Photography Outing

This week I finally got to meet up with my photographer friend Jarrod for a photography outing. Why the word "finally" you might ask, well I shall share the story with you. I first met Jarrod on Flickr, I saw him on the Springfield Missouri group and loved his work so I added him as a contact. We started talking, got along really well and have similar photography styles - this is where the idea for meeting up for a photography outing was born.

Sadly this idea was born in January, and thanks to wintry Missouri weather we didn't really want to spend hours outside. Not to mention that unless is snows, there aren't great shooting conditions in January. So Jarrod and I keep talking and he helps me learn a lot about photography technique. Skip to April, the weather is finally getting nice, so we set a date! What happens on that day you might ask? Well, we get tornadoes! Not prime picture taking weather... No sir.

So we plan again, the day comes and thankfully it's sunny, but a little chilly for my taste... Checking the forecast shows the next day will be a sunny 67 degrees, so after some texting, we change the date for the last time and jokingly decide that if this time doesn't pan out, then "the powers that be" are surely plotting against us meeting up for picture taking.

Thankfully the chosen day turns out to be everything promised. Sunny, warm and begging for pictures to be taken! We meet up at Jordan Valley Park, and after I embarrassingly prove to be the most unobservant person on the plant by not seeing Jarrod thirty feet to my left and proceed to call him to see if he's at the park yet... We met up and get to work!

We hit the jackpot by finding a band taking advantage of the beautiful day by holding their practice outside. They didn't mind us taking pictures of them and the lead singer/tambourine player's adorable daughter. Jarrod generously let me use his borrowed 70-300mm lens, and I greatly enjoyed having some range for a change! We got some amazing shots of the group and made sure to give them our Flickr URLs so they could see the pictures.

We then continued to explore the park and surrounding downtown area, so many great photo ops there! We took full advantage of us both having Canons, and swapped lens as needed. I loved getting to use his Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 and of course the 70-300mm (I don't recall the stats on this one... Sorry folks). It was great because I was able to get some great wide angle shots of some amazing buildings, yet also get some tight close-ups and some long range shots. All in all it turned out to be a great day! It ended with both of us getting some amazing shots, and me having sore feet from all the walking lol

Hopefully this will become a regular event, because I had an absolutely amazing time. It was great to blab about photography to someone who could understand, and I feel like my composition and technique were much improved on this shoot.

There were far too many great pictures to post them all here - for the rest check out My Flickr and Jarrod's Flickr.