Ryan Yorde Photography

In an effort to get back on schedule, here is a post that is actually on time. Over this past week I rented A LOT of gear to test before I purchase my own equipment. Among the rentals are a Nikon D300s with a MB-D10 grip, a 50mm f/1.4G AF-S, one 24-70mm f/2.8G AF-S, a 70-200mm f/2.8G AF-S VR, one 105mm f/2.8G AF-S VR, and one R1C1 macro lighting system with SU-800 and an SB-600. While this did not come cheap, It was an excellent opportunity to get my hands on the equipment in a variety of situations.  Its always good to know what you need and what is just plain overkill. For example, I would really like to own an army of 12 SB-900s. However, at $500 per, that would rack up quite a tab. On a more realistic note, it would be far more economical to simply own three SB-900s, and do the rest of the work with SB-600s at less than half the cost.  The R1C1 macro lighting kit is cool, however it is somewhat useless in most situations. Even while doing macro work, a RayFlash would not only be cheaper, but produce better results. The SU-800 is nice, and in most situations cheaper than controlling your army of speed lights with Pocket Wizards, the line of sight and range limitations make it too unreliable outside of the studio. As for the lenses, I love every one of them. The D300s is a fantastic body especially for the price, and offers only a few minor setbacks from the larger D3. The only shortfalls of the D300s are: one, it will not shoot 14bit RAW faster than 2.5fps. If you understand binary then you may see why this is a problem. Two, one CF slot and one SD slot. It is a little annoying to me that I have to carry two different types of media with me at the same time to get the added redundancy made possible by the dual card slots. This is an especially large problem when you cannot find SD cards as fast as the CF cards you are using. Third, full frame field of view. While sometimes this can work to your advantage in the form of a focal length extension, its drawbacks in low-light sensitivity make it a slight handicap. Anyway, enough of my rambling. Here are a few of my test shots from this week. (Also, my last two post were also shot entirely with rental equipment)

On Wednesday I had the opportunity to shoot the Stonewall Golf Club Pro-Am Tournament to benefit the Cancer Center at Lake Manassas with Noah Hayes. The job was this; between the two of us we had to get at least one team portrait of each of the 26 teams of 4, as well as all the detail shots and standard tournament play coverage. It was a tall order for just two photographers but we got the job done with a divide an conquer scheme. While Noah drove around the course from hole 1 to hole 18 capturing details and normal play, I drove from hole 18 to hole 1 getting all of the team portraits and what details and normal play I had time for. We rushed to capture, filter, and process the images into a slideshow before the tournament was over, so when all the players came off the field the slideshow was already running on all the TVs around the clubhouse. Here are some of my photos from the day.

As are most of the posts here, this one is a little behind. Last weekend I had the pleasure of shooting Stacey and Todd’s wedding with Armin DeFiesta as a second shooter. It was a beautiful day in the district for a wedding. The ceremony was held in a small chapel on 36th street, with the reception just a few blocks away at the Washington Club on Dupont Circle. All images in appearing in this post are/were shot exclusively for Armin DeFiesta Photography. All Images are copyright ©Armin Defiesta Photography.

Today I was invited to join a large group of photographers at Brownie Beach in Chesapeake Maryland. This was a great time for me because I am already familiar with the location. My parents kept their sailboat at Harrington Harbor South just three miles to the north. This particular outing was more for fun and networking than anything else. We had a few models meet us there and as time went on separated into groups. Most of the photographers went with Ivonne (The model wearing the wedding gown), so I went my own way with one of the other models (Kelly) with the hopes of getting a better shot with out having to work around the other photographers that are better than I am anyway. My lack of additional lighting equipment shows, as some of the pictures below fail in comparison to those of Armin and Noah who had 580EX IIs and SB-900s to play with. I had a lot of fun working with the other photographers and learned  a ton. It all goes to show how much more I have to learn. The pictures posted below are not all the pictures of the day (I took  742, 655 of which I kept) however they are a few of my favorites. More pictures will be up in the days to come. Enjoy!

Here are a few pictures from Friday nights recording session with Wayne Leriche and Semisi Timpeni.

Today, Bob Blankenburg came in to lay down bass tracks for the new album. With luck we will start with guitar lines by Friday.