Hey folks!  So we got the start of what will be the new Climie + Co site out there.  There’s new work in the portfolio section, but I’m pretty excited about the artwork Ben Wilson did for the opening page.  I hired Ben about a year and a half ago to do this for me.  I knew this was the direction I wanted to go.

I’m a major fan of poster artists like those at Gig Posters.  As a visual artist, you believe your clients should hire you for what you do and let you do what you do best.  Hiring Ben was my personal test of that belief.  I went to him with a concept in mind that was somewhat similar to this.  I went through his work and told him what I liked, etc.  It was definitely opening with artwork instead of photos.  He pushed it around and came back and said what I wanted and what I responded to were quite different and that he’d like to take a crack on his own.  What he came back with was the beginnings of the art you see above.  Stunning and just perfect!

So why open with art?  I don’t know other than everybody starts with a slide show or jump page of 2-3 images for blog, site, etc.  And everyone uses really similar colors, blues, neutrals, greens, but not that angry red, haha.  I’m pretty sure this is going to be an either/or – love/hate kind deal, and I’m totally cool with that.  I kept with the red theme in the content areas, and I have to tell you, every single image, color, black and white, and no matter what color palette the photo has, just JUMPS off these reds.  In the initial concepts, I tried some cooler colors and there was always invariably a clash of some sort.  One thing is for damn sure, visitors won’t forget it!

Now what about the blog?  Well, uhhhhhh, that’s going to have to come later.  It will still be accessible at the original address, and feeds work fine, but I need to get someone on the blog design/coding.  But it’s there, and I’ll be posting to it!  Really, I’m just happy to have some current work on the main part of the site.  We are really and truly PACKED in this spring and summer, so first things first, eh?

Take care, and see ya ’round the bend!

I just shot Silpa & Drew’s wedding on a very rainy winter day out at the beautiful Serenbe in Palmetto, Georgia.  It didn’t matter that it was pouring all day.  Silpa and Drew were amazing, Serenbe was amazing, and their families had an amazing time, simple as that.  I’m looking forward to getting the full preview online, but I have to catch up with others before I do!  See ya around!

So I flew out of the country to shoot this wedding, and just before the wedding it started pouring.  I was looking for an ark out of the corner of my eye the whole time.  It looked like we wouldn’t get any portraits outside that evening, though eventually we’d have about 5 minutes of a glorious sunset that we didn’t know was going to happen.  I had no choice but to make best use of the space they were in.  The best room there was really just a big empty room with two brightly painted walls with some glass art mounted in some sort of fancy installment fashion.

Flying out of the country meant basically two SB28 flashes at my disposal.  Below is a photo of this wall.  The lighting is courtesy of the gallery, some cans aimed to kind of give this install some interest.  I knew I had to make some awesome stuff here because, well, the only other rooms were packed solid with guests and it was buckets outside.

As you get away from the wall, it’s very very dark.  No other lighting was in this room.  Advantage: Photographer.  I had the perfect environment to do whatever I wanted, so out came a camera flash.  The challenge here, though, is controlling that light.  If you just take a flash out and fire it, no matter how you aim it, it’s going to splatter the whole area with big ugly camera flash light.  Unless you’re Weegee, forget it.

So these camera flashes make it really easy to control the angle of light exiting that fresnel.  Just hit a button a few times, and blamo, a concentrated beam of light you can really use in this situation.  Remember, a shotgun makes a big ole’ mess, but a rifle, well, there you go.  I think I had this flash zoomed to a mid-tele range, just enough that I could cover Jen and no more.  Again, I despise messing around in Photoshop (or anything else) burning and dodging and fixing sloppiness, especially when there’s no reason for it.

I did not, however, want big ole’ shadows on the wall.  I flew internationally, so I was really light on equipment.  To get around this, I used an RTG.  They are really handy and there’s almost always one around.  What?  Oh yeah, RTG = Really Tall Groomsman.  So it was his job to get that thing way up so the shadows fell very quickly behind this setup.  I did bring Jen out from the wall enough that this wasn’t too much a problem and also to put her in heavy shadow so I’d have independent control of my light on her as well as the background light.

With her in complete shadow, I could change my shutter speed, flash power, anything I wanted really without affecting each other, which is an amazing amount of control you can’t always get.  It allowed me to get just the shot I wanted.  The bonus of her reflection in the polished concrete gives the shot a lot of depth.  Shooting low really emphasizes this.  See how hard the light is without being totally obnoxious?  Getting that light off camera axis gets you a lot more flexibility.  Her pose is very much because of the limitation of where the light is coming from given the situation, but I think it turned out pretty nice!  There it is, straight out of Lightroom.

On the wall perpendicular this one was a blue wall with all this glass art in a very rigid pattern.  This was perfect for this kind of shot.  I knew the glass would throw some wicked shadows if I lit it right.  I had someone just hold that flash straight up from the floor back toward the wall a bit so I could get those shadows and to put the hot spot right where I wanted it, again because of the ability to adjust the flash zoom.

So there you have it!  Two great portrait setups out of a fairly ordinary situation!  I wish I’d have shot the room as it looks without any extra lighting.  Then you can see how much a little technique can really dress up a room fast.  Oh well, next time!

Ok! So here we go!  I get request for help a lot.  How do you do what you do, etc.  The questions seem to lean technical and process.  There are numerous workshops out there, so I wanted to do something different.  There are numerous mentor programs out there, but I still wanted to do something different.  I like the idea of 1 on 1 mentoring.  It suits me.  We can tackle exactly the problem areas and get straight to it.  However, it didn’t make sense to me to have them come here.  This should be about them, their gear, their offices, their weddings, not mine.  It’s way too easy to say, “Well MY weddings aren’t as nice as yours.”  So let’s do this on their turf, learn to make the best of any situation.  Besides, either way there are travel expenses, so why not do this centered around them?  Here is what I’m basing this around:

“You need to know how to market your work. Period. But if your work isn’t strong, the marketing won’t help.” – Brenda Milis

This is not a marketing or branding or business approach.  This is for people who are new to shooting and feel in over their head on the equipment/execution side of things.  They have all this gear and are new to the business, and there are just too many options, too many things vying for attention.  They are having limited success with images, but maybe have a hard time achieving consistency.  Maybe some things are flipped around and it’s causing a lot of problems with trying to figure things out.  And really, if you’re asking money, ANY kind of money from clients, you owe them competency.  That is your currency.

These are *extremely* limited and subject to availability and my schedule.  Currently, only open dates between now and early April are available.  I have a two day or 3 day option.  So far everyone has gone for the 3 day, which is 30 hours or so of individualized time.  This is out of the state of Georgia only, please.

Here is what happens with a 3 day mentorship.  I fly or drive in to your city the night before we officially begin.  Then day 1 is spent going over your hit list of priorities, which we determine before I arrive.  We cover as much as we can in the most efficient way possible in an effort to start to affect some changes in the way you cover a wedding.  This is anything, cameras, lighting, approach, etc, etc.  Day 2 is spent with you at one of your weddings, watching how you work, applying new methods and techniques, things you learned, etc.  I can be an official 2nd photographer if that is what’s contracted or I can simply tag along and shoot a bit here or there if it’s solo coverage.  Mainly I am observing and helping out in implementing anything discussed that might apply.  Day 3 is spent looking over images, reinforcement of things learned over the previous 2 days, discussing workflow, best practices for safekeeping of images, color work, anything that will speed along the process or make the ship run tighter.  I fly out the morning after we’ve deluged your brain.

After this, you have access to me for 1 year beyond our mentor sessions (time permitting of course, scheduled in advance) by phone or IM.  You are also welcome to tag along at one of our weddings as well.  No shooting, just helping out and watching us.  I want to see major progress being made within that year’s time.

One of the aspects of doing this “there” versus here is that I want this to be about you finding your own vision.  I’m there to cut through the mess and nudge you along in the right direction, the direction of understanding your equipment inside and out and what it will take to capture your vision.  This is not intended to crank out a bunch of mini-me shooters.  We are going to try to find the spark in your current work that gives us a peek into how you think, how you see, how you want to be seen.

That aside, I want to profile Jesse Inskeep (seen above shooting in the corn!).  I had a rare free weekend in October, and Jesse wanted me to come up and do just this sort of thing.  I have to say that I wasn’t expecting drastic results in a short period of time. I figured it would be a while before things became apparent.  That’s still the attitude I’m going to take, but I was surprised at how quickly Jesse improved on the wedding we shot together compared to all the others we looked at before this trip.  I asked before going up for him to put up a gallery of some of his favorites to date.

Jesse’s favorites before the mentorship:

A lot of the problem was a clash of information picked up from all kinds of sources.  The internet is great, but it can be a detriment when you have access to so much information when you’re not really ready.  One of the benefits of formal training and/or photography school is that they break everyone down to the basics, the absolute minimum of gear and technique, and you steadily build up from there.  It creates a great foundation for a lifelong learning process.  You intuitively know when you’re getting in over your head and you need to back off and solidify your skills.

As I said, I was quite surprised to see how much Jesse improved on that one wedding alone.  I’m looking forward to seeing what he does from here on out!  I’m certain his work will be getting more and more solid as time goes on.

Jesse’s favorites from the mentored wedding:

He’s already starting to show a clarity of vision just from having some mental clutter alleviated.  He got plenty of really strong, clean images, and he’s catching some really nice moments because he’s thinking less about the gear and more about what’s happening in front of him.  He kind of obliterated his former portfolio, which means more work for him!  But it’s good!  He’ll command more money because of these strides he’s taken in the quality of his images.

I asked Jesse to comment on the experience and what it meant for him.  Here’s what he had to say:

Marc coming to help me furthered my photography more in 3 days then I would have in 3 years without his instruction. I had all the “head” knowledge about photography. I knew how to make a correct exposure, click a button and get a good “image” but I was missing the concept of taking a photograph. Sometimes, especially as newer photographers, we get caught up in all the gear and think we need to be very complicated. Personally, I thought that meant “good photographers” used flash all over the place, bouncing here and there and trying to recreate the wheel. I learned that instead I should take my photography back to the basics and just worry about capturing the moment and documenting what’s happening vs shooting flash everywhere and having everything lit up. It is such a simple concept and starting giving me the dimension to my photography that I’ve been trying to get for a long time.

After working with Marc for 3 days I was getting better images with a $97 (Canon 50 1.8) than I ever got with a $1500 (Canon 16-35 2.8L) on my own. My gear bag has been cut in half and I’m producing much better work.

I also got a new stash of funny YouTube links and to hear crazy funny stories about what it really means to be a photographer…

If anyone is interested, contact me for details and to check my availability for the dates you are considering.  Take it easy!

Marc Climie
marc@climie.com
404-759-7336

Hey kids! You’re going to learn, step by step, how to steal a website today!  So you have your passion, but you’re just kinda lazy, and you need a clean new website, and you need it FAST.  What do you do?  Well, if you’re Marc McLaughlin Photography, you just boost one you like, gif for gif!  Here we go, step by step!

Step 1 (above): Just swipe everything you want. The work is already done! How cool is that? But first upload it so that it doesn’t come up publicly.  Something like index_test.html would work.  But wait… ohhhh no you didn’t!  Don’t click the original photographer’s hot links! You might get busted, like immediately.  Bummer!  Oh well.  But definitely don’t forget those bottom two corner gifs.  That could look kind of weird.

Step 2 (below):  Ok, you got all those pesky gifs.  Stupid original photographer could at least have a zip file on their website with all the files included so you wouldn’t have to go through all this. Now that it’s all together, let’s just throw it up as your public site.  Does it matter that it has someone else’s name and contact info?  Not really, because step three is going to go really quick!  Oh, and make sure to put a copyright statement under your new site.  You wouldn’t want anyone to steal any of your stuff now, would you?

Step 3:  Time to take care of pesky details, like the identity of the photographer you stole it from.  There, all better!  Deleting those went quick enough, so clients visiting your site will be all “Oh wow, he must be working on a new site, so exciting!”

Step 4: Make it legit! With all the extra time you saved not having to draw your own box in Photoshop, you can do just what Marc McLaughlin did and drop your name, phone and email on the old graphic and drop it right back in.  Don’t worry about fonts that clash, text that is too long, or whether your new menu overhangs the left of the beautiful, rounded-corner box you just took possession of.  Let’s hope your menu options mesh perfectly with what’s already been created, because that would be even MORE work!  Ugh!  Who wants that?  Besides, Arial is such a rare font to get a hold of, so let’s not mess with this too much.  Just shoehorn your business presentation into someone the structure of the one you stole from.  That’s way easier.

That’s it, 4 easy steps!  Now go out there and get what’s yours!  Ethics are for punks.

ETA: Ok, I feel the need to clarify what’s the big deal since this has gotten so much interest.  I’d like to address a couple of points that usually come up when things like this happen to other photographers and myself.

The first is that imitation is flattery.  Fine, but imitation is taking something you see and making your own and trying to make it better, not physically taking someone else’s work and passing it off as yours.  This is not a major infraction like stealing images is, but to me it’s symptomatic of a larger problem.  So many people think that if it’s on the internet and can be had, it’s theirs, and that’s just wrong and lazy.  Certainly my site is not the first white box nor will it be the last.  Mine is inspired from one of the numerous commercial portfolios out there.  But I made my own from ground up and for my purposes.  I didn’t swipe another photographer’s site code to make it.  It’s 100% mine.

The second thing that usually comes up is that the victim should take this to the person who stole privately.  Nonsense.  Know what comes of that?  Some excuse about “my web designer did it” (or other nonsense excuses) and/or defensiveness and/or varying degrees of compliance, and of course sometimes even shifting blame in the other direction.  Nobody calls or emails me privately before they publicly jack my site, so I feel no duty to offer the same courtesy.  Yes it happens a lot and no, nothing you can do to stop it, but I’m not going to ignore it.  I’m even going to have a little fun with it.  :)

Anandi & Chandan had their wedding ceremony at the amazing Atlanta History Center.  What an amazing location.  Even the ballroom is gorgeous.  We’ve got a ton of images to get through, so let’s get on with it.

Yeah, you knew these were coming.  Anandi’s henna party.

So it’s the next day and Chandan’s turn!

Yeah, so this is really fun to work in.  Luckily folks are OK with the photographer clumsily jumping around the place.  There’s no other way, except maybe zip wires and pulleys.

This was interesting.  For their guest sign in book, they chose one of Steve McCurry’s books.  I believe it was The Unguarded Moment.  I could be wrong.  It was just affirmation that we are reaching the right people.  Most folks outside the photo world wouldn’t know who Steve McCurry was if you just asked them.  Sure, they’ve all seen his work.  But when a couple is this into photography, admires one of the top tier shooters and then hires us, well, it’s quite humbling and reaffirming of our goals at the same time.

The sangeet was at the Westin Buckhead.

Anandi’s mom looking at the couple.  You can see the happiness in her face.

Atlanta History Center!

Barat’n in style!  :)

I love this.  Chandan had to run the gauntlet, and he still lost his shoes no matter how he tried.

Chandan waits.  I don’t envy the guys holding this thing up.  It was up quite a while!

The light in this place in the afternoon is positively insane.

I knew I was looking like an idiot waiting and waiting and waiting for this to happen with the camera in position, but I don’t care none!

I love love love little moments like these and am constantly looking for them.  It’s so easy to get caught up in things like details and ceremony, oh loooook, pretty colors…

Love this as a series.

So there is a lot of these rice throwing photos, but they really really got into it.  I’m pretty sure she won.

What a place, right?

The grand entrance!

Reception time!

Yes, that’s Anandi & Chandan’s silhouette on the wall above his parents because of the DJ’s lights.  I wasn’t believing myself either but I got it!

Yeah, you damn well know what was playing. I have the best clients.

This is me after a wedding and the whole next day.  Seriously.

These shots are soooo sweet.  Last dance of the evening.

Congrats, Anandi & Chandan!

Sonali & Sean brought us up all the way to New Jersey to document their wedding.  What an amazing wedding and amazing people!  There’s a lot to enjoy here!  The wedding itself was at Brooklake Country Club in Florham Park, NJ.  Beautiful place!

Diggin’ the art.  Beautiful.

So happy!

So basically at this point the bride’s family tries to hold her down while others try to take her away.  Fun stuff!

Sean’s dad gets really involved at this stage of the wedding, lol.

Awwwwww, sweet.

These are tied on and not to come off until after the wedding.

Pretty emotional!  And it’s not even the wedding day.

A hora?  I’m confused. (haha)

I love the unpredictability of slow shutter speeds and action.  When you hit it, it’s just oh-so-awesome.  Next up, wedding day!

Silly silly boys!  (lol)

Sonali’s dad sees her for the first time in her sari.

Beautiful mandap, beautiful day.

Last minute touch-ups while the barat proceeds.

Bagpiping with an Indian beat.  It was pretty awesome I have to say!

Too late, Sean!  Happens every time.

Sonali, just minutes before she walks out and stuns everyone.

No, your eyes do not deceive you.

Sonali’s dad is a super cool guy.  I’m betting he was kind of nervous at this point.

Look at Sean.  He’s like YESSSSSSSS!!!!

Custom made background, just for this shot, lol.

That’s a beautiful thing.  I’ll take the bottom right one, please.

It’s a stunning location.

Another hora?  This was not in my notes.  :)

Sonali & Sean trying to bring their families to their knees and almost succeeding.

Yeah, you know the song.  Yeah, you do.

And what else would you do at the end of an amazing wedding?  Duh!

Sonali & Sean, thanks so much for bringing us up to rock out your wedding with you.  We really and truly enjoyed it!

This is something I’ve been meaning to post, but I lost the booklet I needed until now.  It’s hilarious.

On my last trip to Nigeria, I experienced quite the contrast in lodging.  On one end of the spectrum was the Protea Hotel Ikeja in Lagos.  It’s nothing short of stunning.  I stayed there on my last night there, and it was kind of a bizarre experience after living the ‘typical’ life for over three weeks.  Anyway, I picked up a Protea Hotel guide and set on my way.  They have an amazing portfolio of hotels.  So, on with some more pics of this room.

So it turns out the folks at Protea have quite the sense of humor, all the more funny if you’ve actually experienced what they are poking fun at.  Here is another hotel I stayed in on the trip.  I have no idea which hotel this is, but maybe folks familiar with Owerri will know from the window shot.

Just Precious, right?  :)

I was going through the Protea guide book and stumbled on one page they inserted about a fictitious property of theirs.  Hilarious.  Read it for yourself!

LOVE it!

As wedding photographers, we have to provide lots of high quality images at every event under extreme time constraints and with minimal equipment all while remaining extremely adaptable under every conceivable scenario.  Piece of cake, right?  This is why the sooner you learn to use equipment limitations (or intentionally limited equipment) to your advantage will set you on the road to successful image after successful image.

So it’s dark.  What’s the first thing that comes to your mind?  I need light! What kind of light?  Oh, I dunno.  LIGHT! Well, what are you trying to accomplish?  I want to light this place up! So how do you take a very difficult situation like the one above and knock out a portfolio quality shot of a night exit?  What’s the thought process?  What are the problems we have to overcome to make this work?  I don’t have time to work up images in Photoshop, so I have to get it right in camera.

So we have this looooong line of people throwing flower petals for this exit, and we’ve chosen to shoot from a balcony for dramatic effect.  Hey, how about lighting it from below on the lower porch?  Well, there’s no way to bring enough gear and set up a lighting scenario in the 5 minutes you’ll have to set it up.  At most you’ll have one, maybe two lights.  From this vantage point, lighting from camera position is kinda gonna look like ass.  It’s going to look like on camera flash at night, aka “crap”.

We then decide to light it from behind, which will give us a very dramatic exit, and the flower petals in the air will play much better.  But we have a major problem.  That line of people is looooong and narrow, so how do we light this effectively so we get this right in camera and don’t lose the folks closest to the camera?  Take a look at this graph roughly showing the difference in lighting patterns from a bare parabolic reflector and then one of that reflector with a 20º grid attached.

As you can see, a bare parabolic reflector is going to spill light everywhere.  That’s its job, send light out in this big circle, as much as possible.  So what’s the problem with using just that?  Well, look at the patterns.  The problem is that it’s going to dump an assload of light where you don’t want it and in quantities you definitely don’t want.  It’s going to dump a good amount of light to the sides very close to the light position.  So what’s wrong with that?  You’re going to go nuclear on those people nearest the light, and in order to compensate for that, you’re going to severely underexpose 1/2 to 3/4 of the people closest to the camera, maybe even lose them completely.  It’d be an “ok” shot, but just “ok” and who want’s that?

How do you light this narrow group of people as evenly as possible?  Add lights?  That’s certainly possible, but overly complicated, and probably not all that practical given time constraints.  The answer is to limit your light using a grid on your reflector and then use the dramatic falloff from that grid to your advantage.  So what does a grid afford us in this situation?  A 20º grid is going to fall off very rapidly, and this is a huge advantage to us in this situation for maintaining as consistent an exposure from front to back as we can get given the situation we have to work with.  The red arrows roughly show the degree of falloff we are utilizing to make this happen.

It’s the perfect source of light for this.  No burning or dodging had to be done to make this image ready.  Nobody is blown out, and we even have the bonus of Sarah’s dress acting as a bounce light source to kick some fill back into some of the group.  We are using limited lighting here to draw the eye or focus on what’s really important and leave the rest to the viewer’s imagination.  The back lighting shows a lot more shape and shadow, and the flowers being thrown are much more visible in this kind of light.

Effective lighting is simply a solution to a problem, so think about what you are trying to achieve and what the simplest solution would be before you just have a knee-jerk reaction and just throw light all over the place, hoping for the best.  With the constraints we are forced to work in, it can feel like we are handcuffed by our equipment, but when you learn to use those limitations to your advantage, you’ll feel that much more empowered to walk into any situation and bring back those stellar images you want to be known for.

We just got a great email from Sonali & Sean about their wedding images.  Their wedding will be on the blog soon, but I wanted to post this comment.  I love our clients.  They are the greatest.  Absolutely.

Thank you so much for sending through the photos – there are so many and they truly are beautiful.

I think the mark of a good photographer is one that can capture the moment but the mark of a truly great photographer is one who can capture the moment so well that you re-live the memory each time and the pictures actually evoke an emotion – you truly have accomplished this in our photos – thank you so much – as i was looking through i was laughing and crying and just taking it all in all over again – we cannot thank you enough for giving us these memories that will last a lifetime.

No Sonali & Sean, thank YOU!  Thank you for being such awesome clients with amazing families and thanks for your wonderful hospitality.