Post your gear! (PICS)

[KillerBlackbird]

@Shady

I agree, I do prefer natural light to a flash in most situations, but you can actually get a natural look once you learn how to use it. After doing all the editing I have now and the things ive learned in the few short months, shadowing my uncle etc. I’d rather get the exposure and light done right from the moment I press the shutter button then spend hours post processing if it doesnt need to be done.

Agreed, unfortunately setting up strobes in every situation during a wedding etc is pretty much impossible :lol

Play with it, find someone to practice on, ask around and try some things. You can get a flash to look quite natural, sometimes you have to take it off auto/TTL and learn to use it manually, but its very possible. You’re making a lot of work for yourself by shooting underexposed, sacrificing light and retouching afterwards, not only that your probably making your job a bit harder/longer for you and the people your shooting if your making them stand perfectly still pulling out your tripod when you can just use the flash

I’m sorry if I sound like I know everything, because I don’t I’m just relaying things I’ve tried myself along with watching my uncle/father and other family members shoot weddings and events since I was a little kid, ask jim and dan, I constantly ask them questions, im constantly playing with my camera and trying things, theres plenty on here that know more then me, but my eyes dont lie :lol. Maybe im biased but I’ll tell you my uncle in paritcular takes some of the best event photos I have ever seen. He’s arrogant and a perfectionist, he’s good at what he does and obviously has been doing something right if he’s been doing it for 35+ years. He hardly likes what he does anymore to be honest and is a bit of an asshole, but thats because people don’t want to spend what they used to on weddings and their definition of “quality” has changed and don’t understand your paying for time, not just the photos

but I will say again, I like you guys do prefer natural lighting… but for moving people in dark areas or with all diferent contrasts… sometimes natual light just doesnt make sense.

Your uncle is right. Every fuckhead with an DSLR (myself included lol) thinks they’re a photographer because they have a Facebook fan page and a watermark. There are hundreds of guys that make anything I shoot look like shit. The reason I started taking photos is for a hobby, something to do through the week when I had days off and no one was around. Like any serious hobby, you eventually want more or change things up as you learn. You go through stages of what you shoot. You push yourself to do more challenging tasks.

Dan and I were talking about editing with photoshop the other day, I still don’t know how to edit using masks. Someday I’ll sit down and teach myself.

Weddings are something I have zero interest in shooting. Maybe in the future I will, maybe a year from now I won’t own a camera. I was asked to do engagement photos for a friend of mine and the whole time shooting them I felt like it was the most lifeless, single emotion, fake photos I was taking. I’d much rather have freedom to create whatever I felt like and try to convey that emotion from an inanimate object a best as I can or of a person in a different situation than that of wedding or engagement photo. I’ve had an idea for a portrait of a girl based on addiction and drugs in my head for about 5 years now, maybe someday I’ll create it.