These terms hobbyist/amateur/weekend warrior/semi-pro… are not degrading. Heck, the word “amateur” in French means “lover of” so in that sense I am a huge amateur of photography. Being a ‘professional’ can be anything from someone paying a dollar for a portrait, to knowing how to appropriately react when a lens falls and shatters during an expensive wedding shoot.

What all photographers need to realize is that you will never, ever, ever, ever know everything there is to know about photography. On the same note, it is my hope that everyone who takes photography seriously, WANTS to know everything there is to know about photography.

What is the key to becoming a great photographer? It is the love and desire to develop your skills at every stage of your photography life. At that moment, when you take off the lens cap for the very first time, I promise the desire will certainly be there… but keep that passion to learn intact and you will be doing photography for a long time.

The Leavenworth School District hired me to produce a football video for the big screen at the new stadium. I attended the home games with my gear and captured some great highlight clips! Before the 2011 season got started, we filmed some staged shots (the black and white video at the beginning). For the final component, the coach and I met for the speech. Once all the footage was gathered, it was off to the editing room!

The all-important capture! You want to try and get as much of the photo right at the time you click the shutter. Full disclosure, I am a pixel punishing Photoshop ninja. This day was a very bright (and extremely hot) day. In order to try and balance the exposure I fired an off camera flash to avoid creating a silhouette. The pose we were going for mixed with the temperature meant I wanted to spend as few minutes here as possible! Some shots had better exposure but this was my favorite out of the camera. I’m not entirely happy with the photo out of the camera… I began the pixel pushing! Thank you RAW!

First step was to bring out the sky, it’s over exposed. This was done by creating a LARGE adjustment brush, and getting the sky how I wanted it, popped the saturation a bit and erased over the mask over the couple. Then I added a few gradient maps to pull focus even more towards the couple. Created another adjustment brush for the dress, removing the blue overcast which kept it a more pure white! The tux being black needed a slight adjustment, trying to restore some detail in the dark shadows. I then put a lowering exposure gradient on the grass. Then I did some spot healing as the aperture was pretty small, so there were some dust spots, small, but they bug me. The result without firing up Photoshop below.

This photo could stand as is. In fact I did put it out for a few photographer’s critiques. As anticipated the rock in the foreground dominated the feedback. While I love putting something in the foreground in landscapes, this was about the couple and ultimately was distracting. So, I removed the rock and actually cropped down out a bit of the grass. This crop changed the layout too much for me, moving the couple too far to the left. I then created a small sliver to add to the left of the photograph, putting the couple at a ‘rule-of-thirds’ intersection.

The final image (click it for larger resolution)

See a few other photos from this wedding on my Facebook page: Link

The DVD and pictures are not for sale. Simply something for the cast to remember the play! Break a leg!

On the day of the event we made the bridge photo a priority… with a copy of the original photo on my phone held up, we repositioned Jodi and William, a little here and a little there. “Jodi don’t smile” Click.

Both the newlywed couple and I were very pleased with the final product! Oh, and we also took some photos for their grandchildren to recreate. Enjoy!

Thanks for visiting NickSchale.com!