Kyle Hepp

September 8, 2009

Sorry for the disappearance in the past two days. When we were in Germany I didn’t get the week’s blog posts pre-published like I normally do and then when we arrived to Ireland I didn’t really feel like spending my first day in Dublin nor my first day in Galway (the West coast) on the computer.

Seba and I are currently touching up photos to leave pre-published hopefully for the next week and a half or so, but for now I thought I’d jump in and answer a couple questions/comments that people have left in the comments or emailed me.

What camera do you use?

I’ll take this one a step farther and just list the equipment that we are traveling with. We bought two Tenba messenger bags which are WONDERFUL. They don’t look like camera bags, but they fit a lot of gear. We each have a 5d Mark II. Then Seba has been using the 17-40mm 4.0 to get lots of great wide angle shots and I’ve been shooting exclusively with the 24mm tilt shift. Which actually answers another question that someone asked in the comments, it was more or less about how we get the effect where things on the sides are all blurry. That’s how. The tilt shift defies gravity. Not really, but it does change the plane of focus. If you’re into photography look it up, it’s a long and technical explanation and I don’t fully understand it myself so I’d rather send you to get your knowledge elsewhere. But it’s a great lens for traveling because I can use it to bring the focus of the picture directly where I want it and if there are people, as there tend to be in every tourist-y spot that we’ve been to, I can just blur them out.

Your camera gets such vivid colors!:

Some is the camera, but most is photoshop. I’ve written about it a thousand times before so I won’t go back into detail but I convert to LAB mode and change the curves for more vibrant colors. That’s my biggest secret. I also own the Totally Rad Actions as well as the Enlighten Experimential actions, but almost all of the travel pics that I’ve put up have just been run through my own action, which converts to Lab mode, changes the curves, uses selective color to boost up warm hues and that’s about it.

Are you worried about security for your camera?

No. I was before we came, but so far we have yet to be in a position where we’ve felt unsafe. Our cameras come with us AT ALL TIMES. We’ve never left them at a hotel or anything. They’re always on us. But, all the cities we’ve been to seem to be very safe, especially since we’re in the tourist-y parts. It’s not like we’re rolling up to the ghetto and busting out our ginormous cameras or anything like that. And like I said, we have the Tenba messenger bags, which don’t actually look like cameras, so if we are somewhere shady as long as we don’t get our cameras out, no one would have reason to suspect that we’re carrying valuable equipment.

Why are you on the computer so often while you’re on vacation?

Well, I think I already answered this question a while back but for some reason a lot of people seem to be very concerned about the amount of time we are or are not spending on the computer. First of all, how we spend our vacation time is our priority. Second of all, the blog posts that you see for the whole week are usually done in one day. Thirdly, for me, one of my favorite parts of traveling is photographing and writing about the experience. It’s part of the way I digest a place. And, I very much enjoy sharing it all with the world — clearly, or I wouldn’t still be blogging after all this time.

I didn’t know Seba was such a big part of your business. Has he always been?

Yes and yes. In the beginning when I was first starting out, it was Seba who taught me about photography. Then, as the business began to take form, he was there, always helping when he could, but because of his insane work schedule, he wasn’t necessarily at every single wedding I shot, but he was at the majority of them. Now, after he was voluntarily let go from his job, he’s a rock solid 50% of this business. He’ll be with me at every session/wedding that I have scheduled, he can travel with me now too to the out of town ones, he’s even learning how to edit photos (at least the very basic part) and he’s helping me blog as well.

So I guess you could say that without him teaching me about photography there would be no business. Then again, without me being the one to interact with the clients, there would also be no business because anyone who knows my husband knows he’s about as anti-social as they come. So we’re a good partnership.

But, no, we will not be changing the name to Kyle and Seba Photography or anything simply because A. Short and simple is best. And B. We spent a long time building up just the name Kyle Hepp as a brand, so to think about starting from scratch is exhausting. Seba doesn’t care. I think he actually prefers being the silent half. I post his photos on this blog and don’t always mention that they’re his. I try but I don’t always remember. But, it’s another case where we’re two halves of the same whole. 99% of the time it’s my creative vision, but he finds another angle to shoot it from, which is why I LOVE having Seba as my second shooter. He sees things totally different than I do. I direct the clients, pose them, find the spots where we are going to photograph them, make them feel comfortable, get them laughing, and then if he takes a photo of that instant that I just set up, how much of that is his and how much is mine? Since we’re a husband and wife team, fortunately that question is moot

Working on pre-publishing posts for the rest of the week, so come back often, we have lots of new and pretty pictures to show you!