Photo-A-Week: Sleep

Sleep is this week's theme. Something that, for me, has been very elusive this week. There has been a sickness running around the Eaton house this week and I am glad it has decided to leave and take residence elsewhere. Waking up in the middle of the night coughing is never fun, especially when you wake up the rest of the house doing it at 4am. Alright, on to the reason you came here.

I chose to do a photo a week challenge for a few reasons, one being to force myself to picture an image in my mind and execute it during a weeks time frame. One of the most difficult hurdles I have found to get over in photography is creating a product that is what I had in mind. Many times I struggle with aspects that I can't control or determine in order to get the picture to look how I want it. The specific one for this week was opportunity. Do I fake a sleep shot or try to stumble upon one? Do I stay up late and sneak into my daughter's room a start popping the flash, or better yet do that to my wife? I pictured that moment in my head for a little bit, but it didn't look like sleep.

What was re-enforced for me this week is I have to be ready when the opportunity presents itself. I am getting in a mode now where I am constantly looking for that week's theme. So that way I am ready when the opportunity presents itself, whether candid or planned we, as photographers, have to be ready when the shutter needs to be pressed. Joe McNally wrote on the subject in a book called The Moment it Clicks. Probably one of the most influential / inspirational books on me as a photographer.

So this weeks theme, Sleep, fell into my lap during a photoshoot with one of our (Open Sky Studios) families. They have signed up for a product we offer called My Baby Steps. This session was three months. We decided to use some props from the family that detail some very special moments currently going on in their life. Daddy is studying and volunteering to be a fireman. We struggled and struggled with getting the little guy in place among the props and he just wasn't having it, then opportunity knocked. A bottle, a little time in Mommy's arms and viola lights out. The first thought that came to my mind was "SLEEP SHOT". Of course there is also needing to get that prop shot for the family, so two birds with one stone.

So without further adue, our sleeping hero.

P.S. Good luck Dan on the firefighting career, you are a hero of mine already and I can't wait for the rest of our community to get to feel the same.

Photo-A-Week: Macro

I thought that this week's theme would present a challenge to me considering I sold my macro lens a few months back to upgrade one of my camera bodies, but lucky for me my 14-54mm has a minimum focusing distance of 22cm. Which for all intents and purposes achieved macro by most definitions.

There are a lot of definitions of macro photography and depending on who you ask or what Google result you click on you're either achieving it or you have to go buy more gear. For me I just like to think that macro means really close. I lean towards a definition that appeals to me. Probably the thing I like most about macro photography is when it allows me to see something I can't with my naked eye.

One definition I read said that if in a 4x6 printed frame the picture is life size then that is macro photography. I can think of a lot of instances where I would just see it as a great picture of a frog. It wouldn't register with me as macro photography. Now show me a picture of a frogs foot up close and personal, then we're talking.

Keep in mind these are my opinions not the law on macro photography. Honestly if you read my introduction statement you could deduce that I am so enthralled by macro photography that I sold my only macro lens {sarcasm}

Since you probably clicked the post to see a picture and not here me ramble on about my knowledge, or lack there of, on macro photography. Here you go. Also, since I got some great responses back on the two photos from the last post, there's a bonus one here too.

Snow from the most recent weather that came through St Louis.

Photo-A-Week: Breakfast

Breakfast is not my favorite meal of the day, it means getting out of bed even earlier. Breakfast almost always for me has been cup of freshly ground coffee, two teaspoons of sugar and some milk. My wife on the other hand is a big fan of breakfast, so much so that she gets up early sometimes and makes breakfast for us all. Yummy!

This week, with the theme being breakfast and all, I joined my wife on a breakfast adventure. YAWN... Recently I bought some new knives and a new cutting board so I have been on a chopping frenzy, yes even my finger already. We decided on the three egg omelet with fixin's included. I chopped and she flipped. 

Breakfast turns out is a pretty good meal, I just wish it didn't come so early for our household. There are two photos this week for the theme, considering it was a joint effort in accomplishing the finished product. That and I wanted to show off my mad chopping skills.

Review - Hear Back personal mixing system

So the church I am running sound for installed Hear Technologies' Hear Back personal monitor mixing system. We are using them for an in ear monitor system instead of having noisy speaker wedges on the stage messing with the front of house mix. I am new to the Hear Back system, I come from a church that had an Aviom system installed. There are similarities and differences between the systems. Without going into the pros and cons of in ear monitor systems vs stage wedges, and not wanting to turn this into an Aviom vs Hear Back list I am just going to cover some of the specific likes and dislikes I have found so far in using the Hear Back system.

Likes:
CAT5e: I like that Hear takes advantage of networking cable same as Aviom does, well they don't use A-net but you get the point. This can make installation simpler and sometimes cheaper depending on your setup. If your sound booth is a fair distance from your stage then setting a rack unit in the sound booth to grab your Aux channels then sending that over 1 CAT5e cable to another rack unit by the stage vs 8 XLR is cheaper. In most cases even running 8 CAT5e cables all the way to the stage is cheaper. In any case being able to link everything together with CAT5 is great.

Direct mounts to mic stands: Something Aviom likes to charge $30 per head unit for, after you have already paid close to $400 for the receiver. Hear Backs have a screw mount in the bottom of the unit so you just screw it to any standard mic stand and your done. The cheaper solution just got $30 cheaper.

Simple: I know that doesn't sound like something to rave about, but I have bought some "cheap" solutions in the past and they were anything but as simple as the quality model I should have bought. That's not true with the Hear Back system. It really is easy to install. We bought two of the 4 pack packages that have the rack unit included. You just take the provided 8-way cable and plug it into all your Direct Out / Aux channels on your sound board, plug that cable into the back of the rack unit, then plug in the provided 50ft Cat5e cables to the front of the rack unit, plug those Cat5e cables into the Hear Back receivers and your done. Plug in some head phones and turn up what you want.

Aux input on the receiver: The idea of being able to plug in an audio feed directly at your receiver is attractive. Especially if I am a drummer and want a click track. Sure there are other ways to implement click track so that everyone can hear if they want, but being limited on channels (we'll get to that in a minute) an Aux input on the unit is helpful. Also just a tip, the Aux input is what Hear Technologies advertises makes it a  10 channel system. The Aux is a Tip Ring Sleeve 1/8 adapter so you can run a stereo input into it, but you will only be able to hear that when plugged into that receiver only. It's not 10 channel distributed to all receivers.

Dis-Likes
8 channel (no 6) max inputs: First the advertised limitation of 8 channels is a bummer but to find out that really it's only 6 center panned channels is down right false advertising. Channels 1 and 2 on the Hear Back system are hard panned left and right. I am not exactly sure why, maybe the people at Hear Technologies haven't heard of the panning nob on a sound board. If I want something to be left or right ear only I can do that on the sound board, but forcing me to put a snare in the left ear only is not a feature I am excited about. For us fortunately I am able to group our worship team down to 6 channels then put my talk back mic in one of the hard panned channels. But Hear Backs advertised 8 channels needs an * to caveat their little secret.

Numbering System: 3,4,5,6,7,8,1,2 (take a look) Yes sir that's how I learned it in school. I don't know how many times I have heard from the stage "1 is on the bottom" when they are trying to adjust audio in their ears. Maybe my heightened aggravation to that is due to my OCD when it comes to labeling things.

Summary
I have to say for the budget minded installation this system is great. For a 1/3 of the cost of Aviom it stands up pretty well for a personal mixing system. And if you only need 6 center panned mixes and numbering patterns don't bother you then you shouldn't have any complaints.

Photo-A-Week: Cold

This week was the first week I took on my photo a week project. Something I am going to do each week for the rest of the year. I have teased myself with the idea of a photo a day project several times, but I don't think I have the dedication to do a 365 project. Now 52 that's a more palatable number for me.

Each week will have a theme, this week's is Cold. Which presented a problem for me all week. Even though it's plenty cold here in St. Louis there is not much on my daily commute that looked cold. I kept trying to think of ideas, maybe take a picture of a thermometer or something, but then I got lucky. Friday night, a day before the deadline, it snowed.

It actually got pretty scary driving later that night. We decided to head out to take some Christmas presents back to the store and on the way home the roads started icing over. I was very happy we had bought an all wheel drive vehicle this year. We saw 5 cars off the road in a 10 mile stretch, most of them already had emergency responders there and the one that didn't told us he was ok and was getting ready to pull out of the snow. It's a Jeep thing, I don't understand.

Anyway working on the house Saturday morning I decided to get a cold picture of my daughter's new sticky snowflakes they have on their windows. Thankfully for the snow it actually looks cold.

Wow 4 months

I can't believe it's been 4 months since I have posted anything here. That's just poor form. Well it's a new year and a new season for me, so that is going to bring new content.
I am starting a new position at a new church in January. Running sound for The Word at Shaw and supporting my good friend Harry Walls IV over at Worship180. I intend on using this blog to post what all I will be learning about sound engineering.
I also am taking on a year long weekly photography project. It will be a new theme each week, that should make for some posts there too, both here and on my flickr page.
Also, there will be posts about all other things going on in my life. A new church brings new discoveries about all kinds of things. I am very much so looking forward to that.
So, here's to new years resolutions.