Life Event Photography by Fred: 2011

Sunday, November 27, 2011

A Rose of a Different Color

Walked the upper river walk this evening and took some interesting photographs. I decided to try my hand at black and white conversions of a red rose.

First the photograph with the color...

And now the conversion to black and white..

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Sunday, September 4, 2011

For a Limited Time Only $100 Event Photography

I will do birthday parties, corporate events, weddings, Quinceanera's, Sweet 16's, reunions, and coverage of team sports events for $100. This is for one hour of coverage at events with one photographer only. Post processing limited to basic color corrections and cropped to print 8X10 with images on DVD and a usage license that allows printing at a lab of your choice. I retain all copyrights. Offer expires December 1, 2011.

Saturday, September 3, 2011

The Most Important Photograph in a Models Portfolio

The one thing most models forget is the single most important image of their portfolio and the first image of their portfolio should be a very strong headshot with minimal retouching.

My good friend Lupe grew his hair a tad out and wanted to update his book with his new look. We worked on location at the Japanense Tea Gardens in that magical time of day just after Sunrise. And here is his best shot.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

New Policy for Any Bookings

People do not seem to value each others time anymore and I have been left hanging one too many times. This morning I thought I had a model booked for a trade shoot so I loaded a brand new roll of ILFORD Delta 100, installed charged batteries, cleaned lens, and double checked all the gear and props. I then see we are going to be blessed with the most perfect of all light I have seen in some time in San Antonio. I double time it to the shoot so I can setup in order to avoid wasting the light and wait and wait and wait. Half hour past the appointment I give up and call it a day. No call no email no nothing by the model. I go home and drop a note into the models Model Mayhem account and she replies immediately that she thought the shoot was canceled. Never mind the fact I confirmed the appointment by email four days earlier.

My new policy for bookings of any nature is that the booking will not be on the calendar until email addresses and phone numbers are exchanged. Rest assured I will not call unless an emergency occurs that requires cancellation.

Fortunately some backup models were provided by Mother Nature of which a few are shown below. Enjoy the photographs.


Family Portrait

Water Flowing Into the Main Pond of the Tea Gardens

Who Are You Looking At?

One of Many. What Kind of Bird is Unknown.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Portfolio Shoot with T Ritz MM 1886008

Here is slide show with music and contains a brief sample of my services for on location portraiture and model portfolio development.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

A Big Thanks to T Ritz for his part in our collaboration effort.

Legal Notice: This blog and the content of including the images posted are the work of Fred Gerhart and are copyrighted material. Please do not copy anything off this site. You are most welcome to hot link to my Blog pages and please feel free to comment.

I am available for hire.Please visit my website at Life Event Photography by Fred

Sunday, May 29, 2011

On Location Portraits and Talent Development

Two things I find challenging are on location portraits and working with new models on a trade basis. This portrait is of Latonya D who is an agency represented model from Calliope Talent.

I photographed Latonya at the Japanese Tea Gardens around 8:15 AM. Mother Nature's light was flat and not strong enough for me to use reflectors so I mounted two hot shoe flashes off camera on light stands without any modifiers. You can read more about using hot shoe flashes on location at the Strobist Blog . Each light was placed at 45° to Latonya with the intent to wrap Latonya in light so as to pop her from the background. The key light was set for F7 and the fill set to F5.6 as measured by my Sekonic 308S light meter. The image was captured using my faithful Sony A350 with a 50 mm F 1.7 lens set at 1/125 sec and F7.1 which created the bokeh effect of the background. The image was then post processed using Adobe Photoshop with Portrait Professional. And here is the final result.

Legal Notice: This blog and the content of including the images posted are the work of Fred Gerhart and are copyrighted material. Please do not copy anything off this site. You are most welcome to hot link to my Blog pages and please feel free to comment.

If you are looking for a Life Event Photographer, please visit my website at Life Event Photography by Fred

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Black Swallowtail Butterfly Food

Most folks do not know this but those ugly Thistle plants growing in your yard, garden, or pasture are food for the adult Black Swallowtail butterfly when in bloom. No butterfly showed up but I did get this photograph yesterday of the last Thistle in bloom. I also found one remaining bluebonnet. Lastly the red flowering shrub called a Butterfly Bush or so I think.

Monday, May 16, 2011

Full Moon

Didn't quite come out the way I intended. i was hand holding the camera with a 600 mm lens on and had to use a fast shutter speed and at 5.6 to get anything to work.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Where's the Rain?

Nice clouds today with lower level going one direction and upper level another but not a drop of rain. Sky was that blue and this was taken around 7:00 PM today. Hopefully it rains soon.

Legal Notice: This blog and the content of including the images posted are the work of Fred Gerhart and are copyrighted material. Please do not copy anything off this site. You are most welcome to hot link to my Blog pages and please feel free to comment.

If you are looking for a Life Event Photographer, pllease visit my website at Life Event Photography by Fred

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

The Digital Darkroom

Post processing is the digital photographers dark room. Some photographers love it and others hate it. The two images here are the same shot that was captured using the RAW format of my Cannon 50D. Mother Nature supplied the yucky sky.

In my "Digital Darkroom" (PC with Adobe PS CS4) I opened the image in Adobe Camera Raw and post processed in camera raw using an "edgy technique". In one image I removed most of the saturation and the other I bumped the saturation way up to obtain the blue sky. Crop is slightly off in the two images but other than that eveything was done in Camera Raw with five mouse clicks resulting in two different images.

Monday, May 9, 2011

Photographing Pets with Flash

Here is one of the herd that shows up to eat at my place. Sorry about the eyes but I was trying to hold a camera in one hand and my cane in the other (silly ankle just had to turn out) and I finally gave up and turned the camera to full auto and let the flash fire which of course gave me some ugly red eyes. This is my first PS fix of pet eyes and obviously I need more practice.

As Shot

The Correction Attempt

Sunday, May 8, 2011

The Beginning

I came across an interesting concept the other day - take a photograph per day for a year in order to hopefully improve with time. Today is the start so check back often to see what I am photographing. Sometimes the image will be mundane and hopefully other times the image will at least astound me.

I was driving by and saw our flag still waving proudly in the breeze and things have changed since 9/11 but we are still here. A big thanks to our armed forces and our public servants who put their lives on the line daily and to those who have served in the past. Never Forget!

Legal Notice: This blog and the content of including the images posted are the work of Fred Gerhart and are copyrighted material. Please do not copy anything off this site. You are most welcome to hot link to my Blog pages and please feel free to comment.

If you are looking for a Life Event Photographer, please visit my website at Life Event Photography by Fred