I don’t want…

July 28, 2011 by Jay Auskalnis | Leave a comment

I don’t want to quit my job and be a full-time “pro” photographer…

…shoot boring photos…

…cut my prices…

…shoot wedding ’table photos’…

I don’t care if someone will do it cheaper…

I want to shoot what I want for people who appreciate it.

It’s been too long since I’ve blogged or updated my site. First, life is good. I have something new going on at my day job. It’s challenging, exciting, and I’m looking forward to the future. That said…I’m not abandoning photography. I’m just focusing on what I like, what I want, and what inspires me in the world of photography. Yes, I’m still shooting…just not enough. Yes, I’m taking sessions here and there. But, only for the right “fit”.

So, what’s next? Well, a re-evaluation of my site. I’m going to be busy for a bit longer, but hope to dabble in some new stuff, play with film and Polaroids a bit more, and plan out the next workshop later this year.

Here’s an oldie but goodie!

Stay tuned…but until then, enjoy your summer.

-Jay

Posted in rambling

Stinkin’ Spammers

May 19, 2011 by Jay Auskalnis | Leave a comment

Well my site was suspended today. My hosting company just blames me. They tell me to “make my password more secure”. Ok, whatever. That’s not the problem.

So…please pardon any snafus while I fix what needs to be fixed.

Posted in rambling

Film

April 20, 2011 by Jay Auskalnis | Leave a comment

I like the mystery of shooting film. My favorite has been my Mamiya m645. I like available light photography, and Ilford Delta 3200 is great. Here are a few shots on Delta 3200 at ISO 3200, and developed in DD-X

It’s great to have to think about the photo in advance, because it might be several weeks before you see the results.

Posted in film, lighting, models, portraits

The Wedding Album – 10 Wonderful Years

March 25, 2011 by Jay Auskalnis | 1 Comment

Late February, Marta and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. Time has flown by, and it’s been wonderful. There are ups and downs, good times and bad…sickness and health. I wouldn’t change a thing. I consider myself the luckiest guy in the world.

One thing we did on our anniversary is to sit down, and look at our wedding album. It was a weekday, we were tired from work. So, we made a pizza, opened some wine, and sat on the couch. Marta went and got our album. We looked through it 3 times. It was great. There wasn’t any grabbing the laptop, finding the CD, resetting the WiFi, or looking through folders on our hard drive. The album was on a bookshelf, and we knew exactly where to find it. It wasn’t the victim of a corrupt disk, or lost on the “cloud”. No pop-up ads appeared looking through the photos.

The next day, I brought it to work. I showed a few co-workers, and we all got a kick out of it. People tell me I’m skinny, and the album proves that I WAS skinny…now…well, that’s still open for discussion.

So, what’s the point of this post? No, it’s not to talk about the fact I have a wonderful wife, and a fantastic marriage. It’s to promote the wedding album. It is an unfortunate problem where brides looking for a wedding photographer is a race to the bottom. Meaning, the most photos for the least price, and none of that ala carte stuff. Yes, a wedding album is expensive. The reason for that, is 10 years from now, it will look just like it did. It’s a snapshot in time you can never get back. It’s easy to share with friends, it doesn’t require electricity, and it tells a story. That story is a special moment in time which will always be remembered.

To all those future brides: Please don’t focus on images/dollar. If you are truly broke, and your wedding is low budget, plan for an album in the future. No one wants to look at your laptop, Flickr, Shutterfly, or whatever.com account. When I got married, it was shot on film, and everyone still used floppy disks. Don’t allow for your wedding photos to become an obsolete format. Get an album, grab some family or friends, and sit down and have a look. You want a story of your special day.

Special thanks to Roger Beck for the fantastic job he did photographing Marta’s and my wedding.
http://rogerbeck.com

Until next time…

Posted in family, portraits, weddings

Spring must be near…

March 16, 2011 by Jay Auskalnis | Leave a comment

…because co-workers are bringing out their funky old cars.

I always liked it when people collect and drive cool, fairly undesireable, old cars.

Posted in cars, rambling

Japan

March 15, 2011 by Jay Auskalnis | Leave a comment

I was fortunate, several years ago, to make two trips to Japan for my work. It was a week long business trip, followed by Marta meeting me at the end, and both of us staying an additional week. It was a wild place to be, and unlike anything else we’ve experienced. While I was working, Marta was fortunate to have the assistance of two women from the company I was dealing with. Their names were Rie and Ryoko. Marta still exchanges e-mails from time-to-time, and recently heard from Ryoko. Her, and her family were all safe after the earthquake and tsunami tragedy. That was great to hear. While she was writing the e-mail, she said that another small earthquake was happening.

It’s a scary time there right now, as there is not only the aftermath of how to clean-up and repair damage; but the threat of a nuclear meltdown. Having experienced the Japanese people and their culture first hand, I’m certain the best people are working on it, and will contain and repair the problem. Unfortunately, all we can do here is hope, and provide support.

Marta and I will definitely return to Japan some time. It’s a wonderful country with really great people. Not to mention great urban green spaces:

Their incredible fish market:

Really short doorways, and short people (yes, that’s me inside, not Godzilla):

And fantastic cherry blossoms in Kyoto:

One thing to note is all the photos were taken by Marta. I didn’t even own a camera when I was in Japan. Marta had, and still does this great 3.2MP Minolta Dimage XG pocket sized point-n-shoot. I don’t know what I’ll do when this goes kaput. It’s a fabulous camera, and all these images are straight off the memory card. It’s a shame Konica/Minolta didn’t keep developing cameras. I love this thing!

Marta and I recently celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. The next post will be about wedding albums, and why I think they’re important. Too many people hire “shoot ‘n burn” photographers. I feel bad for people who do this, because they might not have a great album to look at 10 years after they’re married (…or 20, 30…etc.)

Posted in gear, rambling, vacation

#Winning

March 9, 2011 by Jay Auskalnis | Leave a comment

Charlie Sheen has been on a roll #winning lately. He says it’s the #tigerblood. Who would have thought? I have to say, watching this unfold has been an interesting turn of events. How many other celebrities have been on a train wreck and just ended up crashing? The jury’s still out, but this guy is feeding off his “tiger blood” and “winning” attitude. I’m interested in what’s next? This is all starting out incredibly amusing, but it’s not sustainable. Meaning, the talk about what you’re doing, and your #tigerblood. There needs to be something else…some substance behind the hype. Well CBS fired him, so much for Two and a Half Men. I really don’t know why they would even consider the show next year with someone else. Get real. Hopefully Sheen doesn’t end up a contestant some day on Celebrity Apprentice. That would be a sad way to go.

Personal amusement aside, I’ve looked at this as a perfect example of incredibly simple, but powerful marketing. Sure, as a photographer, acting crazy isn’t going to get you hired. But, if you can’t take a few examples of self-promotion from Charlie Sheen’s #winning ways, then you just aren’t paying attention.

I’m caught up with most of my shoots, and want to do some more instructional posts real soon. I have another shoot tonight, one of my last…for quite a while…”TF*” shoots. It’s with a person who is also good at self-promotion. I’m interested in what all people do, what works, what doesn’t. Things have really been “sticking” lately. I think it’s safe to say I’m #winning. I must have #tigerblood! Plus, the model has some cheap-o CF continuous lighting. I might try doing the whole shoot with just those, and my Canon 580EX II speedlites. It will be a great lesson for myself. Not just an on-location shoot in a location I’ve yet to see, but using cheap lighting that isn’t mine, and I’ve never used.

Stay tuned…

Posted in lighting, models, rambling

Concrete Jungle Eat Your Tomato

February 16, 2011 by Jay Auskalnis | Leave a comment

Huh!?!?!?

What is this idiot talking about? It’s that Jay-Z/Alicia Keys song about New York. I’ve heard that song time and time again. So PLEASE…someone tell me what the verse is Alicia Keys sings. All I hear is “Concrete jungle eat your tomato”. I’ve been trying to hear what she really says, and have been refraining from Google’ing it because I want to figure it out. But…I give up.

Anyhow, my last post mentioned the winter Antarctic-ish nonsense we’ve been dealing with. Well, guess what? It’s going to be 60 freaking degrees tomorrow. I’ve been preparing by “redistributing” snow. Our backyard likes to flood, and send it all into my basement. No worries, I’m prepared.

In thinking about the cold, I remembered a day I headed into the Loop and brought my first Canonet camera with me. Yes…it was only 4 years ago. Regardless, this photo is just way too much fun in my mind. It’s self processed and scanned black and white film. I know some day, you’re just not going to be able to buy film. But…until then, I’ll shoot it on occasion.

Posted in film, rambling

Thank you for the Workshop!

February 9, 2011 by Jay Auskalnis | Leave a comment

Well…last week was interesting. We got the blizzard of the century, then it got crazy cold, and on Saturday I was having my workshop. I figured, “Early February…no one does anything…” Well, ok…aside from Superbowl weekend! That’s ok, it didn’t include the Bears (sigh). But, everyone made it to the workshop, and from what I can see was pleased! I was completely stressing out over the agenda, and making sure it was a little something for everyone. The night before…or morning of…I woke up at 5 AM, and could not get back to sleep. For the record…I NEVER get up at 5 AM on Saturday. Well, at least not since my job in manufacturing.

The day flew by CRAZY fast, and was a lot of fun. We went through setups, mistakes, options, manual flash, TTL, and everything in between, and around. Our model Jax was fantastic as usual, and Marcin got us some behind the scenes shots. Here are a few:

I’m not sure why, but I decided to break out into the Macarena while Pat shot photos of my drapes.

Then I got serious. While Jax is considering her escape route…I’m trying to telepathically communicate with the Ezybox.

The Ezybox never talked back, so it was me back to dancing. This is my drunk white guy at a wedding move:

I didn’t shoot much, but took a few snaps during instruction. Here, we use ambient as fill, and an Ezybox as key light. All TTL. Oh yeah…a little 1/2 cut of CTO on the hairlight.

Some studio light instruction…fun with one light. AB800 in a 60 inch umbrella:

It doesn’t get any easier…or more fun than this. Single bare, Canon 580EX II on a Manfrotto “Justin Clamp” shot through my front door window:

So…that was it! I had a blast, and I’m already cooking up the next flavor of workshop, so stay tuned.

Posted in lighting, portraits, rambling, workshop

So it snowed a bit…

February 2, 2011 by Jay Auskalnis | Leave a comment

I’ll admit. I was a big skeptic about how much snow we were really going to get. Let’s just say, turning on the new this morning…every weatherman and weatherwoman were practically high-five’ing each other talking about the storm. They predicted it for days, and it delivered. I left work a bit early on Tuesday as the snow and wind moved in. Things weren’t pretty, but not terrible.

Night time came, and the winds picked up significantly. This one looked like it was really here.

So it came…and it snowed…and we had some work to do. One of the block’s snow-blower crew started early. He inched down the block since the snow was deep.

I looked out my back window, and things weren’t looking good. Yep, we had a little snow to clean up.

So, Marta and I got started, and decided we’d tackle the front first. I made a narrow path, and Marta finished up behind me. We made it to the front, and got that cleared.

Then, we started to head towards the back alley and garage. So far, everyone is still smiling.

By time I got to the gate…I could feel it wasn’t going to be pretty. I opened the gate, and saw this:

Yikes! From my back yard, I could see the plows actually came through early morning. While that was good…it also meant I had a LOT of work ahead.

So, 5 hours later, we had the back alley clear. There is a large pile, more than 6 feet high between garages, but I should be able to make it to work tomorrow. There is bitter cold tonight, but the weekend should have some low-30′s “relief”. I guess we got winter all at once. Man…it sure was a lot nicer in Grenada!

The workshop is this Saturday, and hopefully everyone is “dug out” by then and can make it. Until then…stay warm, and rest those shoveling muscles!

Posted in family, rambling