Relay for Life Book and Video Out

I'm done.  Finished.  The book is ready to be sold!  The photo video is uploaded to You Tube!  As a way of raising more money for the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life, I put together a book for sale at Blurb called "Hope: North Valley Relay for Life."  

It is made up of photos from 2011 to 2015 Relays held at Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix.



The book is listed at $29.99 and $7 of that will go to the North Valley Relay for Life. 

Hope: North Valley Relay for Life by James Gordon Patterson | Make Your Own Book

   

I primarily edited the photos with Adobe Lightroom.  I imported some 60-plus photos into the Blurb bookmaking program called BookWright.  The book is being sold on Blurb.  I could have sold on the Apple site or Amazon, but costs would have run higher meaning less money going to the Relay for Life.  

I created the video using a program called FotoMagico.  It allowed me to lay down a music bed and narrate the video, too.  Then I uploaded to You Tube to share with you and the world.

This is all part of the "photo philanthropy" concept... giving back with a camera.  I hope to do more of this in the future.  

Until My Next Adventure, 

(Sedona, Environmental Portraits, with the Arizona Professional Photographers Association)

See You On Down The Road!

Jim Patterson

North Valley Relay for Life 12 April 2013

I volunteered to photograph the North Valley Relay for Life, a fundraising activity for the American Cancer Society once again at Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix, Arizona. 

Volunteering as a photographer is a great way to give back.  I find it fun to share my talent and help a good cause.  I also feel I get just a little bit better every time I do one of these events.

The relay started in the late afternoon, so I had some golden hour lighting left, but I also had some harsh shadows to contend with.  At times I filled with a bit of flash.  I also found the “shadow” slider on Lightroom 4 to be invaluable in recovering faces in severe shading.  Below, I caught a couple from KZON 101.5 with that lovely light.

As it got darker, then the decision was to turn up the ISO and not use flash or use a wee bit of flash turned down to light subjects but keep the background dark.  One of the highlights of the all-night event was the lighting of the luminarias and the walk around the track first by the cancer

survivors.  I had done this type of photography before and decided it best to turn off my flash and work with the light off the candles, turning up my ISO to 3200 (I shot with a Canon 5D Mark III and a Canon 24-105mm lens).  The 5D Mark III does a heck of a job with high ISO!  I worked with an F stop of 4 and was usually in the 1/20^th to 1/30^th range for shutter speed, all hand held.  Even five years ago the technology was not there to do this, so I am thankful I was packing the 5D.  

Being that this is a charitable event, I am not charging for my photographs.  So after editing, I uploaded from Lightroom into my professional Zenfolio site at http://bit.ly/131ORmk  I gave the event coordinators instructions on how to download any of the photos they’d like to use.  All I want is credit. 

My next photo adventure will be mid-May when I travel to Denver to do some macro photography with Canon. 

Until then, Happy Shooting!

Jim Patterson

http://JamesGordonPatterson.com

Here is a slideshow of all the photos I took at the North Valley Relay for Life