Birthday Party for Olivia and Christian

Birthday Party wishes being made captured with candid photography in Tampa (c) 2009 Jason Collin Photography

Besides being a professional photographer, I also teach Mac & OS X lessons.  Carlos is a longtime Mac student of mine who hired me to photograph his children's birthday party.  It was a unique experience for me to have a client that I already knew well and to shoot on location at his home in Tampa.  His family could not have been more friendly and his backyard could not have been a better outdoor location for photographing a birthday party.  

Birthday Party activities can be potentially hazardous to your health! (c) 2009 Jason Collin Photography

Olivia was both not camera shy at all and also able to act totally naturally despite a long lens being pointed her way most of the party.  Again, I could not ask for a better combination!  She also was a very active birthday girl making for a wide variety of candid action shots.  A large rubber ball and a helium balloon are great props!

All the birthday cupcakes a boy can eat! (c) 2009 Jason Collin Photography

The birthday boy was a bit more reserved, showing wisdom beyond his years in securing direct access to some scrumptious birthday cup cakes.  I can testify to their deliciousness myself having eaten one.  

Thanks to Carlos, Olivia, Christian and the rest of the family for making it a great afternoon of birthday photography!

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Setting up for my haikyo exhibition

The gallery space in RAW Vibes as we bring the very first haikyo photographs in.This late night RAW Vibes owner Jeff and I worked tirelessly for as long as our eyes could stay open to get up all the 16x20 prints for Friday night's haikyo exhibition.  It was fun, but tiring, but we made good progress.  I am writing this with an exhausted mind....so just enjoy the sneak preview photos of the exhibition for now.  I'm going to sleep.....

With all the haikyo photographs catergorized and put next to their respective wallspace, we were ready to start hanging.

Jeff has good hanging skills and we got the haikyo prints all within a single millimeter of each other.

All the 16x20 haikyo prints up! I left after this, but Jeff may have labored on as all the 16x9 and 24x36 and 8x10 images still needed to be hung.

Tampa Children's Birthday Party in Black & White

The birthday girl thinks of something to wish for - location: Tampa, Florida

This past Saturday's birthday party shoot was in a near ideal photographer's location:  backyard with lots of shadows but still bright with lots of play space for the kids.  My specialty is candid photography, and the kids at the party obliged that style greatly by mostly ignoring me and going about their play naturally.  However, some of them loved to pose without any prompting, which will be the subject matter of a future post.

The birthday boy chooses a cupcake over birthday cake.

There was a lot of great food at this birthday party, and the hosts graciously let us eat anything we wanted to.  I, myself, sampled one of the above cupcakes and the touch of lemon in them made for a very tasty cupcake.  

No sibling jealousy despite having birthdays very close to each other's.

The brother and sister's birthdays were only separated by a few days allowing for a two-for-one birthday party scenario.  As long as his sister continues to love him as much as she does now, I foresee no sibling squabbles about who may or may not have gotten a better birthday present.  She was always hugging and kissing her brother, as seen above.

The birthday boy's grandfather siphons a beverage into his mouth.It's always great when there can be three generations (or more) at family gatherings, such as the case at this birthday party.  I wonder what grandpa's childhood birthday parties were like?  No doubt he doesn't have as many photographs from his childhood birthday parties as children will have of their birthday parties nowadays.  Blowing out the candles on her birthday cake.

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Historic Roser Park Art Festival 2009

Historic Roser Park - a surprisingly nice area for an art festival.

I thought there were no hills south of Brookesville.  So it took me a minute to realize what exactly was different about the Historic Roser Park area of Saint Petersburg.  My eyes were focused on the stream at first, until a sign told me I was in a ravine.  I looked up and saw houses on hills, like San Francisco or somewhere like that.  This was enough for the art festival to be a win in my book.

Booths stretched down along a small stream and actually contained many unique items beyond the usual festival fare.

The festival was not crowded so we could amble in and out of booths at our ease.  There were several photographers with booths there.  I always like to check out the competition.  As always I thought, if I just had my own booth...but if there were any money to be made from having a booth then surely the best photographers in the area would have booths as well?

 These were ingenious crafts that can transform from a vase into a pretty women's hat! For $15 I was tempted to buy one.

Beyond the fine art on display were a good variety of crafts.  I always find myself very interested in crafts, but never quite buying any.  There were sculptured wooden bowls that could flatten by lowering their handles.  I was impressed with the craftsmanship.  

I first saw a living statue artist on a fell day in Zurich, Switzerland many years ago.

Not to spoil the secret, but under the heavy makeup is actually a friendly woman.  Aya gave her a dollar tip and got a handshake from her, as well as two lollipops and for me this photo chance.  She was good.  I could not see her ribs moving at all.  I would like to know what she thinks about to maintain her concentration?  Maybe nothing?  I should have tried to ask her.

HISTORIC ROSER PARK MAP

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Breast Cancer 3-Day march in downtown Saint Petersburg Florida

A very enthusiastic and dense group of people march down Bayshore Drive NE in Saint Petersburg, Florida.

Other business brought me to downtown Saint Petersburg this afternoon, but fortunately it was photography business so I had my Nikon D300 with me and even my Nikkor AF ED 80-200mm f/2.8D lens attached as I surprisingly witnessed great waves of participants in the Breast Cancer 3-Day event.

The participants were very friendly and not at all camera shy as many who saw me turned and waved.  As I left the area I could hear in the distance the rousing closing rally.  At this time an old woman said to me, unprompted, that they had raised $3 million over the three days.  It made me think, "wow, is St. Pete rich as the population here is actually small."  

Haikyo - Urban Decay from Japan Exhibition

The flyer for my first exhibition in Florida. Exhibition opens November 13, 2009 at http://www.rawvibesart.com

On Friday November 13th at 8pm at RAW Vibes Art and Performance Space I will have my first exhibition in Florida!  The photographs I will be showing for this exhibition will be my haikyo photos from Japan.  I must admit I never expected this collection of photographs to be the first images I publicly showed in the U.S., but I became very fast friends with the owner of RAW Vibes, Jeff Henriquez, about a month ago and he was a very big fan of the haikyo images.

Over 60 photographs will be on display in prints ranging from the standard 8x10 up to the gallery standard of 16x20 all the way up to a few selected pieces at 40x60!  Prices will vary accordingly with many prints available at very reasonable prices for all budgets.  For those with no budgetary concerns, the 40x60 prints will make a striking statement in your business, home or office.  Orders can be placed on site for any piece already sold that you wish to also purchase (25% deposit required).  

I will be present the full 3-hours of the opening night to answer any questions about the haikyo images.  I will also give a brief presentation on the collection of haikyo images in general, including what exactly haikyo is, how they were found, and what it is like to spend the night in an abandoned hotel!

Admission on opening night is $7.  If you leave a comment below, I will choose at random one person to receive two free passes to the opening (you and a guest).  Refreshments will be served at no charge.  

Please RSVP for the opening on Facebook or by leaving a comment below.

Thank you for your support and I hope to see everyone on the 13th!

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Haikyo - Urban Decay from Japan exhibition

• RAW Vibes, 2109 Central Ave, Saint Petersburg, FL, 33713 -- 727-557-8266
• Friday November 13, 2009 
• 8pm-11pm

"A Night of Fashion" on USF Tampa Campus

A jabbawockeez inspired performance. I am a big fan of this style of dance. See Shaq with the jabbawockeez.

Last night's fashion and dance event at USF Tampa campus fully titled, "OMEGA PSI PHI presents 'A NIGHT OF FASHION,'" was quite the challenge to photograph.  Very little light.  No overhead light at all.  The little lighting there was, was in the form of hot area lights at basically eye level.  This translated into having to wait of dancers and models to body block the lights before pushing the shutter, or just choose to use the lights and get an effect like seen in the above photograph.

The leader of the Titans step team was very intense and thus a joy to photograph.

For one whole performance, the men's Titan Step Team was right in front of me the whole time.  The leader (above) had great charisma, and of course dance skills too.  After each portion of their routine, the men would stop and strike a self-fist bump pose.  It was not all serious though as they broke into a Bell Biv Devoe "Poison" breakdown that I could appreciate since that song was right from the heart of my time.

Of course there were plenty of ladies on the fashion runway too.

I quickly realized that my best of the bad light shooting spot was not on the map for a majority of the fashion models that strode out.  So in order to get some head-on shots I had to scamper around a bit, hither and thither.  Even then, I just could not get a totally sharp shot.

The performers, dancers and models all brought their "A" game.  The energy in USF's lower gym-cum-runway was palpable.  The Faces Modeling Troupe got the loudest response of the night.  I look forward to the next challenging to shoot fashion show and will take what I learned from this experience and hopefully have a higher success rate the next time.  But who knows what the lighting situation will be then?

Most of the fashion was very urban, from urban street to urban business attire.