Another Indoor Car Studio
We are working on another indoor car studio in Bay City. This time at the Labadie Toyota dealership. Shown here is builder extraordinaire Mike Kowalski. He has done wonders putting into place some of my ideas that he wasn’t to sure about when the project started. He was able to custom build the light boxes that contain 6,000 watts of daylight balanced light. Now that the weather is getting a little better in Michigan, Mike is trying to get the floor warm enough to paint. Then it’s time to hang the curtains and off we go!
I look forward to being able to pull some cars in and test the studio in about a week.
The Screaming Casanovas
Friday morning I got a call from Mike Magee. Mike has been working on a new regional website, Great Lakes Bay Scene, and wanted some pictures of O’Hares and Midland Street Pub in Bay City. They wanted pictures of Saturday night. This was fine because I wasn’t booked for Saturday and my wife and I could use a night out. We went early and had the the Saturday Night Special which is BBQ Ribs. The ribs were great! Juicy and fall off the bone well done. The ribs were served with a choice of potato and either a tossed salad or cole slaw. At 8pm the bar was a little slow and we new we had some time to kill. Fortunately an acquaintance saw us there and we killed the time with some good conversation.
The band at Midland Street Pub this Saturday night was The Screaming Casanovas. I had never heard them before. They started their set at 9:30pm and the bar started filling up at about 10pm. The Casanovas did a great job covering some 80’s and newer rock songs. They are quality musicians that put on a good show.
We had a few drinks, took a few pictures and went back to Saginaw. If you were at Midland Street Put or O’Hares on Saturday, Feb 6th, 2010 and want to see some pictures be sure to visit: http://greatlakesbayscene.com!
Review Magazine Photo Shoot
I was getting ready to head over to Pit and Balcony in Saginaw to photograph the evenings performance of Five Women Wearing the Same Dressand I got a call from my wife. Review magazine need a cover shoot. She was going to arrange the models and get setup the set and we would do the shoot when I got home. I arrived at the theatre with a few minutes to spare. After unpacking the gear I found out that the play was delayed for 1 hour. Great! This ment that the play was not going to be over when I needed to be at the next photoshoot. The cover shoot could not be delayed because the magazine was going to press the following afternoon.
Scrambling the theatre director suggested that we stage some shots with the actors that were there and in costume and then I could shoot the 1st act and leave when I needed to. This worked out great and we were able to get an entire cast photo, which sometimes doesn’t work out after the show.
After shooting the play I rushed home just as the models were arriving. We hadn’t done a full fledged photo shoot at our house before and I realized that I didn’t know where all the plugs were. So as I scrambled around setting up lights and gels my wife fixed makeup and got the models dressed. An hour later we had a nice selection of pictures for me to edit.
Following is one that didn’t make the cut for the cover of the magazine but was one of my favorites from the night!
Want to hire David Defoe for your magazine, website, senior pictures of wedding? Contact me online
Apple Mountain Wedding
This summer I had the pleasure of being the photographer at many weddings working for Mid-Michigan Wedding Photographers. Following are a few pictures from a wedding ceremony that took place at the Apple Mountain Wedding Chapel and the reception took place at The Hellenic Center both in Saginaw.
Want to book David Defoe as the photographer for your wedding? Click here to contact me or visit www.mid-michigan-wedding-photographers.com
Frankenmuth Wedding Photography
Now that winter is upon us I need to go back and look at the wedding photography that I did this past summer. I book wedding in the Great Lakes Bay Area through Image Artz, Mid-Michigan Wedding Photographer and Defoe Photography.
These pictures were from a wedding that took place in Frankenmuth. I have since upgraded my camera.
Would you like to hire David Defoe for your 2010 Wedding? Click Here and send me a note.
Bay Valley Hotel and Resort
Last weekend my wife was doing a fashion show at the Bay Valley Hotel and Resort. As usual I was there to take pictures of the fashion show. The morning after the fashion show we were getting ready to leave the hotel and we ran into Maureen, the Director of Sales and Marketing, in the lobby. She gave us a tour and allowed me to take some pictures of the hotel and rooms.
Bay Valley is a beautiful hotel that has an old world feel.
Do you need pictures for you hotel website or brochure? Contact me.
Summer of Wedding Photography
Prior to this summer I had photographed a few weddings here and there. This past summer I had a wedding almost every weekend. The wedding season is over and now I need to re-group and get ready for the 2010 wedding season.
One of the most amazing things about each wedding is the diversity and intricacies of the wedding cake designs. Keep looking back as I continue to post the cake pictures from my experiences of the 2009 wedding season.
This summer I didn’t get any names of the wedding cake designers/creators. Next summer I’m going to try to make sure I get the names of the creators.
Are you getting married in 2010 and need a photographer? Contact me.
Car Studio
Building an indoor car studio is taking a little longer than I thought. The painting took a week longer than was expected and the custom backdrop curtain is taking a lot longer to get made then originally thought. The lights all got installed and the portable lights finally got shipped today.
I wanted some heavy duty light stands on wheels and ordered the Avenger A665 High Baby Studio Roller Stand with 29-Inch Base (Silver)
I also ordered 2 Interfit Photographic Prolite-5 Head with Five 24 Watt Fluorescent Lights
Trying to put the Prolite-5 head on the Avenger stands was another issue. I forgot to check the mount when I ordered the stands. The website that I purchased the Avenger stand on said that it has a 5/8″ mounting stud. The mount for the Prolite-5 was not listed on the website but it has the normal mount I’m used to seeing on most of my lights and flash holders. I was able to get it on and secure but the head is crooked because of the inaccurate matching of the mount.
Because of the floor paint I have to wait a minimum of 90 hours before I drive a car on it. I can’t wait until Monday to test out the new studio.
Do you have a car for sale or a show car and need some pictures taken? Contact me!
New Model
My wife was getting ready to put on a fashion show at the Bay Valley Resort on Friday, November 6th, 2009. Most of the models that are in the show we have worked with in the past, but there was a new model for this show. We were in a bit of a rush and the other girls hadn’t shown up yet so I fired up the lights in the studio and took a few quick headshots. After taking 4 shots the other models all walked in the door and off to training they went.
Indoor Car Photo Studio
At my day job I take pictures of cars to put for sale on the Internet. As with most products, when marketing new or pre-owned vehicles via the Internet, high quality images of your cars is an important part of attracting potential customers and compelling them to act. For years we have been taking the pictures outside. This is nice but not always consistant and there are weather issues. Of course it is hard to find enough space for an indoor studio (we need to be able to fit Escalade ESV’s). The other issue is quality and amount of light.
We decided on high output florescent lighting. We purchased enough fixtures to be able to put out the equivalent of 4,500 watts of light. This additional lighting with the regular florescent fixtures that were already in place should allow us to shoot using a shutter speed of 1/60 with ISO200. The lights also needed to be daylight balanced. To keep price down I got 5,000 k lights. I figured this is close enough and after painting the walls with a 14% grey the auto WB in the camera should get the color very close.
 
We are about a week away from the studio being done and I can’t wait to see the first results. At this point I may need more light so we’ve also ordered some softbox lights on a stand with rollers.
