I’m in Vegas baby! Time to brush up my skills and hopefully learn lots of new things to help me be a better photographer. There is something to be said about becoming better at your craft. If you are washing dishes or are a CEO, you can always be better, brush up, and focus on your craft to enhance what you do. I am excited for what this week has to offer and what I can learn from it.
I am staying at the MGM Grand hotel thanks to WPPI who picked my video to win for their video contest. Went to a Plus class today with the great Kevin Kubota and was soaking in his great Hawaiian wisdom. If I get as many ideas and things to implement as I did today, my head will, undoubtedly, explode. Here’s to my head going Boom!
We shot a few photos with the class today and tomorrow we are going to work on them, but I thought I would post a few for you to see.
So… I don’t normally make videos. I have been experimenting a bit with it since I got the Canon 5d MK II, but I still have a lot to learn. Two days ago (Feb 4th) I stumbled upon a contest for the photography conference WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) and thought I would enter.
Jake and I just finished meeting with a soon to be bride and groom and were brainstorming all sorts of nonsense in the car ride home. We finally were set on making a rap video. Since neither of us have actually been to WPPI, it was hard thinking of reasons why we want to go back or be there… I spit off a few lyrics and we laughed pretty hard (Use to make crappy freestyle videos in college… long story).
I got home and was pumped. We were gonna get grillz, flava flave clocks, and bikes (Impalas are a lil out of my budget). I looked at the site for the details and say this: “ends on February 5, 2010″
Holy crap!!! It is Feb 4th and this thing is due tomorrow! Screw all that biz… I gotta get to work on this. No grillz, no girls, and no bikes. That night I got to work on the lyrics. Started writing and workin it out. Also, looked online for a beat, since I didn’t really have a program or time to make one. Found a beat from someplace like “freebeats.com” and decided to work with it. Polled twitter for a free music program and found Audacity, which worked for what I needed. Finished up verse two then hit the sack… had a long day ahead of me.
Got up early in the morning and started to record the tracks. I don’t own a mic, so I had to record into my iPhone, email it to myself, put it into iTunes, converted it into an mp3, then put it into Audacity. Had to do it a lil ghetto because, well… that’s where I’m from. We just make things work.
From there my friend @kumays dropped by and helped me film for a bit. He didn’t have a whole lot of time, but we shot for about an hour and got almost everything that we needed. Next I put the files on my comp, sorted through a whole lot of crap where I forgot the lyrics and spliced it all together. I really don’t do video, so this was the most frustrating part. Converting files, sorting through clips, trying to figure out how to put words on it… ugh. I need a teacher. I put everything together in a really old version of Vegas Movie Studio (kinda ironic), which was annoying. It was super hard to do things that should be really easy. I think. I BS’ed my way through the program and finally got it uploaded to Youtube and to the contest page.
It was a lot of fun and lots of work, but the headache today was worth it. (Until they extended the contest until Feb 12th) Hopefully I will win, but if not, it was fun to put something out that was creative and different.
Okay, so maybe I am not Tyra, but I sure can smile with my eyes. (If you don’t know what that is all about, I suggest you watch any season of Americas Next Top Model). While I am not a supermodel, I am looking for folks to model for me. I am not looking for the most amazing and stunning person in the world, I am looking for the average Joe and Jane. I shoot photos for iStock, which is a stock photo agency and am always looking for regular people to photograph to add to my portfolio.
If you would like to be a model for me, please shoot me an email at simon (at) valophotography.com and I will put you into my model database. I always give photos retouched photos to the people who model for me in exchange for their time. I am also always looking for great locations to use: Office Buildings, Spa’s, Gyms, Coffee Shops, etc. so if you know of any of those, please let me know as well. So until then, keep smiling with your eyes.
