Hi everybody-

Today's post continues with the photo shoot I did with Steph.

The shoot went well over all but there were some challenges related to the lighting. All of the shots with the exception of just a few were shot with available light. The few that weren't were shot with an SB-800 with a Gary Fong Light Sphere.

The natural lighting in the early part of the evening was great. It was soft and even and really nice. As the night went on the natural light gave way to the various man made light sources in the area. And there were a few different kinds, incandescent, mercury vapor, and some other types of street lighting of types I am not familiar.

Anyway the challenge was getting a good white balance as well as minimizing areas with heavy orange casts in the image. Some of them I was able to accomplish this, some I converted to b&w and some were just not really usable.

In this image as well as some others you might see I also attempted to create more than just a standard portrait by adding some texture and bordering.

Please feel free to comment on the images. Your feedback really helps me to create better work, so I do appreciate it.

ON ANOTHER NOTE...

I think I might start a new section of the blog every now and then called On Another Note... where I just comment on whatever I feel like talking about outside of the days photograph.

I'll start it off today with some comments about customer service like I had previously mentioned. I am still wrangling with the camera situation even though it was delivered to me yesterday. I'll talk about that specifically when it's all settled.

But I'll start off with my recent string of customer service disappointments by talking about Mission Playground today. This is a company that I love. I like their philosophies (for the most part) and I love their clothing. I have several of their cool t-shirts and I still highly recommend them to everyone.

But even our favorite companies can not come through now and then. Earlier this year I had used a quote from a Mission Playground shirt in a blog post. I credited them and mentioned how much I liked their products.

Later that day I received a phone call from them. They had come across the post and thought it was really cool that I had mentioned them. So as a thank you they asked what size t-shirt I wore and said that I could expect a few in the mail.

I was super excited as I really like their stuff, well you guessed it. I never received anything from them.

Now, I have no idea what could have happened, maybe it was a fluke or some sort of problem with shipping, hell maybe the package was in one of those delivery trucks on fire you see on the news every once in a while and say, 'damn, I hope nothing for me was in there!'

But if it wasn't that, then it wasn't very cool. You would think that If someone when through the trouble of finding you and contacting you so that they could send you something that they would, A. actually do it, and B. follow up to see it you got it.

Any way that is not so great customer service story number 1. There are three more waiting in the wings. I'll get to those later this week.

Have a great day!