Savannah Shoot

I had the opportunity this afternoon to shoot with Savannah and Amy.  We didn't start shooting until 3 PM and Savannah hadn't had a nap all day.  Needless to say, this made for an interesting shoot.  Most of my ideas required that Savannah be awake and happy but this time was VERY limited.  But you work with what you get and I ended up with what I think are some really cute shots of Savannah sleeping.  I pulled my comforter into the studio and laid it out over my reflective floor panels.

Savannah shots are especially important because all of the royalties that they generate go into a 529 plan toward her college education.  I started with shots when she was a newborn and have (admittedly, a bit too slowly) added to the collection over the past year.  She broke the $500 mark a few weeks ago.  If she could continue at this rate (with no growth) she would have somewhere between $14,000 and $23,000 (depending on rates of return).  Not too shabby.

On to the pictures:

Citylypse 2010 Summary

After 2,200 miles, $42.25 in tolls, $237.23 in gas money, $41 in cab rides, and 8 hotel rooms, Citylypse 2010 is officially over.  I am back in Richmond recouping after a very long trip.  8 cities in 9 days was quite the ambitious challenge but we proved it was possible. 

I now have cityscapes up on iStock from Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, & Louisville.  Cincinnati & Columbus will follow.  Now we just have to wait for the sales to kick in.  That generally takes a month or so and it will take a year or so to find out whether or not the shoot was profitable.

Thanks to all for following along and for the feedback.  Here is a summary of the cities I visited:

Columbus, OH

Just a short 2 hour roadtrip from Cincinnati was Columbus, Ohio.  Columbus is a somewhat spread out city with forks of the Scioto River winding through the downtown areas.  With so much water, the cityscape possibilities are great with each location showing different buildings and a completely different look at Columbus.  The tough part is getting enough into the pictures.  It is hard to get back far enough to see a lot of the city so I found myself shooting a lot with a wide angle lens.

The rain did hold off for us in Columbus (for the most part) but there were a lot of clouds.  We chose to shoot from North Bank Park last night.  I have never seen so much goose poop in my life.  It was quite literally everywhere.  You couldn't take a step without stepping in it.  I dug back into some brush and camped out for dusk.

The big challenge of last night came in the form of the geese themselves.  The branches of the Scioto River flowing through Columbus are quite calm so you get a great reflection of the buildings but the geese were swimming right through the center.  I tried sweet talking them but that didn't help.  I tried to bully and yell at them - they weren't fazed.  They just swam back and forth right through the center of my picture.

This may have looked cool but for the fact that these are dusk shots so they are 30 second exposures.  You don't actually see the geese - just weird streaks through your buildings.  I finally had a rare moment of brilliance.  I dug into my pack and pulled out a Nature Valley Oats & Honey bar.  I broke the bar up and began flinging pieces into the water well out of the view of my picture. 

Two of the four geese cooperated and swam over for a treat.  Unfortunately one of the two geese was very aggressive and kept the other two geese away.  He later chased one in the opposite direction so I was left with just one goose to attempt to clone out of my images.  I ended up going through 4 packages of Oats & Honey bars (with 2 per pack - those geese ate 8 Oats & Honey bars!).

The highlight of the night was when an enormous river rat climbed up on a branch 10 feet in front of me.  I had heard that rats could get pretty huge but I had no idea!!!  This thing had to be 8 inches long (body only).  He eventually plopped into the water and swam down stream.

When the magic 10 minutes of deep blue sky appeared, I nailed down this shot.  I am not a cloud fan but at least these clouds made the sky interesting.

This morning I took off for Genoa Park while Dave and Shelley returned to North Bank Park.  While I didn't get anything brilliant at Genoa, it was a neat view.  I shot with a 12mm lens which is VERY wide angle.  The clouds were moving and I was shooting with a 30 second exposure which captured the movement.  Here is the result:

The animal sighting of the morning was a river otter.  He was swimming down the river and stopped right in front of me to chew on something he had picked up along the way.  He was pretty cool.  I will confess, though, I originally thought he was a snake.  I really do not like snakes.  I am not scared of bears, spiders, or rats but snakes will send me running for the high hills.  Well, maybe not running, but I definitely don't care for them.  So I was psyched to see the otter's head pop out of the water when he approached.

Well, my friends, this brings our cityscape tour to its conclusion.  We are getting cleaned up now and will soon be heading back to Harrisburg.  I am thoroughly exhausted and feel like I need a vacation - I think my day job will feel like a vacation after this.  But this trip was definitely worth it.

As a good start to the "worth it", my Detroit cityscape just received an Initial Rating on iStock.  Initial Ratings are given by inspectors when they really like an image they inspect.  Out of my 1,030 images on iStock, this is just my 3rd Initial Rating.  Hopefully the sales will follow! 

Now on to the post processing.  I will post a summary of the trip either this evening or tomorrow.  Thanks for following along!

Cincinnati, OH

Rain, rain, go away, come again another day! It rained and rained and rained while we were in Cincinnati. It was nasty last night and this morning but those were the only chances we had so we did tried to make the best of it.

See if you can picture this. Me standing on the side of the Ohio River in the pouring rain as the water level is getting closer and closer to to covering my feet and the legs of my tripod. Boats going by are causing wakes that are splashing over my feet while I frantically hold on to my tripod in hope that my camera won't float away. My left hand holding an umbrella over my camera so it doesn't get wet while my right tries to get the positioning of the camera right and the settings modified. To an onlooker, this probably looked pretty ridiculous. But when you only get one shot at shooting a city, you do what you have to do.

As you would probably guess, the pictures didn't turn out as well as I would have liked. My favorite of the bunch was fromt this morning when the rain slowed down a bit.

And I did get one with lightning flashing behind the city but it isn't sharp (think of how your visibility drops in the rain).

We are now sitting in our hotel in Columbus, Ohio facing yet another rainy day. Maybe we will catch a break and it will slow up for us - if not, I'll be out there with my umbrella in one hand fumbling through another shoot.

Louisville, KY

Louisville is a 5 hour drive from Chicago and you lose an hour to time zones so we didn't arrive until 4:30 PM. Add the fact that it was raining and we didn't have much in the way of scouting time. Generally I like to spend a couple hours looking for the perfect location to set up and lock down my shot. Today I didn't actually begin this process until after 5:00.

Luckily the options are not that plentiful so it was easy to scout out the location I felt offered the best opportunity. The bad news was the clouds were thick and a dark gray that would really hold back the reflections in the water and would make the backdrop behind the city drab. But prayers were answered and the clouds rolled away about 10 minutes before the perfect light (God was cutting it a little close - playing with my head!).

My location was down in some brush right on the Ohio River. It was a little nasty but got me close enough to the water to maximize the reflections. The one thing I didn't fully think through was the process of getting back out of the brush after dark. I have found that I do things like this a lot in life. I jump from one boulder in the mountains onto another below without fully processing how I am going to get back up. I wander in some where before dark not really thinking through how I am going to get out when there is no light. But hey, it makes my life far more of an adventure!

Here is Louisville, Kentucky from Jeffersonville, Indiana:



We will have one more shot at Louisville in the morning before getting back in the car and heading for Cincinnati, Ohio. Just Cincinnati and Columbus remain. I must say, I am going to need a vacation after this trip - shame I have to fall right back into the hours and stress of the day job. Most people go back to work feeling refreshed and rested after vacation. I will return to work with bags under my eyes and aching muscles. But it is definitely all worth it!

Chicago, IL

Ever since the first time that I visited Chicago, I have held that it is the one "big" city that I could see myself living in. Chicago has delicious food, a clean and relatively safe downtown area, great architecture and art, and is absolutely beautiful.

Unfortunately, day 1 in Chicago was rainy, very cloudy, and quite hazy. I didn't get even one usable picture all day.

Fortunately, day 2 was much better. We started the day with a Jumbo Chili Cheese Dog and a Large Chocolate Shake from Portillos. It took a year off my life but man was it good! I vegged for a couple hours after that since it was still extremely cloudy but then the miracle took place. The clouds that were called for all day began to move out. We took off for Adler Planetarium and set up for sunset.

The challenge for me with Chicago is the size. My "style" of cityscape is very close up. The only way to capture Chicago is to go wide. I went with one ultra-wide shot and one cropped in a little. What do you think?

Today we are off for Louisville, Kentucky. The weather is currently showing severe thunderstorms for our visit but we are hoping for at least a small break to give us a chance at capturing something. I'll keep you updated!

Detroit, MI

Photographer = Terrorist. That seems to be the opinion of the many of our border patrol - at least the ones guarding the dangerous border between the U.S. and...Canada.

We arrived in Detroit yesterday and checked into our extravagent hotel. In the cityscape below, we were in the tall center building on the 60th floor. That is about 10 floors above the lower buildings right beside and in front of the tall building. Great view!

After hitting up yet another Hard Rock Cafe, we went our separate ways. Dave and Shelley to Belle Island and me to Windsor, Canada.

Without a car, I planned to try to take a taxi across to Windsor. You can't go by foot and apparently many cabs won't bother with the hassle of crossing a national border so your choices are limited. I asked the valet guy how to get across and he said my best bet was to use a guy he knows who would drive me across and then pick me up and bring me back. All for the low price of...$100! He said it was pricey but there wasn't a better option. What our young valet failed to mention was that there is a bus for this very purpose that takes you across and brings you back for the astronomical price of $3.75. I'm guessing the "guy" the valet knew was his brother or best friend.

So across the border I went. The Canadian border patrol was a piece of cake. They asked some questions and sent me on my way. I wandered down to the riverfront but was bummed to find that a good chunk of the path was closed for construction. I really wanted to get an angle that had the tall GM building in the center with the remaining buildings somewhat split on either side. I resigned myself to not being able to get that shot and went ahead and set up my tripod.

It eventually dawned on me that I still had 2 1/2 hours until sunset so I decided to tear my stuff back down and wander around in search for a better location. That wandering paid off. I walked another mile or two down the shoreline and found a pumphouse with the view I was looking for. From there, I captured the shot below.



So where does the terrorist part come in...oh, that is still coming. After dark, I wondered back in search of the bus stop at the Caesar's Palace that would take me back to the U.S. I couldn't find it anywhere so I wandered back to where I got off the bus knowing there was a stop there. I couldn't find that spot either and had already missed the first bus that would take me back. That meant 30 minutes of waiting. I finally found someone to give me directions to the bus stop. It was on a dark street with a little 6 square inch sign 10 feet up a pole that simply said "bus stop." How is someone supposed to find that?

I eventually arrived back across the border and had to go through our customs and border patrol process. Keep in mind here, I am an American citizen with a U.S. passport who has been out of the country for a whopping 3 hours in Canada. I thought this would be a breeze. Not so much! I was treated like a completely psychotic terrorist. They grilled me on my every activity in Canada, my photography background, exactly what buildings were included in my pictures, and were especially focused on whether or not I was a professional photographer.

They asked question after question about whether or not I had included the tunnel in my pictures. I couldn't help myself - I responded that the tunnel is under water - duh! - and that I only captured the water flowing over top. So they turned their focus on that. What? It is a moving river, by the time I hit customs, not one drop of water in my pictures was still flowing over the tunnel. How is this a terrorist threat?

I eventually requested that they simply flip through all of my pictures (I told them they were quite good - they would enjoy them - they didn't find that humorous) and see for themselves. They refused - apparently it was more fun just to grill me.

I had to empty my pockets and they wanted to see all of the contents. This was especially funny because I have a cold and it is freezing outside so my pockets were all full of dozens of used kleenex. I tried to hand them to the patrol guy but he quickly told me to stick everything back in my pockets.

They wanted to know my entire vacation schedule after Detroit and why the rest of my party hadn't come into Canada with me. It was really an amazing experience - I wanted to shout "my tax dollars pay your salary, treat me with a little respect" but figured that wouldn't help my cause. It was really ridiculous. But I did get a good shot of Detroit so it was all worth the effort.

I finally got around to processing a shot from our morning shoot in Pittsburgh. It is a lot closer in to the city than our shots from the bridge.

We are now in Chicago, IL but it is extremely rainy so I have nothing to show for it. Last night we hit the John Hancock Observatory but didn't leave with anything usable. This morning we were at the Navy Pier in the pouring rain. Still nothing usable. Luckily we do have two days in Chicago. Hopefully tonight will provide an opportunity. We shall see!

Cleveland, OH

Next stop was Cleveland, Ohio. We arrived around 11:00 and began to scope out the best place for our night shots. We eventually found our way down into the Flats - a section of Cleveland that lies down by a canal and looks back at the city.

I was instantly hooked. There is an awesome, huge white bridge that I could tell lit up at night and led your eye right into the city. I made up my mind that I was going to shoot from there tonight. Dave and Shelley decided to head out near the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame while I headed back to the Flats.

Upon arriving in the Flats, I realized that I was slightly lacking in an ideal shooting environment. First, there were literally thousands upon thousands of seagulls swarming the sky between me and the city. Another onlooker remarked that it felt like we were at the scene of a National Geographic film. This, of course, worried me a bit as there were streaks of white flying all over the sky.

The second challenge came in the form of the ice. The ice had moved down the canal from earlier in the day and was floating directly in front of me. This messed with the reflections in the water but did make the shot a bit more interesting.

The final challenge was a cloudy sky. The clouds were thin but they were a bit grey. This generally prevents you from getting a good deep blue sky. They came in and out so I just kept shooting hoping to nail a shot when the clouds were not so thick.

On the safety front, in this case I was actually pleasantly surprised. Our waiter at lunch today (Hard Rock Cafe) said he wouldn't recommend going down in the Flats at night. He said the buildings are largely abandoned and a lot of people go there to get in trouble. Before heading out, I asked the desk attendent at the hotel and she told me there was nothing to worry about (yes, I probably would have gone either way - I know, I know, mom). Sure enough, the "abandoned buildings" were actually condos (albeit, definitely not high end condos). There were people walking their dogs and an older lady and gentleman taking pictures. Definitely not a dangerous environment.

Here is Cleveland:



Tomorrow morning will afford another shooting opportunity in Cleveland. After we come back and get cleaned up, it is off to Detroit, Michigan. The weather in Detroit looks a little iffy so our streak of great shooting conditions might come to an end. Keep praying!

On the personal front, I added a new ailment to my aching feet and legs. My lower back is now in agony. Add in my cold and I am a mess. We stopped at a gas station today and I bought Dayquil, Nyquil, and Advil. The lady at the counter looked at me with concern in her face and exclaimed "you must feel absolutely awful!". Yep! So the glamorous lifestyle of a professional photographer current entails leaving at 5 AM, returning at 8 PM, and lots and lots of pain. I love it!

Pittsburgh, PA

Pittsburgh turned out to be a really great city - so much so that I almost forgave her for being home to the Steelers...almost. We walked what felt like a marathon in Pittsburgh but what actually clocks in at around 12 miles according to Dave's pedometer. My feet and legs definitely tell the tale this morning.

In the end, we chose the West End Bridge for our dusk shots. I was a little concerned about shooting 30 second exposures from a bridge - has never worked for me in the past - but we set up near a pillar and the bridge was quite sturdy and my pictures came out sharp.

The biggest challenge was several tug boats who seemed to think it appropriate to repeatedly make trips through the middle of my shot. I understand that it is their job but I definitely think they should have spotted me off in the distance on the bridge and made the decision to call it quits for the day so as to not ruin any of my shots. But since they didn't see it that way, I had to do my best to shoot around them. I ended up with two shots that I can't decide between. They both need some work but here is any early look:

I broke away from Dave and Shelley this morning to take some shots closer in to the city. I haven't had a chance to really look at them so you will have to wait on your first look.

I am off here in a moment to head down to the Flats in Cleveland. Dave and Shelley have already set out for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We are going to be shooting from completely different sides of the city. The weather looks good so hopefully we will both nail some good shots tonight!

Harrisburg, PA

Arrived in Harrisburg yesterday just in time to take off with Dave and Shelley for some dusk shots.

Do you ever feel like a rookie in an area that you should be an expert? Believe it or not, I do know my way around a camera but you wouldn't have guessed that last night. I picked my spot down by the river and set up my tripod. My routine is always to pick my shot and then literally take the same shot over and over again looking for the perfect light.

I found that shot and locked my tripod but then hesitated. I decided to get in a little closer so I changed lenses. So on went my 70-200. I started taking test shots only to find that every shot was either shaky or out of focus. I cleaned my filter, same result. I removed the filter, same result. I played with my focus, same result. I cleaned both ends of the lens, same result. I threw a tantrum, same result. After what felt like an hour (but was probably 5 minutes), it dawned on me that I had thrown a vibration reduction lens on a tripod and forgotten to turn off the vibration reduction. My lens was expecting some camera shake and was auto correcting - but my camera was on a tripod and didn't have any shake. Rookie mistake.

I then proceeded to take nice crisp shots but couldn't figure out why I couldn't get the shutter speed I was looking for. In this case I probably went 20 minutes before it dawned on me that I was in aperture priority mode (you can change the aperture but the camera picks the shutter speed) instead of in manual. AHHHHH! How did I managed to miss that? I cannot even begin to express how much this has me baffled. I have taken these night cityscape shots hundreds of times. I am going to have to blame it on the massive head cold that has me in misery (gotta blame something, right?).

"So you messed up for a couple of minutes, what's the big deal?", you ask. In the world of night cityscapes, you have a 10 minute window to nail the perfect shot. With 1 day per city, that leaves us 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the evening - if we have perfect weather both times. There is no time for mistakes. You must bring your "A-game" every time you are out and need to maximize every shot during those 10 minutes. Hopefully I have managed to get my mistakes out of the way on day 1!

Anyway, despite the mistakes, I did manage to land a usable shot. Here is my first quick attempt at post production. Presenting Harrisburg:

Tessa Shoot

Images are starting to flood into my iStock portfolio from my shoot with Tessa back on the 6th of February. Tessa was really awesome. She has great facial expressions and a great smile. The camera definitely loves her! Here's hoping the images take off!

Just 4 more days until Citylypse 2010. We are off to Pittsburgh, PA, Cleveland, OH, Detroit, MI, Chicago, IL, Louisville, KY, Cincinnatti, OH, & Columbus, OH. Stay tuned for updates on the tour and first glimpses into the images we capture!