Is Your House A Zoo Right Now?

With everyone working from home and schooling from home I’m sure it is. Mine too. In keeping with the “zoo” theme, here are some things for the family to do while staying safe inside:

Here are a few virtual tours of zoos and aquariums:

The Cincinnati Zoo: Check-in around 3 p.m., because that’s the time the Zoo holds a daily Home Safari on its Facebook Live Feed.

Atlanta Zoo: The Georgia zoo keeps a “Panda Cam” livestream on its website.

Georgia Aquarium: Sea-dwellers like African penguins and Beluga Whales are the stars of this aquarium’s live cam.

Houston Zoo: There are plenty of different animals you can check in on with this zoo’s live cam, but we highly recommend watching the playful elephants.

The Shedd Aquarium: This Chicago aquarium shares some pretty adorable behind-the-scenes footage of their residents on Facebook.

Monterey Bay Aquarium: It can be Shark Week every week thanks to live online footage of Monterey Bay’s Habitat exhibit.

National Aquarium: Walk through tropical waters to the icy tundra in this floor-by-floor tour of the famous, Baltimore-based aquarium.

How To Improve Your WiFi At Home

Find a central location for your WiFi router

This may seem like a weird post coming from your photographer but I have my reasons. First, with all of us spending more time at home with family, your home WiFi is on overload.

Probably like many of you, my cable modem was located in the basement where my cable connection comes into the house. So naturally, I put my WiFi router down there. And that worked fine for the most part for many years. But now with COVID-19 and my wife working from home, we were having some issues.

So the first thing I did was figure out where the WiFi router should be for the best coverage in my home. Your basement doesn’t work unless everyone spends a lot of their time down there. I have a basement, a first floor, and a second floor. Moving the WiFi router to the first floor seemed like a good plan. I would have it in a central location so it can still be used in the basement and upstairs.

The easiest plan of action for me was to move it to the first floor right above where it was in the basement. For me, this worked out good as my photography studio is right there. Your situation might be different. I needed to drill a hole from the first floor to the basement and put 2 ethernet cables through the hole. One was from my cable modem (which stayed downstairs – I didn’t want to turn my studio into a data center! lol). The other was to go back downstairs and hook into a switch I have down there that feeds other “hard-wired” devices I have at my house (long story but I still do have non-wireless devices).

In the end, I’m so glad I did this. WiFi performance is now great on the first floor. The second-floor performance increased as well. Basement WiFi access is still acceptable. So now that you have some extra time on your hands <grin> give it a go. Just make sure you do it when there’s no one else using the internet 🙂

Thinking about doing the same and have some questions? Shoot me an email. Before going full time as a professional photographer, I spent 32 years in IT so I may be able to help 🙂

Freddy Awards 2018 Retrospective

With everything going on in the world right now, I wanted to share a little theater joy. I’m not quite sure what will be happening with the 2020 Freddy Awards, but I know a lot of school’s productions have been postponed until the quarantine is lifted. So I wanted to share some of my best photographs from the 2018 Freddy Awards. These were on display in the Easton Hospital Gallery in the State Theatre last year. I will post my 2019 Freddy Award photographs soon.

All of these, and MANY more can be seen and purchased on my website: https://www.dabourphotography.com/Freddy-Awards

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2018 Fredd Award Photographs by Dave Dabour on display at the State Theater

Composites Available In Multiple Sizes

Composite from past SKIT show “Pinocchio”

Composites are a wonderful option if you are in love with several photographs. I can take several and blend them together to make a single treasured memory. The number of photographs that look good in a composite depends on the size of the composite. Generally up to 5 looks good on 8×10 and 11×14. Up to 7 or more can work for 16 x 20 and larger

Composite from SKIT’s “Mary Poppins”

I create all of my composites on either single weight matboard or in the case of 5×30’s, double weight. These make the final product more durable and strong. In fact you could even display them as is or they fit perfectly in a frame.

These composites can have a show name on the top (as pictured) or for dance, a popular dance quote. I have several to choose from or we can use your own! On the bottom can have the name – year, just the name or nothing at all. It’s customized just for you!

5 x 30 composite from SKIT’s “Frozen Jr”

Here is an example of a 5×30 composite. These are individual prints printed on a double-weight mat board. These can contain 5, 6 or 7 photos. This product can be horizontal (as pictured) or even vertical. These are great for unique spaces in a room like above a doorway or on top of other pictures. It’s durable enough to be displayed as-is. If you prefer a frame, they are available on Amazon. If you can’t find them, let me know and I’ll send you the link.

I have the ability to show you an online proof of what your composite will look like before it’s created.

Frozen Jr Theater Photography

Dabour Photography Show Photography from SKIT’s “Frozen Jr”

Theatrical show photographs of SKIT’s current production of “Frozen Jr.” Shows run weekends thru February 1, 2020. More details and tickets at http://www.showkids.org

Additional show photographs are available for viewing and purchase at:

https://proofs.dabourphoto.com/SKIT-FrozenJr

2019 Photo Retrospective

top 300 photos of 2019

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. My fall schedule was intense, to say the least. I was blessed to be working practically 7 days a week from mid-October until Christmas.

It’s common to have a year in review for photographers. Its a fun yet challenging task for an active professional photographer. My Lightroom catalog recorded slightly over 106,000 photos that I created. The sad thing is that is not all of them. Many sports assignments and a few others are kept on a different computer (laptop). For the sake of my sanity, I didn’t look at them.

The 300 images above do not represent everything I’ve photographed either in 2019. I know there are a few clients I realized after creating this I left off, not on purpose.

You can tell from above that I love to create dance and theater photographs. There are also plenty of others too including events, fire, photo booth (not even included above!), headshots and family portraits.

In closing, I’d like to thank all of my clients, past, present, and future for a great 2019. I look forward to 2020 to be even better. I plan on rebalancing some of the types of photographs I create and events I cover so it will be interesting to see how this works out!

Cat and Greg Engagement Photography

New Jersey Engagement Photography

Photo of Cat and Greg the Fall before their wedding. Photo by DAVE DABOUR

Had such a great time with Cat and Greg capturing some images of them 6 months before their Spring wedding.

Photo of Cat and Greg the Fall before their wedding. Photo by DAVE DABOUR

The two of them laughed at most of my jokes and also have a nice sense of humor

Photo of Cat and Greg the Fall before their wedding. Photo by DAVE DABOUR

When the two of them started laughing they were so cute! So looking forward to creating wedding memories for them in the Spring!

Photo of Cat and Greg the Fall before their wedding. Photo by DAVE DABOUR

Photo of Cat and Greg the Fall before their wedding. Photo by DAVE DABOUR

Beauty and the Beast Opens Tonight in Clinton

Photo from CAST’s 2019 production of “Beauty and the Beast” Monday. Photo by DAVE DABOUR © 2019 Dave Dabour

Above is a small sampling of photos from the upcoming performance of “Beauty and the Beast” which opens tonight. The production is put on by the Clinton Area Stage Troupe (CAST) at the North Hunterdon High School.

Tonight, Wednesday July 24th is opening night with performances at 7:30 pm nightly ending with a matinee this Saturday the 27th at 2 pm. Tickets are available at the door. More information please see https://www.clintonareastagetroupe.com/

To see additional photographs of the performance please go to: http://www.dabourphotography.com/event/CAST-Beauty-and-the-Beast

Photos are available to purchase prints and digital downloads.

Cheer Up – Balloon Season Just About Here

Photos from the 2018 Festival of Ballooning in Readington. Photo by DAVE DABOUR

Get ready western New Jersey – hot air balloon season is just about here!

It starts off this Friday with the NJ Festival of Ballooning at Solberg airport in Hunterdon county. What I love about this festival is if there are southern winds, you can get a nice treat as they will blow northward along route 22. Find a nice spot on the roadway and watch them float by!

Knowing the winds and weather is very important for balloon watching/photographing. Too much and they do’t go up. They always error on the side of caution. Good news is there are typically daily launches in the early morning and in the evening.

Photos from the 2018 Festival of Ballooning in Readington. Photo by DAVE DABOUR

Another great balloon festival is balloon festival at the Warren County Farmers Fair. This starts this Sunday July 27th and goes through August 3rd. They typically have daily launches each evening. Whats great about this festival is you can get rather close to the balloons. Don’t feel like paying admission to the fair? No problem you can park free in their parking lot and still get a great view of the balloons.

Photos from the 2018 Festival of Ballooning in Readington. Photo by DAVE DABOUR

A photo tip I can pass along about photographing hot air balloons is try and have the sun at your back if possible. This will give you the best sky and light on the balloons. This is not always easy so just do what you can.

Photos of some balloons at the 2018 Farmers Fair on Monday evening. Photo by DAVE DABOUR

Sometimes the sly and the sun don’t cooperate. So in that case just frame the photo as best you can with impact so the viewer can still appreciate your great photo!

Senior Portraits and More

Summer is a popular time to capture Senior portraits for the upcoming school season. If course you don’t have to be a senior in High School to get your portraits taken over the Summer!

When was the last time you updated your portrait for LinkedIn or your website? You can’t remember? Or you don’t have a LinkedIn account? Or for your corporate directory?

Portraits can be as simple as a head shot or as thorough as capturing who you are and displaying that to others.