What's in a Name?

I'm trying to make a name for myself, literally. I want to create a "company", mostly in name only, so I can use for things like business cards and maybe a website or real company one day. "Why business cards?” you say. I figure it's a little more legit and less suspicious if when photographing a building or children in a park or at the Boardwalk, when I can say, "no I'm really not a criminal pervert, here's my card". "Well why worry about a company name and not just use your own name," you then say. Man, you sure are interrupting my blog a lot. Anyway, if photography is something I would like to continue to do beyond just a hobby, even one day trying to make a quasi-career out of, then I'd like to establish a standard now. I'd like to have a name in place and keep it that way so that I don't have to go back and change things like e-mail addresses and User names down the road.

So, what I need is help picking a name. Please give me some suggestions for a good Photography company. So far I'm leaning toward Deering Photo. Original I know! Other suggestions included:

-Deerster.com (suggested by a coworker which I thought weird at first but it's no worse than Google, Mozilla, or BigDaddy)
-Deering Photography (I like the shorter version)
-D&D Photography (No idea what the other "D" is for but I like the ring of it (and D&D is awesome!))

Please, lend some ideas and help out!

Photography Workshop - Portrats

Well week 3 of our workshop came and went.  I've decided I'm not much of a studio guy and not a people person at all.  Needless to say I was less than enthused about my results this week.  We worked on portrats using a white background an impromptu "volunteer" (the daughter of one of our classmates).  The little girl (who's name I never did catch) was cute, though kind not very generous with the smiles, but it wouldn't have mattered if Shirly Temple was sitting there.  I couldn't get the focus right, my lighting was bad meaning I couldn't get the flash to do what I wanted.  Our book said to use a tripod, a focal length of 85-100, and an F-stop of F/11.  I tried all of that and more and it was just not working for me.  Not a great first experence with my new equipment, though I did get to play with some of the features including my remote which was cool.  Here are the best that I got but I don't think they look much better than your standard mom-with-a-point-and-shoot picture.

It's Here! (Mostly)

All of my gear, minus my tripod which should be here in a couple days, arrived on Friday.  It's awesome and when I get the last piece I'll post a pic.  Hopefully you'll all see an increase in the quality of my photos to come.

In Addition...

In an addition to yesterday's post, I went out a little before we started the work and snapped a few photos.  I'll try and post them for stock eventually.

Not About Photos

This post is totally all about photos! Confused? Never mind, I think I'm funny. Anyway, it's not really about photos. Thursday I skipped out on work for a bit to go help with a Squadron project. We're working on refurbishing a B-17 Flying Fortress. Our job of the day was to replace the elevators (the flaps on the rear "wings"). I don't know too much about mechanics and I know squat about fixing an airplane but I love History and the Air Force so I'm more than willing to lend a hand where I can. It was very cool and we got to go and see the rest of the inside of the plane (and I got photos of course). Not a bad day.

The Tailgunner's Position

Bomb Bay

Cockpit

Getting In Gear!

The Day I have been waiting for has finally arrived!  After more than a year of haggeling, promising, and begging I have purchased my new camera.  Not only that I was able to get all of the additional gear I will need to help me take photos better.  We were very blessed, first by three foster children, then by a very substantial tax return in part because of them.  We were able to actually pay off our car and have enough to (mostly) cover all of my basic camera gear.  God is good, eh?  And for the record, I realize that it's just my own money that I'm getting back and spending, but still it's nice.
The items I'm getting are as follows:
1) Canon EOS Rebel XSi (a.k.a. 450D) SLR Digital Camera (Black) with 18-55mm IS Lens

2) Canon Speedlite 430EX II Flash for Canon Digital SLR Cameras

3) Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS Autofocus Lens

4) Manfrotto 190XDB Tripod Legs (Black)

5) Manfrotto 322RC2 Grip Action Ballhead

6) LumiQuest Soft Screen Diffuser for Camera with Pop-Up Flash

7) Pearstone BD-C430 Bounce Dome (Diffuser)

I can't wait!  God has really blessed me with this and hopefully I'll be able to use it for his glory.  Now, if it all will just get here by the next workshop...

A Night Out on the Town

This post is dedicated to Perry from whom I borrowed the inspiration.


After receiving a kitchen pass last night, I decided to go down town to the Boardwalk in Bossier City and into downtown Shreveport. At our workshop last week Perry was talking about how he wanted to get some nighttime city shots from I-20. I wasn't going to brave the perils of the interstate so I took the safety of the Boardwalk. It's normally a 15-30 min drive to get there but Saturday night traffic was terrible. I guess there were a lot of other kitchen passes as well. Anyway, I was able to get some pretty cool shots from the water's edge (or at least as close as we're allowed to get) and then moved up to the Texas Street Bridge for a birds eye view. Finally I moved over to Shreveport and got some cool "streaming" shots.

I learned several things during my trek. 1) This city (cities) is beautiful at night. 2) I figured out how best to use my settings and especially how to use my manual setting (I have to first go to Aperture priority and set that, then to Shutter and set that. Manual will then use those two settings). 3) Bridges move, A LOT, and getting a "tack sharp" photo on them is not easy. 4)I need to get a remote for my shutter because trying to time traffic 12 seconds out is not fun (10 sec for the timer and 2 for the shot itself). And 5) How to sharpen and contrast cityscapes in Photoshop.