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1191Yes, it’s an actual factual site update! Real new photos and everything!

The 2008 Armed Forces show is now up on the site.

Well you know how busy I’ve been, with the wedding coming up, the job situation, and everything else seemingly falling more and more behind.

But there’s hope yet. I’ve been sneaking in work on the site whenever I can fit it, and happy that I managed to finish a section that can be published. I’m not delighted with the quality of my work in this show– the auditorium has excellent lighting, but the banners tended to muck up the white balance, and as I recall the show was paced far faster than one that size needed to be. But there are a few nice shots in there.

Speaking of, word on the street is that the 2009 Florida NPC schedule is just days away from release. Afterward of course it’ll take me a bit to incorporate it into the LP database (thereby making it searchable).

All South is the last show I have for 2008, and no promises as to when it’ll be ready but it hopefully won’t take as long as this last one. I’ve also got updates for Toni‘s page, some new stock photos, a new page (shh! a secret for now), an update to Adrienne Ann Smith‘s page, and probably a half dozen more I don’t remember right now.

In addition, I’ve got a *ton* of cool stuff waiting to update the Six Flags Atlantis Memorial, so sometime very soon I’ve got to get that done.

So stay tuned, and thanks for your patience.

Shots from the 2008 Greater Gainesville are up on the site.

I can’t thank promoter Brian Elliot enough for the amazing job he’s done resurrecting bodybuilding here in my hometown. Probably 90 percent of the competitors were going on stage for their first competition, and that’s always a promising sign. The show was amazingly well-lit, and ran as smoothly as any I’ve seen.

Everyone had an enjoyable time and I’m already looking forward to the show next year.

Next shows to go up: the 2008 All Forces and the 2008 All South.

(BTW, carelessly erasing the flurry of “Vote for Me!” ads from the latest political carnival, I accidentally deleted a phone call from one of the competitors asking about shots from the Gainesville. Please shoot me an email, thanks.)

After my recent rambling rant on striving for quality shots, how do I explain the Ancient City results?

Well it’s easy: the venue fouled up the schedule and double-booked the auditorium (the place that has the good lighting). Normally they’ve been pretty good about such things, but this time we ended up in the gym. The promoter was hopping mad, and I don’t blame him a bit.

So here from the “Salvage What You Can” bin are the photos. On the plus side, the venue is still amazing from the outside– I did a great quick shoot outside with competitor Adam Frez, look for a minishoot update very soon.

New photos of fitness competitor Toni A. are up on her page.

I loved the light in this shoot, and Toni was fun as always.

More of her soon…

Jenny T at lucas-photo.com
Finally another visible dent in the backlog: shots of lovely Florida competitor Jenny Tremblay have been added to the site.

I hear that she’s been very busy of late but with any luck we’ll see her back on the competition stage soon.

I started (insert the eternal “at last” here) working on shots of cute fitness competitor Teresa Meryman from that same show in Lakeland. They were coming out very nicely, but I paused when I realized how long it’s been since I’ve heard from her– she may not want them on the site now, and I still have a *ton* of other shots to catch up on, not to mention the shots from Saturday’s show in Lake City that are only about 2/3 finished.

Anyway, I shot an apologetic email to the last address I had for her; if anyone knows how to contact her, ask her to check her mail as soon as she can.

At long last I’ve finished the updates to Sherry B.’s page. I’ve created an entire new page for her, so let me know how you think that works.

Some of the shots were underexposed, which revealed magnificent blue gradients in the sky, but left Sherry’s image too dark to discern details. I didn’t want to lose the composition, though, so I used a variation of the Zone System to try to remedy these.

– First, I pasted a copy of the entire photo as a new layer.

– Then I tweaked the histogram of the new layer so that her skin tone appeared more natural.

– Finally, I masked the new layer, then edited the mask to allow the tweaked layer to peek through on the original background.

Tracing such a precise outline with a mouse was tedious but I think the results are wonderful.

Shots from the 2007 Southeastern are up on the site.

There weren’t that many competitors, actually, but since they got to compete in multiple classes this one took a bit longer than anticipated.

On the plus side, the lighting was good and I was really able to bring some of the shots to life, I think.

One more show to go, then look forward to seeing some individual shoot updates and even some new pages.

Sanction Saturday is December 1. I think I am going to go. I’m desperately curious as to whether there will be a 2008 show in Gainesville– I need to train for another one soon.

Follow-up: Yes, this year will mark the First Annual Greater Gainesville show in mid-October.