Week 1 of Advanced Pro Course- Yee Haw!!!!

Howdy!

I'm totally excited for this class to start!! It almost makes up for the photo basics class ending- lol. So I was super happy about not having to take a week off and being able to jump right into the lesson.

Preparing to Prepare

This week is all about preparation, making shot lists, and scouting out locations before hand. I have actually been doing this already on shoots I do for other people, and I'm glad to hear it's the "professional" way of doing things. I thought I was abnormal and being obsessive compulsive or something by doing things this way. I haven't made a pose book or anything cool like that, but on my last shoot I totally made my hubby draw me stick figures on a note card of the things I wanted to remember to do. hahahahahaha. So now I'm all over putting together an awesome inspiration/pose book. So much so, that I strained my back from leaning over while cutting magazines all night. hehe.

Confidence and the Sixth Sense

For me, the major reason for preparation is building my confidence. I pretty much always write down what I want to capture, where I want to capture it, and locations/poses I want to remember. BUT I usually forget about all of that when I start shooting. I go into a "zone". When I start clicking away, I go somewhere else. I begin to see things differently than I had when I first scouted the location. A place I thought was once awesome is NOT anymore. A place I didn't even see there before, now I think is the perfect place for the shoot. I get this "sixth sense" and begin to feel only what is around me at the time (the places, people's emotions, etc.), and "I" change things accordingly. I go with the flow and stop controlling things and just let it unfold naturally.

I recently watched a video Brooke posted on her blog of Elizabeth Gilbert. She talked about back in the day artists gave credit of their work to this "being" that took over them while they were in the creation process. When I saw that, I went Ah-Hah!! I totally feel like something overcomes me and it changes everything I spent hours planning!!! But I definately don't discount the important role preparation plays!

What Can Go Wrong, Just Might Go...Right

This week's shoot I originally planned to go to a different location I never shot at before (our local Fairgrounds) to capture my mama barrel racing. But as luck has it (and I do mean luck), there is this freak equine illness going around our area and all horses are on "lock down" (so as to not infect or get whatever is going around). So I had to do the shoot at the horse's home (my mama's property), but I still did the leg work of looking for different places/perspectives to shoot.

My goal was to be efficient, keep the number of shots to a minimum (quality vs quantity) and keep it around an hour long. So of course, the opposite happens. Due to numerous circumstances (weather, lighting, events pertaining to dealing with horses & humans-lol) I ended up going 2 hours, and shooting 475 images (I'm so very embarassed of that one y'all). But I actually was efficient in my workflow (where I usually slack), so it made up for it. I started using the star system in photoshop and rated my pics: rejects for eyes closed/test shots, 3 for memory purpose pics, 4 for I like pics, and 5 for processing worthy pics. I started shooting around 6:30 PM and had them narrowed down and processed for the next morning. Total record time for me :) It was sooooo very hard to narrow down to just 3. Hope you enjoy :)

Theme of the week: Roots

f/4, 1/200, 100

f/6.3, 1/500, 100

 

f/3.2, 1/100, 100

A shout out to my mama- thanks for sharing your love of horses with me and my children :)