The Cynic Gazette » Photography

The 7P’s and the giant photo FAIL

Joisey Mike — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:54:01 +0000

The fellas at the This Week in Photography blog posted an excellent entry about the 7 P’s, which I feel so strongly about, I’m going to bold-type: Proper Prior Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

When you go out to get a photograph, there are two ways you can set out. Prepared and unprepared. When I was in Basic Combat Training (Basic for short) I heard all about the “7Ps.” At the time, I thought it was just my instructors being, well – you know….difficult.

Full entry at TWIPPhoto.com.

This was illustrated in a most exquisite photography FAIL of mine at my fiancee’s MBA graduation.

Accomplished Checklist:

Camera battery fully charged
Flash batteries fully charged
Perfect framing, focus and light settings from where I was sitting.

Things that should have been added:

Knowing she would be graduating from the management college instead of the business college like I’d assumed. 10 seconds of research in the graduation pamphlet would have told me this.
Paying attention when the correct college for her graduation was called to the stage so that I would have noticed she was the second person in line, and not in alphabetical order.
Leaving the flash and camera ON so I could wake it from sleep mode and get the shot, instead of fumbling through “OMG WHY WONT ANYTHING WORK?!”
Zooming out first (70-300mm lens) so I could find her quickly on stage and zoom in to quickly frame, instead of trying to find her with a super-zoomed-in 1-person-at-a-time frame.

So yeah, lack of proper prior preparation resulted in piss poor performance. I missed the shot which would have looked great framed next to her diploma. For me, heartbreaking; for her (luckily) a funny story of what a camera geek I am.

And to think, before all of this I was kicking myself for not bringing my Canon 70-200 f2.8L because I thought I’d need the extra reach of the crap Quantaray 70-300. Everyone’s said it a million times, the best gear in the world doesn’t matter when you miss the shot.

Lesson = learned!

Fishing for photo passes

Joisey Mike — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:57:15 +0000

A couple of pretty good shows are coming up in January and February, and I’m doing what I can to try to get photo passes into ‘em. So far I’ve generally not needed them since the Ottobar and Sonar have pretty non-existent photo policies, but a few are coming up at Ram’s Head Live and Ram’s Head OnStage, and they’re a bit stricter. I’ll record how the attempts fare as time moves on.

Requested Passes:

The Pietasters – 1/30 @ Ram’s Head Live
Johnathan Coulton – 2/21 @ Ram’s Head OnStage
Cynic – 2/20 @ The Recher Theater

I’m crossing my fingers; my show shooting so far has been pretty well received, so I’m hoping any of them pan out. They’re one step closer to trying to get backed by a media outlet (mags, radio) to shoot freelance and use their name (which gives more access).

And for the hell of it, here are a few shots from the Pietasters a year ago at the 8×10 Club in Federal Hill.

Yeah? Well, you’re a … high dynamic range

Joisey Mike — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 10:24:06 +0000

In the latest battle in my war to keep myself entertained, I’ve gotten back into photography beyond being the guy at the party who has a camera around (granted, I still plan on doing that). Below is my first try at HDR (high dynamic range) photography. If you want to know more about that pic, just click on it and you’ll end up on its photo page on Flickr.

From the desert…. cometh pictars!

Joisey Mike — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 05:15:24 +0000

When I was staying at my dad’s in Vegas, we headed out to Red Rocks state park. I give the new camera a bit of a workout, so here’s a couple of shots from the trip. And one of Sheba the dog.