Back in Black

I’m at the office at the moment, preparing for my second wedding in two days. We had a double header this weekend, Friday and Saturday. Both sizeable events.

Last night was a nightmare that I managed to stumble my way through. Not for any malpractice on my part mind you, but just general system wide equipment failure. My Quantum Turbo battery bit the dust and my backup has some funky problem where after ten minutes it flashes “check turbo” and promptly dies. My boss’ camera litterly fell off it’s bracket. I handed off my rig to him so he could continue shooting while I fixed his. 30 minutes later and after completely replacing nearly every part of our setup, we got his into working order again.

Add to all that the fact that I was playing full contact camera hockey with a small asian guy with a pro rig. Apparently someone told him to come and take pictures “just in case” or some bullshit like that and he was in my face ALL NIGHT. For example, as the ceremony is starting, I’m positioned at the end of the isle so I can get the father walking the bride down the isle. I’m shooting away and suddenly this guy jumps in front of my shot. He does it again a half dozen times. After the ceremony he’s shooting directly next to our set up and copying us picture for picture. We had enough and told him in not so polite terms to get lost or else there would be physical harm. The rest of the night he kept on shooting anyway. At one point I tapped him on the shoulder and said “move… now” and gave him the dirtiest look I could muster. He was in MY spot for some dancing photos and had slid in there when I turn my back. He didn’t move, so I walked through and OVER him. I made it my personal mission to stand infront of every single shot he was taking for the rest of the night. He got the hint and by cake cutting time he was gone.

I can’t understand that. The bride didn’t hire him, the groom didn’t hire him, none of the family hired him or knew who he was. My only thought is that the reception facility hired him. I just don’t care actually. I’m hired by the family to take pictures of their daughters wedding. No one is going to get in my way, make me miss a shot I need, or make me compromise on an angle I want.

If I was hired as a 2nd photographer to someone, I would make it a point to go up, introduce myself, say that I’m not trying to get in their way but that I was hired to take picture of the decorations or something. I wouldn’t jump infront of another photographer like that. That’s the most unprofessional thing I’ve ever seen.

But the mashed potato bar was good, so, there ya go.

Todays wedding is further south of the city, at some country club thing. It’s smaller than last nights thankfully. We’re only supposed to be there from 3-9:30. At least, thats what we’ve been paid for. The party is scheduled until 10:30 but we don’t know if we’re staying that long. I hope not.

After the wedding I’m going to grab my car from the studio and head 3 hours west to New Braunfels, to a little ranch where I’ll be chilling for the weekend. Lauren and he family left this morning and I’m meeting them tonight. Thats why I hope the wedding doesn’t run long. Starting a 3 hour drive at 9:30 instead of 11 is a huge difference. Either way there’s Red Bull to keep me company.

Alright. Back to work. Have a great weekend everybody. I’ll be in Margarittaville if you need me. 🙂

bordom

Well. I’m at the graduation for St Agnes Academy today. Its a catholic school here in town. We’re photographing the event in a documentary way. We don’t have anything to photograph durring the pre-graduation mass… So here we sit. An full hour long catholic mass. I’m not knocking anyones faith… But mass is boring.

Best site in the world

Ever gotten a “Nigerian Money” scam email. You know, where someone offers to send you billions if you hide it for them. Well, this site is for you. 419 Eater. Why simply deleted those emails when you can have hours of fun fustrating them to no end? This is quite possibly the best idea I’ve seen in a very long time. Awesome.

http://www.419eater.com

Battlefield 2 Hands on Preview

There’s been plenty of preview and screenshots, but not too many this big and in depth. Most are “we played it, it was nifty”. This is a 3 page breakdown of a hands on preview IGN got at the EA Games offices. Man I hate IGN… but the article isn’t too shabby. Enjoy.

Linkage

Xbox Launch Titles

Hot on the heals of the hardware comes the software. Now that the rest of the world knows what the Xbox 360 will look like, the list of games to be launched with the console have begun to congeal. Obviously, not all of these will make launch, some might be cut, pushed back, delayed because they’re simply not finished or moved further in the calendar for better holiday sales (I hate when they do that) but at least some of these are going to make it. You can find the complete list HERE at EuroGamer, but here are a few I’m interested in….

Alan Wake (Remedy) – Alan Wake, which is set to be unveiled in more detail at E3 in a cinematic presentation, is Remedy’s first game since Max Payne 2 and is a psychological action thriller according to the developer. It’s also coming to the PC.

Call of Duty 2 (Infinity Ward/Activision) – While current-gen consoles are getting a squad-based game focused on the American 1st Infantry – subtitled Big Red One – the Xbox 360 looks forward to the same content PC owners can expect. Infinity Ward is at the controls, and the expectation is that CoD2 could be the World War II game to end them all. Actually, that’s just hype. But it’s also a hope.

Dead or Alive 4 (Tecmo/Microsoft) – We’re not sure it’s been officially announced yet, but screenshots have been online since 12th May and nobody’s bothered to deny their authenticity. It basically looks like Dead or Alive 3 with a stupendous leap in detail levels. Which is either a good or a bad thing. We have a feeling the truth of its worth may be in the animation system; but, given Tecmo’s wonderful work on DOA Ultimate, the combat should be solid enough to carry it

Dimitri (Lionhead) – Again, this one hasn’t been officially confirmed for X360, but figured in a GameReactor magazine article created in collaboration with Microsoft. It’s another brainchild of Peter Molyneux. “It’s a game about… You,” he said recently. “It allows anyone who plays the game to relive their life, their entire individual life. That’s a pretty ambitious concept.” Moon On The Stick doesn’t currently have a release date.

Full Auto (SEGA) – This sounds ingenious. Rather like Prince of Persia, it has a rewind feature that allows players to turn back time on events that don’t go their way. Except it’s a racing game. So you’ll get Burnout-style spectacular crashes followed by the chance to undo them again. It looks mightily impressive, and word is it was the basis of the gorgeous XNA “Crash Test” demo shown off at the Game Developers Conference in 2003.

Ninety-Nine Nights (Q Entertainment) – Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s Xbox 360 title, featuring lots of very, very shiny men. It’s full of jaw-dropping vast battles and sees the developer angling away from his usual musical influences in a game that looks more like Dynasty Warriors than anything else.

RalliSport Challenge 3 (DICE/Microsoft) – Unconfirmed, but mentioned in the print press. Will it be unveiled shortly? We shall see. Seems like a good bet though; the last two (especially the first) were warmly received by most.

Possession (Blitz Games) – Imagine a strategy game in which you order zombies around. Imagine it’s on Xbox 360. Imagine UK-based Blitz Games is developing it. Oh, well, there we go. Blitz hasn’t been heard from much since Fuzion Frenzy (which, er, wasn’t brilliant anyway, except for the Sumo mini-game), but if you want to announce your arrival on a new platform there are few better ways to do it than making a game about unleashing armies of zombies on innocent human crowds.

Unreal Tournament 2007 (Epic Games/Midway) – Epic Games brings its multiplayer series to Xbox 360. It uses Unreal Engine 3, utterly unsurprisingly, and will involve killing people and guns and vehicles and such. Yes, really.

Looks like a good bunch of games. I was worried it would be all about Halo and Sports titles.