New Year, New Start: New Jersey Portrait Photographer

A few months back we ran a contest of sorts called ‘New Year, New Start’ – the idea was: if you’d been affected by hurricane Sandy – give us your name! We did a random drawing, and the lucky winner received a photo session for free. Being that it was random, we weren’t sure who we were going to pick (obviously). There were many deserving families, and we truly wished that we could give free photos to everyone (if we could, we would!). We lucked out when we picked these guys – they were so sweet, their little one was so adorable, and they were so wonderful to work with.




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Staying Grounded

 

We photograph a lot of the same things again and again. Living on a barrier island, this is unavoidable unfortunately. There are only so many ways you can do dune grass – only so many wave shots you can take – before everything begins to look the same.

 

On a walk to the jetty this weekend, I decided to test some of the limits of my new 5d Mark ii and get on the ground. I had old jeans on, so it wasn’t too huge a production to pretty much lay in the sand for some shots.

 

 

 

Ray was attempting to get low, also:

 

 

Anyway, it was a really gorgeous day for some faux-macro photography of ordinary things!

 

 

 

 

 

This is How We Roll

I am sorry for the lack of posts! Lots has been going on with our business (check out the site if you haven’t already, www.deepsixphotography.com – and ‘Like’ us on Facebook!!).

Here is a behind the scenes look at what was going on when I got some shots the other night!

The main goal of the evening was me wanting to catch a cow-nosed ray. I suspected it would be easy to do this, since they are visible in the waves from shore right now (you can see them kind of surfing the break). I pretty much figured the second that I tossed my bait into the water, I would have one on the line. I wanted to be the girl fighting the huge fish on the beach while all the bennies watched.

Unfortunately, the rays weren’t picking up what I was putting down, and I instead decided to venture off and get some photos.

It was great, and I was getting some nice shots.

Here’s what our set-up looked like. Ray was staying pretty still, so I figured I’d try to sneak some HDR in and do something a little different.

That is pretty much our set-up. Camera bag, orange bucket, and two poles. It was such a gorgeous night, and the colors of the sky were so beautiful.

As I was photographing, I kept looking at my pole. There was nothing doing.

All of the sudden, I heard the tell-tale squeal of Ray’s drag, and it was fish on. I actually took a video of him reeling it in. It is not the best quality video (and I apologize for strange camera angles) – but you’ll get the idea. I’m going to try to embed it here:

Long story short – when he was done, he pulled in this cute little bugger:

Yes, they have stingers. I was a little nervous this thing would pull a Steve Irwin and stab Ray through the heart, but luckily nobody was injured, and this ray swims free.

Here’s just one more quickie. I made Ray cooperate for this:

A Word On Movement

I was going to write this post yesterday, because I had a few things to say about my HDR work and some recent subjects I was trying to capture. However, some other things got in the way. Those other things were (in order): 2 papers for my graduate coursework (they are still not done), cooking chicken, and watching ‘Crazy, Stupid, Love‘. I don’t have much to say about anything except the movie. I wanted to see it when it was in the theatre but did not get around to it. Then I had to wait a really long time to even get my hands on it after it came out on DVD. This is saying a lot from a girl who’s favorite movies include Jaws, Beetlejuice, Thelma and Louise, and An Officer and a Gentleman.

I’m not sure Crazy, Stupid, Love can stand beside Jaws – but it was good. It was actually able to capture in some small measure – something that felt like real life. It did include an obligatory ‘make-over scene’ which the movie probably could have done without, but aside from that I enjoyed it.

Anyway, on to what I was really going to write this post about.

The other day, after I got those bird shots, I got some beachy/sunset shots. I actually went down to the lighthouse when the sun was going down to see if it was going to be as epic as the other day, and it didn’t seem like anything was cooking – so I tried some other perspectives. I got a couple nice ones, but quickly became frustrated because I was dealing with this:

All the guys fishing makes for some cool photography in itself. You would have almost thought that they were giving out free $5 bills down at the jetty for all the crowding down there. But they weren’t. These are all just men after some good old Jersey Shore striped bass. The problem with all those guys fishing was that it was killing my attempts at HDR – because you can’t have people milling all around and trucks driving everywhere when you are trying to take the exact same shot at least 3 times at different exposures.

I managed to get 2.

This one is actually the nicer of the 2, although there is one truck that’s ghosting because it was driving. I’m sure you can find it if you look. The tidewater was so nice for HDR (the reflections always read really well) so I just had to give it a shot. Just after this shot, I looked behind me – and noted that the sky had begun to do crazy things. Unfortunately, the rush back to the jetty for a better view proved too little too late, and between setting up down there and rushing, the shots did not come out post-worthy.

Here is the lesser of the 2 shots:

It’s still cool, but I am a sucker for those reflections.

I guess I’ll just have to wait to do my thing until the beach is a bit less crowded, or get more creative.