San Francisco City Hall Wedding

Sometimes things drop in your lap. Actually, that's been most of my business lately.

A friend of mine (who routinely browses Craigslist for various things) came across a couple looking for a last-minute photographer for their quick ceremony at San Francisco City Hall. He copied the link and posted it onto my Facebook wall, of all things.

So when I woke up in the morning and saw his message, I figured "why not?" and sent an email reply to the couple. Within about 45 minutes, we had the event booked.

I hopped on the train into San Francisco for the short and sweet (as city hall weddings tend to be) ceremony, followed by a little bit of just hanging out with the newlyweds and snapping some photos. Here are two of my favorites:

Video Editing Now an Option!

Howdy folks.

In the last year, I've had to turn down a lot of video inquiries. Doing video for weddings or musicians is much more time consuming and costly than still-photography, from an overhead standpoint. Not to mention that many people asked about it as well as doing still photography for their wedding... kinda hard to do one when I'm already doing the other.

Since Lancaster Photography is a small operation (meaning: myself, and a few part-time affiliates), it's just not doable or profitable at this point.

The thing is, I've been doing video editing for years and am current with the latest software/methods/formats. It's been a strong hobby of mine this entire time, along with audio post-work (see the video page for examples).

So, what to do?

I had this thought. Even if you don't hire a professional camera man with the insanely expensive video rig, you probably have (or will have) a bunch of funny, sweet, silly, stupid, or downright offensive video footage from your wedding/event that you'd like to save, but don't know exactly what to do with. I'm talking video from iPhones, Flip cams, camcorders, etc. that you or your guests filmed throughout the night.

Now, for an hourly editing fee, you can give me all of that priceless footage (I don't judge, trust me) to splice together with music, titles, transitions, captions, video enhancements, and audio enhancements... and voila! ...you have a movie! Once it's finished, I can give you the final product in any format you like, including DVD.

Contact me for rates and ideas, and let's finally do something with all those random video clips that are currently eating up space on your computer's hard drive.

clay@lancasterphoto.net

SOPA, PIPA and the end of Digital Freedom

US Capitol. Don't worry, I took this photo. It's not copyright infringement.

This has nothing to do with photography. Well, maybe it does. After all, I am in an industry that is certainly subject to copyright infringement.

That said, I'm growing increasingly concerned over the state of our country, the power of our government, and the things it believes it's capable of controlling.

Most are familiar with SOPA and PIPA by now, thanks to large sites like Google protesting the proposed legislation, and sites like Wikipedia voluntarily going offline for 24 hours to make their point. But today the Federal government has stepped in and shut down Megaupload, one of the world's leading file sharing sites.

This is a big deal because it starts to pave way for our government to not only get you into trouble if you share copyrighted material, but for even having copyrighted material... even if you're unaware that it's sitting on your servers.

It also potentially paves way for government to monitor and view all your private data in order to make sure you don't have any copyrighted material.

I might be naive, but I'd like to think that my grandfather didn't fight in WWII to protect a country that would just turn around and screw its citizens.

This is getting out of hand fast, and rather than go into too much detail here, please read the article I just wrote for theFIVE10.com.

theFIVE10.com : MEGAUPLOAD FILE SHARING SITE SHUT DOWN BY FEDS

what do you think of the whole thing?

-Clay

Walnut Creek Engagement Shoot & 2012 Happenings

2012 is shaping up to be a busy year, and it starts now I guess!

Hopefully it's a sign of a slight economic recovery, but by January 1st much of my 2012 calendar was already booked. I've had to turn away three weddings this week alone because the dates were taken, so get a hold of me soon if you think you're gonna need me. Great for business, but I hate having to turn people down.

Since the week of New Year's, I've been to Reno, NV - Carson City, NV - San Francisco, CA - Los Angeles, CA... and everywhere in between. That's a lot of driving, especially when the starter on my car is acting like it's 90 years old.

Last week I cruised down to Hollywood to work on a video with the other half of Lancaster Media (my brother Keith Lancaster), then came back to the Bay Area to finish edits on a wedding, had a couple of meetings, and then an engagement shoot here in Walnut Creek on Saturday morning. Here are a few of my favorite photos from that session:

Wedding at Mills College - Oakland, CA. End of 2011!

I hope everyone had a great New Year's celebration! I was lucky enough to spend it at one of my favorite venues in San Francisco with many of my favorite people, watching my pals in Happy Body Slow Brain debut a new song and bring down the house. Can't think of many better ways to ring in the new year.

My last wedding of 2011 was for a lovely academic couple, held at Mills College in Oakland, CA. I really enjoy the intimacy of a small wedding, and I think this was the first time I've been served breakfast at one! Not to mention it was the first time I had done a wedding at a college (which apparently have chapels... didn't know that).

The room was super unique... round, with the alter in the center, and a large pipe organ on the back side. Very dimly lit, which was not conducive to photography but sure had a great atmosphere, and I managed to get some cool photos regardless.

This couple is really sweet, and I thoroughly enjoyed that they appreciated my stupid jokes throughout the day.

Merry Christmas for 2011!

This has certainly been an interesting holiday season.

I'm headed to my parents' house in a bit for some Xmas eve cocktails and dinner, but I figured I'd wish my pals, clients, acquaintances (and anyone else who happens to stumble across this) a Merry Christmas!

Next week will be a fun one, as we head to Reno, NV to film the third installment of our "Gone Golfing" series... which is basically a movie about our adventures on a crappy golf course as we desperately try to make par. The last movie was 2003, so it's been almost nine years! Very much looking forward to it.

Speaking of Reno, here's a little photo of us sledding on Xmas weekend a couple of years ago. This canyon is our back yard... literally. Of course, the house isn't there anymore (see what happened to it) but that won't stop us from sledding there again! As soon as there's snow, anyway.

Sledding in our back yard in Reno, NV. Before the house burned down.

Be safe, eat food, drink some drinks, open some presents... 

-Clay

Holidays, Weddings, Parties, and General Merriment

Hi folks!

OK... what a crazy month. I had a clear calendar for basically all of November, which ended up being the perfect decision.

At the beginning of the month was Angela's birthday, then we headed to Gettysburg, PA for a week of relaxing and historical education with my mom and step-dad, topped off with a few days in Washington DC, then our family's house burned down in the 2,000-acre Caughlin fire up in Reno, then came Thanksgiving, then my birthday, then time to break out the decorations and get a Christmas tree!

With all the activity, it was nice to not have any "work" to do.  I say "work" because I love being a photographer, so it never really feels like work to me.

Some fun things coming down the pipeline soon, so I promise more of these posts will be actually related to photography.

Until then, get yourself into the holiday spirit with this lovely photo (taken by Keith Lancaster) of me, face-planted into the snow a couple of Christmases ago: