Have you been out shooting with a group of photographers? If not you should try it out.

Why would you want to shoot with other photographers? There are many good reasons:

• Setting the pace: If you’ve ever been the lone photographer in a group (out with friends or family), you’ve probably been constantly badgered about keeping up or keeping moving. It’s true, when a person is out taking photos, they move at a much slower rate then if they were without the camera.  Heck, I find that I move slower at the zoo then my friends with two kids under 5. And we tend to linger in places longer than others. I know I’ve spent 20 minutes in front of a display taking photos and waiting for the “perfect moment”.  But when you’re out with a group of photographers this isn’t a problem. Move as slow as you’d like and you’ll find there’s probably another photographer moving slower than you. We’re just more understanding about creating photos. It takes time and when photographers walk around, we’re not just looking where we are going, we’re looking for shots.

• Silly amounts of equipment: It’s a widely known fact that photographers all have a bad case of Equipment Acquisition Syndrome (EAS). We all want more equipment, better equipment, and newer equipment. So when you’re out shooting with other photographers you get a chance to try out some other equipment. I know that when I go shooting, I generally have no problems with people borrowing lenses or flashes from me. And most of those who I shoot with lend me equipment as well.

• Talk the talk: Nothing bores my friends and family like talking about photography. This topic is right up there with geek chat about computers and video games. Most people just don’t find it interesting and tend to glaze over when I start in. They have no problems coming to me for advice on what camera to buy, but beyond that, it’s like talking at a wall. Other photographers are generally eager to talk about photography. And teaching someone something (even something quick and simple) is a great way to reinforce it in your own mind.

Things have been a little busy for the last three weeks. Weekends have been filled with trips out of state for various family things. Weekdays I’ve been fairly busy at work and just not in the photo groove in the evenings. Thankfully August should be a bit calmer than the last couple months.

My company is revamping their website, and I’ve been tasked with shooting photos of our projects. Should be interesting and give me some structured photography projects. Look for them in the next month or two.

Here are a few photos that I took during a photo walk earlier in July. There were 8 or so people out taking photos around Nicollet Island.

So for today I wanted to write about taking photos of friends. My friends (and their kids) have been photo subjects ever since I’d moved to Minneapolis. For the first year or so, they insisted on making a photo-face of some sort. They pulled a fake smile, made a face, or looked away. Those photo-faces make it so hard to get a good photo of people when you’re close to them. The photos come out useless (making a face or looking away) or posed looking.

This is why I like doing candid street photography with a long telephoto (70-300mm) lens. I can take a photo of a subject who can’t see me. I get natural expressions that way. No photo-faces that way. The downside is you can’t get a connection with the subject in the photo.

Of course candids of friends and family while you’re in the room are hard to do without being noticed. Diving behind the couch kinda detracts from the moment. So you’re stick with more mid range focal lengths (24-70mm) and the subject will be aware of you. How do you deal with that?

I dealt with it by keeping the camera out and just wearing them down. I always have my camera around and just keep taking photos until they are just so tired of making photo-faces that they just ignore the camera. For the most part, I can take photo of my friends from in the room and have them not really react to me. The kids are a bit different. Every time I get out the camera, they need a few minutes of showing off before they start ignoring it. So just give them their show off time and they calm down.

You can see photos of my friends over on my Flickr page: Friends Set, Best of the Bug Set, Alex Set, Kai Set

So for photos today, I have a few photos from a hot afternoon walking around Long Lake Park and a few photos of my friends from an evening of setting around relaxing.

You can see more “Out for a Walk” photos over on my Flickr page here:

You can see more photos of this evening over on my Flickr site:

After putting in almost 50hr by Thursday, I decided I needed a break and took last Friday off. I hadn’t been out to take photos since my trip to Ft Worth.  So I thought I’d hit the MN Zoo in the morning. It was a wonderful day for a visit to the zoo. Perfect weather.

So here are a few selects from the day. Many more photos (from this and other trips to the zoo) can be seen in the MN Zoo set of my Flickr page.

Last month I was invited to visit the PVI Water Heater plant in Ft. Worth, TX by my local rep. This plant visit is something that most of the other mechanical engineers/designers rave about. You are treated well in Texas.

Seeing as this is only a two day trip, there was no need for any checked luggage. I packed my camera bag and a carry-on bag and was at the airport with plenty of time to check in. Waiting in line for the security check, got my shoes off, pockets empty, belt off, all ready to go. Walk through the metal detector…. and off it goes. Security tells me to check my pockets and try again. Same thing happens. I have no idea what’s going on. The detector says it’s something in the waist area that’s setting it off. So I get shunted into the glass box. The glass box is there so that you can’t go anywhere and security can keep an eye on you until you’re checked out. As soon as a step in there, an overly enthusiastic older lady declares “I got my eyes on him. Not going anywhere.” I had a hard time not laughing as I racked my brains trying to figure out what was setting off the detector. A nice gentleman comes over to relieve the old lady and do my security check. He has me walk over and set on the special chair to check me out. As soon as I sit down, I realize why the metal detector was going off. I’d forgotten that I had me knee braces on. Each one has a small metal rod down the side for added stability. I wear the so often that I don’t really feel them until I sit down. So I tell the guard what happened. He’s fine with it, but sill has to perform the full check. So I get patted down. Wanded for other metal. Verify that my waist band contains nothing. And finally my knee braces get swabbed to check for explosives. All negative thankfully. So off I go to my gate with enough time to make the plane.

The rest of the trip in Ft. Worth was great. We took a tour of the Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. Drove around the new Cowboys Football stadium being constructed next door. Ate at Del Frisco’s where I had the best steak I’ve ever eaten. Wandered around downtown Ft. Worth for a few hours with my camera. Hit a few bars. Spent a day long tour of the PVI water heater factory. And finally, had a whole mess of BBQ Ribs at Sammy’s.

Back to the airport. This time, I was careful not to leave my knee braces on. They were safely packed away. Some of the other PVI schwag I’d gotten (pens, hat, post-it notes) went into my camera bag as there was room. I thought I was home free. Got up to the scanner, and ran my bags through. And suddenly, the lady watching the screen stops the machine and looks at the screen. Then she calls another security person over… then another… I’m thinking “Awe shit! What now?” They finally take my bag out and ask me to follow them over to a table. They tell me that something in the bad came up looking funny on the x-ray machine. I tell them it’s just camera equipment. Been through an airport scanner a dozen times. So he opens it up to take out the “suspicious item”. It’s the damn PVI post-it notes! They’re a block (2”x2”x2”) setting there right in a lens pocket. He pulls them out, swabs them and puts them back. I ask him why they came up funny (so I can avoid doing it again in the future), and he pulls the “I’m sorry, but I’m not allowed to say” crap. I get all my stuff back together and head to the gate. After 5 mins of thinking I figured it out. A large wad of paper on top of a camera in a bag probably looks like an unknown mass on top of a pile of electronics. In other words, an explosive device. Stupid PVI post-it notes.

So here are a few photos from the trip. I would love to return to the plant and spend less time touring and more time taking photos. More photos can be seen in the Ft. Worth set of my Flickr page.

I did take more photos at the rehearsal than normal. Mostly because for the rehearsal supper, they’d rented out the pool at a local hotel for the party. So there was a lot of roughhousing in the pool (and beer drinking). It was very dark in the pool. So I cranked up the ISO on my D300 to 3200 and popped the flash (SB800) on top with it aimed at the ceiling. Amazingly, I was able to get pretty good photos with this setup. I didn’t even use the fast 50mm f1.8 that I have. Most of the shots were with the 18-70mm (f3.5-4.5) and the 70-300mm VR (f4.5-5.6).

Here are a few photos from the weekend. More can be found on my flickr page.

Now that I’m more or less settled into my townhouse, hopefully I can get back to taking photos on a more regular basis.  I’ll keep you posted.

For those who care, I’m on Twitter and post there fairly regularly. Check me out.

Townhouse stuff is all under control. Most of the immediate work is done. I still have to paint both bathrooms and the spare bedroom, but that’s not critical.  Maybe later this month I’ll get onto that. And I need to replace the water softener too. Time to call in a favor.

A month or so ago, I needed a break to take some photos. So I took my friend Lane and his son Kai to the Twin Cities Model RailRoad Museum. If you’ve never been there, it’s a great place to take a kid. So many things to look and and plently to take photos of. Best part is that it’s inside. So it’s a great way to spend and afternoon in the winter. I’d suggest bringing along any macro lens (or macro filters) you have. For most of the afternoon, I was shooting with the Nikon 70-300mm vr lens with a +1 macro filter on it. That allowed me to focus much closer than normal. Somewhere in the 24inch range instead of 5 feet.  With this combo on the D300 (at a highish ISO of 2000) I was able to shoot without a flash and still get sharp photos.  Having shot most of the trains last time I visited, I turned my lens to the minature cars and people in the model.  The only thing that would make the place better (aside from more light so I could get down to ISO 1000) would be for the models to be dusted a bit more often. You can’t see the dirt with your eyes, but a extreem macro shows it all.

Here are a few shots from the day. More (from this and other trips) can be seen on my Flickr page.

And for other who’ve seen the stupid malware warning pop up on this site, sorry about that.

The scoop on the long absence: So the last real post I made I mentioned that I was looking at townhouses. Well I bought one. And that required silly amounts of time. Then I had to spend 3 weeks prepping the place before I moved in. Painting, new outlets, network wiring, etc. And then I had to move (big thanks to Lane & Chris).  And then my brother’s (Andy) wedding was last weekend. Thankfully I was just in the wedding and not the photog. Basically I’ve been so busy for the last 8 weeks I haven’t been able to take any new photos at all. Even though I don’t post here as often as I like, I still update my twitter feed (http://twitter.com/ravsitar) once a day or so. If you need to see what I’m doing (like anyone needs that), my twitter feed is a bit more “real time” than this blog.

The stupid malware: Apparently someone managed to slip something into the wordpress code for my blog without logging into it from the back end. Some vulnerability in that version of werdpress. So I had to dump the wordpress files and upgrade to a new version. Now it’s all better. Moral of the story, keep wordpress up to date.

Now that all the crazy stuff’s done for a month or two, I can try and get back to taking photos and updating this blog. I’ve got a few photos to post with this (Some shots of a Transformer toy), some from the Twin Cities Model RR Muesem, and then the stuff I shot at my brother’s wedding. Should have atleast 3 weeks of posts from that.

These photos were shot with the same setup used for the Silver Streak photos in the last real blog post.

Also, if you’ve seen the malware warning for this site, I’m sorry about that. Not sure what’s going on with that. Possibly some minor site hijacking. I’m hammering at the backend to get things fixed.

Last week I was baby sitting for some friends and took along my camera. I set up my SB800 flash and aimed it mostly at the ceiling. Controlled it with the camera and the Nikon CLS system. Most of the photos were taking at ISO800. The flash wasn’t used at the main light source. Mostly it was there to just balance out the light and bring up the light levels. Here are a few from that evening.

Also a bit of news. My car is all better. Got it back on Friday and the dented fender has been replaced and you can’t tell there was any problems. Nice that it took only 3 days. I was getting a little tired of driving around that Chevy Cobalt. It looked nice, but had no power and a soft suspension. Much nicer to have my Subaru back.

Also, I picked a townhouse and made an offer this week. And with a little back and forth, the offer was accepted. If the inspections go well, I’ll be the owner of a townhouse at the end of Feburary. March is going to be a busy month with prepping the place before I move in.

Car Troubles:
A couple weeks ago, while I was out looking at townhouses, I hit an icy spot on a turning lane and slide into a curb and clipped a street sign. No major harm done. My alignment was off and I’ve dented my front fender and scratched the bumper. It was drivable. Big thanks to the guy with a pickup who saw me slide up on the curb and into the snow bank. I’d have had a hard time getting off the bank without a pull from his truck. I had the alignment fixed on Tuesday and I’ll be taking the car into Morrie’s for the body work next Tuesday. It’ll probably be in the shop for a week or so. I’ll have a rental for that time.

House Hunting:
The townhouse search is going well. I’ve looked at loads of places and narrowed it down to a couple. I think I’ll have things sorted out and be making an offer on a place in the next two weeks. I’ve already notified my apartment manager that I wont be renewing my lease, so I’ll be moving out no later than the end of March.

That’s about all I’ve got for now. I’m going out to take photos with some friends this weekend. So I”ll have some photos to work on and eventually post.