Wanamaker Photography

For the past couple of years, we have been attending a few of the many Irish Dance Feis events in the area. While photography of the actual dance is expressly forbidden (unless we have specific permission from the top), we attend these events to provide basic portrait photography of the dancers.

On Sunday, we attended the 2008 Garden State Feis in Scotch Plains NJ where people from all over the area, including one visitor from Virginia, came to compete. This was our second year attending this event and while last year was good … this year was great!

This time, we decided to offer on-site printing with the option to order some of our Feis specific products to be mailed out after the fact. The orders were coming in so fast that at one point, we were nearly six customers deep and trying to keep our heads on straight. Why were we so busy without action shots you ask?!

It has to do with the dresses. Each one is handcrafted, expertly detailed, brightly colored and extremely expensive. They can range in price from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars … and that is for the pre-owned ones. Because the parents of the dancers are so heavily involved in the culture, each time their child gets a new dress, they find it necessary to get new pictures. And like most sports, when the dancer places very well, the parents always want a shot with the trophy.

 Here are a couple of the dresses …

Overall, the best part of attending these events are the parents. Regardless of whether they are a new or returning customer, each and everyone of them are a pleasure to deal with. We even have a few customers who visit us at each Feis event and get new pictures each time … even if they don’t have a new dress! I guess that says a lot for the type of service that we can provide!

Here are a couple more shots of dresses we photographed …

Two weeks ago, at the Minisink Valley Cheerleading Competition, we were asked to attend the Pine Bush Cheerleading Competition, which took place this past Saturday. It was like Deja Vu! A lot of the same teams that were at the Minisink Competition were also at this one … with the same routines and the same music. However, there were some new teams that attended and we were able to get some great shots of the girls (and guys) during their performances.

There was one group during the morning session that was comprised of absolutely adorable kids. Known as Take One, this group had one little male cheerleader who looked more nervous to be out on the mat than anything. Over all, they put on a great performance!

As the day progressed, we snapped some great shots of the older performers as well …

Including some of those funny “frozen face” shots …

One of the other photos I captured was inspired by a local press photographer (Chet Gordon) who we occassionally run into at some of the events we attend. A recent blog post he had showed two shots of competitors hanging together during two different events that he attended. Each shot was composed of just their legs and feet as they huddled together.

The shot I captured was in similar fashion except it was the patterns that caught my eye …

Overall, it was a great day and we had a lot of fun capturing the images!

This past Saturday, we attended our first Cheerleading Competition hosted by Minisink Valley. While we’ve photographed cheerleaders at football games before, this competition turned out to be a completely different animal for us!

We setup in the morning for portraits in the far corner of the gym and found a nice spot behind the judges to video record all of the performances. We had a slightly smaller crew this time with Sean working the video camera, Loretta and Jenny at the table and myself shooting action shots during the event.

As things got underway, I quickly found that I was trying to anticipate the next flip, kick or jump. Needless to say, I did so with very little luck! Everything was extremely fast paced and moved over every inch of the mat. As the day went on, Jenny would join me in front of the judges and would shoot group shots to get the action as it happened while I would shoot closeups on a few of the competitors. Some of the shots we captured were interesting!

In our new Photo Of The Week section, we also posted a great shot of one of the cheerleaders with a memorable face that became an instant classic!

In between the competitions, we would watch the crowd and sidelines for things that might catch our attention. The little boy pictured below was hanging out with us at the edge of the mats and decided to pick up one of the megaphones that was being used as a barrier. I think he might have a future in this

During the morning set, I hopped up during one of the breaks to make sure everything was alright at the table with Loretta and Jenny and to check out the video Sean captured so far. As I came around the judges table, I found this couple who seemed to support their little cheerleader 150%!

Overall, it was a great day for everyone and we were even invited to do the same for the Cheer For All Winter Fest at Pine Bush High School on February 16th! Let’s see what kind of shots come out of that one!

They often say that no matter how much you plan something out, you can never be fully prepared for what you are going to encounter … and after our first onsite printing expedition, I can believe that completely!

Loretta and I arrived at the Minisink High School just before 8AM yesterday with a ton of equipment from our new Schinko printer to a desktop computer to all of our lighting and camera gear. We setup everything across three tables and got ready to start shooting the matches and printing the images!

The rest of the crew arrived just prior to 9AM so we had a little time to brief them on any changes. Sean, my brother, headed up the computer while Jenny and Amanda setup their cameras and chose a mat. Jenny’s sister, Kim, came out to provide us an extra set of hands at the table and a runner for the memory cards as we shot the matches. We were set and ready for the wrestling to begin!

Since one of the teams dropped out of the tournament, all of the one-on-one matches had to be reconfigured and caused the event to start a bit later than everyone thought. Right around 10AM though, everything got under way and we began shooting away!

What I didn’t plan for was exactly how many shots we would all be taking! The majority of the matches were so good that neither Jenny, Amanda or myself could put down the camera as we’d wind up missing something! This is where our bottleneck started …

As Kim kept rotating the cards to keep up with the matches, Sean would download each of the cards to the PC so we could print contact sheets to display on the table. It was just about this time that Amanda’s camera (a Canon 20D) decided that it wanted to ignore the continuous numbering setting and would reset its numbering scheme back to img_001 each time we inserted a new card. This created problem for Sean as he needed to rename each image from Amanda’s camera each time a card came in. Thankfully, Sean is quick on his feet and created a simple way to avoid any duplicate image problems for us later in the day.

As the day went on, our proof sheet printer became tired and started running slower and slower … Our photo printer lost its color calibration somewhere along the way and a bunch of prints had to be thrown away as we readjusted everything … And the matches started getting longer and longer as the wrestlers were more evenly matched.

By the time the day finally came to an end, it was almost 9PM and we had a bunch of orders (including custom posters) and we were all a bit tired. We took the last little bit of energy that we had, cleaned up our equipment and called it a day!

After everything that happened during the day that made our first shot at OnSite Printing a bit of a crazy one, I do have to say that everyone did an absolutely amazing job. While we were dealing with the problems we encountered, not a single one of our customers knew anything was wrong or not going the way we had intended it to. So while things were a bit crazy, I have to say that it was a job well done. Now it’s time to make our adjustments and head out to the next event twice as strong!

Here are a couple shots from the day!

During wrestling season, no matter where you turn, tournaments are always going on somewhere. This past weekend was no different. With the half day Minisink Valley JV Tournament on Saturday and the full day Vernon Team Wrestling Classic on Sunday, it felt like we were completely enveloped in it!

The Minisink Valley Tournament on Saturday saw wrestlers in attendance from a bunch of the local area schools including Warwick, Port Jervis, Washingtonville and Goshen. Loretta provided full coverage of that tournament, getting a bunch of great action shots of the wrestlers doing what they do best!

The Vernon Team Wrestling Classic on Sunday saw even more teams, some local like the Sussex Wantage Wrestling Team and others from much farther away (Philly & South Jersey). I spent the majority of the day shooting the tournament myself and then Loretta joined up just prior to finals to provide some better coverage. I have to say that we saw some unbelievably good matches between the wrestlers! Most of the kids ranged in age between 7yrs and 13yrs and wrestled ten times better than most of the High School guys that we follow! Here are a couple shots from Sunday as well!

Now its time to get ready for the Minisink Valley Invitational next Saturday where we’ll debut our On-Site Printing and Custom Sports Posters! I can see it now … Its going to be a busy week!