Happy New Year!
For most of us, it’s hard to believe that it’s already 2018. 2017 flew by at a dizzying pace and now here we all sit, wondering what all this year will bring us.
We’ve got a lot of exciting things coming up this year! We’ve already scheduled a few weddings, more senior portraits, and our big event for the first part of the year, the Kaufman County Junior Livestock Show. Plus working on some more creative experiments with both film and digital, one of which will hopefully bring a new service to Shutterjunkies soon!
But for today, we want to wish you all the best, and hope that you all have a prosperous and happy new year!
Oh Man, Did I Screw Up...
Some days, photography is just completely exhausting. When you combine that with managing a 2 month old baby, well exhausting doesn’t even come close to describing. This last week, I managed to lose a vintage camera, expensive strobe light, and my wife’s instead camera and had no idea where I had lost it...
The day had started off great, we were heading to a livestock show with the school where my wife teaches. I was excited about the great candid photo opportunities that awaited! I loaded up my Canon AE-1 Program, lots of rolls of Koda Tri-X 400 and a roll of Elgar just in case 😉 I snapped a few photos before we left, but when we arrived I found the combination of the clouds and zero light in the barn made shooting with 400 impossible. It was too late to shoot higher than box cause I had already snapped a few shots. I struggled the entire day with trying to expose the film enough. There just weren’t any good angles either. I was already flustered, but add to that the fact I was helping my wife watch our new born and I had a disaster heading my way.
After a frustrating photography day (we all have those sometimes) I was just exhausted. We headiest back home, stopped to eat along the way, and got home and hastily unloaded the truck and crashed. It wasn’t until I tried to find the camera several days later that I discovered that the entire bag was missing 😮 I freaked out. We searched the entire house, every place we had been, we called people that were at the same event. The camera was just gone. And I couldn’t even remember having it when we got home. It was all just a blur and I couldn’t remember anything. I was just sad.
I have never lost any of my equipment, I’m always so very careful. I love my cameras like family almost. It seriously broke my heart that I had been so careless. And it drove me crazy that I couldn’t remember what I had done with the camera. I began to entertain the wildest theories in the hopes of finding it somewhere, anywhere. Ugh... After looking every possibly conceivable place, I had to concede that I had lost it. I had let fatigue and frustration cause me to lose a member of my creative toolset. It was the worst.
I decided to try to learn from the experience and do better with my equipment. The loss has renewed my vigilance at wanting to keep my equipment in orde and well maintained. So I’ve started organizing and cleaning all of my gear, organizing my accessory equipment, and making sure that anything that needs attention gets the repairs it needs. Losing the camera at least made me appreciate the gear that I had been neglecting. All the while, I kept thinking about my poor camera sitting on the side of the road somewhere or that some scummy criminal that had no idea how to use it was just snapping up my Kodak Tri-X film and laughing with his criminal friends. My imagination ran wild.
But besides learning a valuable lesson, this story does have a happy ending. While we were cleaning around the house today, my wife stepped out on the back porch where she saw my camera bag, with all the equipment I had feared lost forever sitting quietly on the back porch. I had walked out and decided to feed the dogs with the bag still on my shoulder, and removed the bag to pour the dog food and give the dogs some water. After I had done that, I walked right back into the house and left the camera sitting on the back porch all week. My wife had saved my camera and saved me my all the worry I had been dreaming up reasons to continue with.
The moral of the story; don’t let fatigue get in the way of being vigilant about your gear. Also, put your camera up before you feed the dogs lol 😂😂😂
The last image of my camera and bag before I lost it for a week...
Instant Pack Film is Disappearing Soon and I’m Sad About It.
If you don’t know what instant “pack film” is it’s ok, most people under the age of 50 have never seen it.
Fuji’s Version of Color Pack Film
A lot of people, including myself turned to the Impossible Project and began begging them and hoping that they would somehow help to save the format. If you aren’t familiar with The Impossible Project, they saved integral film (the instant film most of us think of when we think of polaroid...) by buying a Polaroid factory and spending a decade and more money than I can imagine trying to recreate that Polaroid magic. Just a month ago, Impossible changed their name and entire business to Polaroid Originals which was a good indication that they are going to be here to stay for a while. Their integral film is amazing and I love the company and have been a customer of there’s since the beginning. I think that all of us pack film fans secretly hoped that this change might bring about the salvation of our beloved format. If they could save integral Polaroid film, and were successful from a business standpoint, maybe just maybe they can save pack film if we harass them enough...
But sadly this week Polaroid Originals released an article definitely squashing our hopes. They do not have the resources to revive another format and want to make sure they can continue to improve and thrive with their current product. I was heartbroken. Other companies have tried and failed. New55 brought us some hope, but they fell short also.
There are several of us out here in the world that love pack film and are hoping and even praying for a miracle; for some titans of industry me innovation to come along and breathe life into our old cameras once again. Until that happens, I have decided that I’m going to spend as much as I can afford and purchase as many packs as I can to make this a Pack Film Christmas with my family. I’m going to enjoy the format as long as I can!
If you’re curious about pack film, it’s not too late to order some Fuji FP-100c and it will work in any old Polaroid Land camera! You can find them for cheap online. They are a different experience and just a lot of fun! It’s definitely worth looking into 😊
The last few shots that I took before I ran out...
The negative side of the pack film after processing.
Jocelyn and Kaitlyn
Hagan always poses like this...
Arina, who is a model now, is so easy to photograph.
An Exciting Opportunity For Shutter Junkies!
Shutter Junkies will be the Official Photographer of the Kaufman County Junior Livestock Show for 2018!
We are surrounded by such an amazing community of people here in southern Kaufman County! Having worked with so many students and families in Terrell, Scurry, Kaufman, and Forney over the last few years, we have made so many friends and had the opportunity to take some spectacular photographs! And we are always looking to meet new people and take more photos, it’s our passion!
This year, when we learned that the Kaufman County Junior Livestock Showboard was accepting bids for photography at the 2018 Kaufman County Livestock Show, we jumped at the opportunity! And then we waited... But good news came this week when the kind people at the KCJLS emailed us to let us know that we had been selected! How exciting!!! Everyone, students from all over Kaufman County bring their livestock and Ag Mech projects to the Kaufman County Fair to display and have them judged. It’s the culmination of months of hard work and it is a wonderful opportunity to see so many of the kids from our community at their best. And the most exciting thing for us is that we get to be there to capture all of those special moments for these students, their families, and the community! We are so grateful to have been selected and we are already hard at work planning the details of everything that we will need to do to make sure we don’t miss a thing!
Within the next few weeks we will be setting up a dedicated page on our website with information so everyone will be able to stay up to date and know what to expect from us when the show actually starts. If you have any questions for us now or anytime between now and the show, please feel free to ask!
Thanks to the Showboard for this opportunity! Make sure you check out their website at www.kcjls.com and definitely find them on facebook and give them a like!
Check out our Livestock Photography Page Here!
Newborn Photography
Pinterest is full of super cute newborn photos. In every position, cute container, adorable outfit, it’s just full of these beautiful and seemingly easy to shoot photographs. I mean you look at them and think, “The lighting is simple, the props aren’t hard to make, this should be a piece of cake.” But if you think that, you’d be very WRONG!
It’s really hard to keep a baby in a pumpkin happy...
I never intended to be a baby or child photographer, it just isn’t what I’m passionate about. That is until I had a newborn. Now I find myself trying to recreate every ridiculous cute photo I see. And my wife is just as bad. We literally took about 500 photographs over the course of 2 different days and counted ourselves lucky to have gotten a small handful of good photos. Over the past two months with our new little bundle of joy, we have discovered and now expect a challenge every time we want to try a photo idea. Kids are not always cooperative so we have learned to be patient and to cherish even a single decent photo out of the batch. We’ve also learned and babies will be smiling and happy all day, until the exact moment you half-press the shutter button and bring them into focus. But the challenge isn’t going to stop us, cause I mean, have you seen all the cute Christmas phot ideas with babies on Pinterest!!!! 😂😂😂
Here’s to the challenge and the hopes of getting one good photo!
Its Prom Season!
High School Proms are the best. So much excitement, the air is almost electric! Students go all out, renting and buying clothes, getting flashy vehicles and limousines to ride to prom in. Its a moment you definitely want to capture and save forever!
For my senior prom, my parents took pictures with a 35mm disposable camera. And my pictures look terrible. They just do. I cherish the memories that those photos bring back, but the photos themselves are really nothing to look at. Its a good idea to find someone with a decent camera (not a camera phone, seriously those are terrible...) to snap some photos. If you can afford it, definitely hire someone! In ten years, you won't regret it.
If you need someone to take pictures for your senior prom, send me a message! Proms are fun and we love doing them. From pictures at your house, or at the event location, we can make it work.
To all of my Terrell High School friends out there - your pictures are edited and on their way to print. You can purchase digital copies with a release for $25 per picture or you can order pictures online by going to the site below.
http://www.shutterjunkies.org/ths-prom-2017