Just had my 60th birthday

It might be a bad idea to date yourself, but I just had my 60th birthday on Monday.  I have been thinking about my imagery that I have taken since I was about 8 years old.  Of course my idea of what makes an image has changed over the years, just like my writing skills have improved, I hope.  

I was talking to one of my clients; she is also my mother-in-law, and she is also a long-time real estate agent. She told me I need to study images from homes that sold more than a million dollars on the market.  She says that my work as a photographer is fabulous and I have a high level of skill.  She also states that’s not good enough to work in real estate as a photographer, taking excellent pictures is not enough.  You need to think like a realtor in selling the house when you are taking the pictures.

She says I need to photography the homes to produce images that the realtor needs to visually sell the house.  Even in this industry, you have to be a visual storyteller.  Is it not enough to just take technically quality images of a house, follow standard design elements and make the building shine, at least by how I have trained.

You need to make a story with your images, like how a realtor writes the description to sell the property.  It’s not your job, but the homeowner and the realtor. But you still have to make sure they have cleaned the place and staged before you take the first image.  Highlight key areas of the house in your images that people want to see.  Dishwasher, stove, Washer and Drier.  Key elements that accent the house and make it different from the average house.

She asked me to study the images from homes that sell for more than a million dollars.  You always should study your contemporaries.  I didn’t think there are that many homes that sell over a million, but in the DC/VA/MD area, it’s more common than you think.  It’s where the residential realtor can make some, similar to the commercial market.  That’s where I really want to work in.  

Why do I like to work in the commercial architecture market?  Like photographers Ezra Stoller and Julius Shulman.  It’s a mixture of technical and artistry, showing human culture that benefits humanity.  I also think that it’s more cut and dry for being paid.  That’s the bottom line, trying to make a living and helping others with my photography.

Finally able to fly my drone on a job.

Living in the DC, Virginia and Maryland area is a tough National Air Space to work in. We have many airports, helipads, restricted spaces and of course the no great fly zone for the DC area. The DC area no-fly zone, covers more than the District of Columbus, and we have multiple military bases that have their own no flight zones to boot.

I finally had a request to fly my drone in a Class B area that permitted flying below the 400 foot level. Which is the maximum height a 107 commercial drone Pilot can fly up too. My client wanted both daylight and twilight photography showing off the pool and lighting around the house.

Now, to say I was a little scared of flying a drone that I never flew before, because I was always in restricted space, had me going. The first daylight flight went off without a hitch, but the twilight gave me a little trouble.

My compass was off, which is an easy fix, if the software program would let you. The application became fixated on the message bubble telling me of the issue. One thing I found out that night was, the drone would still fly and let me take pictures. It was hard to see pasted the message, but I could accomplish the mission.

You ask me, why didn’t I just stop and correct the compass by doing the compass dance with the drone, well, I was to press for time. My window of opportunity for the best, ambient lighting to house lighting, was coming up on the end of my flight permission with the FAA.

Driving home, I was concern that I didn’t get the pictures, but I did and I just found out the house owners loved the aerial drone images that I took.

Web Site Design Plans

I have made my website into a catch all place for people to see what creative projects I have been working on. I originally wanted one site under my SquareSpace website. But SquareSpace has some limitations, such as adding video, but we can add audio with no problem. With video, you can only have a place card in its position and a link for the video. So I added a YouTube site under my name.

I also started a podcast that interviews normal everyday people and have them talk about their career and life. On SquareSpace it’s pretty easy to have an audio blog, but it’s a lot of work, setting up each post. I went with Anchor a website to host my audio podcast which has worked out wonderfully. Anchor has a connection with Wordpress to start a blog about my podcast.

Wordpress lets me set up a blog that is more automatic than Squarespace. It will post the podcast with a paltry amount of work. What I didn’t want is for people to go around the internet to find everything from me. After several attempts at coding and erasing, I think I found out how to link up both websites, my main website and my podcast blog. I asked the software engineers at Wordpress and they sent me instructions on how to do it. I plan to do work on that in the next few days.

Finally, my website for client based photography, like event photography, is with Zenfolio (VorlagoPhoto.Zenfolio.com) and it lets me take jobs, say a social party, post the photos on the web and then sell them to the people at the party. So far I’m thrilled with the setup, now I just need more clients and events to photograph.

Is it the best situation, where I have all things under one basket, but it all looks like it from the same person or company. My website presence is getting there, helping me to get closer to my goal of what to do after I retire from the FBI.

The great debate has ended, for me that is.

Today in photography, besides deciding what brand of camera maker you will follow, the question has been, DSLR or Mirrorless. My brand of choice has always been Nikon. I have been a Nikon fanboy since my high school days, over forty years ago. It’s not that Canon or Sony and the other camera brands are bad cameras they all take wonderful photos. 

I believe the reason for me to use Nikon my entire life was from visiting a photography studio as a teenager. This commercial studio was a Nikon and Hasselblad house with large format cameras mixed in. 

This place was a dream for me. Their name was Guild Photographers, a working studio out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. During my first two years in college, I started as a part-time intern the first year and hired as a photographer the next year.  My intern pay was zip, not heard of these days, and minimum wage the second year.  I learned a lot from that group of photographers.


Now, let’s step to the future and photographic technology has changed to a reliable digital camera system based on the DSLR camera model. For me, the camera choice was the D850 series, nice but heavy.

I used it for architecture photography, still life, landscape, and just about any subject I could think of.  With Nikon, you can still use any of the lenses that you purchased over the years. I had maybe a dozen lenses, nothing longer than 200mm.  I wasn’t shooting sports or even thinking of photographing animals since my high school days.

Today, depending on your opinion and taste, digital is great.  Digital photography has advanced to where you’re combining computer techniques to enhance your image that you could never do with just analog photography.  It has reached more people and turned them into photographic artists.

So, I sold my old lenses and camera bodies and purchased the Z 7ii camera body to go with the Z 6 body that I had already for a backup.  I’m keeping the lenses that will continue to work with my Z camera bodies from my collection.

One issue I have so far is that the accessories that work with my DSLRs’ will not work with my Zs’.  Cable releases won’t attach to my new bodies.  My Nikon 10mm shaved lens I was using to photograph spherical images won’t work with Nikon’s FTZ adapter as normal.

I had to research and then purchased a Chinese-made lens adapter that permitted Nikon G-type F mount lenses to mount to a Z mount camera body.  This is the closest I can get to full functionality with the lens: I’m losing auto aperture camera control and can only operate the aperture manually from the lens.

So, has this been the right choice?  Will Nikon continue to support the DSLR camera systems? What changes to my photography procedures do I have to do?

As I explore the changes between the two systems, I will update you on what I find.






Nikon Z 7ii mirrorless camera with 24 to 70 F/4 lense

Nikon Z 7ii mirrorless camera with 24 to 70 F/4 lense