photography

The Rorate Mass is a traditional Mass held during Advent, usually early in the morning (pre-dawn) or late in the evening, where the entire church is lit only by candlelight. Mass begins with the singing of the Rorate Cæli (translated "Drop down dew, ye heavens"), and as it is a votive Mass for the Blessed Virgin Mary, white vestments are worn instead of the typical Advent violet.

In St. Louis, we had a Rorate Mass at St. James the Greater parish in Dogtown, which is a western part of the City of St. Louis (and about a 10 minute drive from my house).

Like Tenebræ, It's one of the liturgical events that's better experienced in person than viewed through the lens of a camera, but I did as much as I could with the dim candlelight available and my f/2.8 lenses (most shots were handheld):

This weekend, I'm down in Springfield, MO, photographing the Steubenville St. Louis Mid-America youth conference (which is on its second weekend—more than 6,000 teens participate in this event!).

I'll be posting my pictures in near-real-time to Flickr (on stlyouth's photostream — here's a link to all the pictures from the weekend), and I'll hopefully have time to do a writeup on the gear I'm using—two Nikon bodies (including a rented D7100!), two Eye-Fi cards, and a 4G hotspot.

Here are two of my favorite shots from the tonight (Eucharistic Adoration is always a highlight):

This year's Transitional Deacon Ordination Mass took place last Saturday, May 4 (May the 4th be with you! And with your spirit.).

I was privileged to be able to take photos for this year's transitional deacons, even more so since I will be unable to attend the Priesthood Ordination Mass this year (due to my attendance at DrupalCon Portland), and was happy to see many of my seminarian friends become deacons—one step closer to their journey towards the priesthood.

You can view the entire set of photos on Flickr: 2013 Transitional Deacon Ordination.

See previous posts:

• Photography Weekend Part 2 - Taking Photos
• Photography Weekend Part 1 - Packing My Gear

An Ounce of Prevention...

When you work on a project where every piece of work (in this case, every photograph) needs to be cataloged, backed up, and sent to production as it's created, you have to plan things out pretty well in advance, but also be ready to fix problems and adapt to difficulties as they arise.

During my weekend of photography at Steubenville St. Louis, I was quite prepared for most difficulties that could crop up in photography:

See previous post: Photography Weekend Part 1 - Packing My Gear.

I apologize for not getting this post out sooner; the first weekend of Steubenville St. Louis went by so quickly that I simply didn't have time to write more about my process over the weekend.

In this entry, I'm going to speak a little bit about the gear I use while I'm out getting pictures. Note that this setup is what I'd typically use when doing photojournalism-style event photography—not what I'd necessarily have when doing studio shoots, portraits, etc. (more controlled environments).

This weekend I'm heading to Steubenville St. Louis to photograph the weekend's events. There will be a wide variety of photo opportunities, from band shots/stage lighting, to outdoor portraits, to group shots and environmental shots. Thus, I will be needing almost all my gear to make sure I can have the versatility I need to get the pictures people want to see.

I'm going to try to document the whole process—packing up/readying my gear (in this post), getting outfitted with the equipment I need (once on location), processing photos, and then cleaning things up.

(Click on the photo to view a TON more detail about all the gear)

As you can see from the picture above, I pack relatively heavy. At least, for a solo photographer who doesn't do much commercial work :)

I popped over to YouTube yesterday to check out my channel page, and realized my videos have now surpassed 500,000 views—that's pretty awesome! I also have about as many subscribers to that channel as I do to this blog's RSS feed, so I figure I might think about catering to that audience with some new videos...

(Video has since been removed)

I've posted all the photos I took at this year's Mass of Priestly Ordination at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis on Flickr:

Congratulations to all five men who were ordained; we'll be praying for you!

I recently told my Facebook friends that I was thinking of writing a book to help people get better photos with their fancy cameras, and received a lot of positive feedback.

Getting consistently sharp, vivid, interesting photos doesn't have to be hard.

Some of the things I want to write about include:

• Getting photos that aren't too bright or too dark.
• Getting photos where people aren't blurry.
• Making people look great.
• Taking pictures that are beautiful, more often.

I don't want to be technical in this book, other than introducing people, slowly, to important concepts in photography. I want to show people through example and experience exactly what's going on when they snap a picture that they later find to be ugly, horrible, or too blurry or bright/dark to use.