How to Shoot Your Ex-Boss and Get Away With It

A Man’s Final Image

“We need a 20×30 of just him by Saturday”, Carlyn told me, struggling to talk through her laryngitis. I would have to move fast: Crop him out of one of the family photos, do some editing, execute a Photoshop trick to get more pixels out of an image, get it printed and mounted by Friday evening.

The day before Thanksgiving of ’08, Carlyn had called, asking me to provide family photographs as the entire family was in town, and nobody knew how long her 91-year-old father would be around. Two days later, I got to photograph four generations of this wonderful family. We included many combinations of family members, including ones of just the patriarch and matriarch. It would be a photo of this long-married couple that I would use for the urgent 20×30.

When I went by Carlyn’s house the next week to pick up the easel I had lent them her mom was there, recovering from a broken pelvis. This newly widowed lady and I spoke for a few minutes. She then pointed across the room to the print they used for the memorial service and said, “Thank you.” She was so appreciative of my efforts. I was so glad to have been able to do it for them.

Great Experiences Through Photography (Modesto Photographer)

Meeting a 4-Star General

Being a blessing to the father of the first Modestan killed in the Iraq War

Being in the pits during NASCAR Cup Series practice

Helping a Mexican orphanage with attaining support

Being an integral part of dozens of weddings

Providing families with heirlooms to last generations

Getting to know, teach, and enjoy numerous teenagers

Having nobody question why I am standing where one shouldn’t just because I have a big, white lens

Getting to have fun photographing high school seniors

Meeting countless wonderful people

These are just a few of the great things that I have gotten to do as a result of photography. A few details:

4-Star: I was asked to photograph the annual Modesto Veterans Day event at the Gallo Center for the Arts. The keynote speaker was General John Craddock, Supreme Commander of US and Allied forces in Europe. We did not exactly sit down to lunch together, but I did get to chat a bit with him in the green room. He exuded humble confidence.

Marine’s Dad: One of the presenters at that same event was Michael Anderson, whose son was the first Modestan to die in the Iraq war. He delivered a moving presentation of his son’s heroic work that resulted in his death during a firefight while purging a house of insurgents. I spoke with Mike several times, and was able to provide him images of his presentation, like the one below.

NASCAR’s Big Boys: I was given a pit pass by Don Campbell, a driver in the Southwest Tour Series, so I could create some photographs for his website. If that was not fun enough, the Southwest Tour Series drivers alternated practice with the Cup Series drivers, so I got several big names to autograph the Campbell Racing Team shirt I was wearing. Mark Martin, Ryan Newman, Dale Jarrett, Bobby Labonte, and owner Richard Childress were all kind enough to accommodate this overgrown kid. Later, Don would not take the shirt back from me, and insisted I keep it.

Rancho Santa Marta: I cannot adequately describe this incredible school and orphanage about 60 miles south of Encinada, Mexico. Sure, the physical appearance can be easily captured in photographs, but I had the honor of attempting to capture the spirit here when I accompanied the dental team of Corey Acree, DDS.

Great Times with Wonderful People: In all of the weddings, portraits sessions, sports events, performances, teaching, and just shooting for fun, I encounter some great people. Customers, fellow-photographers, and others make photography so much fun, and so rewarding.

Three Performances and a Wedding (Modesto Photographer)

A big weekend of photography involved three performances and a wedding…. and a portrait session, too.  It started Thursday evening with the SONdance dress rehearsal of their “Christmas to Remember” program. This Christian Dance School and Ministry has over 100 dancers of all ages. (www.sondance.org) Dress rehearsal is sort of my Super Bowl of photography. Getting good images of dance is among the most difficult challenges I face. It is like a wedding and a hockey game at the same time.

Friday night I covered a performance by Anastasis Ballet. (www.anastasisballet.org)  This is a talented group of young ladies who have traveled around the area and to Europe to share the love of God through dance.  The light was so low, I was testing the high ISO settings of my new Canon 7D camera body. I was pleasantly surprised at the image quality, as well as the focus speed of this new gem from Canon.

All of Saturday was dedicated to a wedding. I won’t go into detail, but I started prep as soon as I got up around 6 AM and called it a day a little after midnight. Wonderful wedding, but I was pooped!

During my prep on Saturday, I received an email from one of my photography students. She and her brother, who was also in this fall’s class, were in a church production this weekend. She all but begged me to come, as she wanted quality photographs of the show. I had told her before that I could not make it due to all that I would have already done, plus a high school senior portrait on Sunday. But with rain continuing until Monday, I now had time to go, and did. WOW! What a production! I have seen big church productions that have no resemblance to the stereotypical event with children playing parts when they can keep focus for ten seconds, adults forgetting lines, staging that requires great imagination, and singing only the hearing impaired can love. But I have never seen anything this grand.

The church worship center has possibly the largest stage I have ever seen, and I have been in many Broadway theaters. The cast and crew totaled around 150 people who functioned on an extremely professional level, and all but one of them was a member of the church. The one “ringer” they had is a friend of mine from my church, Mike Johnson.  Mike is a gifted actor who perfectly filled the part of the grandfather, even though he is stunned he no longer plays the romantic lead. Yes, we are all getting older.

Then Monday, the weather cleared up and I was able to complete the senior portrait session we have been attempting to do for several weeks now. Despite fatigue from all the past photography and the need to put plenty of work into my day job, I had a great time, as I usually do with the teens I get to “shoot”.

So the photography marathon is over and the Lightroom and Photoshop marathon begins. (In case you were wondering, the five events totalled over 2200 images.)

Upgrade to Windows 7 (modesto photographer)

Well, I did it. I bit the bullet and upgraded from XP to 7. It’s done and it was not too horrific, but I thought I’d share some of my experiences.

1. MS Customer Support was good. I talked to a lady in the Philippines who helped me when I was not sure which choice to make on something. She then called me back after an hour to see how I was doing.

2. Good thing she called me back. I used their program “Windows Easy Transfer” to back up files and settings, then put them back after the upgrade. (XP to 7 is a “clean” upgrade, meaning all programs, settings, and files are lost, and must be reinstalled.)  But when I went to reinstall, there was not enough room. Turns out, my files were not removed in the upgrade process, so I could not put them on there again. She had me delete the file “Windows.old”, which feed up the necessary space.

3. I did have issues getting back on line because of two things: A. Windows 7 did not recognize my wireless card. So I went looking for a new driver. But none exists. So that card is worthless to me now. And when I hard wired, it still didn’t work. So what now? B. I did the logical thing. I installed my AVG Internet Security before trying to connect to the internet. But that blocked my computer from acquiring the info from the router. Once that was resolved, I had internet.

4. The big relief was that Lightroom found all the catalogs, folders, settings, etc. It would have been a huge job to retrieve that. It did lose the presets I had, but that is minor.

5. Windows 7 is pretty, but I really don’t care about that. I want speed and stability. Time will tell. Right now, it is running faster that with XP, but that often happens whenever you start over again with a PC. So again, time will tell.

Own Son’s Engagement Photos (Modesto Photographer)

It’s not often that a man gets to photograph his own son’s engagement session. It’s even less often that Modestans get to use a beach overlooking Puget Sound.

Another Proposal! (Modesto Photographer)

I was hired to covertly photograph another proposal. After she said “yes”, he outed me and we took some posed pics on the nearby beach. Congratulations to Amanda and Alex!