New Heights

YES YES YES it WORKED!

Today was a huge learning day for me in the photography file management world. Let's just say, before today, my files were a mess. Self-taught managing in every which way. 16,000 images just thrown onto an external hard drive without any particular rhyme or reason. "It's normal" my photography friends / mentors assured me today "but it's time to organize your files the right way, starting today". So ladies and gentlemen, today I have a new system and I just successfully uploaded my jpeg file through my new management path. And the only tricky part was that it was in a TIFF file and blip only uploads JPEG. But I got it. And today I know what a TIFF file even is. And it feels good knowing that I was able to retain the information that my photog friends spent so much time showing me today.

I have this really cool opportunity that has come my way. These two marvelous friends of mine own a professional photography business. They have a high end wedding coming up at the end of the month and asked me if I would be interested in assisting. WHAT???? Of course I said yes. I will be an assistant on the shoot. My first real shoot in my whole entire life. I will do everything from holding flash screens, to helping position people.....to whatever it is that they want me to do. And they are letting me shoot. I can't believe they are letting me shoot! So the deal is, they insisted that I start using their Cannon 5D now. For the next three weeks, that sweetheart baby of a camera is mine to play with, figure out, and shoot with daily. They want me to take it out. "Don't be shy with it, it's just a tool". An insured tool thank goodness. But I get it. As nervous as I was at first to hold this camera in my hands with its fancy lens, I do understand that if I am going to truly be able to help them out, then I need to know the in's and out's of this camera. I need to be comfortable with it. I need to be a self sufficient photographer that day. So I am taking this opportunity extremely seriously. And thanks to blip, I can say without a doubt, that I will absolutely be shooting with this high end camera every single day because I do that anyways with my Nikon.

I am so excited about this. It is incredible to learn how much goes into shooting a wedding, let alone even running a photography business. We talked all afternoon about the camera and its functions. We discussed the wedding day and what it will look like. And the icing on top of the cake was the one on one tutorial on file management. These two went through my photo programs with a fine tooth comb changing settings and fixing things that I didn't even know existed. We plugged in my external hard drive and within ten minutes, it was organized in a more efficient way. And from this point on, my file storing will be different. I am going to follow the system that they set up for me. This is actually such a huge relief to me because it was starting to cause me some stress and worry that I have years and years worth of photos that have never been organized in a systematic way. I am so fortunate that I am learning some of these techniques now instead of five or even ten years down the road when I will be storing tens of thousands of photos. My brain is still reeling from all of the information today but slowly, I know that I will start to be able to make sense of it all. These are the early stages for me as I know that photography will be a huge part of my world for the rest of my life. And for the next three weeks, the Cannon 5D will be my new blip tool.

I am happy with today's blip. I was just starting to fool around with the camera this afternoon and get used to the exposures. It definitely functions differently from my Nikon so it will take some time to get used to the dials. My son was climbing in his favorite tree and I was able to take advantage of the zoom with the 24-100mm lens. I am so used to my fixed 50mm. So to add some interest, I took advantage of the bright backlit sun and was able to create a silhouette image of my son in the tree. I have several images that I considered using. It was actually a hard choice this evening but I went with this photo because of his darling profile and the way the sun illuminates his hair. I want to thank my friends so much for their mentoring today. Really, today is a day that I will always look back on with such gratitude. They are both so generous with their time and their teaching and this wedding is going to be the experience of a life time for me. Thank you thank you thank you and THANK YOU!!!!