Maria Agustin Photography

2011 in review

mariaagustin — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:10:59 +0000

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,000 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 33 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

The Class of 2012 Football Poster

mariaagustin — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 20:26:50 +0000

Well I have had a lot of requests to post this but sometimes life just gets away from me! So without further ado, I would like you all to see the Minnechaug Falcons senior football players and I let you see a little of the behind the scenes work that goes into the making of one of these conglomerations of photos.

First the final product. I am going to include a link so you can see it nice and big the way it is meant to be seen. Looks great printed on metallic paper. When you do something like this you gotta go big and you gotta go metallic!

Click here for the big view

I decided with all the crap our poor little town of Wilbraham had been through in 2011 including a tornado, a hurricane and my personal nemesis, the snowstorm in October that totally destroyed my yard, it would be nice to include that for the boy’s memories. I knew what I wanted to do but it took a while before the thought of how to pull it off came to me. I started with some pictures of the chaug field and it just wasn’t working. So I took my camera and drove off to the eerie scene on Tinkham road where the tornado hit the previous summer and captured a shot which I thought would be dynamite as background:

It was great to have the grass in the foreground. It actually reminds me of our crappy home field at Chaug so it hit me to just add the lines. The lines are added by overlaying a photo of the chaug field, then stretching and warping so the lines point toward the viewer and then masking out (erasing in Photoshop lingo) the grass and just leaving the lines.

Next I needed a tornado but I really wanted our tornado so I looked online until I found a file photo of it – low resolution and not very big but if you stretch it out and warp it just right, you can’t really tell! Then since our scoreboard was a victim of the tornado, I threw that in and since it looked lonely all there in the tornado by itself, I added my son’s car (which kinda looks like it lived through the tornado even though that’s just his driving!)

Now you can’t have football without our horrible lights (which I had leftover from last year’s poster) and then you have to light them! I thought one of them should look damaged just to up the cool factor… I also added in some bricks and other debris from the conveniently collapsed building right next to our studio at Indian Orchard Mills. Oopps, How did Matt get in there?

Then cause I like things moody, I darken things up with curves, add some fog, some cool fonts for the text and I threw in the 4 captains which are studio shots taken with two alien bees studio lights in soft boxes just so you can how the individual player shots are added in.

It’s a big job to keep track of all those layers in Photoshop!! Normally, I am pretty sloppy about naming layers but not when I make one of these!

Now I’d like to finish off with some of the outtakes and studio shots so you can see we did have a little fun while we were shooting these!

Our lucky guinea pig Joe and my son, Garrett starts things out with lighting tests.

Gotta catch those balls or it just doesn’t look right lol.

Joe’s final pic below…

Now we have the tumbling Chris who was worried about telling the coach how he got hurt while having his picture taken instead of playing football!

His final picture…

My son Garrett, taking one for the team lol…

Quarterback Greg was actually the hardest subject to shoot. Either his tongue was hanging out or he didn’t like the way his non throwing hand looked. Exhibit A…

Since it’s hard to get an action shot of lineman, receiver Tony volunteered to get roughed up by lineman Scott….

Jakeem and I decided a one arm pushup was just the thing for him

Dan couldn’t bother showing up so I caught him last minute in front of his garage…too bad cause I was about to use his cute fluffy white dog as a replacement!

Ryan E gets beat up for good photography…

Ryan D has too much fun acting out his backup quarterback routine…

And so does Brandon catching his interception…

And there you have it. Our 2012 football Seniors! I hope you enjoyed it…

Nate – Another Cutie Pie

mariaagustin — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 02:35:00 +0000

So Nate came to visit me in my studio recently. He was a cutie pie and a very good natured guy but….in case you think this was easy….No! He was as uncooperative as the rest of the babies that come to see me! I’m starting to think its me! Oh well, we managed to get some great snaps of Nate in his adorable outfits. But I have to admit I am always a fan of simplicity so starting with my favorite, here is Nate and his parents:

See more shots of Nate on my facebook page www.facebook.com/mariaagustinphotography

Corey // Mohawk Senior

mariaagustin — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 22:06:37 +0000

So Corey stopped by with his sports equipment and not much of anything else lol. Boys will be boys won’t they?? But they love their sports and I love to photography them in their sports world so what could be better!! Here are some of my favorites from Corey’s session.

I call this next one the boyfriend pose….isn’t he cute girls???

This last shot was done with an antique spot…truly one light photography! I love the look and I was happy to not catch on fire or be electrocuted. As usual, check my facebook page www.facebook.com/mariaagustinphotography and my website www.mariaagustin.com for my photos of Corey and upcoming seniors!

The Effervescent Rylee in the Great Outdoors

mariaagustin — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 01:45:21 +0000

So I love Rylee and it has been awhile since I saw last her. She was just as cute and contrary as she has always been but somehow after a few Smarties and a lot of coaxing and hugs we always seem to capture some of the Rylee magic! She refused to put on my white dress and then she wound up wearing it home. Such is Rylee. My favorite little girl lol….

See more pix of Rylee on my Facebook page www.facebook.com/mariaagustinphotography and my website www.mariaagustin.com. Thanks for looking!

Track Plus Two

mariaagustin — Wed, 04 May 2011 23:57:31 +0000

I’m falling behind again! So today, I bring you two track meets. Triple meets pitting Chaug against Amherst and Westfield last Monday and then Northampton and Central the week before.

Ryan Ellington in the triple jump:

Garrett Agustin stretching to make the hand off to Josh Ouimette:

Willy Baymon in the high jump:

Garrett Agustin checking out his mom:

Nick Gilotti mighty with a spear:

Dan Sydurka attempts the pole vault:

Check out my Facebook page www.facebook.com/mariaagustinphotography and my website www.mariaagustin.com (the latest) for more track photos. Thanks for looking!

Meet the Diodati’s

mariaagustin — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 21:09:53 +0000

Long time friends and beautiful family, the Diodati’s of Haverhill asked me up to do some portraits in their home recently. So we pushed the furniture aside and I set up shop in their family room. It’s tough to get this many kids/teens/young adults to meet up for any reason, let alone having their picture taken with their siblings and parents but somehow they were able to pull it all off! I think they look great. Be sure to leave a comment and let them know what you think.

Alex, Erica, Stevie & Anthony (aka the kids..)

Kathy & Steve…

Alex & his girl (so cute together)

The whole gang…

Another outfit (this wasn’t easy to pull off with less than enthusiastic males)…

Another troublemaker, Lucy…

And the outtake…

See more shots of the Diodati family on my Facebook page: www.facebook.com/mariaagustinphotography or my website www.mariaagustin.com. Thanks for looking!

Track is Back!!

mariaagustin — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 22:28:41 +0000

The 2011 Minnechaug Boys Track season started this week and boy am I rusty track photographer!! Track is a challenging subject to shoot. The action is fast, the sun is either blinding you or casting heavy shadows and people are are always getting in the way….anyway enough excuses lol! I have a few more upcoming meets to practice at over the next few weeks.

First off Garrett Agustin in the high jump. Yep, my baby boy.

Tyler Chateauvert, javelin thrower extraordinaire…

Willy Damon putting in a huge effort in the 100 yd dash

Garrett Agustin winning his heat in the 100…

Donovan Haywood in the 100…

All of these shots were taken the Nikkor 85mm f1.4 lens. A great and versatile lens but maybe a little too short for a messy triple track meet. Long focal lengths are your friend when there is so many people and stuff in the shot. See more pix of track on my Facebook page www.facebook.com/mariaagustinphotography.

Models!!

mariaagustin — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 19:06:12 +0000

We had a few potential models over to our studio a couple of weeks ago. With the new space, there was plenty of room for friends and associates Beckie, Dave and I to spread out. We had a blast!… except for when I almost almost amputated my finger on the rickety old fan that now has officially retired. (I’m lucky the blades were plastic. All in the name of hair motion…

For my photography peeps, these were shot with AB beauty dish (love that), really cheap knockoff strip box (still does it for me) and my fab Nikon 24-70 f2.8.

Here are some of my favorites. Enjoy…

Lauren….

Ali…

Alison..

And my man Matty…

Beckie…(in the back)

Of course you can see more at my Facebook page www.facebook.com/mariaagustinphotography or my website at www.mariaagustin.com. Thanks for looking and don’t forget to leave a comment and tell them how great they look!

Meet the Matthews…Yeah, Christmas photos….

mariaagustin — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 22:39:15 +0000

So good friends the Matthews came to visit me for last minute Christmas cards and I while they got their cards in time for Christmas, I have fallen behind on my other photo editing. So without further ado, here they are…they are just too darn cute not to share!