Wanamaker Photography Blog

Behind The Scenes Of A Photography Studio

The final entry of our coverage of the 2008 High School Graduation series ends with Eldred High School. While Chris was attending the S.S. Seward Graduation, I headed north to Sullivan County to cover the graduating class of Eldred High School (which my younger brother was a part of).

After a few days of rain and a close call at the Minisink Valley Graduation the previous evening, Saturday turned out to be extremely beautiful and very hot! It was one of the hottest days in recent memory!

As the ceremony got under way, students received awards for various achievements and accomplishments throughout the year as well as throughout their entire life as a high school student …

With nearly 60 graduates, the ceremony was brief … and I am sure that the students appreciated that it was because of the ever increasing temperatures. As the final names were announced, I positioned myself to capture one of the traditional shots at every graduation …

As everyone made their way to their parents, my brother and two of his friends stopped for a quick, candid shot!

Back in May, my baby brother, Robert, had his Senior Prom. I still cannot believe how fast time has gone by! It seems like just yesterday he was in Kindergarten! Anyways, enough looking to the past …

Being the photographer of the family, he asked us to follow him from the Eldred School to the Riverview Inn in Pennsylvania where the dance was being held. I accepted (of course) and decided to treat him like a celebrity that day!

As the time came closer, we kept checking the weather as it was supposed to rain on and off during his entire trip to the dance. As we arrived at the school, things seemed to hold off long enough for us to grab a couple of shots before heading in for the announcement of the couples. So we picked out some locations around the front of the school and grabbed a couple shots before heading in. In this shot, we asked Robert and his date, Katie, for a little attitude …

After the announcement of each couple, we headed back outside and got everything ready to head to our next stop … a local playground. Utilizing the kid that is in all of us, we decided to play on the swings for a bit and grabbed this shot …

After being attacked by the all of the bugs, we decided to head down to the Hawks Nest and test out some shots there. As we headed down along the river, the rain could hold out no more and downpoured on us. Forging ahead, we grabbed our umbrellas and towels and decided to give it a try anyways.

Robert and Katie were already parked further down the Hawks Nest with a heavily modified Subaru WRX. As we closed in on them, the rain began to let up and we setup our shots as quickly as possible. We’d check the traffic and when all seemed clear, Chris would jump out into the middle of the road and grab a few shots before the next car would come along. Here was one of his shots …

As the rain moved in again, we decided to head out and down to the Riverview for his last few shots before dancing the night away! On our way down, the rain let up and the lightbulb went off. We wanted to grab just a few more shots before heading to the dance … so we pulled off the road and headed out onto the bridge between Matamoras, PA and Port Jervis, NY. We grabbed our umbrella just in case that downpour followed us.

We started playing around with some different ideas once we got onto the bridge and captured as many shots as we could before the weather got ugly again. As cars passed by, the passengers kept looking at us trying to figure out what was going on. After capturing these shots, we decided to wrap things up and let Robert and Katie head out to their dance …

After leaving them at the dance, we headed back and literally started working on the images. Playing with them inside of Adobe Lightroom was incredible and everyone loved the shots. Robert and Katie felt like celebrities for the day as they had their own paparazzi following them around!

Now I get to look forward to his graduation!

The Baseball season and I haven’t been seeing eye-to-eye so far this year. Each time I’ve had a scheduled game to attend for Minisink Valley, it has either been postponed or cancelled because of the rain. After weeks of the game between the weather and myself, I finally got my chance to photograph the Minisink Valley Varsity Baseball team when they played against the Cornwall Dragons at home in a non-league game.

As this was one of my first Baseball games of the season, I decided that I needed to warm up the skills a bit and so I decided to shoot a few frames of Minisink during practice. A few frames turned into a few hundred by the time I was done!

As the game got under way, the clouds (which seemed to be messing with me during practice)  finally parted completely and it turned into an incredible day for a Baseball game!

From right next to the first base umpire, I grabbed this shot of CJ Callaghan just before he smacked this ball into the outfield …

And this one of Mat Hannon repeating the same move …

As the game went on, I started focusing on some of the action on second and third base as Minisink had runners pumped and ready to go. It was a good thing I did. I grabbed this shot of Nick Iannuzzi sliding into third as the thirdbaseman caught and was about ready to pitch the ball back to first.

As exciting as the game was, I left around the top of the 6th inning as I had other obligations to attend to … but I did find out later on that Minisink lost the game 11 to 19.

Last year, our introduction to the sport of Lacrosse started with an invitation to photograph the annual Boys vs Girls Swap Stix Match at Minisink Valley High School. Unfortunately, that game was nearly at the end of the season for the teams and we only had a couple more opportunities to photograph them before it was all over.

During the off-season, after a couple phone calls, we had a contract with Minisink Valley to cover the 2008 season for the Varsity and Junior Varsity teams. Finally, Lacrosse season is here!

I love Lacrosse because its fast and action packed and reminds me a little bit of Hockey. Last Wednesday was my first game for Minisink Valley Varsity as they played Valley Central at home. These two teams have always been big rivals and the game they played was tough. Here are some of the shots …

Chris and I attended the MS Walk like we do every year. I photographed the events at the Hackettstown location. To my disappointment, it seemed like there were less people in attendance than last year. All ages participated and it was a great day despite the cold weather we had! There were only two companies there Mary Kay (who was there last year) as well as Betaseron representatives. Betaseron is a drug that helps prevent your immune system from attacking your nervous system.

In looking at Chris’ post, I realized we captured very similar images. My images were shot with the Rebel XT and XTI. Enjoy the photos!

On April 5th, Bri from Just Add Sugar Cafe asked me to go with her to the Walpack Inn to set up a wedding cupcake display tower. I agreed as this was my first time seeing a full cupcake tower assembled from start to finish.

We arrived at the Walpack Inn that afternoon and began setting up. I never realized how much work went into making it perfect. I saw the opportunity for pictures and brought the camera. I did snap a couple of shots for her upcoming website. The lighting was perfect because the room we were in was like a sun room with the sun shining brightly through the ceiling.

This was taken with the Canon Mark III and the 70-200mm lens F/2.8.

Last Friday, I visited my friend Bri at her shop in Milford, PA called Just Add Sugar Cafe.  The store has a boutique feel with many different gifts like aprons, coffee mugs, cupcake salt and pepper shakers and so much more! The most enjoyable gifts would have to be the delicious cupcakes, cookies and coffee. Bri has a variety of custom decorated cookies as well as the traditional favorites. She keeps the coffee exciting by offering a new flavor each month.

Bri asked us to photograph her creations for her new website. I spent a couple of hours there with her photographing different types of custom cookies for christenings, cinco de mayo, thanksgiving and birthdays. The best part about these cookies is that they look fantastic at any event.

When I arrived, Bri was working on a special order for a customer who’s son was having a birthday party that weekend. Her son, Zack, loves golf and by the photo below, you can tell how much he will love the arrangement. Each of his friends got to take a “cookie pop” (as I call them) home with them.

Her custom cookies are very good looking but nothing beats a traditional one. She has many different flavors to choose from including chocolate chip, peanut butter, snickerdoodle, walnut chocolate chunk, and oatmeal raisin. My favorite would have to be the Amaretto Joy!

As you can see, Just Add Sugar Cafe’s delicious cupcakes and cookies are the perfect solution when you have a craving for sweets but don’t have time to do it yourself. This peanut butter cup cupcake looks so good you may feel like eating your computer! Enjoy!

A couple days ago, my sister stopped by and brought me a Lily plant for Easter since we weren’t going to see each other. It was still closed up until the other night when it decided to open up in a matter of a couple hours.

I took a few shots of it last night, getting creative with my light … but wasn’t 100% satisfied with what I had captured. This morning we had a beautiful bright sun coming in through our front windows, so I sat this in front of the window and snapped a couple of shots.

I setup the 20D with an 18-55mm lens zoomed to about 25mm. I set the aperture to F4 so I could really just focus on the inner parts of the flower, set my shutter to 1/2500 and ISO to 100. Thankfully the sun was bright enough to kill out the background completely as our one cat wanted to be in every shot I took!

Kali became one of the latest teenagers to experience our custom Senior Portrait Session!

Kali’s mom originally contacted us as she was not happy with the quality of the images that were produced by the school photographer for Minisink Valley High School. Her original intention was to purchase a bunch of wallets to include in Kali’s graduation invitations and she wasn’t about to use what was produced by the school.

During my initial phone consultation with Kali’s mom, we discussed what exactly she needed and what she could expect with the Senior Portrait Session. We booked Kali’s session a few weeks out as they wanted to wait until she had her braces off.

The day of the shoot finally arrived and Jenny and I headed up to Kali’s house to setup everything. As we brought everything into the house, I secretly scouted their decor as I hadn’t had a chance to have an actual sit-down consultation with them prior. I took notes and knew that I could surprise them with something I knew would fit right in.

We started out with the traditional drape shots …

… and then moved on to some more traditional shots … but in non-traditional locations …

Once we captured enough shots indoors, we bundled up and headed outside for some “fun” shots around her house. We posed Kali in one area and photographed away. Jenny and I would often switch off and hold the reflector while Kali’s mom grabbed one of our cameras for some “behind the scenes” shots (which are extremely top secret )

Once Kali’s session was over, she told us that she felt like a “superstar” and couldn’t wait to see the images. Jenny and I packed up and headed out. Now the real work began!

We touched up a couple photos with different overlays and embellishments to give them a unique look that Kali would love.

In the mean time, we had a custom DVD Slideshow, assembled to music, created for our upcoming Sales-Order Session with everyone. I also worked on creating a custom 5×30 poster with a bunch of our favorite images of Kali. My notes finally came in handy as well as I talked to our custom framer and had something created that would fit the style their house perfectly.

When the night of the Sales-Order Session came, we showed everyone the DVD on their big screen and I uncovered the 5×30 framed composite poster of Kali. Her mom loved it so much that she purchased it from us. However, the best part of the night was when her mom told us that the composite poster frame was “her frame” and that she felt like it was specially made just for her. Paying attention to those details always pays off!

Carly came to us for one of our Senior Portrait Sessions. Actually, she is one of our Ambassadors for the Eldred High School in New York. With that title comes a free photo session and images to take with her to show off to her classmates. In return, Carly will provide us with the information of other interested Seniors so we can setup their Portrait Sessions as well!

During Carly’s Senior Portrait Session, we took some standard and unique photos indoors and then headed outside while the sun was still strong. I wanted to experiment a little with a prom gown she owned … so we decided to incorporate some images of her trashing her prom dress.

However, before we totally ruined the dress, I took her back to a wooded area that had a couple large boulders … one of which I sat her on. I shot a couple frames before this one and then she just tilted her head and looked right into the lens with her amazing blue eyes … so I snapped this shot and absolutely loved it! (We’ve got more images of Carly coming really soon!)

I shot this with our Canon 20D with the 70-200mm lens at F4 at 1/160 with the ISO all the way down at 100.