Missy Cochran Oregon Photographer

I just made  this fun little blog to chronicle the road to film which I know I am taking.  I get so excited about each step in the process, this will be a fun way to share.  Here is the link:

http://learnfilmwithme.blogspot.com/

About a month ago (wow, had it really been that long?)  a bunch of us local photographers went to Sara Grey’s Beach house at the coast for four days.  It was a photographer’s dream!  We talked shop almost the whole time except for when we didn’t talk shop.  I felt like I was in middle school have a huge sleepover with all my girlfriends without a lot of sleep.  Every day we went to the beach and took pictures of each other and we even had good weather most of the time.  The pictures I took were a new kind of experiment since it was the Fuji film’s version of a Polaroid camera.  I looked like a kinder-gardener walking to the beach with this huge plastic camera because I cannot yet be trusted with a real camera.  Yah, I got a lot of flack, but it was so fun and such a different experience to shoot with a VERY limited number of pictures that I could take.  I think I had 20 frames for the whole weekend.  Here is what I got…

Erica Ann knocked my socks off with her super sweet posing skills!

These girls thought I was taking a picture of their feet and they are bopping to the song, Under my umberella-ella-ella-eh-eh-eh which was stuck in my head the whole next day.

Sara Gray sporting her canon in the cutest way.

Dianne Michelle looking amazing

My sister, Melanie Jade (I call her Mel)

My camera really surprised me when the flash popped.  I didn’t even know it was there!

Taylor, I love her biker chick self juxtaposed with her sweet personality (Taylor, I don’t have your link!  If you send it to me, I will insert it.)

Jenni Carmon twice

Sara Gray again

Melissa looking fierce

Me.  Mel took it

Erica Ann again

My piggies

It’s me again.  So long.

I have so much to say about WPPI that I just don’t know where to begin.  Since this is the case, I will do what most people would do and that is to start at the beginning.  Mel and I had so much fun driving and being silly and reading to each other.  The drive took longer than we thought it would and it started getting pretty late.  We were driving from Reno to Vegas and there was a police officer in front of me.  He was fiddling with his spot lights and Mel (my sister) wondered what he was looking for.  Right as she thought that very thought, she looked to the side of the road and saw a car in the ditch.  She only saw a small portion of the car, though, because it was in a ditch.  She figured that was what the officer was looking for and insisted that I flash my lights to get his attention.  We flashed and flashed and flashed some more and finally the cop pulls over onto the side of the road and gets out to start walking toward us.  I leaned my head out the window and yelled, “Are you looking for a car in a ditch?”  And he says, “Yep, and it would be a lot easier to find it if you weren’t riding my tail and flashing your lights!!!”  I say, “well, we saw it about 50 yards back up the road.” and he said, “Well, what color was it?”  He said this very gruffly like he was very suspicious that we were up to no good.  I looked at Mel since she is the one who saw it and she said, “red” and he said, “Well, that is the color of the vehicle I am looking for.  You may pass me.”  That version is a little bit abridged for the sake of my fingers, but it was our first adventure.

Our second adventure was that we saw Jose Villa at the trade show!!!  Talk about fanfare!  It was all Mel and I could do not to run up to him screaming and pulling our hair out Beatles fan style.  Turns out that there are a bunch of photography celebrities at the convention, but not only is Jose Villa our favorite, but he also spoke to a small group at the Fuji booth for about half hour.  It was a total coincidence that we got to see him speak since there are about 10,000 photographers at the conference and the trade show is huge and we didn’t know he would even be there for that blip of time.  His words were so inspiring and I love that he follows his artistic sensibilities more than he follows a proper business sense.

We learned a ton researching the products shown there which was the whole point of going and we found out that we love White House Custom Colors lay flat books.  They were awesome and I will be ordering a sample soon!

In the evenings we hung out with Mel’s friends who live there and who we were staying with to save some moolah.  It was so fun to see the dancing water at the Bellagio.  The city was beautiful with the crisp cool air and blue sky.  The huge hotels on the strip laid the foreground of snow covered mountains in the distance.  Minus all the corruption of gambling and scantily clad posters everywhere downtown, it was an amazing place!

On the way home we had another crazy adventure.  It was the afternoon and we were going north on I-5 coming home when a man driving southbound fell asleep at the wheel and drove through the median and foggered (referencing the old atari game) through a bunch of northbound traffic (us) and over the highway through a fence and into the fruit tree of an apple orchard.  How do I know he fell asleep, you may wonder.  Well, when he hit the tree, we pulled over and Mel ran over to the car while I called 911.  He was dazed, but had no serious injuries and another woman who jumped out of her car to help turned out to be a trauma nurse.  It was so surreal to see this all happen right before my very eyes and also to know that the reality is that we could have been seriously injured if the man hadn’t been blessed enough to miss all the traffic.  It was a miracle!!

Here are some more pictures from my kids session last week.  I am playing with some new actions in photoshop.  They aren’t that different, but if you want to, let me know what you think.

That title should be sung to the tune of the parent trap movie (the  60s version).  Anyone know it? Okay, I am just throwing this out there for everyone. Many of you know that I am a member of the wedding photography forum at the b school. We get together once a month to talk shop and hang out. It is so very casual and I love it! By the way, anyone is welcome to join in on that. If you want me to put you on the mailing list of where and when we are meeting, let me know!

Here is my thought. Since the above mentioned group is made mostly of wedding photographers, how many of you out there would feel benefited doing one for portrait photographers? Basically what I am asking is this, If I were to try to plan a portrait photographers get together that is very laid back, would you want to come?

Here is my other thought. Are there enough casual photographers (having no professional aspirations, just wanting to get better at taking snapshots or pictures of their children)that read this blog and would feel benefited by either a mini workshop or even a questions answer get-together with a panel of photographers willing to help them and answer their questions, or just me answering questions, ha ha.

What do you think?

Missy Cochran is a lifestyle and wedding photographer in the Portland Oregon area
my website ~ blog home

I just got an email that I want to respond to on the blog for everyone’s benefit.

Alicea writes:
” I realy like ur images and I like your logo. We are going nuts trying to find a logo designer that has some style and won’t break the bank. Who did your logo? Also just curious as to what lens you were using in the featured wedding and what aperature you were shooting in the pic of them at the alter.”

Melanie and I worked together to create the logo ourselves! I hear all the time from photographers who are very established in this business that your branding is everything! Like Alecea, I am not at the point where I can afford to get professional branding done at this point, so I said to myself, “Self, you need to come up with something that you can stick to for the next 3-5 years while saving for some professional branding makover.” You see, I tend to change alot and become dissatisfied with the old and trying obsessively to rise onward and upward. Since I wanted to do something I could stick with, I decided to do some reasearch and start thinking about different ideas. For those of you who are members of the [b] school (if you are not a member, I hightly recommend it!), I found a really cool thread about branding at this link.

At weddings, I use a varity of lenses plus I have a second shooter with access to those same lenses. I am sure that I used a couple different ones for the shots referred to, so here is the list of lenses that I use during a ceremony:

These are all Canon lenses:
50mm 1.4
85mm 1.8
70-200 L IS 2.8

Also, during a dimly lit ceremony we always shoot wide open and avoid flash whenever possible not only so that it doesn’t distract from the ceremony, but so that we can take advantage as much as possible of any ambient light.

Missy Cochran ~ is a lifestyle and wedding photographer in the Portland Oreogn area
my website ~ blog home

This post is for photographers and it’s all free.  Who can beat free info about photography?  Any photographers out there who want some guidance I have some realy cool stuff to throw your way!  It’s maybe not the best way, but it’s worked for me so far and it’s what I value.  Click below to read the rest of the story.

I started making a series off assignments to help other photographers get going and have some direction.  I am just going to post them as I think of them.  It’s all very flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants!

Assignment 1:

 is designed to help you create direction for your style.  It is also designed to find out how compatable our styles are with respect to shooting together.  There are no wrong answers so focus on what you love no matter what anyone else thinks!
 
Your mission should you choose to accept it is to create a google reader account to track the blogs of your favorite photographers.  If you make it your homepage, you will see updates for your favorite photographers every time you log onto the internet.  Once it is created, I would love to look at who you found and I will share with you mine, so that we can get ideas from each others selections.  This will help me to get to know you artistically and appreciate your vision for yourself as you incorporate many elements into the style you want to develop.
 
Good sources for finding photographers are:
 
google
mywedding.com
theknot.com
Professional Photographers of America (PPA)
Digital Wedding Forum (DWF)
wpja.com (wedding photojornalism association)
WPPI
 
Here is the link to make a google reader account: http://googlereader
 
The next part of this assignment is to familiarize yourself with my favorate photographers.  When I communicate about photography, I reference my favorites a lot and it is helpful when we converse about the subject to reference the same people.  Melanie and I often say something like, “I was totally inspired by the light is was so whitebox!”  Whitebox is one of my top three favorites!  Along with Jose Villa and Fred Egan.  Whitebox epitimizes what I love in photography about light and color and fun, I love Jose Villas film look and timeless classical images, my favorite kind of fine art.  Fred Egan’s photographs are infused with free spiritedness.  I like to think of myself a combination of the three when it comes to weddings.  I draw from different inspirational sources for families, kids, babies, etc.  I hope that my assistant will not try to shoot like I do, but try to lean toward the inspirations that I draw from, does that make sense?  I am always trying to grow and stretch myself this way! 
 
Here is the link to my favorite photographers: http://delicious.com/misphotographics
To make this part of the assignment quantitative, I would like you to make a folder of your favorites from these websites and email them to my when you have looked through everything.  Tell me who you loved and who stood out to you and why.
Assignment 2:reader.google.com

Read your camera manual and try out everything in it.  Read it twice if you have to.  Figure out what features you will use on a regular basis and which ones you don’t care for.  At least you will know they are there.  Pay special attention to ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed, and manual mode, you will probably always be using your knowledge of these. 

Assignment 3:

Buy Lightroom and read the manual.  I feel this program is more inportant than photoshop itself!

 Assigment 4:

Go to Becker School!  This is a free education use it!

There, that ottah keep you busy for a while.  Like I said, it may not be for everyone, but if I could go back to day one and tell myself what to do to progess quickly, that is what I would say to myself.  Actually the Becker School is pretty much cooler than anything I can do for you, so watch everything for a wealth of info.  I am very much in agreement with Becker’s philosophy of helping out and giving back and networking with other photographers.