This is JK from Saturday’s photo shoot.  This young man said he doesn’t like to smile, so I felt priviledged and very lucky when I was able to get a laugh or smile out him.  As we were shooting and talking, I asked him what he was going to do after he graduated and he’ll be going into the Marines in July.  Luckily what he’ll be doing will require about a year and a half of schooling before he sees any active duty.

I learned a lot from this experience.  One is that I need to get a bigger memory card.  Two is that another camera body would be extremely nice to have so I wouldn’t have to fiddle with changing lenses as often.   Three, start a bit later and work a bit faster.  Four, bring water for both of us.

I also quickly learned that I needed an extra person to hold the reflector (his mother was sick and not able to come), so it was abandoned early in the shoot.  It did put a nice glow back on him, but I couldn’t maneuver the reflector and handle the camera at the same time.  If you remember, I said that I might try spray painting the flip side of the reflector with shiny gold paint, which I did do.  It didn’t stick, though, and flaked off when I tried to fold up the reflector.  The paint can directions said for an application like this to prime the surface first, and I do think that would have helped, although I wanted some of the silver to show through.   I might go back to the store and take another look at the sun shades available.  Although, I can just order a real one now to have in case there is a next time.

I’ve whittled down the 400 images to about 100, using a very critical eye.  If there was any softness in the focus at all, it was flagged as a reject and deleted.  I want to narrow down the remaining images even further to give them only the best.  More images to come over the next few days, although there will probably be a break in between for other things.