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As I mentioned last month, one of my projects in December was the 95th birthday party for my great-grandmother (God bless her). In that post, I mentioned a lot of the unknowns around trying to shoot a lot of photos and doing portraits instead of my usual landscapes, etc. Well, most of that all turned out not the way I had anticipated.

lt was still well, though. It was a nice party and everyone had a good time. I’ve posted my first set of photos (one of two cameras), and you can find them on Flickr under the Gussie’s 95th photoset. I’ve also included a few of my favorites below. There were a lot of people taking photos, and these are utlimately being used for our family’s website, The Ciolinos. A few of my distant relatives, many of who I just met on Saturday, will be emailing me their favorites as well, so those will be added to the same photoset. Attribution will be credited to photos that I didn’t take, once they’re posted.

One of the unanticipated things on my part was that there was about 8 different people with cameras all trying to take photos at the same time. A few of us commented that it was kind of silly the way some of these group photos came out because different people were looking at different cameras. With 80+ people crammed into a tight golf course restaurant, there wasn’t going to be any chance of making order out of that chaos.

Still, it was good practice. Shooting portraits and group photos is not exactly my primary focus. I’m not certain that it ever will be, but experience is experience, and the more photos I shoot in many different situations, the better. I will no doubt learn from all of them.

With the Thanksgiving holiday now behind us, it’s time to look towards what December has in store. From a photography perspective, I have two projects right out of the gate. I thought I’d take a moment to mention them.

The first is as early as Thursday, when we make our second trip up to Door County, WI. I’ve been tracking the weather up north and hoping for a winter wonderland to shoot in. Unfortunately, so far it doesn’t look very promising from a snow cover perspective. None-the-less, it will be good to get back to the peace and quiet that we experienced in September, and I’m sure I can find enough to shoot while I’m there.

I’m also looking into an outdoor skating rink near our lodge in Sister Bay. Primarily, I’m looking to bring my skates and get back on the ice, but there’s no reason I can’t bring along my new Rebel or my 20D and get a little creative. It will really depend on how crowded it will be, and if they’re open during the day, I might be able to take advantage of all the kiddies being in school and have the rink to myself.

The second project involves something a little bit more out of my element, portrait photography. Up until now, the majority of my focus has been on landscape, night time, and astrophotography. The only person I’ve really taken pictures of is my wife when we’re on vacation. With this upcoming project, I’m both nervous and excited at the same time.

It’s going to be the second weekend in December, when we go back to Wisconsin, Lake Geneva this time, for my great-grandmother’s 95th birthday. We’re having all of our relatives from across the country coming into town for this one, and I came up with the idea of putting together photos of everyone while we’re there and leaving it all on a digital photo frame for her to take home when it’s over.

I’ve never really done anything like this where I setup things like a potrait photographer and have different people line up and have their photos taken either individually or with their significant other. I do have a pretty good idea of how I’d want it to work, but there are a few unknowns that I’ll have to wing. First, I know we’re having it at a country club, but I won’t really have any idea on where to set this up until we get there. Is there going to be enough room? What will the lighting be like? Can I get a spot near a power outlet for my camera and laptop?

I already have a tripod that I can use to shot in Portrait mode should I chose to, and I just ordered a Canon Speedlite 430EX II Flash to use with my Rebel XSi if I need the extra lighting. I also have a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens that should be perfect for individual and couple shots, and can use one of my wider lenses in case we want to take larger group photos.

The other unknown and what’s making me just as nervous, is how much time am I going to have? Not only will I have to scout a location and setup, I’ll also need to take names, match them with photo numbers (since I’ve never met most of these relatives before), and then post-process, arrange, and tranfser to the digital photo frame all before we have to leave for the night and the drive home. I’ll have my XPS laptop with me, and I haven’t decided whether I’ll install my Photoshop CS4 upgrade by then or just still with CS3 for now.  I’ll also need to brush up on my batch editing skills, too, so I can speed up the redundant stuff.

Aside from the rush to get things finished, I’ll have a lot more time to put something together more elaborate and more for everyone online to remember. Not only can I post them to my Flickr account and do slideshows, etc., I also plan on posting it to our family’s website, The Ciolinos. I haven’t had much to do with that website recently, so it will be a good reason to bang out some new code there.

Hopefully after getting through those two projects, I’ll have some more experience under my belt and some time to get outside and shoot some winterscapes. If I can get a good clear day and we have enough snow cover in Chicago by then (which believe it or not, is hit or miss), I’d like to go back to the forest preserve near our home where I shot these autumn photos in October. If not, I’ll have to wait for the new year.

Wish me luck.

For someone that has grown up his entire life in the northern suburbs of Chicago, I haven’t spent much time downtown in my lifetime. In fact, in the time span of almost 30 years (boy, that number’s starting to scare me), I’ve probably spent a grand total of 7 days downtown. Sheesh.

Well, with not much to do this past Sunday, we decided to hop in the car and take an afternoon drive downtown, and of course, I had to bring my camera. We found ourselves at Belmont Harbor, just north of all the major sights and attractions like Navy Pier and Soldiers Field. We walked around for about a half hour and I was able to take a few dozen photos while we were there. It was such a beautiful day out temperature-wise, albeit overcast, for the first weekend of November, and there were quite a few people out there on bikes, roller blades, or just their running shoes and man’s best friend trotting along side them.

Most of the day after that first stop was spent driving around and getting familiar with where everything is. We cruised Lake Shore Drive mostly and took a view side trips to see if we could get lost. For whatever reason, I’ve always had a weird stigma about driving around downtown Chicago, but I think this was a good step forward for me (as childish as that sounds).

After this initial trip into the big city, we’re certainly going to be planning a few more visits in the coming weeks. It’s always a magical sight in Chicago during winter when the streets light up, shopping down Michigan Avenue becomes a battle against the elements and the crowds, and everyone is in such a jolly mood. I look forward to capturing many of those moments in my photos.

Until then, you can check out my newly created Chicago photo set on Flickr and be sure to check back for more photos in the coming months.

The first assignment for my shiny new Canon Rebel XSi was at the Allstate Arena for an American Hockey League match-up between the hometown Chicago Wolves and the near-hometown Rockford Ice Hogs. To make matters more interesting (from a hockey perspective anyway), the Ice Hogs are the minor league affiliate of the Chicago Blackhawks, of which we’ve been big fans of this year.

Personally, I’ve played hockey since I could walk and have been a fan my entire life, so being able to shoot at hockey games is a combination of both passions. This was only the second time I went to a game fully intent on taking photos, and the last time was with my Canon EOS 20D. That gave me a good base comparison for how the Rebel XSi would fare in similar use.

The Seats

To start, I was behind the 8-ball from the opening face-off because we were sitting in one of the Suite boxes that was directly behind one of the goal nets. Great seats if you’re a fan (which we are, and we loved the seats), not so great if you’re trying to take photos through the giant protective netting that goes from the top of the glass up to the rafters. I knew that if I was going to get the types of shots I wanted, I’d have to sneak my way into some other seats (which I did).

For the Hawks game last year, we had the perfect seats, both from a fan’s perspective and for taking photos with my telephoto lens. Where I moved to this game with the Wolves, I ended up setting right near the goal line about 40 rows up. The best shots I could get from there were of the opposite end of the ice to clear the glass that was in front.

The Camera

So, to what really matters, the photos. Initially, the auto-focus wasn’t playing nice for me, which was do in most part to the netting and the glass that was in the foreground of my shots. I tried to stick it out, but ultimately had to switch to manual focus for the climatic shootout at the end of the game.

Being indoors and in a constant lighting environment for the entire game meant I didn’t need to play around with too many settings between shots. That made taking pictures quicker, but didn’t really test the entire range of features and usability like other situations would warrant. Overall, though, I was fairly impressed with the outcome.

One of the first noticable differnces from my Canon 20D was that the Rebel weighed a little less (about half a pound less according to the Canon specs). That is, however, until you put the telephoto lens on and then you don’t notice the difference that much. The large LCD screen was a big upgrade from the tiny little window on my 20D, so that made reviewing photos much easier. It also was a change for me to see and control all the settings on the screen itself, since the 20D has the display panel on the top of the camera, but that was only a minor adjustment.

The Photos

Out of about 350+ photos that weren’t total throwaways when I shot them, I ultimately ended up with about 40 or so keepers, which I’d say was pretty good. One of the issues I need to learn to correct when using the Rebel has to do with the Auto Focus settings. Even when I wasn’t shooting through glass or netting, I still had more than a few shots that seemed like it would only focus on a single point in the frame and not multiple areas like my 20D would. I adjusted the focus settings to use mutli-area and tried the different AI and Servo modes, but to be honest, it was mainly trial and error at the time. I need to do my homework on that one.

I do struggle a little with indoor shooting from a white balance perspective, so trying to get the right balance in some of these photos, both during the shot and in the digital darkroom, was a little bit of work. Compared to the shots I took at the United Center last March (when everything turned out with yellow and orange tints), I think these came out a little better, but not the level I wanted to.

With a fast-paced sport like hockey, I like to throw my camera in continuous shooting mode and catch some of those moments in action. For hockey, some of the obvious favorites are slap shots, body checks, and face-offs. I was also fortunate enough to get a few shots of the shoot-out after the game finished overtime in a tie, so that was neat as a fan and as a photographer.

The Rebel XSi, however, was only able to shoot at 3.5 shots/second, while my 20D made it up to 5 shots/second. If I had brought both cameras with me (like I intend to do on vacations and maybe future games), I would have switched to the 20D for that part of the game.

You can view all the photos from the game at on Flickr here.

As mentioned previously, I’ve had the Canon PowerShot SD890 for about a month now, and the first real test I ran it through was our trip to Door County, WI last month.  I thought I’d share some of my initial reactions and first photos using this little guy.

For a camera so small, a good part of the backside of it was the screen, which was larger than I’m used to.  I’ve shot with Cindy’s Nikon E5600 from time-to-time, so using the LCD instead of the viewfinder isn’t that big of a change for me, but the nice, clear screen on the SD890 made it very effective.  Even in bright sunlight, where Cindy’s Nikon sometimes suffers, it was still bright enough to get a good shot.

I was pleasantly surprised with how well the SD890 captured true colors with even the basic shooting modes.  I had some success with adjusting white balance and exposure settings, but even out of the box or with one of the program (SCN) modes, it held up to the Canon name.  As you can see with the colors in the photos here, everything looks crisp and vibrant, and for the few times we had clear skies that weekend, these shots came out great.

When the clouds started to roll in, I did have a little trouble adjusting the exposures to compensate.  In all fairness, that is one of my current weakpoints and something that I’m always working on.  That aside, I’m pretty happy with the SD890 as my everyday, everywhere camera.  Even my wife has started taking a liking to it, which is good because once we’re back in Maui next year, my quality shooting time is going to be spent with my DSLRs.