Archive for January, 2010

Sooner or later something goes amiss;
The singing birds pack up and fly away;
So never try to trick me with a kiss:
The dying man will scoff and scorn at this.
-Sylvia Plath

What a melodramatic way to start a blog post. I know. But  I love poetry. I especially love little snippets of poetry, kind of like phrases from a favorite song. In fact, if you look at my most played music you’ll see a common thread: great lyrics. I adore when people can paint pictures with their words and give them rhythm and movement and symmetry. This poem especially keeps playing in my mind because Nate and I have been talking a lot about this topic. A feeling of impending doom. A feeling that everything is just going too well and that something bad has to be just around the corner. Each day it seems we keep getting better and better news. I was joking with Nate that we need to start picking bigger dreams because a bunch of our dreams for 2010 are already in the process of coming true and it’s not even the end of January. Next year, I’m dreaming for a Ferrari! (Just kidding, I’ll totally pick world peace.) We’re keeping our fingers crossed that the singing birds don’t fly away just yet.

I don’t really want to go into all of it, because I feel like it might come off as a brag fest (even though my intention is more of an excited “gushing” but we all know how the interwebs can be) but this week was filled with exciting emails and big dreams being realized. Even in our personal and family lives things have just been wonderful. Nate keeps worrying that any moment now we’re going to get bad news, just because it seems like the good news can only keep coming for so long. The other day we were dancing in the office (What? That’s totally normal. Stop looking at us like that.) to one of “our songs”. It’s lyrics are made of a string of “wishes” and after it ended I looked up at him in astonishment and said “All those wishes came true.” (Are you nauseated yet? No? Okay… I’ll continue.)

While we understand that our art is our business and our business is our art, I’ve been telling Nate recently how excited I am for the day that I am at a place in my career and industry to be able to encourage other people in their dreams. And this week has done nothing but support that dream of mine and show me that it is within reach. I am so excited for what this year has in store for us, our clients, and also our relationships with other photographers and creatives. Today I worked up the courage to email some of the wedding industry’s most talented photographers (What?! I know, right.) for an idea I have been wrestling with for about a year now. And within just a few hours I had received excited and supportive emails from a bunch of them. It affirmed my vision and got me so excited to make that vision into a reality. More on that tomorrow…

I guess this post is more of a mental detox than anything else. I don’t really have a moral to my story. So I’ll conclude with another prose that I love and some pretty pictures…

Honestly can you believe we cross the world while it’s asleep?
I’d never trade it in because I’ve always wanted this.
And it’s not a dream anymore, no.
It’s not a dream anymore, it’s worth fighting for.
-Paramore

How adorable is she with that hat and those glasses!

We shot their session at the Port Orleans Resort in Disney.

I think this one is my favorite. I don’t know why, but I adore it.

In true French quarter fashion, they suggested Beignets

Ok, I lied. This may be my favorite. Check out that sugar dust mid air!

.

.

.

I’ve got a feeling, that twenty seven is gonna be a great year. Twenty seven is gonna be a great, great year. It’s a funny thing to me, the way time changes things. (And conversely, doesn’t change things at all.) The first birthday party I ever threw for Nate was when he turned 25, the age I am now. And I plan to continue throwing him parties until I can’t throw parties anymore. And my Nathan, he is just as celebrate-able today as he was at 25. He is both completely the same today and completely different. The last 27 years have aged him slowly and steadily to become the man he is right now. A man with eyes like deep pools. A man with eyes that I want to pass on to our children one day. (And then they’ll team up against me with their pool-like eyes and I’ll be a goner. Lost in an ocean of love and physically incapable of forming complete sentences.) A man with wit like no one else I’ve ever known. It’s completely disarming. He has a super human ability to love beyond reason and to forgive unendingly. His desire for his friends to feel joy knows no bounds. He dives head first into his friendships and while, sometimes that ends up endangering him, he never regrets the reckless abandon. He holds all of me and I hold all of him. He is able to understand things I can’t even describe and he can see into the inner shadows of my being. He finds me lovely (even in the shadowy parts). He is the best person I’ve ever known and I could not think of a better thing to celebrate today than him. Lucky for him, he is getting a few days of celebrations this week. The first was on Sunday. The following photos were from a pirate-themed celebration thrown for him this last weekend by his family.

Today is Nate’s 27th birthday. Everyone tell him happy birthday because he’s working hard today and won’t get to start celebrating till later tonight. And don’t think I don’t know that there are hundreds of you reading every day so I expect an overflowing comments section today. Even if you are too lazy to actually write anything, just leave Nate a smily face as a birthday wish for happiness. ;)

.

.

.

The Ferrari 360 Modena is one of my all-time favorite cars.  Ferrari craftsmanship is some of the finest built in the world, they make beautiful cars that perform as well as any on the market, and range from $175,000 to close to a million bucks. For about $80,000, however, you can get a Nissan Skyline.  It’s not only a gorgeous car, but actually FASTER than the Ferrari, and is in EVERY way truly state of the art.  On-board computers monitor the car’s telemetry, g-forces, gas mileage, horse power, tire pressure, and hundreds of other measurements in real-time, and display them right on your dash, and the traction-control system is the most advanced in the world.

I wanted to begin with this analogy, as both cars kept popping into my head when comparing the 5DmkII and the 7D.  the 7D is more advanced, incredibly fast, smarter and loaded with gizmos, but sometimes feels like something is missing at its core, but for 2/3′s the price, it’s certainly an appealing option.

I’ll keep the rest brief and let the pictures do the talking today. Let me preface this by saying that I love my camera, but it’s common knowledge that the 5dMkII has superior image quality.  The real reason for this comparison is because so many people have been asking me how big of a difference there really is, how usable is the 7D at High ISO, and if it’s worth the money.

The following images are all simply one shot, and although I took some more, they were not good comparisons (my focus may or may not have been soft…ooops).  The images below were shot at ISO 3200 at f/1.8, 1/80 of a second. The images taken with the 5DmkII were shot with a 50mm f/1.2 and the 7D images were shot with a 35mm f/1.4. I chose these lenses to compensate for the crop factor, although because they are different f-stops away from the maximum aperture, sharpness may not be to scale (the 50mm is probably sharpest at ~1.6, whereas the 35mm is probably sharpest a ~2.0).

Special thanks to my good friend X:144 for being my model/guinea pig.  He’s one of the most talented people I know, so go check him out @ www.x144.com.

Conclusions:

Noise – the 5DmkII is clearly better at high ISO, but that really is like saying that Scarlett Johannsen is hotter than Jessica Alba.  While it may be true, I wouldn’t put a bag over Jessica’s head when we go out for my birthday dinner tomorrow.  Even at 3200 ISO, the 7D is still perfectly usable

Detail – Under low light conditions, like these, the 5D clearly excels.  Under normal light, however, I’ve found my images to be about as sharp as Becka’s, although she generally shoots with the 50mm f/1.2 and I usually shoot with the 35mm f/1.4, both known for being incredibly sharp but hers usually wins in lab tests.

Color – Becka describes my color as sometimes “a little wonky”.  The images sometimes have a bit of a green tint, especially in low light, while her skin tones are usually more accurate. But blue skies and green grass seem to pop more, probably too much more, on my camera.

Bokeh – The images from the 5dMKII have a much better background blur, some of that is obviously from the 50mm f/1.2 which is know for the amazing bokeh, but it’s largely in part to the larger sensor of the 5D.  For as much as I really want to understand why sensor size effects bokeh, I really don’t, at least not well enough to explain it.

Fun – The 7D is simply more fun to me.  The controls are smarter, the AF system is faster and more accurate, also giving you more options for select AF points, and the 8 frames per second is just amazing. if you need more, please see my review on the 7D

So….. for about a $1000 price difference, you really need to figure out what is most important to you.  Becka prefers the 5D for her style of shooting. I prefer the 7D. To be honest, they go together like peas and carrots, cheese and chips, and Becka and me (sorry Ms. Alba).  They complement each other perfectly, but if buying both of them isn’t in the cards for you, you’re going to have to decide if you want the fun and speed of the Skyline or the pure quality and reputation of the Ferrari.

If you’d like to see the high res versions for a more up close and personal comparison you can download the files at this link and compare for yourself. We hope this helps!

.

.

.