Daniel Rarela

Dan ain’t dead… just hustlin’!

Heey all on RB! I’ve missed talking with all of you, but what can I say? Life has been so crazy lately that it’s been hard to find the time to blog again!

I guess the main reason why life has been hectic is because of the economic crisis. I didn’t really think it’d affect me, but after losing my job in January (and still having about 50 payments left on my car), I’ve been relying on unemployment insurance, my mother’s generosity, Craigslist, and God’s grace to see to it that the monthly damage to my finances has been minimal. Not that I’m struggling, mind you… it’s just that, well, no matter how much money you think you’ve got, it always looks like a lot less when you’re on the crappier side of the employment fence.

That said, nearly every day I’m scouring online job postings and classifeds, looking for anyone in the LA/ OC/ IE area of Southern California who needs a photographer. The general rule with Craiglist is that you can send out 100 emails/resumes in a day, and be lucky if even one person responds, but still, can’t leave any stones unturned, can I? Thankfully, there have been other avenues – word of mouth and Model Mayhem have done a much better job at getting me freelance gigs. I guess I’ve taken a short break from fine art photography and dedicated myself a little bit more to the kind of photography that helps pay the bills – that is to say, fashion/modeling and wedding photography! Because after all, there’s always an aspiring model who wants some great headshots (an art which I am slowly but surely mastering), and there’s always couples who are getting married!

Speaking of weddings, I just shot my very first REAL one last week! Mind you, I’ve done a few weddings before, but in those cases I wasn’t the main shooter. This time, I was more or less the one running the ship on my own, so the pressure was much greater. You can see the results of it here

It actually went a lot easier than I expected, but shooting in that darn church was a hassle. It was bad enough that I couldn’t use flash AT ALL during the ceremony, but the fact that the church was so poorly lit to begin with made everything so much worse! That said, I had my I.S on during the whole time in that church, shutter speed around 1/20s, was shooting as wide open as my telephoto would allow (f/4-5.6), with my ISO bumped all the way up to 800.

CAMERA NERD ALERT

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my Oly E-520 and all the wonderfully sharp Zuiko glass that goes with it… but Olympus also has a reputation for having noisier images than most of their competition when you go to ISO 800 and beyond. Noise isn’t a deal breaker for me when it comes to cameras, but it still is an issue I’d rather not have to deal with – especially as a photographer who prefers available/ ambient light over studio work. My idea of a perfect camera would probably be the new Olympus E-620, but with a few minor adjustments – it’d hold the same kind of batteries as the E-520, have the E-3’s weatherproofing,/ SWD focus motor, be free of all those BS Art Filters which damage its reputation as a semi-pro camera (although I’d keep the Pop Art/ Grainy Film/ Soft Focus filters), and it’d also have a sensor that could keep images as noise free as Canon’s cameras. I don’t go gaga over Canon, but I was still impressed at how little noise there is in their photos, even when bumped up to ISO 1200/1600. That said, as tempting as it is to splurge on an E-620, I think I’ll wait for Olympus to create a similar camera in which its Achilles’ heel (noise) is less of an issue.

In terms of the wedding I just did, shooting the whole church ceremony at ISO 800 was such that you could see the noise even when it was magnified at only 25% on my computer. The great thing, however, is that you can always convert the images to B/W and boost the contrast to give it a really cool, old school film kind of feel. It’s just my hope that that kind of look is one that the newlyweds can appreciate. Even if they’re iffy about that, the fact still remains that I got some great shots everywhere else that day! Taking some advanced photography classes in wedding photography and available light has really helped – it’s been getting easier to spot random locations that happen to have good light and milk it for all it’s worth!

CAMERA NERD ALERT END

And having knocked out that particular wedding, I’ve got a few new potential clients on my list now as a result! One of the bridesmaids will be getting married in July, and she wants me do photograph it. The emcee at the wedding needs some headshots, so I gave him my business card. And the wedding coordinator loved me too, so hopefully she’ll be contacting me soon as well.

Weddings aside, I’m slowly building up a reputation as a fashion/ portraiture photographer as well! I’ve always had tons of fun photographing my friends and making them look like models (keep in mind that nearly ALL the people you see in my RB images are friends of mine, NOT professionals), but it’s also great to work with aspiring models who, for the most part, are a lot more passionate about being captured on camera. I’ll say it again, setting up a Model Mayhem account as helped tremendously in this sense, and as I’ve built up my portfolio, more and more people have started contacting me, requesting shoots. Nearly all of them just want to do TFP shoots, but even in spite of the fact that I earn no money off these shoots, I still learn a little more as a photographer with each one I do. Plus, the only thing I give the models in return are low-res files of my best shots for online promotion only and three prints, so it’s not like they benefit a whole lot more than I do from our shoot together. If they want extra prints, or a CD, that’s when I start charging them.

I’m also trying to keep a healthy balance between shooting male and female models. Normally, whenever there’s a photo shoot to be had, it’s always the ladies who step up first. Not that I don’t appreciate that, but shooting male models was something I had less experience with, and in some ways is more of a challenge for me. When you photograph a woman, there’s a wide variety of poses/ looks that she can get away with and still look drop-dead sexy. Guys are more confined to looking tough/ macho, and it’s difficult to push those boundaries without making them uncomfortable… so working within those “barriers” ultimately forces you to think harder about how to get a great shot. So far, I think I’ve done a good job making both genders look beautiful, and I’ve still got a lot of growing left to do.

Weddings/ Fashion aside, the daily hustle for me mainly consists of smaller things here and there. Currently I’m working as a retoucher for another wedding photographer. She takes a while to get in touch with me when I do projects for her, and none of her phone numbers work when I want to contact her by phone, but otherwise she’s a wonderful photographer, and a very kind/ down to earth person, which is probably the most important part. Even if you greatly admire someone’s work, something tells me you’d admire it a lot less if they took you under their wing just so they could be a complete jerk to you.

There’s also a small photography company that I found on Craigslist who calls me every so often to be their assistant. I got my first taste of what being a “commercial family” photographer was like, thanks to them, since they mainly photograph little league portraits/ first Communions/ etc etc. The gigs are good for a quick 60-90$ in your pocket, but I can’t say it’s something I see myself doing more often in the future. It’s probably the lack of creativity that goes with that kind of photography – you set up the background, you shoot your models one by one (all of whom are wearing more or less the same thing), they need to pose the exact same way, the lighting is always the same… yeah, not my cup of tea. I felt less like a photographer and more like some mindless machine, cranking out photos on a conveyor belt. For those of you who’ve read the Willy Wonka novels, do you remember what Charlie Bucket’s father did for a living? He worked at a factory, screwing caps onto toothpaste bottles. THAT’s what it felt like for me, doing that kind of photography. I know times are tough, but in the end I’m hoping God will open up better opportunities for me. You can call it stuck-up and narcissistic, but at the end of the day, I’m not a photographer – I’m an artist whose medium just happens to be photography. It’d hurt if my potential clients/ employers looked at the work on my Bubblesite and were unable to tell the difference. After living my whole life as an artist, and slowly mastering the specific art of photography with the help of people on RedBubble and elsewhere, I have no intention of being remembered merely as someone who just knew how to use a camera.

So screw you, crappy economy! You’re NOT gonna downgrade me into becoming some second class “photographer” with no artistic spirit!

Whew… anyhow, that’s enough for now… I’ve still gotta speak on where I’ve been from a spiritual standpoint (that’s a journey that’s been a bit more interesting, lemme tell ya). I can only hope that, in spite of the whole micro-blogging craze, people will still be able to hang on to a story that’s longer than 100-200 words (CURSE YOU, TWITTER!)