Trevor and I had the chance to hang out with our friend Erik Dixon (Zack Arias‘ studio manager) in Milwaukee on Saturday. Erik was traveling with The Constellations over the weekend, having driven 15 hours from Atlanta for three shows between Milwaukee and Madison. Aside from a few unplanned bar stops and taking in the show at Urban Outfitters in Milwaukee, I had the chance to shoot a few portraits of Erik.

And a few shots hanging out with the band..

~dave

Most of these will get posted on Flickr from now on.

~dave

~dave

Having been recently inspired by Chase Jarvis’ recent run of iPhone photo bloggage, I got off my arse and decided to utilize my own iPhone to shoot some photos. If used the right way, the iPhone actually takes some pretty decent photos. Especially if you go out and snag some of the cool photo apps via iTunes.

The photos below are straight out of camera and were created using the “Old Camera” and “Polarize” apps. I hope to post more from time to time and try some new apps along the way. If anyone has any other decent iPhone photo apps, by all means hit me up in the comments!

I found this one walking into the doctors office today, after a week long bout with a WICKED head/chest cold.

Now if I could only find a way to hook-up a Pocket Wizard to this thing…
~dave

Zack Arias brought this issue up on his blog today. It seems that Canon cannot figure out how to allow their cameras to focus in low-light shooting situations, such as wedding receptions and with night time shooting. As frustrating as it has become for me dealing with my camera hunting to focus while missing some key shots, I finally found a fix this past year courtesy of my friend Cliff Brunk.

Although I don’t use the same set-up as Cliff, I simplified the concept a bit to find a working solution. I went out and bought a Canon ST-E2 infrared transmitter ($220.00 new). When the ST-E2 is mounted to the camera’s hot shoe, it sends out a nice focus-assist beam allowing low-light focusing. Because I use off camera lighting at receptions and while shooting on-location, I need to use Pocket Wizards to trigger my strobes. I velcro my Pocket Wizard to the top of the ST-E2 and connect it to the camera via PC sync cord. Focusing is a breeze!

Cliff uses a modified ST-E2 with a hot shoe mounted right to the transmitter, which will accept a Pocket Wizard. He sent me THIS LINK a while back to Michael Bass’ ST-E2 modifications.

~dave