Talk about a botched photo shoot :(

[SouthBayPhoto]

Well...Gene, you best disown me from Reefland now, before it's too late.

As you will see, I had a modeling photo shoot today...(no...I wasn't the one modeling! EWWWW! )

If you want to know how today's shoot went...here's one phrase to ponder..."just shoot me...and not with a camera!"

Ya...that bad.

The good things are:
1) The bike showed up (even before me)
2) The model showed up 15 min late (I give them 20 before I get grouchy and call. so it's fine - and she called me when she was about 5 min late, so that's always nice to get that courtesy)
3) I think that's it.

The bad things are:
1) How long can this post actually go?
2) Refer to # 1



I forgot sooooo many things. I think a darn newbie would have done better than me!

Here's some of the basics of what went down...

1) The model arrives...cool, let's go to the shoot site. We get there (about 2 blocks down the street) and the friggin' sprinklers are on in the park. Plus, I judged the sun location wrong, so my original shooting background couldn't be used any more. Okay, mistake one.

2) Next, the sprinklers stop, so we get the bike out there on the grass and I forgot to shoot "non-model" shots of the bikes (which I always promise the bike owners prior to them coming out...figure it's only fair for letting me use their bikes). That was mistake # 2. (kinda made up for these shots later, but didn't get all the angles I wanted)

3) Mistake # 3 - Completely forgot to have the model sign a release. :eek3: Simple basics and I completely forgot!

4) I start shooting...completely forgetting about the high ISO setting I left it on...thus completely blowing out the highlights of the first 14 frames

5) Then I over compensate and shoot way too dark for the 20 frames or so.

6) Oh and forgot to shoot the gray card and set my custom white balance...that'll make for some beautiful non-tinted/cast shots

7) and this is the BIGGGGGGEST EMBARRASSING MISTAKE! I didn't check to see that my focus was on "One Shot". So, I used friggin "AI Focus", so every time I focused on her eyes and moved the camera to compose the shot, the AF refocused on my composition. OMFG...soooooo damn embarrassing!!!! So, I missed the focus on a TON of shots. Only ones I didn't miss the focus on was the ones I didn't have to re-compose. OMG...did I mention I was embarrassed?

Oh, and don't forget the "police presence" that showed up to kick us out of the park about half way through the shoot. I've NEVER had a problem before...ever. I've always spoken to the officer(s) if one/they showed up and they understood and would just tell me to hurry or they would stay and watch (and drool most times. ). Nope, not this one...we had to leave.

Sooooo, embarrassed and beat down...we moved to a friggin' parking lot (omg) next to the park and finished the shooting there.

I don't think there is much more that can go wrong...OH WAIT...YES THERE IS! I friggin' find out later, after the shoot, that when comparing the jpg shots to the raw shots, that I changed the 40D's settings too much! I put wayyyy too much contrast in (one up from the middle). So the shots look dark and I lost a lot of shadow detail compared to their CR2 cousin's. I also had the saturation set up +1, but I think that is fine and actually makes the shots look better, but the +1 on the contrast really screwed up the shots, I think. Luckily for a while I did shoot in L jpg and L CR2 and then eventually just L CR2 (which I used to ALWAYS shoot ALL my modeling shoots in RAW - now I remember why. ). So, I can save the CR2 shots (if the focus was on....I did eventually change it to One Shot about 3/4 of the way through the shoot).

So....what do ya all think? Sorry for venting. Should I go back to shooting sports only again? Last time I did a modeling shoot was probably about 2 years ago. Since then I've mainly done more sports than anything.

I still have to go through the shots...I just kind of briefly went over a few and noticed that every darn shot in the beginning was off in focus. It makes sense cuz it was on AI Focus (pretty much the same as AI Servo). I just want to slap myself. Especially for simple mistakes like double checking settings, shooting a gray card and getting a model release. These are things I used to do allllllll the time.

I just pray I can pull 30 pics out of the 558 I shot. That's my agreement in my shoots...to provide at least 30 high rez pics on CD. I guess the only good thing is that if I don't come up with 30, I can change the modeling agreement before she signs it. I'll have to have her sign it when she gets the CD.

So now you know what NOT to do.

Have a nice day!

[SouthBayPhoto]

oh and did I forget to mention that the model basically only spoke Russian? Her sister did the translating during the shoot when I'd tell her what I wanted her to do.

[Poseidon]

That stinks Mat! We have all been there though... I shot a whole wedding at 1600 once! The bride LOVED the pictures even though I was sweating bullets.

As for the speaking only russian, well she can't complain then can she? LOL!

[SouthBayPhoto]

Ya she can...her sister translated it to me. :eek3:

That's why I don't shoot weddings. I'm sooooo afraid of something like this happening and I couldn't shoot it over. I'd feel sooo bad for the wedding party. I could always shoot a modeling shoot over if I reallllllly had to.

[zhenya]

Oh man, that stinks, Mat. That will teach ya...

Next time you shoot a russian model you call me,I'll come and do the translations, no relatives allowed on the shoot...

I totally understand the focus issue, it happened to me as well on vacation once, I lost most of my shots then.
But, I'm an old man and forget things...

[SouthBayPhoto]

Shoulda told me you could translate Gene!

I would of had you out to help me out. I'm guessing her sister was translating for me...I don't really know to be honest. LOL Every time I said something to her (either good or stay there or don't move or move this way, etc...) she would say something to her. So, I'm hoping she was saying what I was saying.

Then again, she could be saying "he's an idiot", "he's a pain", etc..

Well, I think I got a couple of useful shots out of it...for the model anyway. I went through them all last night and tonight. I hope the model at least likes a few. I'd probably dump most of them. I got a couple of headshots that I don't think turned out TOOOOO bad...but the model was one of those "one look" models...I FINALLY got her to smile at the end of the shoot and I think I have a shot or two of that...she's very pretty and should have smiled more during the shoot. (even though I asked SEVERAL times)

Anyway, I have two more shoots in three weeks, so we'll see how it goes. Maybe I ought to make myself a friggin' checklist or something.

[zhenya]

Maybe I ought to make myself a friggin' checklist or something.

Now that's what I call a plan!

I'm Russian, Mat, so it would be easy to ranslate for me. ;)

[SouthBayPhoto]

That'll do it! LOL Next time I shoot a Russian model, I'm calling you on the cell phone to translate the shoot for me, so keep a 3 hour time slot open, will ya?

[zhenya]

Next time I shoot a Russian model, I'm calling you on the cell phone to translate the shoot for me, so keep a 3 hour time slot open, will ya?

I can see it now... everybody with the cell phone in their ear doing a photo op...

[charlie]

Hey Mat, sounds like the "Peter Principal" was at work here. If it can go wrong, it will!!!

[SouthBayPhoto]

LOL..that was about it Charlie...or so it felt.

Hopefully with the next one I'll be back on track. I actually didn't used to be too bad. LOL If you see some of my modeling shots in my gallery on my webpage, you might agree.

Not perfect...I still have wayyyyy far to go...but not bad. I've seen worse, put it that way.