by dmitriybabichenko

Remotely controlling your camera

A few months ago I posted a blog entry about remotely controlling a camera with two laptops and an ad-hoc wireless network. So far I got 27 emails from photographers asking for detailed instructions on how to set this up. Since my original post my remote shooting technique changed a bit – I recently bought an iPad and use it in conjunction with a laptop and a wireless network to control a camera. I wrote a step-by-step manual that hopefully will help anyone interested in remote shooting. Remotely Controlling Camera(function() { var scribd = document.createElement(“script”); scribd.type = “text/javascript”; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = “http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();

by dmitriybabichenko

My Little Sister Is Married

A few weeks ago Daniella and I drove to South Carolina for my baby sister`s wedding. It has been years since I`ve been to a wedding in a non-photographer capacity and I have never had the opportunity to walk the bride down the isle. The whole trip had been amazing – I got to hang out with my family, I watch my little sister get married to a man she really really loves and spend a lot of one-on-one time with my daughter. Daniella has been great throughout the entire trip – she uncomplainingly toughed out a 13-hour car trip, 3 nights in a hotel and a lot of strangers trying to pinch her cheeks. Unfortunately I did not have a chance to take a lot of photos – my hands were full with a 3-year-old and in any event I thought that it would be incredibly rude for me to get into Olga`s and Roger`s wedding photographer`s way. Olga and Roger had a beautiful outdoor ceremony at the Silver Coast Winery in North Carolina; during the ceremony Roger sang Justin Bieber`s “Baby, baby” for Olga – the video of his performance actually made it to justinbieberzone.com.

And here are a few of my photos: Olga and Roger Wedding | Dmitriy Babichenko Photography Olga and Roger Wedding | Dmitriy Babichenko Photography Olga and Roger Wedding | Dmitriy Babichenko Photography Olga and Roger Wedding | Dmitriy Babichenko Photography Olga and Roger Wedding | Dmitriy Babichenko Photography Olga and Roger Wedding | Dmitriy Babichenko Photography Olga and Roger Wedding | Dmitriy Babichenko Photography Olga and Roger Wedding | Dmitriy Babichenko Photography Olga and Roger Wedding | Dmitriy Babichenko Photography Olga and Roger Wedding | Dmitriy Babichenko Photography Olga and Roger Wedding | Dmitriy Babichenko Photography Here are some more photos from the entire roadtrip on Flickr. Another update (04/17/2012) – just found out that the video of Roger singing Justin Bieber`s song made it to Celebs website.

by dmitriybabichenko

Daniella`s First Movie

My 3-year-old daughter Daniella loves going to the Carnegie Science Center. One of her favorite things to do there is play with a stop-motion animation machine. She would pull a few toys from a box, put them on the machine`s screen, press a big button, move the toy, press a big button, repeat… This weekend we decided to do a slightly longer animation at home. Daniella did pretty much everything by herself. I did set up the camera for her, but after that, she was pretty much on her own. I gave her a camera remote and complete creative control. This is what she came up with… My little movie maker | Dmitriy Babichenko, Pittsburgh Photographer

by dmitriybabichenko

For the love of photography…

I want to warn you from the start – this is a rant. I don’t rant to often, so please bear with me. As it is the case with any business, photography has its good moments and bad moments. If I meet with a client who wants me to slash my prices in half because she found someone of Craigs list who will photograph an entire wedding for $500.00, I get understandably upset. When people come up to me in coffee shops when they see my camera and tell me how they are photographing weddings with their digital Rebels, I get really frustrated. When Panasonic released its ill-fated Lumix camera commercial that featured an exhibition by a photographer who did not know the first thing about photography, I did not know whether to laugh or throw a shoe at my TV.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that there are days when I love photography and I want nothing more than to go out and shoot. And, there are days when I wonder why I ever picked up a camer in the first place. Recently, I came across two opposing (kind of) views on photography. Well, they are not really opposing, more like the whole cup-half-full vs. cup-half empty thing… CNN ran an opinion piece by a Los Angeles-based news photographer Nick Stern where he ranted and raved about the decline of photography as a profession and about how apps such as Instagram and Hipstamatic actually cheat the viewers. A few days after reading Nick Stern’s piece, I came across a blog post by Allen Murabayashi, a co-founder and the CEO of Photoshelter. His blog post was titled “Rant: I Love Photography”; in that post Allen spoke out against all of those who complain about this and that in photography. His message essentially was “Stop moaning and complaining, grab a camera and take some photos”. I’m not exactly sure where I’m going with this rant (I really wanted to make a point when I started writing, but now I forgot what it was). However, if you have any interest in photography, these two opinions are really worth reading and show two sides of the same coin. Oh, and as an added bonus, I found out that Ken Jeong is a medical doctor. Wow!