The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 5,800 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

It’s been a great year, and I appreciate the support of my customers as well as blog readers. The main reason why people blog is to use keywords in the articles so search engines pick them up as updated relevant website content, and of course that’s part of my goal too…..but I also believe in having good useful content for this blog. I like to share photography technical information, some business talk, some general ramblings, experiences with various photoshoots I do, as well as recent Jay Farrell Photography developments and news. It has to be more than a place to spam keywords for people to find it useful. As always, suggestions are welcome, as well as topic requests.

2011 has been a ground breaking year for me. This has been my first full year of blogging, working a bridal show, joining TWESA, becoming a wedding wire featured member, comprehensive wedding photography packages, new Facebook business page, website shopping cart added, and many other exciting things! Not to mention the great networking and photoshoots, and weddings I have had the pleasure of photographing. I really hope 2012 is a year we can all be excited about and find prosperous! New Years resolutions to me are silly, as we should have more than one evaluation in a year’s time as far as how things are going, where we are at, and the changes that need to be made. I wish all of you a Happy New Year! I hope 2012 is a successful year for us all and thank you for your support, party safe on New Years eve

This should be my final major announcement of this year, lol. I recently signed up with a company to build me a custom Facebook business page,  www.primesocialmarketing.com .

I needed help optimizing my page and realized there aren’t enough hours in the day for me to do it all, and how important social media really is to today’s business. This way people in my demographic can find me when searching for a photographer, whether wedding, portrait or headshot, etc. Not only is the welcome landing page better looking than a standard page, but there are keywords that help photography clients and enthusiasts find me….as well as easier to navigate features like contact form, blog and website, and Twitter buttons. In turn I hope to get more likes as well as overall traffic, which means a lot these days to stay relevant in a crowded market. So I hope you will have a look at my new page and click the like button, and I will continue to engage my audience to the best of my ability! www.facebook.com/jayfarrellphotography or click the like button to the right. One more article for this year then we start fresh in 2012, are you excited for what this next year will bring?

I had met an artist at several local art shows that we both had been a part of.  Her name is Iggy and definitely has the heart of an artist, and is a joy to collaborate with. We have been talking for a year about working together, and we finally were able to make it happen…..as much as I hate to talk about things and not get them done as fast as I like, I quickly saw there was a reason for the delay that worked in our favor. Sometimes when creating art in a photograph or on canvas, it’s about patience sometimes. Other times it falls into place instantly. We did fine art figure study as well as hula hoop action shots that she needed. She does hula hooping with a team that opens up for different events and wanted some cool action shots different from the snapshots taken of them at actual events.

Here is how everything worked out. I have an old Canon AE1 35mm that had been in my family, and last year my uncle gave it to me. It takes the old FD lens mount all pre EF. It happened that I had Ektar 100 color film in it, and now have a wide angle lens my friend is letting me use with that lens mount. We shot some hula hoop photos with digital but just for fun, I brought out the old film camera and fired off 9 with the 18mm wide angle lens. When Iggy and I looked through them, we both agreed that 3 of the film images were cooler than the digitals. The rest of our shoot was digital and came out wonderful as well. Also, up until a couple months ago i didn’t know about this particular abandoned gas station we shot at. Not that another location couldn’t have worked but it was still an element of these photos.

Older lenses are not UV coated, so me angling the lens slightly composing the edge of the building allowed for some lens flare very easily. I know lens flare can be an overdone fad, and was once considered a flaw in a photo. But it was a cool little detail in this photo….I won’t be overdoing it and following every trend, but I believe each shoot has it’s own unique flair and style. This is a shutter priority camera, so I selected 1/400 shutter speed, and the camera selected F4 if I remember right. With the hi res negative scan a large poster can be made

Just a quick note to wish all of you Merry Christmas and happy holidays! I am grateful to have many great readers of this blog, and great customers I have formed relationships with over the years, as well as new customers! Not to mention family and friends I’ve had the pleasure of spending time with. I hope all of you have time to spend with family and friends, enjoy some good food, watch movies, play games, etc. As well as think about how photography has enhanced your lives. Had to throw in that little infomercial, LOL! I did my holiday travel to NY at Thanksgiving, so I will be staying put for Christmas, but will be entertaining friends…..oh yea and doing cajun fried turkey!

One thing I have really enjoyed this holiday season is not only families coming together and doing portrait sessions, but also to be invited to my clients’ social events and parties. A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of doing outdoor family Christmas portraits for previous wedding clients and they invited me to dinner with them at a Japanese steak and sushi restaurant, which I graciously accepted…..as well as several different clients’ holiday parties and open houses I’ve had the pleasure of attending. All of which feels good. That shows me that not only my business model of doing the best job possible and treating people right is appreciated…..and they think enough of me to let me in their circle. That makes what I do rewarding! Oh, I have always said to myself that I won’t work on any photos on Christmas…..so far I’ve never been able to resist the urge, LOL. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all!

It’s that time of year when I send Christmas cards to customers, as a token of my appreciation and wishing them a happy holiday season. Any of my friends and customers who know me well, know that I am one to be considerate of their wishes and needs, but do not like to fall into politically correct traps. For that reason, my custom greeting cards say Happy Holidays, and it’s always been done as far as I can remember because you don’t always know if someone doesn’t celebrate Christmas……that way it’s a more generic holiday greeting but it shows you are thinking about them right? But I usually write Merry Christmas inside the card if I know that person isn’t Jewish or doesn’t celebrate Kwanzaa. But even by my cards saying happy holidays instead of Merry Christmas I felt as though in a way I was contributing to the politically correct problem in this country. Even though I felt it was a good balance, and obviously geared towards Christmas as the dominant holiday in the U.S. whether those who celebrate it are Christian or not.

But I don’t know….maybe next year I’ll figure out a way to have my cards say Merry Christmas without alienating those who don’t celebrate Christmas. I can understand someone who does not celebrate Christmas not wanting Christmas shoved down their throat, but they have to abide by the same with others. But no one really has a right to be offended just because they hear Merry Christmas. When they are in Rome, no one is forcing them to do as the Romans do……but they do have to deal with how the Romans do things and we all have free will. So my position on cards saying happy holidays is to not alienate, and it’s definitely not to be politically correct. I have always loved Christmas, but the commercialism of the holiday has gone too far. The gluttonous Black Friday behavior is hardly flattering at all. Whatever any of you celebrate, I encourage you to have a happy holiday season, Merry Christmas and enjoy time with friends and family, oh and good food

I recently flew to New York for the Thanksgiving holiday and decided to bring my old Canon AE1 film camera, but was concerned about the safety of the film with the airport security scans. So I researched a little before flying, because I had a half shot roll of Kodak Ektar 100 and a new 400 speed TX black and white, and did not want either damaged. The check in baggage xray scans are stronger than the scanning at security for carry on baggage. The check in baggage scanning will damage film, so any film cameras need to be carried on the plane and not kept in checked baggage. You can ask the security agent at the airport to hand check the camera if the film speed is 800 ASA or higher, but the carry on baggage scan will not hurt any film below that. I believed in safety first and the agent in Nashville on my outbound flight was nice enough to hand check it, whereas the agent in Newark gave me a hard time…..I just said fine than scan it, (asshole! muttered under my breath) lol.On my return flight, I just had them scan it because the airport was such a zoo and it was like 5 AM so my brain was not awake yet.

So, sure enough, my film was unharmed. I got to enjoy photographing a few familiar faces and places during my visit, and everything came out fine. This is an impromptu family portrait of my cousin with her kids while in Allentown, PA. visiting our grandmother. By the way, Allentown has a really great farmers market at their fairgrounds!

Recently I had the pleasure of meeting an aspiring photographer downtown at a coffee shop to talk photography after getting acquainted on wedding wire pro forums. She asked for critique on her website as well as photography in general. I respond to those requests whenever I can, but I find that most of the people who ask, really don’t want to hear the honest answer. Which is a huge strike against them that they will ever make it in any realm of professional photography. I have only been using that forum for a few months but it’s been good because there are all different types of wedding professionals and photographers. Out of all the critique requests I have seen and responded to there, hers and one other were the only ones who really meant it when they asked for critique. Critique is a valuable part of what we do, and those too defensive and pig headed to listen to those more experienced are only limiting themselves. This girl really wanted to learn and took the critiques from everyone like a champ, which won her a lot of respect from me and her other peers. I shared in one posting that I was thinking of learning Spanish and she offered to assist on any jobs where I needed a fluent Spanish speaker, so we talked more and I agreed to meet up with her to talk shop.

I asked her to bring a print book, laptop, or tablet with 10 of her best images and we’d critique in detail. One image in particular I told her needed to be her benchmark, because it was really good…..nice intimacy between the couple, nice black and white tones, and nice composition. At this stage, she is working on developing her style and keeping consistent in the quality of work….well with the others I noticed that attention to detail in the background or foreground which distracted from the subject affected the images. She had a pretty good understanding of composition which is a basic fundamental of photography…..so it was nice to see she cared about a core mechanical aspect. And she didn’t have the fix it in Photoshop attitude, she really wants to be a photographer and not some modern day hack with no regard to the craft that many people love. We discussed use of light and color temperature, composition, and looking what is around the subject (like tree behind someone’s head, lol). Hopefully those couple hours on the outdoor patio of Panera Bread downtown Nashville, will give her food for thought in future shoots.

I don’t look at it like creating competition…..but rather creating education for those who really have a passion for their craft, and not just those who say they do. Educated photographers mean educated clients. That makes our industry a better place. People have helped me, it’s only right for me to share something valuable with others, I really believe it pays off in the long run. As long as someone really wants to learn, I don’t mind helping them. I learn in the process and remind myself of key elements for my own photoshoots. None of us are ever done learning. To get help from pros, the moral of this story is to be teachable first. Listen now, talk later. Listen to everything, use what helps.

Actually I started out asking my fellow photographer friend, Marty Copley if it was ok with him and his fiance for me to write a blog article about not only their engagement session I photographed with them, but also a little clarification about the history of the formation of their relationship. I may have been half asleep when I messaged him asking this in a Facebook message. So he took it to mean I wanted him to write a blog article about those subjects, but it all worked out great, because this gives an inside perspective directly from them! I will share this, in his words from this point forward.

First comes love, second comes marriage etcetera, etcetera.  Well, not really if you’re lucky, an engagement falls in there somewhere. At least that’s how it happened for me.I met my fiancée’ out of the blue and it was what you might call a whirlwind romance.  Within a week of meeting her, I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life loving her.  She’s about as perfect for me as I could have ever prayed for.  In less than months, I bought the ring, she accepted, we were engaged and had the wedding date set for November of 2012.    So, in my world it’s more like ‘First comes love, then comes ring, then engagement pictures, then comes wedding pictures’ –But I’m a photographer.  –now, I’m also a fiancée’.

 
Guess what, my fiancée’ wanted pictures to document our engagement in pictures.  Did I mention that I’m a photographer?  I don’t like having my picture taken.  Go figure.  That’s how it all began.
I’ve known Jay Farrell for several years now; we respect each others’ work. Have met multiple times for lunch and swapped war stories and bragging rights and the like about this or that job or session and how we might make it better next time..  Well, having your picture taken is a serious undertaking when it’s as important as your engagement and more importantly; when it’s your wedding and finding the perfect fit in a photographer is paramount to documenting the memories that you will want to remember for a lifetime.

 
My fiancée had seen Jay’s work from our interaction on Facebook and subsequently, his website and she became a fan, and I wasn’t even jealous.  So when she suggested I talk with him about shooting our engagement session and he accepted the assignment of photographing another photographer, I was as excited as I could get about the ‘ordeal’
We met with Jay and shared ideas and concepts, which is something I always prefer to do myself before a session, and I would urge anyone to do as well when selecting their own photographer.  We came up with a few great concepts and set the date and prayed the weather would cooperate.  It did.

 
On the day of the shoot we met and went over the larger details and left the rest to timing and skill.  Through the session I have to say Jay was great.  Almost as great as I would have been! (just kidding, Jay) He was as professional as he was cordial, if not jovial!  His personality and professionalism accomplished the one thing that I try to succeed in myself, make yourself invisible, make your shots one of a kind, make the memories that the client will want to hold on to for a lifetime. Jay came through with flying colors and I didn’t ‘hate’ the experience as I had expected. I actually enjoyed it, and to my surprise, I was actually looking forward to seeing the proofs.  Honestly, I was almost as excited as my fiancée.  And that was pretty surprising to me! The proofs arrived in short order, and I was beyond pleased.  So, when Jay asked me to write something about my experience shooting with him, I was happy to do so.  And in short, what you have read is my personal account of my experience with Jay Farrell and I couldn’t give anyone a better recommendation.  If you can’t book me, you GOTTA go with Jay or you may well regret it!  Do it and you will not be disappointed?
~Marty Wayne – website www.copleyphotography.com
p.s. Stay tuned to the upcoming wedding because Jay is the only one I would trust to photography my wedding since my fiancée won’t let me multi-task.

When shooting in the studio especially, I do not leave my lighting set up when finished with a photoshoot for two reasons. I often have to pack up my lighting gear to shoot on location where indoor lighting setups are needed, or I need them for outdoor fill lighting. Also because I don’t want to get stagnant and always shoot with the same setup. My goal is to bring something new to0 my shoots. Part of which involves lighting technique. I’ve always been a fan of artistic lighting style that uses shadow play and highlight contrast. I feel that helps me stay hip and trendy, yet have people come to me because I stay on top of my craft by never getting away from employing the different properties that make a photo successful. Lighting is one key ingredient that helps set the mood and personality of the photo, in a technical and cosmetic sense.

This setup was anything but traditional. I tried to draw a diagram but that didn’t work out so well, so here it goes. With the subjects in front of me and the background behind them, I will explain this. There was no light source directly in front of them. I used a strobe with a medium softbox to their right from where I was standing, about 6 feet away, maybe 15-20 degrees behind them, as their key light, at eye level but not aimed down like a rim light. This was to feather the light and have a larger source than a grid, should they move about, yet it allowed for there to be shadow along with brush light. But it needed fill of course. There was a hair light with a 20 degree grid above them on the rafter, aimed down with a slight angle from behind them. I also used a rim light aimed down at them to my left and about 45 degrees behind them as a butterfly setup would be on that side. With a 30 degree grid. I used a large silver reflector directly across from the key light softbox to my left to help fill in the shadows and add some detail, without flattening the light as if I used a direct source with no spill control. I also used a round white reflector across from the rim light to my right. This way both subjects had nice brush light, and the light falloff in shadow areas weren’t excessive. And the rim light and the overhead hairlight provided nice fill in where their faces joined and helped create a really dramatic feel to the images.

I was very happy to hear from a client I worked with several years ago. She is now in a great relationship and they wanted some new intimate, but classy photos together as a symbol of their love. I had the pleasure of meeting with both of them which I am sure took the edge off for him, since he had never met me, but had loved the photos I shot of her before. I have always enjoyed this type of photography that capture soul and emotion. Fortunately for me I don’t think there are a ton of photographers in Nashville who do boudoir / intimate photography as part of their services. My approach is to get to know them and learn about them enough to connect with them, since this is such a personal service. And some nice background music in the studio helps keep the mood, it doesn’t have to be anything extreme like Barry White, LOL!

It’s always important for me to create dynamic lighting and instill the mood, and capture details like fingers, neck, and watch tightness and stiffness making the mood of the photo uptight and disconnected. Encourage free movement, etc. This particular shoot, I only made a few suggestions during the shoot because I didn’t want to interrupt the mood, and it worked out well. And with the rim lighting and shadow play, as well as the black and white tonal qualities, these made a wonderful memory this couple can enjoy for a long time! I was going to elaborate on the lighting as far as technical discussion, but I will do that next post because it’s a by product of another topic I wanted to discuss about lighting. Stay tuned, and I hope the Jay Farrell Photography Blog has been helpful and entertaining for you.

I remember being on vacation a few years ago at one of my childhood stomping grounds, Pt. Pleasant N.J. That’s right, the Jersey Shore, that stupid tv show did a fabulous job butchering the reputation of, but anyway….LOL! My grandmother lived near there and we would go to the Shore a lot when we visited, enjoying the ocean and the games and rides on the boardwalk. So I went there to unwind, and then took a tour of New England and even went to NY to visit family and friends. My last day at the beach, I set the alarm for this God awful hour so I could grab the camera and make it to the boardwalk for sunrise. Not a morning person, but it’s for the love of the beach and photography I did this. So I walked up the strip with my camera and a couple different lenses, I think I ended up using my telephoto, 70-200 F4 for this particular image. There were a very few people walking the boardwalk, and I patiently waited for the sunrise.

When I overlooked the jetties and the bay, I saw a man fishing with a net from where I was standing….I thought this would make a perfect silhouette, and I used the same technique as described in last article about metering off the sky. I used F6.3 and 1/160 shutter and 100 iso on this one, and used a lens hood so I wouldn’t get lens flare from the sun off to the side. At the time I shot this photo, I had no idea the significance it would one day have, for someone I didn’t even know yet. This was just a couple of months before I moved to East Nashville and added to the stable of East Nashville artists and photographers there are here, love it by the way! That day at the beach and my vacation came and went. Later, I went to the house I was going to soon move into and went over to meet the next door neighbors. It was a hot afternoon, and I had to ask them if they were ok with me trimming some of the brush that neighbored our back fence lines, so I could clear the way for building a fence for the dogs. They were early 60′s I think, and very nice. They even offered me a Coke and were sitting on their porch steps and listening to a small transistor radio, as if they’ve known me for their whole lives, which was nice to see and rare.

I had moved in a while later and my dogs would always run over there when they were out on their porch, and we talked for a few minutes most every day. The wife, Joyce was retired because of disability, and the man, Al was working part time as a meat cutter but semi retired. So I was thankful to have formed a good relationship with them. I had lived there for maybe a year and Al’s wife had grown ill and unfortunately passed away when in the hospital. Which was sad to see because they were married 40 years or so and both are so nice. Al had worked hard with his sons expanding the deck so they didn’t have to sit on the steps, and painted the inside to surprise her when she came home. Unfortunately she never got to go home again. At the funeral and during the time after, he was having an impossible time adjusting and was very depressed….even my dogs sensed something was wrong. I was concerned for him as of course his family was, and his sons and daughter tried their best to be with him and take him places to help him adjust and work through his pain.

It seemed any words were inadequate, he seemed very reserved. A light bulb came on in my head! He was an avid fisherman and loved the ocean….so I printed a nice 11×14 and framed it, and told him to put it on his bureau or wall and think of what he loves to do. Hoping that would help him somehow…..that was the first time his eyes lit up since Joyce was gone, that I have seen anyhow. I saw it placed on his kitchen counter near where he sat at the table. His sons who were over a lot, even told me how much he liked the photo, and how they liked it as well. I was thinking, how cool! Sadly, a month or so after losing his wife, he suffered an aneurism and passed away at the hospital. I guess grief got the best of him, but at least the company he had made even those hard days better for him. And this photo was somehow included in that mix. At his visitation and funeral, his sons and daughter placed that photo on the wall of other family photos on display. Later, I went on to sell print of this photo at a local art gallery showing, and it may not have the same meaning as it did to them, it still adds color to their walls.

It all boils down to using a backlit setting and exposing off the background and keeping the subjects away from a light source in the foreground, therefore making a silhouette with the subjects. This is an oldie but a goodie, but the next blog article I was preparing inspired me to discuss the technical end of this particular photo…..as the next article has a similar style photo without the major presence of human subjects and I will be discussing a different aspect of photography, as a more emotional power a photograph holds. My heart has always had a huge place for doing fine art photography. This particular photo was taken with a model couple just approaching sunset, at Percy Priest Dam in Nashville.

There was still enough light to light the subjects with shallower depth of field, and use of a flash as fill would have helped keep the mood in the sky in the background, if I wanted to expose the subjects. That wasn’t what I wanted here, I wanted something different. Silhouette action baby! I metered off the sky and shot this at F11, 1/200 shutter and 100 iso. Read my histogram and went on. It showed ample detail of midtones, very little detail in high tones, and no detail in the blacks. Bingo. Since the subjects were backlit, that allowed for silhouetting to take place. I shot at 10,000 kelvin white balance to capture all the warmth of the sky possible. Very little Photoshop. One thing you have to watch with silhouettes is things getting globbed together. Like if a model is holding a cloth blowing in the wind, if there is no overlap between the cloth and her body if doing a silhouette, it will all be a big blob. Separation of arms and elbows, and knees, fingers, etc from body creating some gaps, are a must so you can see detail in the photo. The photo will not show what you can see with your eyes, which is one reason why there’s a trick to this. With this photo, I wanted to create enough separation yet keep the closeness. I would even liked a smidgen more separation between their noses but I think it was near ideal for what I was going for.