David Martschinske Photography

So it’s been 5 years of papers, projects, and stress… I’m finally done! I graduate in a few days on Saturday, June 14 2008! woot woot! now life gets easy right? haha, who am I even trying to kid. Life is already so busy with doing youth ministry, working at Artisan, school, photography when I get a chance - not to mention my social life (My girlfriend, movies, my new dog Tucker, the Inn… the list goes on). I kind of wanted to move somewhere completely in the middle of nowhere or at least where I don’t know anybody. I kind of just want to start a new life and not have to deal with all of my mistakes/commitments. I have a problem of overbooking myself socially. I most definitely have learned a lot from college in more than just engineering.

Let me show you a bit of what I’m working on currently:

The Sirks Wedding:
Dane and Barbara are married! I was so excited when they asked me to be their photographer and I think the pictures turned out great. I took over 3500 images (also shooting was my brother, Jason Martschinske) and now feel that it’s best to send online albums to my client before ANY editing even gets done. It feels like a big risk for me because editing can cover up some mistakes… and let’s face it… editing is required for a number of reasons. Sharpening (a must do), local and global tonal shifts, contrast, popping the eyes (not literally haha), vingetting, acne/blemish removal, skin smoothing, you name it, they help ANY image out in my opinion. Enough jibba jabba, here are some that I’ve chosen to edit so far.

THIS IS ME:
This is just what I do with my friends… I was in Allison’s car and totally paparazzi’d Rachel and Jon. This is how their relationship goes… Rachel controls. haha.

This is me playing guitar hero, I’m so good, NOT. I’ve found that I dont have any non-blury pictures of me taken with my camera, people have a hard time when I tell them, “let me adjust the ISO before you take that or else it will be blurry.”

Hands On Films:
Fred and Aaron of Hands on Films asked me to take some pictures for their website/promotional material. They were the perfect clients because they basically said, “do what you want to do, we just need pictures.” That gave both of us an atmosphere to explore each of our creative minds in order to get a cool shot. Here are a few that I’ve edited so far:

Janelle Herrick:
Janelle asked to get some senior pictures so that she can give them to her family. We went out and had some fun in a few fields - That’s always fun for me!!

work it girl!

Dinking around:
This is my sister, Jessica, and her friend Meghan Dickinson doing some karate at night!

Kayla and Chris Fry Wedding:
Kayla and Chris Fry are married! Kayla’s cousin, Dave Ainley of Dave Ainley Photography was there shooting as well. He is really good and you should check out his work. Anyways here are a few of my favorites, you can see a trend of color masking that is sort of my thing that I do.

Mikaela Sulak Confirmation:
Mikaela Sulak, the girl who sold me my dog, Tucker so she could pay for a mission trip, was recently confirmed at Bellingham Covenant Church. Here is the proof baby!

My Puppy, Tucker:
If I did’t have a girlfriend, I would use Tucker to pick up chicks because EVERY person stops to pet him - total babe magnet!

The first day I took Tucker away from his brothers and sisters.

Now he’s all grown up, at least to 9 weeks.

This concludes this blog of “oops i need to actually post in my blog”

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Today was a milestone for myself. I had my first taste at fashion photography with Cory Arashiro. She’s a clothing designer from Hawaii who moved to Portland, OR to go to school. I know her sister Cody who recommended myself to her. (thanks cody!) Anyways this shoot was fun… incredibly!

Working with Cory and Cody was easy because I had a great assistant, Jaycee. I explained to Jaycee exactly what I wanted in terms of lighting and with that said the pictures turned out great, I’ll let you see for yourself at the bottom of this post. We ventured to three different locations for this shoot and she had on about 5 different dresses. When she pulled them out to show me before the shoot what they looked like I said in my mind, “where is the rest of it.” they were short! When she actually put them on they didnt seem quite as bad as I imagined but DANG GIRL, showin some leg! haha!

Our first stop was an abandoned blue bus, I can’t wait to process those images because the bus contrasted amazingly with her dress. Afterwards we walked down to Squalicum Beach in order to grab a few shots - those turned out okay. The real fun began once we got into the ally. My favorite type of shot is one with excellent juxtaposition. Blending a beautiful girl in with a dingy ally turned out amazingly! I am learning more and more how to get successful shots at peak efficiency! Bellingham has a lot of great locations to shoot at and it will take a while until I find some more locations in Vancouver.

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So apparently when people go to college they need to find a job afterwards… That is what I have been doing. Ever since I interned at US Digital it was sort of a no - brainer that I wanted to return and work as an engineer there. The company is amazing… I’m talking free granola and lemon slices in your water nice. After interviewing at Artisan Industries, Elite Plastics, Fluke Electronics, R&D Plastics, as well as US Digital I thought my head was going to explode if I heard another utterance of health care plans. Long story short what it came down to was among many other things the quality of work that US Digital would provide me with- giving me room to expand and spread my wings, the benefits (outstanding), and the ability to only 4 days a week! This would give me plenty of time to work on photography, a serious passion of mine - obviously! I cannot wait to decorate my office space with my photography and textbooks upon textbooks.As far as photography goes I did some graduation pictures at boardwalk with my friend Tanya Hedine and her roommate Laura Mckenney. Here are some of Tanya’s that I have gone through so far:

I was blown away by how much her eyes popped out. Look at those puppies! It is sessions like these that remind me why I love photography so much.

Speaking on that note, what I do NOT LOVE about photography is the price of gear! I have spent so much money on camera stuff, and though it is worth every penny I am glad that I will actually have a real job to supplement new purchases. I really need to get a set of white lightnings, a few pocket wizards, a giant softbox, grids, a light meter, backgrounds, and lightstands… wow this is expensive!

In other news… The Real You has requested me through my friend, Rachel Nelson to do some band promos. It’s been a while since I’ve worked with a band and I hope this works out. I checked them out and they sound tight. I hope they give me some tickets on the side, I should just tell them to give me a set of tix to their show on the 16th in Seattle so I can take live photos of them. (ok, just sent a myspace message, we’ll see).

Also, my skillz have been growing a lot lately and my wedding gallery really undersells me because that work is so old! I’m taking down those pictures because I think it does more damage to put up pictures that don’t show my capacity.

Tulip Fields - Mt. Vernon, Washington:

I will probably be making some posters of a few of these shots as well as some others to take to the saturday market / art gallery for a showing.

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I cannot wait until next month when I get to shoot Barbara and Dane’s wedding!  The wedding will be in Camas, WA at the Camas Community Center.

Here is why I’m excited:  The last two weddings that I shot were just purely to dab my feet in the water.  Now my feet are wet, and I am actually prepared this time with equipment.  Before I had only a kit lens for my camera, after dropping a LOT of money on lenses I’m ready to make some CLUTCH pictures!

Another reason that I am excited is because my wedding portfolio will finally be updated to reflect the level that I am at.  I feel like when people look at my wedding section they don’t see a clear picture of what I can offer.  I’m a budding professional photographer and I am still honing in on my skills.

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Did a few senior portraits in the last few days for Levi Johnson and Reid McEvoy, Here are some of my favs.

Levi:

Reid:

Senior Pictures went well.

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well, the title basically explains what happend today. I took the new lens out for a test shoot with my girlfriend and my roommates car got annihilated. First of all the “fake senior pictures” went well. I wanted to try out some new poses with my girlfriend, Allison Budzier as the model. I learned about a new sharpening tool and well, this lens is sharp anyways so hopefully you can see a definite increase in quality. Below are some Before and After Edits, A few are a bit overdone on the eyes on second glance, but hey… that’s what practice is for right?

Allison Senior Picture Pose 1

Allison Senior Picture Pose 2

Allison Senior Picture Pose 3

Allison Senior Picture Pose 4

So, I went a little overboard with editing, I know! But I had some fun. Let me know if you think it’s too much or if its classy, I would really value your opinion. whoever “you” are.

Also, my roommate, Boon Chaya got his car smashed into around 10:30 at night. Allison and I were out after our photoshoot grabbing some Dairy Queen and then driving down Chuckanut Drive to view the bay. When we came back, my roommate Joel was in the middle of the road checking out this car that had smashed into Boon’s nice Honda. The guy was totally drunk and was actually our neighbor… classy.

So as you can see, Boon was upset! Don’t worry though, I sang him a song after this happened.

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Thanks to Michelle of LuLu Weddings I finally have the 17-55 f/1.4mm. I sold my marshall JCM 600 guitar amp and Jasmine (My guitar) in order to purchase this $1000+ lens! It is sort of a wierd feeling because I spent so much money on it, but at the same time I am going to be making so much more with it. Anyways, I need to get booked for a lot more weddings now. Speaking of weddings… I REALLY cannot wait for Dane and Barbara’s Wedding on the 25th for 2 reasons. First of all, my wedding pictures before this are not where my skill level currently is and I need to update my wedding section. Secondly, I am itching to use this new lens. I took It on a test run today and I am amazed at how sharp it is. At 100% crop I get pictures that are much sharper than my 50mm prime! You may think I am lying but I kid you not! It was well worth the truckload of money that I spent. Here are some pictures that I took with it today:

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Tonight I took my 50mm f/1.4 to The Inn with Allison and did a field test. I feel so much better using this lens after tonight. Here are a few things that I learned:

1. Shoot while “riding the light” - This technique is used by spot metering on the face of the lead guitar player (or main subject on stage) taking those readings and “riding the light” by shooting fully manual with the spot metered reading. This is always great to do because of the constantly changing light sources for bands and performances on stage.
2. Don’t always shoot at the widest aperature! Even though my new lens is capable of a f/1.4, there are certain situations where this is not useful. When shooting with a flash when people are moving around a lot f/2.8 might be more suitable due to its wider depth of field. I was noticing when shooting wide open (f/1.4) that images would get blury (shooting near 1/40 of a second) this was due to the narrow DOF I’m assuming. That’s what testing is for right!? We’ll see what happens with more testing.

For $250 this 50mm f/1.4 Nikon lens was well worth the investment. Shooting a prime lens takes a small amount of getting used to but the benefits are well worth it! You have lower costs for faster glass, only you lose the capability to crop shots without moving and not to mention you have to carry more lenses.

After the Inn my roommate Boon and I played with my new lens and sync cord. We took some cool images using nikon capture which allowed us to see the photos immediately on the computer (this will be cool once I get a laptop!) Here are some of the shots, I want to do a series of all the roommates then print em all out! BTW Boon took these pictures, I edited them. Except for the one I took of him brushing his teeth.

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This is a video tutorial of how I approach a picture when I want to turn it into black and white. Notice that of the common methods to turn a photo to black and white, the most labor intensive one (Channel Mixer tool) yields the best results.

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I’m a Nikon guy, I probably always will be. Why you ask? It’s all thanks to my old roommate Joe. After my Grandpa bought me my first camera (Sony DSC W-1) I got way into photography and my roommate at the time, Joseph Lee let me borrow his Nikon D-50 all the time. This sent me into a love-hate relationship with Nikon. Things are very sketch between us. I love the interface, controls, and the fact that my infantile stages of photography were on a Nikon. I hate the fact that lots of people I know use Cannon, making it hard to share lenses as well as the fact that Nikon is not well known for its noise at high ISO settings.

This being said, I have recently made some additions to my Nikon gear collection. Today I bought a 50mm f/1.4 lens with a b+w filteras well as a sync cord for my sb-800 flash - This ran me about $300. Here is a shot of my buddy, Grant that I snapped with this lens.

 My other lens…

So right now I have a 80-200 f/2.8  as well as this new 50mm f/1.4, This means That I really need to get a wide angle lens before May 25, which is my next wedding (Barbara and Dane Sirks - Camas, WA). Michele Waite has a 17-55 f/2.8 lens up for sale and it is awesome! the images were as sharp, if not sharper than my prime lens! This is likely one of the reasons that it will run my $1050!!! Yeah, I need to sell a lot of stuff on craigslist in order to get this lens. BUT once I do I will at least have a basic setup for shooting weddings. As you can see from my VERY limited portfolio using basic lenses will only yeild basic photos. I NEED faster lenses, f/3.5-5.6 aint gunna cut it jack! Especially since Dane and Barbara will be getting married at a place with super low lights. I’m always hesitant to use a flash, I think everyone should be.

As my editing workflow gets better every week, the quality of delivered product also increases. I hope that I will be able to work under a great photographer locally and gain massive amounts of insight!

Well, it’s time for me to get to bed, I need to work on lots of stuff tomorrow!

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