PHOTOSBYSTICKS | Wedding and Lifestyle Journal

Taking a good break

admin — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 05:21:55 +0000

Merry Christmas! I am taking a well deserved break in Orlando, Florida with my family and I am having a good time. I haven’t used my camera’s in a long time so I have one with me and got back into some shooting. Nothing fancy, just enjoying the sun and the cool breeze @ the beach.

Hope you all are having a nice holiday! Blog you soon.

The Website is ALIVE

admin — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:01:38 +0000

After lots of work and branding, I have put up my very first website. Very Simple and clean. I love it! I didn’t know how much work and time it’ll take to get a website up and running but it’s been great already. I actually went live sometime last week to show my portfolio to the WPJA and yes…I got accepted! I’m so excited to have had my work reviewed and granted membership into this prestige association. One of my photography goals earlier in the year was to get accepted into the WPJA once I had shot a handful of weddings. It was a pretty tough task as I had to learn a lot quickly and deliver strong photojournalistic images in a short period of time and I am thankful to God. I guess this is one of my early Christmas presents Next year will be much more better and I can’t wait to do greater things as I go on. I already have goals for next year while rapping up this year so I am stoked!

Greater things to come!

New website: CLICK HERE

Enjoy!

……And They Said We Couldn’t do it?!?!?!

admin — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 05:20:28 +0000

It’s a wonderful feeling. BOOMER! SOONER! Let’s go whoop Florida. We are picking that HEISMAN too!

What’ve I been up to?

admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 03:45:24 +0000

This image should tell you everything. Believe it or not, I shot this while driving on the highway with a very high shutter speed. I have not shot anything on my cameras for over a month and figured I should shoot something at least. This is not one of the sites we work at but I saw it on my way back to the office and since I couldn’t stop on the highway I just stuck it out of the window and shot like 5 frames. I guess I got lucky….Don’t try to do it please! Unless you are comfortable driving with one hand while the other is handling the camera. I have been really busy with work and ready for the thanksgiving break!

Have a nice rest of the week.

Spankin’ New Business Cards

admin — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 01:33:32 +0000

I just got my business cards for 2009 in today and I am pretty stoked about these. I went for a very simple plastic design (using one of my favorite images of the year as the back image) to match my brand and I am very excited to be passing these out soon. Don’t mind the white specks on the cards, they came from the wrapping and I’ve cleaned them off. Enjoy!

Some Halloween Fun Scary - You’ve been warned

admin — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 01:51:05 +0000

This year’s halloween was the first time I ever dressed up. I decided to go as a character I call “the VERY handsome dude”. The image was taken by my friend, Stephanie B. The party was for the company’s employees over here in Louisiana and we had a swell time. I think my smile in this photo is AWESOME! What do y’all think? Have a nice week!

My Little Project/Website Update

admin — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 00:26:18 +0000

I’ll be starting a personal project which will be largely based in New Orleans. The big picture is not yet known to me but I’m leaning towards the street life and how the city is developing after Hurricane Katrina. Lots of thoughts will be put into this one and tons of planning to figure out where and what to shoot. I’m definitely thinking of helping out one way or the other and meet the people of the city. I was there last weekend and was quite intrigued with what I saw and had tons of fun shooting random things. I’ve never done anything like this before so put me in your prayers and wish me luck as I dive into it.

The PHOTOSBYSTICKS website is almost done and It will be launched in January 2009. It’s not as easy as I thought but it’s going pretty well.

Here’s another image I shot last weekend in New Orleans. It was exciting to see so many talented street performers/artists and to know they do it for a living….WOW!

The Painted Guy

admin — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 01:29:55 +0000

I was in New Orleans earlier today with a couple of friends and while we were walking around, we saw this guy. Pretty neat huh :)

Have a great week ahead!

WEDCOMP Winter 08

admin — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 18:12:31 +0000

The first and only time I have ever entered into a photo competition was my last semester of college in the student media department. I was quite skeptical since I had never done something of that nature before - maybe since I felt I was very new and my work would suck! But I decided to show it off anyways since I was pressured asked by a couple of friends to get in and show off what I’d done so far in order to get some criticism and such. I figured it won’t hurt so I made a slideshow presentation of my recent work - paid, personal, school etc. It was free and I turned in my application the last day it was due.

I had pretty much forgotten about it until I got a text from my photo editor saying “John you just won the photo competiton” and the first thing I did was pause for a moment then I laughed! I was at fellowship that night and we had just got done praying and people wondered what in the world was wrong with me. I really couldn’t believe it until I got another text about 2mins later from my friend who was at the end of the year dinner saying the same thing. I was in shock! Anyways I won $250 which was good money for a broke college student and I bought something nice for myself although I have no clue what I spent it on now but it was a great feeling. My work was judged by a bunch of people and I got good comments and how I could be better. It was awesome for real!

Anyways I’m getting into my second competition and this is strictly wedding related. I have only shot a handful of weddings and wonder what my chances are if I enter this one. I think it’ll be good to show what I have done and get my wedding images reviewed and I am really thinking of which images to put in since it costs $10/image. Yikes! This will be my task this weekend so we’ll see how it goes. The competiton won’t be over until next year so I have a little bit of time. Hopefully I can pick 5 images that I really like. I am so picky incase you didn’t know. This is what is taking me so much time to get my website LIVE. Someone should beat me up to get it done. Ayesha is already doing that - Thanks a lot. Speaking of Ayesha, she’s one photographer that ROCKS!!! She knows why so check out her work at http://www.bedazzledphotography.com .

If you are interested in placing your images in the competition the link is http://www.wedcomp.com

Image upload deadline is in 3 months so be quick about it if you want to do something fun. You could win some good prizes too.

I’ll keep y’all posted. Wish me luck. Sorry I don’t have any image to put up. Till next week.

2 More To Share

admin — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 04:31:49 +0000

I am getting the images from Yetunde and Jide’s wedding completely finalized and ready to be presented to the couple in a few weeks These two images jumped out at me as I was doing some more processing. It’s amazing what you can do with off camera flash to give your images a little bang as seen in the first photo. I always travel with my flash and PW’s especially for the couple’s first dance. I will be doing more with other ideas at my next wedding :)

The set up was easy: 430EX bare flash set on a stand behind the couple and triggered with PW’s. I shot at 1/250s @ F.28 and ISO 100. I think I had the flash on 1/2 or 1/4 power. I never shoot on full unless I really need the power. I like the burst of light the flash usually produces when it’s left bare. I don’t use an umbrella or soft box for such shots and it’s just my style I guess.

The second image is pretty cool with everyone trying to catch a shot of the bride feeding the groom. That was shot @ 1/80s @ F 2.8 and ISO 800. I shoot at F2.8 95% of the time. Post Processing was done in lightroom and a little smart sharpen added in photoshop.