up group of photographers and we go on photo safaris, it might sound completely nerdy but when a man with 40 years of experience gives me a business/photo/camera tip I consider it a free gift from the photo-gods. You hear that? Free. Free experience and expertise from a man who has paid for and earned 40 years of it just because I listened to him talk. Learn from the best and aspire to be your best. Take workshops, there is probably one closer than you imagine, and if there isn't Improve Photography and Digital Photo School have some really great online workshops, articles, and tips for your implementation and absorption.

This is all I have for now, as I battle off the other sports and landscape photographers in my neck of the woods (pun intended) I will continue to blog about things I find pertinent in the photographic world.