I asked a good friend and fellow shooter, Daniel Thom, to assist with the shoot. We set up a couple of Einstein strobes with large softboxes to use as light. The sun was off to the southwest providing a great rim light as the day wore on and the two Einstein’s used for fill. I also brought along my new Orbis ring flash to try out. We shot for a good 4 hours and got a great collection of photos for the family to choose from.

Click Here  — to view all of the photos from this shoot!

More info with photos after the break…

The location is Allure Hair Design at 621 E. First Street in downtown Newberg.  Its on Hwy 99 in the part of the highway that goes through old Newberg where the one-way streets are.  Its on the section where the one way traffic goes east on Hwy 99.

It’s in an old part of town and has a small park right next to it with a really cool fountain and old brick wall.  Right across the street is a coffee shop called Chapters – it’s part book store, part coffee shop.  Seems that every corner in Newberg has a small hole in the wall coffee shop, and they are all great.

The park will be in the shade about mid afternoon….

 We hooked up with Vista Hills Winery up in the red hills above Dundee with a great vista of Lafayette below and the coast range in the back with the setting sun – just a really cool place. 

Well half way into the party this fairy showed up.  I was totally unaware.  Later I found out it was a friend of Alicia’s that she once worked with.  Below is a video of that meeting.

Alicia asked if I would invite some of my photog friends to her party to act like paparazzi’s and take photos of everyone since they would be dressed up like movie stars. I had a handful of photog friends show who did a fantastic job shooting the party, they were the talk of the night. It was a chance to have their pictures taken while they were all dressed up and at a great location. You can CLICK HERE to see the photo’s.

One of our neighbors graduated this year from McMinnville High School and asked if I would shoot her senior pictures.  Of course I said “sure”.  Her friend Nikki came along with Sara and I.  First stop was Lafayette Locks Park.  We tried a few walking down a path, along a fence and on the playground equipment. 

We left Locks Park and headed up to the Trappist Abbey to do some on location shoots their along the little creek and lake they have. 

You can view all of the photos taken that day by CLICKING HERE.

CLICK HERE to view all the Prom Photo’s taken that night.

I wasn’t up at 6am to take photos but I did drive up later in the day to snap a couple of shots. Below is what I got –

Below is a video of the placement of the 747 onto the water park structure.  These are over 6,000 still photos someone took and put together to make a video of the event…

.

The “why” we will never know in our life time, soon we will meet again and talk about it then. We remember the man that Dan was, the time we had to spend together, as short as it was. But, it will still be sad to see him go so fast, so young, and with so much.

Rest peacefully my friend, I’ll see you on the other side!

Dan Selsor from Randy Kashka on Vimeo.

As I did some research, talking to people, reading what I can on the web, and looking at what other photogs charge I find that there is no real guideline except that your services are worth something and “it all depends”. Depends on where you live, depends on what you shoot, and depends on your experience and style. In the end I found it very difficult to create a price structure.

I don’t think I’ll get rich and famous taking photo’s, that’s not my intent. I want to learn as much as I can to capture the best photo as often as I can. In the process of doing this I am finding that this field of work does have some costs involved from the light stands to hold a light, the softbox to make the light appealing, the lens to get the sharpest images possible. All these items do cost money. If I can create a price structure to offset my costs and time then I think I am successful.

So after looking at what others charge, comparing my works with theirs, and giving it much thought I finally put together, what I think, a very competitive price matrix for that question I often get asked – how much do you charge? I figure my time to take the photos is worth something, then the processing time to go through each photo, evaluate them to see if they are keepers or not, make adjustments to lighting, cropping them to exploit the real topic of the shot, cleaning up the skin, eyes, etc (do photogs really do that – yes), other post processing edits to make the photo pop and then create a web page for others to view them is worth something. Then to get prints or copies of those is also worth something – they are works of art, aren’t they?

At the top of this blog you will now be able to find a link to my price structure for my work, which of course can change at any time and is definitely negotiable.