Team pictures for Sheldon HS Volleyball
Today we made our annual trip to Sheldon high school, out near Elk Grove, to do pictures for their volleyball teams. We've been photographing them for probably six years now, have done senior portraits for some and have even hired two former Sheldon players to travel with us to volleyball tournaments and learn to photograph volleyball and work at our booth. So it's a group we're always happy to visit and re-connect with.
For the last several years, we have done the same style of indoor team picture. So this year we returned to the great outdoors and created some very nice volleyball portraits of the girls. Regardless of what we are photographing, our goal is always to create the best images possible. Even when "just" doing team pictures, we want to create very nice portraits - ones that just happen to be in uniform.
Volleyball, the Feather River and more Volleyball.
Today was kind of crazy, in a good way.
Jason and I photographed the Sacramento City College Women's Volleyball team picture this afternoon. It's something we've been doing for four or five seasons now and it always a lot of fun. Laurie Nash, their coach, is a funny, easy to work with lady who does a great job of consistently fielding a team that places well in the Junior College State Championship tournament each season.
We've never photographed the team picture in the same location - each year we find somewhere else on campus, scouting for a spot that will make a good background, but allow us to control the light on the team.
This year it was near the front of the campus. There is a grove of 8 or 10 large redwood trees that recreate the wonderful shade of the forest. There's great texture on the ground and on the trunks, with some nice dappled light throwing some pools of light here and there.
I really like the contrast of the sun lit leaves with the blue of the denim jeans.
Working with junior colleges in the Sacramento area is great because we get to continue working with athletes we've been photographing for some time. For example, we've been photographing several athletes on the Sac City team for years now in club and high school volleyball.
After the Sac City team session, I got the pictures downloaded and processed at the office and got directions to my next assignment - I was scheduled to go to East Nicolaus high school to photograph the JV and Varsity teams in action. I had Googled the directions, but read them wrong, and stayed on HWY 99 North longer than I was supposed to and so wound up in COMPLETELY the wrong spot. Then I wandered through the small town of Nicolaus on both sides of the freeway, meandered down a levy road and along the Feather River, backtracked and got back on to the freeway to head further North, thinking perhaps I had taken an early exit. All the while my gas tank is creeping towards empty and I'm starting to stress. I wound up in the middle of nowhere - which people always complain about, but in this case was really pretty. I managed to find a gas station, but still not the high school.
Middle of Nowhere, CA:
This is just one of those shots I felt like taking. Nothing spectacular, but I like the evening light and the "road to nowhere" kind of feel matched my mood and situation. :)
At this point, it's nearing sunset and past time for the JV to start playing and I still don't know where the school is. So, I decided to head back to Nicolaus and explore it some more and perhaps photograph that stretch of the Feather River if I had the chance. I have the team's schedule and know they are playing again at home in two days, so it's not imperative that I photograph them tonight. I may just have to call Alecia (the coach) and get better directions.
So I headed back to the Feather River via that levy road. The sundrenched golden leaves are no longer sundrenched as the sun has dropped considerably during my wanderings, but the river looks great and the sky is showing some evening colors. I spend some time making a few frames. My chosen location is apparently not a secret one as there are scattered beer cans and bottles, the remains of a firepit and a few bits of trash here and there. I can understand wanting to come and hang out by the river, but it would be nice to not have to walk through other people's trash to get to it.
I didn't make many images, but this is my favorite of the evening. Compositional "rules" stress not putting the horizon dead center through the image like this, but I like the symmetrical nature of the reflections.
The evening was totally quiet. I think two cars went by while I was out there. Just a bit of a breeze and some welcome silence. Silence aside from the sound of me hitting myself, that is. I know that may seem strange - but it was in self defense! The mosquitos in that area were out in force and decided I was dinner. They kept me dancing and flapping about.
With the sun down, I decided to drive once more through Nicolaus, but this time to continue further than I had. The directions (which I STILL didn't know I hadn't read right) called for the school within a mile of the freeway. I crossed back through town and drove about five miles further on. I spotted HWY 70 back to Sacramento and was just about to turn and head home but decided to go a bit further. Lo and behold, within a mile of HWY 70 I'm pulling into the parking lot of East Nicolaus high school.
So, after an extra 20 or more miles of driving and a sunset on the Feather River, I managed to photograph two games of the Varsity match afterall. I'll be returning Thursday to photograph both JV and Varsity and I'll be out once more a week later to photograph their team pictures for them.
Good thing I know where I'm going now!
Summer Bunch Ball
To me, nothing quite feels like this time of year like soccer.
I know, for most people Fall means football, but for me, it's soccer. Soccer with it's July and August practices in 105+ degree heat and it's 8am Saturday games. Soccer with the muggy, moist warmth rising from the ground and the smell of grass. Sometimes, if the season went well, it was even soccer in December during playoffs, in freezing rain and mud.
Playing soccer is long behind me, and it's even been years since I photographed it, but it turns out my nieces are playing their first season of soccer and their dad, Alan, is their coach. We got to talking at Niki's wedding recently and he emailed me this weekend's schedule, so I grabbed my gear and headed out.
Soccer at this age group is often was is affectionately called "bunch ball". The children are young and just learning the sport and the notion of a position or zone of responsibility on the field is something they aren't familiar with yet, so you get this scrum of players moving up and down the field bunched up tight around the ball, all trying to kick it (without much intent other than getting a foot on the ball). That's bunch ball. I was pleasantly surprised in that this game, even with these young players (some are as young as six years old) had good structure to it. There was a defense and an offense. Of course, that isn't to say it wasn't bunch ball, afterall, these are young players that are just learning to run with the ball at their feet, they haven't yet progressed to the concept of looking for the open player to pass the ball, so forming a bunch around the ball is the thing to do.
During the match I took a few (hundred) pictures. I'm sharing some of Sydney and Danielle, since they are family, but I photographed the action of the ball, no matter who was touching it, so there are nice images of many of the players.
Their team was pretty dominant (by the end of the game we didn't know if they had won 6-2 or 8-2) so Danielle, who plays a defensive position mostly, didn't get to see a lot of action. Sydney got into the middle of it in the second half, when she changed from goalkeeper to forward.
There it is ... the "bunch".
And, of course, I couldn't leave Alan - proud coach that he is - pictureless.
[Note: Alan is also the contractor I mention in this post. So if you are looking for a contractor for home improvements, I can put you in touch with a very good one. -mh]
Smoke and Lucy.
My brother Jason is an animal person. I mean, I like animals, but Jason is an animal person - he's always really been into the animal kingdom, loves watching animal programs and wanted to work with killer whales when he was younger. And animals have always liked Jason - they respond well to him. Growing up he had all kinds of critters around - from blue bellied lizards, snakes, fish and birds to a very intimidating (and large!) pet jumping spider named Hugo.
More recently, he's been working on his own mini animal kingdom at his house with his wife Kristina. They have four cats, three salt water tanks with corals, snails and fish, not to mention a bruiser of a goldfish that must be at least several pounds and is so large that he now lives in his own pond in the back yard, a bird named Tyson and they added Smoke, their greyhound mix, to the family about six or seven months ago.
Smoke is an adolescent - they adopted him from the SPCA. He's good natured and rambunctious to say the least. He's nearly a perpetual motion machine - always doing something. At least, that's what he's like when he has visitors. Jason says (and even has photographs to prove it) that Smoke does like a good snooze or snuggle. Smoke likes squeeky toys and walks around the house chomping away with enthusiasm while they screech. He's got a bunny stuffed animal he loves and really enjoys a good game of tug of war with Jason.
Smoke, being largely greyhound, is an avid runner. Once or twice a day, he gets to go for a walk and a run at a park around the corner from Jason's house. Yesterday, I got to see him run for the first time.
Naturally, being a portrait photographer, I brought a light with me and, as dusk started to deepen to night, we took a few portraits of him. He's gotten somewhat used to being photographed, as Jason has been using him as a practice subject in his study of lighting with off camera flash. As a result, Smoke was quite cooperative!
I setup one flash and umbrella to throw a nice little pool of light onto the grass that would fade into a darker background.
In addition to all of the fur children they already have, they just added Lucy - another dog rescued from the SPCA. This young pup is ADORABLE. She's so darned cute it's unbelievable. I met her only a few hours after her induction into the family and she got her first portrait session as well.
Lucy is a really sweet girl and is very calm and good natured (and she's got that new-puppy smell!) She's already fitting well into the household. Smoke seems to recognize that she's a pup and is therefor more gentle with her. He invites her to play tug of war with him by putting the tug of war towel in front of her and, when she takes it up, he is very gentle about how he pulls and tugs.
she's a great addition to Jason and Kristina's family.
Niki & Jason's Wedding
This weekend I had the very great pleasure of photographing the wedding of Niki and Jason. I've known Niki for quite some time now, about 17 years, she's a friend of mine. She and Jason got in touch with me this past Spring to ask if I would photograph their wedding and I was happy to say yes.
Niki was a breeze to work with. She's feisty (in the good natured way), but easy to work with. The girls got ready at the Lake Natoma Inn in Folsom. The wedding itself was a very small, family affair at a relative of Jason's house in Loomis. The ceremony was a sunset service with the bride and groom not seeing each other prior to the ceremony. This makes the ceremony beautiful, but it is the sort of scenario which can make outdoor formals taken after the ceremony very difficult in that there is very little time to photograph once the sun goes down and it starts getting dark fast.
Niki and Jason knew about the timing issues and were OK with it - their biggest concern had been the ceremony itself, which turned out very nicely. Afterward, though we had to move quickly on the family pictures, we got all of the important ones in and got to spend a few minutes with the new couple in beautiful late dusk light on the shore of a pond on the property.
After that, everyone was off to the reception, which was - again - a very small, simple but elegant affair consisting of dinner under a canopy of trees lit with twinkle lights and candles on the tables and an old movie playing on a projector and screen.
One other really neat thing about this wedding is that the two flower girls are my nieces! Sydney and Danielle did a great job and were - as always - a lot of fun to photograph. These are two girls with a heck of a lot of personality.
I left the Lake Natoma Inn before the girls were totally done getting ready so that I could check out the ceremony location and get a few portraits of Jason prior to the ceremony. He was completely relaxed before the ceremony and happy to hit it for a few pictures.
Shortly after that, the ladies arrived for their final preparations. Niki had done her makeup at the Inn, but had to do her final hair styling and put on her dress.
One unusual thing I noticed after looking through the images is that, with the time pressures of the sunset ceremony, we don't have any portraits of the bride by herself. This is VERY unusual, but it happened that - because of how things came together - Niki wasn't actually in her dress until literally about five minutes prior to the ceremony! We had absolutely no time to put aside for photographs before she walked down the aisle - the light was fading and everyone was seated and waiting (and it's kind of hard to sneak the bride out when everyone is expectantly watching the doorway for her appearance). When I left the room so that her final bridesmad could dress, all of the guests were already seated and ready for the ceremony to start. I basically had enough time to leave the room, get to the ceremony area and get my cameras set for the light before photographing the first of the bridesmaids coming down the aisle.
All of that might sound stressful - but it wasn't. It was fun! :)
Once the sun went down, I was looking forward to long exposures of the dinner area - that rich, cobalt blue of the sky is photographically addictive, especially when contrasted with the warmth of the lights. To get the images, the ceremony area required a 20 second exposure and the reception area a six second exposure.
All in all this was a wonderful experience. Niki and Jason are very much in love and I'm thrilled for them!
Tough Girls.
I was hanging out with my daughter, her sister, Sierra, and their mother, Christina, recently when we were joined by my nieces, Sydney and Danielle, and their parents, Allen and Anna (got all those names? There will be a test at the end of this post! :). We had lunch and icecream at Leatherby's, a local family creamery and then headed off to the park to play.
Along the way I got the idea for a few photographs and, of course, I had my gear in the trunk.
In keeping with the fact that I am trying new techniques photographically, one of the ideas I had was for a high contrast image cross lighting the sun with a flash. This type of light is not something that you would usually use to photograph four cute little girls, it's the kind of thing you would see on more "intense" athletic portraits or tough guy type images. So I decided that the girls needed to be tough. I line them up and told them I wanted them to look mean, like this was their playground and anyone that messed with them was going to get it!
These are four of the sweetest, nicest girls you'll ever meet, so this was a bit of a stretch for them, but they did what they could for me. :)
Afterward, I took a group picture more in keeping with their bright and sunny nature and then we goofed off on the swings.
Another idea I had one the way over involved taking a series of images of each of the girls on the playground and then combining them into one, along with a nicely lit portrait for a portrait/action composite.
Unfortunately, at this park, the playground toys were half in shade half in the sun when we arrived, which was simply too much of a difference contrast-wise, so I had to wait until the sun had set to photograph.
I like the image, but think I'll give it another shot on another day when the sun is shining full on the toys - that will give more pop to the colors.
And finally, it's been a while since I had a picture with both Ryan and Sierra, so I relented when they suggested it. Bear hug style.
Eric & Soma's Wedding
Recently I had the great pleasure of working with a very good friend of mine, Meagan John. Meagan is a full time staff photographer for Christopher Kight Photographers - she runs his shooting room (photographing all of his studio portraits) and photographs weddings for him as well. (Chris is the primary photographer in his studio, but employs a number of additional photographers, Meagan is one of them).
However, Meagan used to work for US at our volleyball tournaments (we still miss her!). She worked with us a few seasons, but we wore her out with our 18+ hour days and she wanted to shoot more portrait & wedding work, which we were not doing a lot of at the time, so she joined Chris's staff.
Chris is actually an old, old family friend, and both Jason and I spent time working with him in the late 1990s. So, this was a total win-win - we're all friends and I was happy to help and thrilled that Meagan asked.
Meagan called me in July, when I was photographing Joe & Melody's wedding, and asked if I would help her photograph a two day Catholic/Indian ceremony. That's as far as she had to go before I jumped at the chance. I've been wanting to photograph an Indian wedding for years now, but have never booked one.
So I joined Meagan for both days - the first day was a Catholic ceremony and a luncheon for family and friends. The second day was a full Indian ceremony with dinner and reception. Both days were beautiful. The entire experience was a lot of fun - the families were wonderful and working with Meagan again was a breeze. It was fun to call somone else "Boss" for the day! :)
This wedding was so fun and beautiful, I could post hundreds of images from it before feeling like I had started to share everything we saw, but I'll have to stop! If you would like to see more, we have updated our wedding galleries.
I really hope I have the opportunity to photograph more weddings like this in the future.
My girl.
I'd be a pretty big hypocrite if I didn't photograph my daughter, Ryan. Afterall, the reason I am a photographer (aside from simply enjoying the act of creating pictures) is because of the importance of having images of family members to look back on in the years and decades to come.
Ryan is growing up fast - she just turned 9! She was only 2 when I started this business (I really can't believe seven years have gone by just like that). Anyway, she's getting older and taller and I realized it had been some time since I made a point of photographing her. It was about time I did ... and it had been long enough since I had last bothered Ryan with a camera that she was willing to sit still for it.
I enjoy portraits that suggest something about the individual, and Ryan loves to draw, so I sat her down with paper and pencil while I broke out a set of small, portable lights I had recently purchased and used a portrait session with Ryan as an opportunity to get used to working with them.
The images were intended as simple portraits of Ryan doing something she really likes, and those are the kinds of images that I, as her dad, will really enjoy when she's older and I'm looking back on these and wondering how in the heck time passed so quickly (I already do that).
Along with drawing, Ryan is a big LOUNGER. She loves our couch (don't get me wrong - she goes to ballet several times a week, loves horseback riding, is itching to play soccer and loves a good pillow fight - she's very active ... but when she comes to visit Dad, she also enjoys a good lounge). So, naturally, we moved to the couch for some images.
And, just to add a little more fun, we broke out the colored gels. These two images are an homage to the portraits that photojournalists create for feature articles every day. I had in mind a feature article of a young author when I took these.
In spite of the fact that they look like a studio portrait, they were actually photographed in our front entryway, photographing down our hallway. I used two lights - one for Ryan and one for her bedroom door. The idea was to create a studio type look right in the middle of our house, with very little space - something I often have to do when photographing portraits.
The next day we were bored and Ryan wasn't tired of being photographed, so we hopped into the car to head out to the park for some pictures. Somehow, we wound up downtown and I took what I call my "Future Governor of California" portrait of Ryan. And the next picture reveals the fact that I'm a sports photographer much of the time, and this does creep into my portraits every once in a while. :)
So there you go - a few portraits of my girl taken in fun over a weekend.
Isn't being a photographer supposed to be fun? (Yes it is!)
As with many hobbies/passions become profession, it is often difficult to continue to do what you love, simply for the love of it, when you also have to do it to pay the bills.
I know many photographers that stopped photographing for themselves once their studios got busy, simply because they had so much work to do and photographing no longer felt fun, it had become WORK.
I've experienced that myself. I started our studio just over seven years ago. There have been stretches where I've gone looooong periods of time where I didn't take a single picture if it wasn't for a paying job, and I resented it if my family wanted me to take pictures, or suggested that I should take pictures of some activity.
The idea of photographing, downloading, sorting, processing, archiving, etc., etc. more images was in itself TIRING. I simply didn't have the energy to even think about it. Thankfully, there is a simple explanation for that: OVERWHELM. Looking at those periods of time I can see I was overwhelmed by images to process, upcoming jobs, orders to fulfill, paperwork, emails to answer, etc., etc. At that point, fun ran right out the door and left behind a big mess for me to clean up!
As we've become more efficient, we've caught up on backlogs of work. I no longer have stacks of paperwork surrounding me. All of my orders are fulfilled and I am (as of this writing) simply waiting on a few supplies from outside vendors to complete delivery of several coverages - all of my other work is done. My bills are caught up and my email Inbox is essentially empty.
And guess what happened? I actually got interested in photographing for the fun of it again! I regained an ability to conceive of pictures I would like to take and have actually gone out to create them. I've set aside time to go out and have fun doing things like spending an evening in downtown Sacramento photographing. Or photographing my niece when she came to visit.
Why post this? Because, for the first time in quite a while, I am looking for fun things to photograph - or fun ways to photograph familiar things. I'm feeling energetic and excited about photography again and am looking forward to creating some great images.
I'll be posting some ideas for fun portrait opportunities soon.
So what do you say, do you feel like being photographed?
The Return of the Rose.
Aedyn Rose is back!
If you've visited our blog before, you may have seen our previous Aedyn entry. It's been just over a year, and she's growing like a weed!
She's actually returned home now, but not before she and her mom (my sister Cadie) spent a good, long stretch with us. Long enough that everyone was happy when she got to go home. :) Not because of anything bad, but simply because we could see she needed to go home - the structure, the bed times, her space and things, her dogs and, last but not least by any means, her dad.
While she was here, she got to utterly lay waste to her cousin's room, help wash her aunt and uncle's car, visit the family at a bar-b-que, spend a summer evening eating olives, brocolli, carrots and other vegetables completely drenched in ranch dip, decorate the patio with sidewalk chalk and horseplay with her aunt Erica.
I remember having summer days like these - they sure were fun! :)
I love pictures like these not just because Aedyn is family, but because they are her being herself, hanging out. No stressing over things like, 'Look at her room - it's horrible!' (sure, it's a kid's room afterall), or 'Oh I have to run a comb through her hair!' or 'Smile honey!'. Just being a kid, doing kid stuff. Pictures like these are going to mean a heck of lot more to our family in the years to come than your usual 'Smile and you'll get a piece of candy when we're done.' picture.
I want the pictures we make - ESPECIALLY of children - to be about capturing a memory of those moments that pass so quickly and you wish SO badly you could have more of once they are gone. I know I do. My daughter, Ryan, is nine and wonderful but seeing these pictures of Aedyn, I wish she could be two again - even if just for a day.