Upcoming incoming

I always feel accomplished when I can put together some of the thoughts that go through my head and form a concise idea. When I can take the all my questioning, pondering, interactions of life–basically my thought process–and be able to organize it into something intelligible, now that’s significant.

Right now I can only wish.  But life is life.  Thankfully it is not an end but merely a means to an eternity.  Life goes on, as always.

But anyways…

I’m shooting this guy on Saturday.  It’ll most likely be one of the biggest band’s that I’ll officially shoot for, as I don’t plan on perusing a career in concert photography.  As I found out with Dr. Dog, shooting more popular bands is a lot more limiting than shooting smaller bands due to the rule where you can only shoot during the first three songs.  This makes it a lot harder to just go with the flow and experiment with different shots but it also makes you work fast.  Then again, the band is super popular, so… that’s gotta add something, right?

Another thing that I’ve been learning about in publications is usage rights.  I’m used to just putting up my favorite pictures from the day, but now I’m having to think about it more.  I have to keep some pictures confidential so that a new newspaper or a new yearbook won’t have old photos.  It makes sense have usage guidelines for a publication, but it’s just another thing to get used to.

For now I can tell you that I’ve been taking a lot of portraits of people the last few days.  My studio has been ghettofabulous, but it’s been working.  These people all have something in common: they have a story.  That’s why I took pictures of them.  ;)

Enough random thoughts–here’s some photo.

A few pictures from the other day shooting for a one-man-Ryan-band.

Stay classy, errbody.

~ Jon

Wedding Things; branding; the biz

Being professional and also open about your learning seems to be two things that don’t usually go together in the photography industry.  From the start, my plan has to been to turn jonyoder.com into my business site.  Since I haven’t always had a clear plan for where my business is heading, this blog has mainly just been a place to put the photos and ideas that I come up with, having only thoughts of doing photography professionally here and there.

The idea that seems to be most prevalent nowadays is to “fake it ’till you make it” in your business, while also having a personal side that people can relate to.  I understand this concept–you want to make your potential client confident in your ability to deliver something of quality in a professional manor.  So, even if you’re making things up as you go, you should do it with the confidence as though you’ve been doing it that way forever.

This mindset might sound weird to some of you.  Maybe it sounds wrong to show confidence when you aren’t sure or always trying to look/sound professional.  Personally, I’m choosing to be mostly open in my learning of the ins and outs of wedding photography.  It isn’t that I think different ways or what I’m used to seeing is bad, but I’m just choosing to be open about my learning simply because that’s the way I want to do it.

I’ve always been pretty open about things, so why stop now?  There could be many different good answers to that question…but for now, I’m just posting what I do.  What I learn.  Today it’s logo, website, and style choices.

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time looking through different fonts to put together a logo.  As of now, I’m thinking: Jon Yoder Photographer | weddings & portraiture.  Pretty elaborate, right?  :)

I know that photographs speak louder than websites, fonts, styles, and logos, but being a perfectionist, I spend a lot of time trying to get things, well, perfect (except that I never am 100% happy with the way I make it).  I follow quite a few wedding photographers, and a decent amount of them have websites that are kinda hideous (I’m not going to name anyone :-) ).  Yet they still seem to be doing fine–I guess brides know that they aren’t getting a website made for them or a book of some terrible font, they’re getting the photographs.  That’s not to say that the presentation doesn’t matter, it certainly does, but you can sometimes still do alright without a strong website.

All this brings me to the things that I still need to work out:

• I don’t know my unique style.  I’ve been tending toward more natural vs. lots of photoshop work lately, but I think it’s good to have more of a distinctive style than just the way you shoot.
• I haven’t settled on a logo.  Or a watermark.
• This goes with the last point–but I also want to change up the website a bit and have a style that goes across my whole brand.

There are definitely more things, but those points are what I’ve been thinking of most.

My favorite wedding photography brands (as far as websites / styles / design goes) and inspiration:

• Mindcastle // amazing style.  I really like their name, defined style, video work, & creativity.
• Red Leaf Studios // I like the leaf in the logo…and the background, and the photography.  ;)
• Stacy Reeves // Really great style.  :)  I like the brightness and the patterns.
• Matthew Saville // One of the few photographers that uses dark theme/light text.  I like the fonts and color choice. Great guy and mentor.
• Jasmine Star // obligatory.
• Jon Yoder // The color blue…the simplicity, the experience…wow–haha, I’ll stop now.  :)

I’m always going to aim high.  Where that will get me, I don’t know, but I suppose you’ll find out how it’s going soon enough.  =)

~ Jon

A day in the life: Grandma’s house; HDR

The other day my brother, Dad, and aunt went to my grandma’s house to help out and do some cleanup work. It was a good time to

Pictures.

(that’s how my attention span works most of the time. ;) )

My dad pouring over paperwork.

My Grandmama. She's an amazing woman. (sorry for making you nervous grandma! :))

My dad doing his chain saw thang.

Grandma wanted a tree limb down. My dad's first method was to (try to) use the force to bring it down.

Unfortunately, that didn't work, so he resorted to the lesser method, chainsaw, which promptly got stuck in the tree due to unforeseen evil, gravity.

So, this picture...

[non-related, photo talk] So the above picture is an HDR (high dynamic range).  My first one, actually.  HDR is where you take multiple pictures of different exposures to get a really dark picture, a normal picture, and a really light picture.  Then, on the computer, you combine them to include more detail (since it’s multiple pictures in one).

Many people love HDR pictures.  If you search google, you’ll soon find pictures like these, which tend to be way too overprocessed in my book.  A TON of people (even decent photographers) love the overprocessed, details popping out everywhere look, but I’m not one of them.  It makes me gag sometimes.  I’m not saying I don’t like the pictures that I linked above, but I just don’t like the fake plastic non-real look that the term HDR is affiliated with.  You can make HDR pictures that look realistic, and I like those, but the mobs seem to like the overprocessed HDR pictures more.

Pardon the mini rant.  All in all, HDR is kinda cool.  I might use it once in a while, but it isn’t something you’ll be seeing here very often.

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. ~ Oscar Wilde

Peace and love,
~ Jon