Wanamaker Photography Blog

Behind The Scenes Of A Photography Studio

As a follow up to my last post about becoming the official I9 Sports Photographers …

This past Sunday was Portrait Day for the Spring I9 Flag Football League. With temperatures hovering around 45 degrees, an 11-mph breeze crossing the field and no sun to speak of, we knew it was going to feel like one of our fall sports leagues!

In between portraits for the different groups of players, I would grab the Mark III with the 70-200mm lense and head over a snap a couple shots of the kids playing their game.

I love this one shot (that I captured by accident) in that the player in red has his eye intently focused on the ball carrier’s flags. I didn’t realize I had captured this shot until we took a look at it on the computer later in the day …

As I headed back to get ready to photograph the last group, some of them (while waiting for the rest of their teammates) decided to practice a little to try and stay warm. As they would pass the ball, I would follow the runner down the field a little to try and capture a jump-and-catch shot. Well … this was the only kid who was able to do just that …

And just before we headed out, I looked down one of the fields and couldn’t help but capture this one shot …

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.

This past week, Loretta photographed Baby Brady for the start of his First Year Package. During the session, Mikayla (his older sister) became Loretta’s new assistant. She loved holding one of our little white reflectors while Loretta grabbed some absolutely adorable images of Brady.

However, the moment Loretta took out our blue and purple mats, Mikayla decided that she wanted to switch jobs and become a model instead!

Using the Mark III, the image was captured at F5.6 at 1/125 with ISO 160. She had one Alien Bees 800 light with a large soft box set off to the right of our assistant/model at 1/8 power.

My first post…how exciting!! Chris keeps me so busy that I don’t have time to blog really. So now he made me stop what I was doing to post my first blog. Today was my exciting day with Baby Brady. I took the information I learned at Jack Reznicki’s lighting and digital photography training camp yesterday in Philadelphia and applied it today. It is amazing how easy it is to compose an image just by utilizing your surroundings. 

Baby Brady was so well behaved, I wish I have 10 kids like him. He was very mellow and only complained of the flash with small little grunts. For a 6-week old, he was very strong and able to hold his head up pretty well. I tried hard to get the traditional “First Year” session poses and succeeded! These images were taken with our Mark III and a 28-105mm lens lit with one Alien Bees 800 light and one white reflector held by Baby Brady’s big sister, Mikayla. She was such a great “assistant” and so excited to help.

Enjoy the photos!

This last picture will make anyone smile!

This past Saturday, we photographed our first ever Cheerleading Competition at the Minisink Valley Ultimate Cheerleading Competition. While we’ve photographed cheerleaders at football games, we were still in the dark about what we’d encounter during the event itself. Let me start off by saying that cheerleaders at football games are a bit more predictable. These competitions happened fast and moved over every possible inch of the mat!

Shots like the one above pretty much became the theme of the day. While each of us tried our best to anticipate the next flip, kick or jump … we found that we were swinging the lenses around in hopes that we’d capture something great. Well, we did get some great shots … but not the ones we had in mind!

The shot above was taken with our Mark III with a 70-200mm lens and a hot-shoe mounted flash at F2.8 at 1/250 with the ISO at 1250. Most of our close-up shots of the girls in action yielded more roller-coaster and screaming-match shots … except for this one … which was taken during the actual performance itself. After becoming an instant classic, we all started comparing our “frozen face” shots as the rest of the day went on … but nothing seemed to top this one!