P.S.

One of my best friends of roughly 20 years or so got married on 9/24. Congrats Dan and Julie!

Oh yeah, and we got down with our bad selves too:

Accomplishing a mission

So, of you photographers out there, who ever gets a great idea for a shoot or subject matter, and when you go to shoot it, things never seem to measure up?

-That's my case far too often.

Anyhow, here's a quick story about how one such mission of mine actually came out really close to what I had hoped for, and finding out about a good cause at the same time:

I wanted a picture like this:



I had this idea from seeing part of a European bike race in which whatever network it was on had a camera van riding parallel to the peloton (say that 10 times fast) as the 70 or so riders moved by a field of sunflowers which must have been easily 5 square miles, as you could see it span into the hills.

My wife and I started a very sporadic search for anything even remotely close to this in New England. After learning (about a month later) that sunflowers have a very short lifespan for their blossoms, we re-focused our search during July, when we were expecting the flowers to actually be in season. We eventually stumbled upon "Buttonwood Farm" in CT, which ran the annual Sunflowers for Wishes program. A private farm in which the owners plant massive, several-acre fields of sunflowers to attract visitors and tourists to their already well-trafficked dairy farm (ice cream!) operation. The proceeds from tours, sunflower sales etc, are donated to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which I am sure you're all aware of.

We were in luck. The peak (just one) week for the flowers was ending that very weekend. We immediately planned to head down on what was to be the very hot/humid Saturday morning.

The drive was about 2 hours in 100% blue skies and increasingly warm sunshine. We arrived about 11:00 am or so, and I knew the trip was worth it. I was about 1/4 of a mile from where I took the above photo, when I first insisted we pull over after about 10 seconds of driving by one of their largest blooming fields.

The majority of the day was spent exploring the various fields, shooting different angles, and just strolling with my wife as we joked about how much I would start sweating when I tried to hold still for a photo (it was that hot).

You may have noted by now "Dan, you said you drove down in blue skies, your picture has a lot of clouds in it."

Yes. Yes well, I'm getting to that.

After cooling off not nearly to a satisfactory level from the unfortunately-messy ice cream break, we began to make our way back down the road towards the car to call it a wrap. I noticed a woman who was perched on the small bluff of grass next to the stone wall separating the field from the road. She was painting the view in front of her in acrylics, it looked great. After much debate about possibly disturbing her I eventually worked up the courage....to ask my wife to ask her if I could take a photo of her painting the field...
(Flex)
She immediately told (Andrea) that it would be no problem, and I happily started snapping away.

That's when we heard the 1st heard the thunder.

If you look just above the tree-line, and below the clouds you can actually see the rain coming down in that photo. It reminded me a bit of watching distance rainstorms when you've summited any reasonably sized mountain.

After informing the very disappointed artist "But I was just about to start painting the actual petals!", of the impending storm (she didn't hear the thunder) , I quickly walked along the stone fence and took several frames of the scene you see before you now. With the clear blue skies, the sun washed everything out. Now, with the diffusion of partly cloudy skies, the field was perfectly lit for what I needed.

Overall it was very satisfying to take in the views and actually get some nice photos out of it. I'm very glad we made the journey. Plus we made a bit of a donation by purchasing a bunch of cut sunflowers. (They lasted about a day. :|

Oh, and I took this during our ice cream pit stop; it makes me feel far away...something about it.



See you next time.

Oberly Wedding Teaser

Here's a quick tale and one of my favorite "wedding-environment" shots from this past weekend's wedding in Western MA. (full wedding post to follow in time)
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"What is that?" You ask. Well, we'll get to that in a bit. For now, just keep that image in the back of your mind as you read on:

Directions and navigation have never been my strong suit, to say the least. However, I've always managed to get by and find my way after a few twists and turns. My wonderful parents, perhaps sensing my lack of an inner-compass, gave me a GPS system last Christmas, and I've never looked back.

GPS, however, are not always privy to local *ahem* "construction", or in this case, lack thereof.

Upon arriving in Montague MA, a small town I'd never heard of prior to booking this wedding, I immediately made the turn on to Greenfield Rd, where the wedding was to be held in its entirety at the Montague Book Mill. After driving about halfway down the road, (about 2 miles or so), my TomTom GPS unit cheerfully informs me that I have "reached my destination".
Slowing my car a moment, I came to the reasonably quick realization that, no, the wedding wasn't being held at the "Montague Town Water-Treatment Facility".

After more driving, and more equally unfitting locations to exchange vows, (A dairy farm, A flea market, and residential housing) I called my brother, who just happened to be also attending this wedding as a guest.
My call to him initially only resulted in more confusion. As I was on Greenfield road, the road I was on ended in a dead end with forest and jersey barriers, and on the other end, just led out to where I came from. Brian, however, was "there" at the Mill, also on Greenfield Rd. Everything I described to him as I drove past he had never seen, and everything he told me to look for, I never saw.

Frustration was mounting, and the wedding bells were going to be sounding sooner rather than later at this point.

Then, while looking at his own GPS to help solve this mystery, my brother determined the problem...

...So "What's that picture above?" Oh just an aerial view of the 1,000 foot gap in the road where a bridge used to be that they never rebuilt.

I didn't really have time to rattle off the laundry list of problems I had with splitting a road in half and providing no sign-age whatsoever. So, biting my tongue, I managed to plot out my detour and arrive in just enough time to snap some bridal prep shots before things got underway.

So how do wedding photos turn out when this is your location?:


Stay tuned to find out :)

Gagnon Wedding

A quick note about my blog: It's back! Workload, some sickness, and an epic trip to Alaska later, this blog will continue to be updated with all wedding, event, portrait, and personal work that I shoot. I hope you enjoy :) - Dan
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The Gagnon wedding in August with Tiffany and John was a great experience for me. I worked extensively with Tiffany to make sure that I captured the artsy and classic themes they wanted for their Rock and Roll themed wedding. Both bride and groom (and their wedding parties) were excellent sports in receiving direction from me, as well as helping to add their own twist to shot ideas and execution. What a great couple!

I will admit, I got lucky at the unfortunate fact that there was miscommunication between the wedding and the limo driver, so I was awarded about 20 crucial minutes beyond what I would have had with the couple for cocktail hour shooting. This extra time actually led to one of my favorite shots with Tiffany (1st photo below) as John worked out the details for transportation.

Here are a few shots from our shoot after the ceremony, and a few details shots from the bridal prep, and reception:

Can't miss

Sometimes you've got a work a little harder depending on the subject matter you're shooting. I know, I'm bias, but with my little nephews...you just don't even need to try :).
I'm going to miss their official 1 year birthday party while I'm away, so I stopped by my brother's place to take some unofficial shots of them at juuust about 1 year old.

Quislai, one of my brother's two cats, removes herself from the fray after a few infant left hooks to her face. She preferred to observe from afar then be on the front lines.

















Lost in the sea of toys and playpadding.















Gimmicks be damned, I love a good selective desaturation now and again. Also, I am really pleased with the 24-70 so far, this was one of the best test conditions I've used it under in terms of portraits, and ...well just look!

Screwing around

In preparation for my trip to Seattle and Alaska next week, I'm trying to learn a few techniques to maximize my time away, and best be able to process shots when I get home.

Since landscape photography opportunities will be everywhere, I wanted to try some panoramas so I know what I'm doing before out there potentially wasting time and frames.



What did I do wrong here? Well, it was too close to what I was photographing. Panning from image left to right left the semi-circle voids at the bottom (and the top), so if and when I wanted to crop this evenly, the bottom of the image, the track, would be largely lost. Seems like I'll have to compose what's visible, and them sort of re-compose in my mind what will make the final crop.



So here I backed up a bit but I'm still far too close. (Won't be a problem in Alaska) You can see the bowing in the middle where the lens was the closest to the subject while panning. Here I was experimenting with how many frames I need to take to cover the area I want with the correct amount of overlap. Basically the margin for error here is large, since I probably ranged from 10-30% overlap, and no reference point really suffered through the stitching process that I can tell.

So, second task was this kind of inverted/desaturated layer overlay method in Photoshop that Prav told me about. It's kind of a way to bring out the same sort of contrast and tonal ranges that an HDR's Tone Compressor would emulate. It doesn't seem to replace a detail enhanced HDR, but that depends on the photo you're talking about, if you'd want to use that method or not if you're even going for an HDR in the first place. Any way you can bring out the best in the photo and only use the original shot is ok by me, so naturally I had to try it out.

Here are my results:





This certainly made the colors pop out of their shells, and without a "false" look to them. It's like a brightness and vibrance enhancement without any of the additional noise added if I turned it up that much in LightRoom. I'm interested in trying this technique on different kinds of shots. These example I took tonight served both the purpose of using the new 24-70mm during golden hour, and checking out how much color/tone was effected by this photoshop thing, which was my main interest.

Lagging behind

I've been sick for, basically the month of April. So I haven't had much drive to update much here lately, but that's not to say I haven't been busy.

Over the past few weeks I've done two wildly different shoots. One, a portrait session for an local Hip-Hop artist in Boston, hoping to use the materials for future promotion. Two, being an event hosted by and for M.I.T. at the Prudential Center allowing teams of graduate students to present their competing ideas for a real estate project in downtown Boston.




First up for this post:,Terence, aka "Blaq Legend", a super nice guy who not only wanted my input on how to get the best shot, but had a great idea and vision of what he wanted as well. A fairly rare combination in subjects I've found.
Prior to the shoot, Terence scouted locations and we decided on a meeting spot at Boston Symphony Hall. We concentrated on several areas that focused on his past, places that he spent time in his youth living in the city.
It was a very mobile shoot, capturing everything from a local pizza joint, to the subway system and Boston Landmarks like the Prudential Center etc. Aside from some local *ahem* over-served individuals, it was very easily managed session as Terrence and his Cousin, who accompanied us, were very easy going.