Atlanta Commercial & Advertising Photographer | Will Godfrey

Avett Brothers at Merlefest 2010

willgodfrey — Wed, 19 May 2010 18:27:16 +0000

Avett Brothers at Merlefest 2010 in Wilkesboro, N.C. – Images by Will Godfrey

A few weeks back, I had the pleasure of attending The Avett Brothers show at Merlefest 2010 in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. I knew this was the closest they were coming to Atlanta for a couple months, so I had my eye on the show for a while. I made it work out to where I got cheap trip up just for this one show and it was well worth the early morning drive after a late night wedding. Phew. I was exhausted.

But, I had a great time. The Avett Brothers invited their sister, Bonnie Avett, to sing vocals on Swept Away and David Mayfield played the last couple songs of the show with them. If you still haven’t checked out these guys, now is the time!

Langhorne Slim at Harvest Records in Asheville on Record Store Day 2010

willgodfrey — Mon, 10 May 2010 21:04:57 +0000

Langhorne Slim at Harvest Records in Asheville for Record Store Day 2010 – Images by Will Godfrey

While I spent a few days in Asheville with Langhorne Slim, they got to play at Harvest Records for national Record Store Day. We hung out for a bit, browsed some records in the store and then they rocked out. Always fun to see Slim play in different environments. Have you checked out their music yet? You should!

Langhorne Slim at the Orange Peel in Asheville – Night 2

willgodfrey — Wed, 05 May 2010 22:05:40 +0000

Langhorne Slim at the Orange Peel in Asheville – Night 2 – Images by Will Godfrey

So the first night in Asheville with Langhorne Slim was a blast, but man, they came to play on night 2. This was essentially their last night in U.S. for a while because they are currently on a 5 week tour in Europe. The energy they put forth was incredible. I found myself a few times just stopping to enjoy the music.

Hope these photos due that show justice. What a blast. Stay tuned for more Langhorne photos from Asheville.

Langhorne Slim at the Orange Peel in Asheville

willgodfrey — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 23:28:26 +0000

Langhorne Slim at the Orange Peel in Asheville – Night 1 – Images by Will Godfrey

It’s been a whirl wind couple of weeks around WGP’s HQ. I’ve been traveling a bit, shooting a ton, and loving life along the way. What could be better?

Almost two weeks ago, I took a short trip up to beautiful Asheville, N.C. before the POTUS induced craziness happened. I went to shoot a couple Langhorne Slim concerts that concluded their two week tour opening for the Drive by Truckers. As usual, I had a blast. Sean, Malachi, Jeff, David, & Mia are all greats folks to chill with and there is never a dull moment.

These images are from the first show in Asheville at the Orange Peel on Friday April 16, 2010. Stay tuned for a few more posts from this trip included their show at Harvest Records and Night Two at the Orange Peel.

No Mas Photo Fun

willgodfrey — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 21:27:43 +0000

No Mas Photo Fun with Sarah Witherington – Images by Will Godfrey

I recently met an emerging photographer at a local industry event and we became fast friends. Making our schedules mesh for this photo shoot was a fun challenge but totally worth it. Sarah and I headed out to North West Atlanta to just shoot whatever appeared in our viewfinder. I haven’t been on a little trip like this in too long and I throughly enjoy them. We had a grand time and I gave her a few pointers while she gave me an evil look because I continued to take photos of her. What can I say… I love people photos!

Let me know what you think of the photos! And if you are interested in checking out her work, here a link:

Atlanta Wedding & Portrait Photographer Sarah Esther

Sam Quinn Recording and Portrait in Concord, North Carolina

willgodfrey — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:45:29 +0000

Sam Quinn Recording Session & Portraits in Concord, NC – Images by Will Godfrey

Last weekend, I journeyed deeper into the Appalachian Mountains heading to Concord, North Carolina to photograph Sam Quinn recording some new material with audio engineer Justin Glanville of Live And Breathing. In between Justin’s gardening sessions and mostly late at night, Sam got down to business on a sweet new track. I am looking forward to sharing it with everyone over at Live And Breathing‘s website when it is complete.

We also played around with some portraits at dusk using my radio transmitters to give a cool rim light effect. Let me know what you think!

Twilight Self Portrait in Cleveland, Ga

willgodfrey — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 21:00:31 +0000

A few nights back, I was in a odd mood (for me) wanting to shoot some self portraits. As per my usual self, I didn’t want to make it easy and I came up with a bit of a challenge. “Take a photo of me, that I like and want to show off.” Yeah right.

After a 20 min brain storm, I decided on a tight shot at dusk with diffused side light plus a rim and that is exactly what I got. But! The challenging part was getting the image. As I mentioned before, this was a self-portrait. My only help were two light stands and a tripod. Let me tell you, those guys aren’t very good for anything beyond standing upright and staying still.

I had a spot picked out on the ground which helped a lot in terms of getting focus and keeping focus, but I still needed to manually dial in the focus to keep it tack sharp since I was shooting at f/1.4. I started by guessing the distance and then tweaking to get the exact focus. Once that was complete, I started working on getting the exact exposure for my lights. I use the new Pocket Wizard TTL radio slaves to make some things a bit easier. My main light was set to TTL, but because I was bouncing out of an umbrella Canon’s TTL system has issues (as with any bouncing with Canon flashes). So I set the flash exposure compensation to +1 to get the results I was after.

Then I moved on to the rim light which is always a bit tricky to get setup. Any good rim light is basically pointing directly at the camera lens so you have to use gobo to block the light from the lens. Otherwise, you will get some crazy lens flare that is not very attractive for most shoots. I used the same type Pocket Wizard to trigger the rim light as well, but this flash was set on manual at 1/16 power because TTL has no idea how to deal with a rim light. In my experience you are better off keeping full control of that light.

Once I had the lights, exposure, and focus dialed in, it was just a waiting game then. I gave myself plenty of time to get the shot setup before dusk. This was also useful because I kept having to reshoot the images to get myself lined up exactly as I had the image in my mind’s eye. This part was a little tedious, but I really like this image of me and you won’t hear me say that often!

What do you think? What could be better?

Photoshelter: Simplifying my Cloud

willgodfrey — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 06:31:58 +0000

Langhorne Slim Q1 2010 Favorites – Images by Will Godfrey

Being a self-described technologist, I pride myself on efficient utilization of technology and Photoshelter just plain makes my life easier! Photoshelter is the hub of my image archive and it has simplified my workflow in every respect. I shoot primarily music and Photoshelter allows me to easily send images to bands or managers or clients. They host them all. In fact, all of the images in this post are hosted in my Photoshelter Archive.

The Avett Brothers play at the Fabulous Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia on New Year’s Day 2010. Both Sallie Ford and Langhorne Slim opened the show.

About 9 months ago, I got fed up with my website’s inability to talk to other sections (i.e. portfolios to blog to e-commerce) and started looking into new solutions to streamline my image management across my entire web presence. I have been using Photoshelter since 2008, but did not quite realize its full potential until after I nearly started a new business to remedy this pain point in my workflow. After going so far as beginning to recruit developers to help in writing the code, Photoshelter announced their Graph Paper Press WordPress theme integration and stopped my new venture in its tracks (thankfully!).

My frustrations 9 months ago stemmed from the fact that I wanted to upload an image *once* but my portfolio required one size, my blog another, and e-commerce yet another size. So to disseminate one new image across my website required 4 different images to be uploaded to the web (the 4th being a hi-res upload to Photoshelter). In terms of speeding up my workflow, this just didn’t work.

Enter Photoshelter + Graph Paper Press. I was already using WordPress for my blogging software, so moving it over to a Graph Paper Press template was simple and the integration with Photoshelter made my dream of one image upload a reality!

I now have a website built on an easy to modify backend (WordPress) and all of my images reside in my Photoshelter Archive. This means that every image on my new website is hosted on Photoshelter which has the ability to send over any size image my site requires. Also, anytime you click on an image (even from within a flash slideshow) you will be taken directly to that image in my Archive where you can purchase a print or a rights managed download. Ease of use? Check!

While I recreated my website, I also took this opportunity to learn everything Photoshelter teaches about Search Engine Optimization and implemented massive changes with the relaunch of my new site. I reworked my workflow to include SEO from the very beginning and the results have paid off. I highly recommend reading Photoshelter’s SEO Cookbook. But, don’t just read it, take the time to implement it! I tripled my organic web traffic in three months by following their advice.

Live And Breathing reocrding a few new Sam Quinn songs at his home in Concord, North Carolina on Feb. 20, 2010.

Photoshelter also allows me the piece of mind to manage my business and clients from anywhere. This past January I was sitting in my seat just before kickoff at the FedEx Orange Bowl when I get a call from a client who was less than thrilled about one specific image that was posted on my site via a flash slideshow gallery from Photoshelter. Instead of saying “Sorry, I’ll get to it after the game.” I was able to say “Give me 5 minutes.” I quickly decided to test out Photoshelter’s iPhone compatibility and was pleasantly surprised. I was able to remove the image from public view right from my iPhone and make my client happy within minutes all without leaving my seat.

Photoshelter’s bulletproof image archive, streamlined photo website capabilities, search engine optimization education, and e-commerce features have given me a great deal of comfort in my website. Photoshelter is easily one of the most important companies I use in my business. The only other company that comes close is ShootQ, but that is an entirely different topic for another day.

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Rural Sunset Drive through the North Georgia Mountains

willgodfrey — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 04:45:06 +0000

Rural Sunset Drive Art Photos – Images by Will Godfrey

After being cooped up in the office for a good portion of the day, my conscious wouldn’t let such a beautiful day become a complete waste. So I grabbed a camera and headed to the car about an hour before sunset to do the closest thing to street photography that is possible in the country. Essentially I drove until I found a road that I had never been on before and turned to find out where it went, all the while shooting photos without looking through the viewfinder.

I do rather enjoy getting out of the car and taking some photos, but I have been burned on numerous occasions around here. Seems these old country folk aren’t too keen on scruffy looking city boys wandering about their property with a camera in hand. Only time I ever manage to get away with it, I have an cute female photographer with me to help smooth things over.

Anyways, I drove about for over an hour shooting as I went. The images above are my favorites. I must say, I didn’t expect to get one keeper because I am so obsessive about good clean design within my composition, but I managed to surprise myself.

What do you think? And remember, I also didn’t get into any accidents while I took photos and drove (not recommended).

Sam Quinn Recording Session in Concord, North Carolina

willgodfrey — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:13:52 +0000

Sam Quinn Recording Session Concord North Carolina – Images by Will Godfrey

Hi Everyone! This post is long overdue because I’ve been a bit under the weather recently. Thankfully, I am feeling much better now!

Two weeks ago, I spent the weekend at my business partner’s house in Concord, N.C. while he recorded some new tracks for Sam Quinn.

Head over to Live And Breathing website to hear his new track Oceans.

Click here to hear the new track.