Jacksonville Florida Wedding Photojournalist and Lifestyle Photographer

Jacksonville Wedding – Trudy & Steve Hudson

tlester — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:15:57 +0000

My first wedding of the season is “in the can” as they say in the film industry. It was a gorgeous Florida winter day today. Mid upper 60’s and lots of sunshine. Trudy and Steve had a rather relaxed wedding. A simple service with friends and family then a reception back at their house. Here’s a sneak peak of the day. I’ll post more and give some details when I return from the WPPI convention in Las Vegas.

My WPPI Schedule

tlester — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:21:29 +0000

Woohoo! I’m heading to Vegas to go to the WPPI Conference at the MGM Grand. I’m so excited! It’ll be a few days of learning, networking, partying, and hanging out. I may sneak in a round of black jack while I’m there, too. However, I’m horrible at cards, so I’ll only do it to say I did it. So, if you are going to WPPI, here’s my schedule. I’d love to connect with you while I’m there. All times are Pacific.

Monday March 8th

05:00 AM – 10:20 AM – Fly from Jacksonville, FL to Vegas.
11:00 AM – 11:30 AM – Leather Craftsmen booth [Booth 1428] to see [b]ecker and check in with David Willis.
02:00 PM – 02:30 PM – Leather Craftsmen booth [Booth 1428] to see Sara France
03:30 PM – 05:30 PM – Jared Bauman’s talk [Room 306-307] – Your Business: On Auto Pilot for a Six-figure Income
06:30 PM – 08:30 PM – Jasmine Star [Room 319-320] – Ghetto Fabulous Marketing
08:00 PM – 10:00 PM – WPPI Pool Party

Tuesday March 9th

08:00 AM – 10:00 AM – Sara France Master Class [Room 202] – Aperture
01:15 PM – 01:45 PM – Leather Craftsmen booth [Booth 1428] to see Jasmine Star
03:30 PM – 05:30 PM – Justin and Mary Marantz [Room 304-305] Creating Loyalty Beyond Reason
06:30 PM – 08:30 PM – Andy and Angie Wood [Room 306-307] – 10 Steps to an Amazing Web Presence
08:30 PM – 09:00 PM – Pictage party @ Studio54. I’m just going to stick my head in and hand for a bit before going to Mike Colon’s talk.
09:00 PM – 11:00 PM – Mike Colon & Jim Davis-Hicks [RM 319] – The Marriage of Profit and Purpose.
10:00 PM – 01:00 AM – [b] Party (if I’m not dead by then).

Wednesday March 10th

08:00 AM – 10:00 AM – UNITE Prayer Meeting
11:00 AM – 12:00 AM – ShowIT booth (maybe… )
01:00 PM – 01:30 PM – Leather Craftsmen booth [booth 1428] to see Mike Colon.
02:00 PM – Whenever – Head to the airport to fly home.

It’s going to be an exhausting trip. There are many more parties that I may go to, many people to meet, a HUGE show floor to cover. It’s going to be crazy. I may not sleep… I guess I can catch up on sleep when I get back home.

So… here’s a picture that’s completely unrelated to this post, but blogs are boring without pictures.

Sub30 Launch

tlester — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:10:47 +0000

Last night was Celebration Church’s launch of “Sub30” a new college and career’esq service. As Pastor Josh Turner brashly stated, “If you are over 30, you are too old”. Yep, this is a service for post high school, but under 30 crowd. Held in Celebration’s Annex, Sub30 has more of a coffee house vibe than a church service and the Annex coffee bar and chill atmosphere puts Starbucks to shame! The night opened with Ryan Kirkland from Between the Trees playing an acoustic set while people hung out and enjoyed their coffee. Over all… great night!

Hitting the Parks with Off Camera Flash

tlester — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:32:58 +0000

If at all possible, I avoid direct flash from my camera. It’s just not very interesting and makes the images look flat. On a recent trip to Disney World in in Orlando Florida, I took my typical walking around the park set up. One camera body (my Canon 5d mk2) and my 50mm lens. Simple. I also bring a long a hot shoe flash (the kind that sits on top of the camera), but it rarely comes out to play. However… there are times when you really need a flash. For example… in really bright daylight when the dynamic range of a scene (the difference between the brightest part of the scene and the darkest part of the scene) is just to broad for a camera to handle it. Without a flash you have to decide to either underexpose something, or over expose something, but you aren’t going to get everything exposed properly. This is where you just have to have a flash, reflector, or some other light source to balance out the scene.

I’ll usually break out the flash and bounce it off of something. A wall, someone with a white t-shirt, ceiling, or whatever. Not this time… this time, I brought a long the the new Pocket Wizard ControlTL triggers. LOVE THEM! They are so small and easy. I put a MiniTTL and a FlexTT5 in my wife’s purse along with a 580 EX II. I almost didn’t use them at all on this trip. Then, my friend Jonathan noticed these cool cloud patterns. I wanted to get a shot looking up at the clouds with Jonathan in the foreground. Due to the high dynamic range of the scene, I had three choices:

Expose for the sky and Jonathan would go black (a silhouette).
Expose for Jonathan’s face, and blow out the sky. The sky and the clouds would become white and you wouldn’t notice the clouds.
Light the scene myself. This way, I can expose for the sky, which would still make Jonathan dark, but that’s when I would light Jonathan with a flash.

So, I grab the flash and mount the FlexTT5 on it and slip the MiniTT1 on my camera. I manually get my exposure on my camera and set the flash to TTL and hand it to my wife to hold and point at Jonathan. I lay on the ground in the middle of the street at Hollywood Studios and snap the shot. I’m sure I looked like a crazy to all the tourists, but hey… I got this shot, so who cares right! Sacrifice for the art!!!

Trudy and Steve (a week from today)

tlester — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:45:19 +0000

Wedding season officially kicks off for me next Sunday with Trudy and Steve’s wedding. Trudy told me that she was putting together bookmarks for her guests and needed a picture. She lives in my ‘hood, so I told her I’d stop buy and grab a quick shot. Her and Steve are so in love and are excited about next week, so it was a blast to see them and hear all about their final week of preparations. Here’s my favorite from our very-mini-session.