Our journey westward took us to the famed Mississippi River where we made stops in such scenic cities as Maiden Rock, Stockholm and Alma (among others).  I brought along my spare camera so Panda had something to play with while I lugged around my favorite Manfrotto tripod and my ol’ faithful 40D.   Thanks to technology (mainly RAW and auto bracketing) – capturing truly inspiring HDR imagery is actually not as difficult as it once was but you still need a good eye.  I’m still working on that one. 

I suppose a short explanation of what HDR is would be appropriate.  lol.  HDR stands for High Dynamic Range.  I’ll point you to the Wikipedia article for a more technical explanation (Wikipedia rules so hard!).  The definition I give when trying to explain the concept to people is as follows:  When you take a picture, you typically expose for the main subject area of your image.  You can see this easily when taking a picture of a friend outdoors and they look fine but the sky is blown out.  When creating an HDR image, you take several pictures exposing for the different areas of the scene you are capturing and then using software such as Photoshop’s built-in HDR processing or as I did with Nik Software’s HDR Effex Pro plugin, combine that data into a single photo.  The human eye is without a doubt the best camera ever made but with the proper images, software and patience, you can create some amazing images.  Depending on your settings that image can be photo realistic or swing far on the pendulum to the hyper realistic.  I feel just from the images I’ve played with thus far that my personal artistic preference definitely leans towards the hyper realistic.  Not a big a surprise.  haha

So with that I present some samples of my first dabble into this rather intriguing area of photography.  The technique is time consuming and really doesn’t work well for moving subjects however I just tried it again at a wedding I shot this past weekend and am very excited to see the results!

View more pics from the day on Facebook!

Share and enjoy!
Cheers!
Erik

I have a number of new posts in the works so I will leave you to smile and feel warm inside while viewing engagement photos of the beautiful Laura and her Dave.  We took photos in and around the Menomonie area including a few in the Mabel Tainter Theater.  I have shot here before but it was years ago for the UW-Stout Apparel and Design Senior Silhouette Show (modeling photography).  The staff was very friendly and had no objections to us just walking in and using their beautiful venue as our backdrop.  The theater is very much active and provides a wonderful cultural experience in the Menomonie area.   Check out their site and then grab some tickets to enjoy with loved ones.  (Guys:  Gals will LOVE this side of you).

Thank you Laura and Dave for a great shoot!  Laura – the way you held onto your hat while embracing was simply adorable.  I can’t wait to photograph you two tying the know this coming May.  Yikes – That’s pretty soon!.  :)

Share and enjoy!
Erik  

Normally these two lives do not overlap but the holidays are a special time of year.  It is a time where I get to visit my compatriots in Colorado while enjoying a short yet well needed escape from the grueling Wisconsin winter.  You see – even though I work remotely – the company I work for fly’s me out every December so I can partake in our annual Holiday Pajama Party.  A ‘Holiday Pajama Party’? – what’s that you might ask.  Well I’ll tell ya!  It’s basically your average office holiday party except we get to wear our pajama’s to work, throw in some beverages throughout the day, potluck lunch, a few contests/special events and top it off with a quasi secret Santa gift exchange.  I know – pretty badass.  :)  Oh and I got a chance to play Microsoft Kinect…exhausting!

When I used to live in Colorado, I was of course the office photog for all our events.  Now that I work remotely – I don’t get as many opportunities to capture our staff being awesome so when I can – I’m there and with an itchy trigger finger!  Take a look below to check out some of the great pictures I captured.  Perhaps next time you have an office party – you’ll think to yourself – ‘Gosh it would be great to have some pro pictures taken’ and then you’ll look me up.  :)

I’ll leave you with this handy life lesson…..
With great camera power comes great responsibility.   This is my gift, my curse. Who am I?  I’m Spider-man. (Actually I’m still Erik but I do have super skillz).  :)

~Erik

p.s.  I should throw in a plug for the awesome company that I work for, Webolutions.  Are you in need of a new website?  Have you be trying to figure out a way to tie together your real world marketing with your online persona?  We do that and do it well!  The people I work with are all amazing and caring individuals and every one of us strives to make your dreams a reality.  Sounds cliche – I know.  But remember – when you do well as a company in this big world – so do we!

I have some engagement picture love to share with you!

Just a week or so before all of the beautiful fall colors in the great state of Wisconsin faded – I made a trip down to the Milwaukee area to capture the engagement photos for my friends Anna and Nick.   They live in Menomonee Falls which happens to be near one of the most beautiful religious landmarks in the state – Holy Hill.  Interesting Fact:  Holy Hill’s full title is ‘The Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Help of Christians, at Holy Hill’.  A mouthful to say the least.  :)

The trip down was great – I grew up in Brookfield so it gave me a chance to visit my mom who currently resides in New Berlin.  I don’t get down there as often as I should.  I even took a little trip to my high school alma mater, Brookfield Central.  Wowzers has that place gotten a face lift (sadly I can’t say the same about their website).  Nice to see the taxpayers of Brookfield still care about education funding.  :)  I didn’t visit the school during normal ‘classroom’ hours – try 2AM.  Weird I know but I brought my cam and tripod and captured some really neat shots.  I am even playing around with some HDR photography using images from that night.  Should be interesting and I’ll post them when I’m happy with my tweaking.  HDR though awesome and creates a very unique look, I am sad to say is a technique I haven’t played around with much.  Plenty of time for learning in this life, right?

Now….onto the engagement photos!  Anna and Nick are a couple I have known for many years now.  Really cute together and just another example of a pair made for each other.  You know how I tell?  It’s easy – when my favorite pictures from a session are ones I didn’t plan for – you have it – you have magic!

Share, enjoy and love!  Thanks Anna and Nick!
Erik

Now onto some wedding fun!  I am nearly complete with my work on Trista and Tyler’s wedding package and have a little teaser for you.  The ceremony was held at St. Lukes in Clearwater, Minnesota with reception at Jack and Jim’s in Foley, Minnesota.
Fun fact:  This is amazingly the farthest north I have ever been in the land of 10,000 lakes.  Though I am pretty sure Wisconsin has more lakes, I’ll let it slide since it is so pretty.

Enjoy, share and love!
Erik

So – the upside of hanging around the house all day was progress.  I worked through nearly all of Stacy and Brian’s wedding photos and have a little teaser to show you!  I’ll give you a few more specifics on when, where and how awesome it was when I post the final blog entry.  See – I’m a tease. 

Hears to being wrapped up in a Slanket (don’t make fun – they are awesome!) while watching Back to the Future with friends!  Enjoy!

Erik

So first with the news – I have been working on a marketing idea for a few months now and am finally ready to push it live this coming Halloween weekend.  The idea comes down to this – it’s this mat you see – you lay it on the ground and it has different ‘conclusions’ that you can jump to.  Oh man – how I love Office Space.  So – as I was saying – one of the areas of photography I have been working myself more and more into as of late is bar photography (I’m even working on a couple side website projects for a few bars in town that will not only get them more online and social network recognition but also provide me with another venue to display my art and more importantly to display it to a whole new group of possible clientèle.

So – the concept – I really enjoy carrying my camera around while I’m out and about with friends – I mean – you do look pretty badass walking around a bar with a SoCo in one hand and a DSLR with flash and diffuser in the other.  Side note to the diffuser – I use the Gary Fong LSUPRO Lightsphere Universal PRO Kit

Which brings me to the product unboxing I got to have fun with this afternoon.  Exactly a week ago – October 11th to be specific, I placed an order from Moo.com for some Minicards,  their new Leather Minicard Holder and a couple of their White Label Minicard Boxes.  I choose USPS standard shipping and am happy to say they arrived in Wisconsin on my doorstep about 12:30 today.  Call me impressed – that is good turn around and I’ll tell you why.  If you aren’t familiar with Moo – you should be.  They employ a printing technology that has been branded “Printfinity“.  The classic example of this amazing service – you order 100 Minicards for $20 and the image on the front side of everyone of those cards can be different.  Every single card.  As an added bonus – the actual Minicard is a pretty slick little business card that is unique and definitely gets people talking.  I am ALWAYS getting asked by people in the field “Where did you get these cards?”.  Everything from the nice thick bond of the paper to the amazing quality photo reproduction which is then encased in a silky matte finish – they scream quality – not for just the cards themselves but also for the person who is handing them out.

Let’s get to the unpacking.  :)

The box arrived 7 days after ordering (not business days…real days).  Moo’s cheapest shipping rates still provide a tracking number however it’s USPS and I always find their system to be a little ‘jumpy’ when it comes to updates.  I will see the package be received and then leave the origin hub but then typically not see an update until it has reached the destination service center and is about to be put on a truck and delivered.  It’s low cost and fairly efficient shipping – no big deal.

Moo plays the branding game with the best of them.  Little details like their logo stamped on the package seal make you feel good inside.  I have already borrowed a few of their branding concepts for my own deliverables.

“Designed by Moo and You”
More clever branding.  Well Played Moo.

Packaging and shipping are spot on.  The exterior box is thick enough so minor dings won’t be noticed on the inside.  If a fork truck drives over it – Moo can’t be held accountable.  Then again – since everything inside the box is in its own container – who knows – stuff might survive…..but no promises.

I have been ordering from Moo for a long time and their packaging/display cases for cards have definitely evolved…in a very good way.  The box they ship in now is made from recycled pulp board and coated paper.  It’s a classy container that looks good sitting on your desk but is also solid enough to carry your cards in the rough and tough field and know that they are protected and ready to go.

I ordered 200 cards.  There is there nice little price break (well that is running as I write this entry) wherein if you spend more than $50, shipping is free.  Because I was ordering the leather case, cards and a few of the white label display cases – I was very close to $50 but not over.  However – since standard shipping is about $8 and another box of 100 cards is only $20 – if you know you’re going to need them in the future – it’s definitely a better bang for your buck to just drop the extra $20 and save on shipping.  You’re basically getting that $20 pack for $12.  Not too shabby.

I picked up a couple of their White Label Minicard Holders.  They are exactly the same as the boxes that my cards came in except they don’t have the classic Moo ‘teardrop’ logo printed on them.  I have no idea what I’m going to use these for at the moment but they were cheap and might come in handy.

This is the one I was most excited to see – they recently released a new Leather MiniCard holder that boosts storage up to 45 cards with stylish looks.

Packaging was top notch.  Check out that thin tissue paper wrapper around the actual card holder which was then inserted in a made to size cardboard box.   Classy.

There is is.  From what I can tell – the stitching appears to be clean and solid though I can’t speak to how well it will hold up in the real world when it’s stuffed with their suggested number of cards.  More on that below.

A little hook – perhaps for your key chain or lanyard.

Ahh you got me.  The reason I am doing this review now is because I just got in my cards that I’m going to use for “Show Me The Bokeh”.  More on that in the near future.  :)

Here you can see how the holder expands to accept more cards.  It’s a nice design because it keeps the holder small when you only want to carry a few cards but expands to fit a large number.

Look!  Look!  There I am pictured in Step 6!  (I guess that’s me in Step 1 as well)   This fun illustration printed on the inside of their shipping box is just another reason why Moo is hip and appeals to my inner geek.

And now for some detail shots to make you salivate…

This shot is taken with the card holder carrying exactly 45 cards (which is what Moo specifies as its capacity.  Personally – I would drop that number down to 30 or so unless you knew it was going to be a high demand card sharing night and you don’t have time to refill very often.  The reason I say that is mainly based on ease of use.  With 45 cards stuck in there – it is a TIGHT fit and getting the first 5-10 cards out it is a little bit of a pain.  I also mentioned earlier that I wasn’t sure about the strength of the stitching with that many cards crammed inside however – now that I think about it – leather expands with use.  Perhaps that is where they got the magical ’45 card capacity’.

Woo!  All right!  So what are you waiting for?  I bet you’re just aching to go give them a shot.  Oh wow – almost forgot to mention – Moo provides design templates for every one of their products (Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign and JPEG).  Not a wiz kid with Adobe – never fear – Moo has also teamed up with sites you use everyday to allow easy importing of images to their system and onto your cards.  You can import images from Etsy, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and Smugmug.  Super Easy.  Super Awesome.

Have a great and safe weekend!
Erik

Hello there.  How are you?  It’s been a busy last few weeks for myself wedding and portrait photography wise and I needed to take a mini hiatus from Photoshop and Lightroom to tweak some things on my new site.  A while back I spotted this rather neat plugin that a number of fellow photog’s have on their sites/blogs.  Why is it sweet you might ask?  Well I’ll tell you.

Thanks to a pretty spiffy plugin from the people at Flaunt Books, you as the viewer of my art now have a super easy way to take a stand and scream out your love for any particular photo you see in my blog.  Think of it as the ‘Like’ button on Facebook but without the millions of social ties.  It would be pretty sweet – if anyone from Flaunt Books is reading – if there was a process in that if a person ‘liked’ a set number of photos from a particular blog entry – a Facebook app could load up and ask to showcase those thumbnails in their feed with a link back to the full entry.  Just a suggestion.  :)

Installing the plugin was extremely easy – upload the files to the plugin folder, activate the plugin, choose your settings.  Bim – Bam – Boom WordPress rocks!  Thanks to a great partnership between Flaunt Books and the talented people who develop my back end theme, installation required no changes in code.  (If you do have to make coding changes – don’t fret – there is always lot of help on the Internet.  Remember – Google is your friend).

The root of this plugin’s awesomeness is its social power.  The ability for a visitor to make a single click and thus make a statement about their feelings regarding a particular image is wonderful.  Everyone (or at least I hope everyone) has come to realize that the power of all of us interacting can drive a company’s image as well as sway those future potentials.  In today’s connected society – bad news of any kind spreads quickly but it doesn’t compare to bad news that has gone viral.  Case in point – the infamous Domino’s ‘prank’ conducted by two employees whose video spread on You Tube faster than pizza delivery.  That single incident which was unfortunately out of Domino’s control destroyed their brand image and most likely led to the current ‘new pizza formula’ advertising drive they are pushing right now.  What’s the point of all this?  I’m a bit miffed myself but I believe my primary point was to be very mindful of your image, online and off.

Allow me to get back on topic.  :)  The Flaunt Books plugin allows you to add a little social touch to your images and more importantly specific images.  The plugin admin allows you to view which photos have been ‘liked’ the most, set what your buttons look like (they even provide a Photoshop template) as well as providing a method to display the highest rated images on your site.  (The ProPhoto integration is done by adding a clean thumbnail bar across the top of your site just below the bio.)  (Suggestion for Flaunt Books team – add a few more controls within the plugin admin area – for example – the ability to set the color of the thumbnails description text.)  In addition they provide a handy little widget and it even has the ability to keep vote spamming under control with a simple IP tracking system.

What can you do with this helpful voting information?  Any kind of data that you can track regarding what your site visitors like (and don’t like) can be helpful.  Perhaps a certain image from a wedding reception is absolutely adored.  The next time you are covering a wedding – it might makes sense to use that image as inspiration for a similar shot.  I’m of course not saying ‘copy it’ but there are definitely elements in that image that people found appealing and it’s a safe bet that will be felt by others viewing your work in the future.  The other really good example of how this data can be used is in your marketing.  Having a tough time trying to decide which image to blow up for that bridal show?  The answer is in the numbers.  :)

I just realized after I was finishing that last paragraph that I was speaking pretty much directly to photographers but of course this plugin has merit with any website where you care about your viewers opinions regarding a specific image.  :)  So – please – browse through my categories and ‘show the love’ for my work.  If your interested in using this on your site – check out the Flaunt Books Image Voting plugin!

The second I switched – it was night and day in terms of functionality and having that ‘professional’ feel.  Previously I used Picasa from Google – it it a great product and I suggest it to all of my friends who want to ‘do stuff’ to their pictures however it is not an image management application – well not one like Lightroom.

So….Why do I love Lightroom (in a concise bulleted list)

• Non-destructive editing
  • Exactly as it sounds – you’re originals are never changed.  Making any changes within Lightroom such as adjusting exposure, white balance, even spot removal is all done separately from the original.  Lightroom keeps track of your changes and applies it to the preview but at ANY point you can revert back to the original.  When it comes to editing in Photoshop – copies of the original are made.
• Organization
  • If you are an organization freak (which I am slowly becoming), Lightroom fits the bill in so many ways.  Keywords, EXIF Data, Collections – All searchable so you can find exactly what you are looking for.
• Export Super Powers
  • I have a couple export routines depending on how I am going to use the image.  Lightroom allows me to configure Export Presets so I can quickly setup my workflow for whatever the use of the image.   So for example – I have a 12×12 export profile that scales the image and resolution down to 12×12 inches for inclusion on the client DVD.  That is a pretty basic export.  My favorite export functions use the LR2/Mogrify plugin to apply fancy borders as well as my watermark.  You can see examples of this in my blog entries containing client work.

So to bring this article back to the ‘housekeeping’ topic that is in its title – my Lightroom catalog file had grown to be about 55,000 images.  It was literally a disaster when trying to find anything – especially since I had client images and personal stuff all mixed together.  I was definitely using the Collections function to break out clients but this was basically a bandage to the situation.

Here is how I broke apart my catalogs – for every year that I had client work mixed in – I created a separate Lightroom Catalog (Lightroom only allows you to have one catalog open at a time which is a bit annoying especially since if you could have more than one instance open – I would imagine you could drag images from one catalog to another rather than having to use the ‘Export as Catalog’ function.  I am sure there is a good reason from Adobe so I’ll let it slide

The final outcome of all this work (and it did take a while – 55,000 images is nothing to scoff at) is I can now locate a client either current or previous with just a few mouse clicks.  It Is Beautiful.