My analysis might be flawed, and even my lexical understanding of the market itself might be highly colored by analogous terms I understand better than econ speak but I think I know what’s happening.

Functionally everyone involved purchased things they could not afford and did so with easy credit that was available to them. Consumers did this, banks said they will give them the credit, the secondary mortgage companies like FNMA and FHLMC (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac) who help provide the backing for these mortgages were complicit. These mortgages and other loan based credit are then bundled and sold to other financial groups/institutions as investments. The federal reserve helps regulate this by setting limits on fractional reserve style banking, and regulating the deposit based lending from banks. In this sytem we’re dealing with two types of monetary supply. The first is cash based created through the treasury, the other is in the form of interbank loans. The federal reserve determines the percentage interest rate at which banks can loan each other money to make sure they stay within the fractional reserve guidelines determined by their total deposit amount.

Clear as mud?

What happened? People bought more than they could afford. Whether is was a mortgage that they directly couldn’t afford or other things that contributed to their inability to pay back the loans/credit they had taken out. The economy has boomed recently because of the increased credit. As purchasing power increases due to increased credit available to everyone, more people purchase more things. Banks started holding much lower amounts of fractional reserve (deposit to loan ratio), and investors were more likely to purchased the bundled bonds. These investments get spread around to countries, international banks, hedge funds, etc…

In this case the inability to pay means that those providing the money for the loans will lose money. These bonds and bundles are normally grouped to minimize this, but when a vast percentage of people cannot meet their financial obligations we find ourselves in the current situation. If no one can pay the price for the current market of houses, then the values of those homes and other goods/services will come down. Dropping value of assets combined with an inability for the consumers to follow through on the initial purchase price and you have dissappearing money. The bond holders and purchasers of the bundles lose money. They are then less likely to purchase more bonds. Credit tightens and that economic boom based on credit dries up. Less things will be sold. Less money will change hands.

The bubble burst. What the $700 billion dollar bailout does is it give the Treasury the authority to purchase $700 billion of those securities to provide financial backing to the institutions that created those loans. This doesn’t mean it would cost the taxpayer $700 billion, since there would be some return on investment. My issue is the power it would give the treasury. It opens up the door to even more cronyism in government finance. It might assuage things… but what it was meant to do was to inspire confidence in the financial market.

It failed already.

Wall Street continued to take a huge dump after a slight boost when it passed the Senate. People are pulling their securities investments, taking huge losses in the process. Every investment based company is affected.

Foreign companies and government also purchased these securities and are hurting. The huge monetary supply of the US acts as a cushion, but other countries are going to be hit just as hard.

Credit will be harder to come by, prices will go down, failing companies will shed workers, and the baby-boomers who are now retiring are going to have to rethink how they’re going to retire.

There were over 1700 pictures taken, and we’re currently doing the first run through. I’m doing initial processing while culling the bad shots out. After finishing the first run through I’ll pick the best of each pose/framing and separate into groups: Portraits, Ceremony, Snapshots, Inanimate, Reception. I don’t expect to be done for at least another week. Once that’s done I’ll have to find the highlights and give them an extra touch.

I have all my equipment now, and purchased a bat bag to carry it all. I’ll post some shots with the different lenses when I get a chance. I’ll probably take a ton of extraneous photos since I can only keep the rental equipment until the 8th. I’ll find an excuse to use the 3 extra lenses.

Here are some photo picks from the last few weeks. Oh and in case you haven’t noticed there is a new link to the left. Click on it and you’ll be taken to an album of our latest 120 photos.

Most of the server from the Dark Age of Camelot days actually banded back together to play. The game is really fun and far less time consuming and difficult to just jump in and play as DAoC or even WoW. You can level exclusively through PVP, and it actually works and is probably the fastest way to level.

Anyway, due to the fact that I can have a better experience playing for 15 minutes in Warhammer than playing for 2 hours in DAoC, I went ahead and picked up the game, on the pretense that I would temper my obsession to a reasonable degree.

If you want to try it out, I’m on the Iron Rock Server - Destruction side. My character’s name is Yoritomo.

It focuses really close and get wide enough for my need when I’m taking shots of the girls. It’s now my default short portrait lens, and luckily I got one that is really sharp wide open and has no focus issues, which are common problems with off-brand lenses. Here’s the test shots I took. Stuffed animal for sharpness, close up of sleeping daughter for focus, and a shot of phoebe to see how the bokeh looks.

My light stands should be coming in today. The radio triggers will probably be another week. I’ll have some two light shots when the stands come in and then try and incorporate 3 when I get the triggers in as well.

I already won one Nikon sb28 off an ebay auction, now I just need to win one more.

Now they want us, and I mean Heather and I, to shoot their wedding. Not to air the personal dealings amongst family here on the website, but I have to share my own personal thoughts. People shouldn’t photograph weddings for their family. I’ll list a reason. If you shoot for other people you get to shoot, post process, deliver and pick out some of the best ones for your portfolio. In a normal situation you don’t have to analyze those pics again after they’ve been shot and delivered to the client. If you shoot for family, the wedding album they make out of your photos and the digital prints you deliver them will be there every time you visit. I’ll be a better photographer in 2 years than I am now. Knowing those limitation I have about a month to prepare and work harder in a single day than I will work in any other time in my life… because it’s family.

Because of this I have to go all out. There’s equipment I need to get shots to create those moments in time that will be remembered by Cindy, Blake, their children, their grandchildren, and since she’s family, probably my children, grandchildren, etc…

To put this in perspective, just my post processing style has changed at least 5 times since I bought that little camera 5 months ago. I’ve only recently begun to start framing shots outside of the subject-center snapshot style that everyone who pics up a camera does.

So here’s what’s happening. I’m going to document what I’m doing to prepare for the most important shoot I’ll probably ever do.

Immediately after I agreed to shoot their wedding I ordered another ebay trigger and receiver, along with 3 more receivers. This gives me 2 transmitters and 5 receivers. Yes that gives me an extra transmitter and 2 receivers but with those little eBay pieces of comparative junk you can’t be too secure in your need to have backups. I had to order them now because the shipping from hong kong will probably take about 3 weeks. The alternative costs 180 bucks a pop. I’m not there yet.

I e-mailed Shig immediately to see what equipment I could borrow from him. He’s got at least a lens that will really help, and if he’s not shooting that weekend he’ll be able to spare a few more items: Wide angle zoom, flash, and the 50mm 1.4 prime. Awesome.

Today I reserved rental equipment. The 60 mm 2.8 af-s Micro, Sigma 10-20 HSM wide angle zoom, and an extra battery for the d50 which I’ll be borrowing from my father in order to have a second camera and backup at the Wedding.

After our credit card payment goes through I’ll be sending another one in, cause BH is getting a decent sized order. 2 impact stands, 2 more umbrellas, 2 sunpak 383s, and a Tamron 28-75 2.8.

Finally comes study time. I need to learn from people who do this for a living. Not just wedding photographers, but wedding photographers who capture the feelings and emotion in such an event. Heather will be my idea person and shoot director during the wedding, so together we’ll be taking long hard looks at two photographers I think are really amazing.

Ed Pingol

JWLphotography

Both photographers capture the fun that a wedding day should be, but also seem to exhibit a calm harmony in one of the greatest days in peoples lives.

Portraits were taken with sb-600 and shoot through umbrella at camera left. Hibiscus pic was taken with Spencer hand holding the shoot through and flash high camera right.

Post processing was done in Adobe Lightroom, D2X Mode 2 color for all pics, then ran through noise ninja in PS CS3 and then sharpened with softlight high pass and converted to sRGB.

I got a flash for my camera and have some lighting equipment coming in this week. I’ll get to try it all out at Jo Ellen’s reception.