First up on Monday afternoon, was Niagara Falls. Here are some photos from that excursion.

From there I drove to Jackson Center, Ohio and spent Monday night with my Hallmark buddy Becky. On Tuesday we went boating at Indian Lake with her sister and friends.

Later on Tuesday, I got to see her movie theaters and where she will be setting up her own photography studio. Then Tuesday evening at midnight, we saw the grand opening of Transformers 2 at her drive-in theater, which was sold out with 200 cars.

Wednesday was spent driving across Illinois including 3 hours just getting through Chicago – can you say what a pain?

Thursday, my car broke down near Rochester, MN and I had to have it towed to the Toyota dealer where I sat all day for their diagnosis. Turns out that I needed to replace my engine and that I would have to sit around Rochester paying hotel and food bills for a week, so I decided to just tow it home and deal with it at home. Since my 4Runner is like 15 years old, I don’t want to put much money in it and will probably retire it for a new one. Thursday evening, I traded in my 4×8 Uhaul trailer for a Uhaul van with a flat bed trailer to pull my disabled car home.

On Friday, I was back to having fun again and visted the Badlands National Park in South Dakota.

Friday evening I checked in to a hotel near Mt. Rushmore. Here are some photos from a night show at Mt. Rushmore.

Saturday morning, I re-visited Mt. Rushmore as soon as it opened.

After Mt. Rushmore, I visited Crazy Horse.

From there I went past the Grand Tetons National Park, where I saw a Bullshead Moose in the wild in the woods.

I continued on and decided to find a hotel since it was getting late. I drove through Jackson Hole, Wyoming and over the Titons into Idaho, where I spent the night.

Sunday I got an early start and drove back across the Titons to Jackson Hole and then to the Grand Tetons National Park. On the way, I was lucky enough to see these hot air balloons landing.

After crossing the mountains, I pulled over and discovered that the straps came off both of my front tires. It was a good thing that I discovered that and fixed the straps. The whole setup is not the best. Anyway, aren’t I traveling in style? And driving up and down mountains with this heavy load is fun too.

I decided to stop at the Grand Tetons National Park information center to pick up some trail maps for hiking and watch an introductory video.

The area I decided to hike in is called the Taggart Lake Trailhead. I ended up hiking about 6 miles and because it was early ran into almost no one except a park ranger.

Then I drove to Yellowstone National Park and viewed Old Faithful.

From there I drove to Butte, Montana where I spent the night.

On Sunday, I drove past the large beautiful lake called Fisthead Lake up to Glacier National Park, which is near the Canadian border in Montana. When I arrived at the park they told me that I was too long to go past the visitor center unless I unhooked my trailer. So, I found the transit parking lot which was deserted and figured out how to take the trailer off. Since I have a lot of experience with boat trailers it was not too hard. It was also much nicer traveling up the mountains on narrow roads without pulling a heavy load.

Upon traveling back down the mountain late in the day, I started to worry about how I would get the car trailer back on the trailer hitch by myself when I am practically blind in backing the UHaul truck. I was thinking that since no one is at the transit lot that I might have to go find a ranger to help me. Well it turns out it was not as bad as I thought. I just slowly backed the truck up in the right direction and kept getting out to check where I was in relation to the trailer ball and kept inching it bit by bit until I finally got it. Luckily the process only took about 20 minutes due to my experience backing boat trailers. Boy, was I relieved to finally get the trailer hooked back up and be on my way home. I ended up driving until dark to get back to a hotel off I90 on the Montana/Idaho border.

Finally, on Monday I drove the rest of the way home and that completes my road trip home.

Another week of fine tuning our portfolios and preparing prints. We also have a few optional classes. In addition, we have to turn our school equipment back in.

On Wednesday morning I shoot another self portrait. Here are some photos from that shoot.

On Thursday, the morning started off with our final updated portfolios being accepted. Here is the top row of my final student portfolio.

The bottom row of my final student portfolio consisted of the following photos:

Thursday afternoon we had a practice graduation rehearsal. Afterwards, everyone cleared out their lockers because this is the last day we will have access to the building. Here are some photos from around the school.

The evening was spent with friends, including some good friends who came from Seattle for my graduation.

Finally on Friday, the big day, we had graduation. This was a very bitter sweet day – although everyone is happy to be graduating, we all kind of wish we had just a few more weeks to be with our friends as Hallmark is like a really big family – unlike a typical college. The final statistics are with 213 students starting out, 195 passed for a 91% success rate. Graduates came from 42 states and 10 countries. Here are some photos from graduation.

Saturday, I spent the morning with my friends from Seattle and showed them the Bridge of Flowers in Shelbourne Falls, Mass. Here are some photos from that.

Later in the day, I rented a Uhaul for my trip back home and saw a movie with some Hallmark friends.

Sunday was spent packing. This concludes my Hallmark Education adventure and marks the beginning of my new career as a full-time professional photographer. Check out Robertson Photography Studios for my non-travel related photography.

Even though I did not do much shooting this week, I did manage to have an outdoor portrait session on Saturday morning. Here are some shots from that session.

One more week until graduation.

Just a few optional classes and a continuation of portfolio reviews for other sections. As such, it is very boring these days with not much to do in nowhereville.

On Wednesday, I visited the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream factory in Waterbury, Vermont. Here are some photos from that road trip.

On Friday, I assisted Justin and Mary Marantz (wedding photographers) in Connecticut.

Well, this week the judging of the portfolios was the opposite extreme of last week. Whereas last week the bar was extremely high – this week they were passing everyone – very inconsistent. Hopefully they will find a happy medium at some point.

The only photos that I shot this week were of the Basketball Museum in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Everyone is really getting anxious to graduate and be back out in the real world making money again.

Wednesday night, everyone turned in their portfolios, which consisted of 28 11×14 prints and a DVD with our images. During the day, we had also dropped our images with a link to our website on the school server. My new web site of my current non-travel related photography can be found at www.RobertsonPhotographyStudios.com. I invite everyone to visit it. The entire event was highly emotional for a lot of people as it was the culmination of a lot of hard work and anxious people. After our portfolios were turned in, everyone went out to celebrate.

Next up is the independant judging of our portfolios by visiting judges over the next 3 weeks. As I previously mentioned, my section is up first this Thursday and Friday so I will know whether my portfolio passed or not by the weekend. I kind of hope that I am the first person on the first day but we will see.

The judges on the panel are: 1) Gregory Heisler, a NYC photographer who likes edgy stuff that would appear on the cover of TIME magazine; 2) Tamara Behar, an Art Director from New York, who is into beauty and advertising; 3) and Skip Cohen, former president of Rangefinder publishing and WPPI (Wedding & Portrait Photographers International). Unfortunately, it was heavily biased towards individuals that were into the edgy style of photography. It would have been nice, if there was a judge for other areas of photography such as Commercial table-top and more contemporary photography, but I guess it is what it is.

Thursday was spent in portfolio critiques. It was a good thing that I didn’t go today as only half of the 14 students who went today passed. The judges were brutal today and it was very emotional for everyone. I felt very sorry for some of the students that didn’t pass because I felt they had good portfolios.  Hopefully in re-review, their portfolios will be easy to bring up to passing. Even though I was totally confident that my portfolio would pass before today started, I am not as confident now.

On Friday, I was finally up. I was the last person before lunch. I had a friend take notes for me while another one videotaped the process. All the judges thought I had some solid work with some suggestions on how I can bring it up to top notch before I graduate. They want all our portfolios to be the best that they can be so I got about a half hour of valuable feedback. In fact, one of the judges thought I showed enough potential in my work that he invited me to an all expense paid workshop of his in Las Vegas in August.  Nevertheless, I got a lot of valuable feedback on how to improve my pictures to make an even stronger portfolio.

BTW: With the first of eight sections done we have a NOT ACCEPTED rate of about 40% (5% of student body), which if it keeps up for the other seven sections, we will have almost half of the school going to re-review. To put it in perspective, only about 20 students of last year’s class went to re-review and we will probably match that by Monday’s review. This process has been very brutal so far with one judge even saying it wasn’t their responsibility to make sure we graduate.

Anyway, here is my current portfolio for your review, with the first 14 images on the top row from left to right.

The next 14 images were on the bottom row from left to right.

One of the strategies for portfolio review is to start and end with your strongest work. Stay tuned for an updated AWESOME portfolio.

Our work of 28 11×14 images are displayed on stage in front of all the students and anonymously judged by visiting judges. Once they are graded, we are called on stage and sit in the “hot” seat to listen to our evaluation and whether we pass or not. For many students, this is a very stressful moment. The process lasts about 3 weeks until all the students are done. If we don’t pass, we are told what we need to do to get our portfolios up to passing and have a few weeks to complete this. Final graduation is June 19, 2009. – can’t wait.

As usual, the week started with a guest lecturer. The guest was Gregory Heisler.

Very little in the way of photographing this week as time was spent in more classes and editing and printing and evaluating our portfolios to get them ready for the final critique. Many of the students still have a lot to shoot but luckily I had shot enough to have backups for shoots that I was hoping for but kept having models cancel on me. It is so nice to be ahead of the curve. Many late nights were spent in the school digital labs working  to fine tune our prints.

I did shoot another student named Gina on Wednesday morning for my web site. Here are some pictures from that.

Wednesday afternoon, I had a review of my entire portfolio with all 28 11×14 images and only about 4 prints needed to be tweaked. Feeling a little confident, I decided to take advantage of Wednesday movie night and take a break. My goal is to by completed with my prints tomorrow so I can help fellow students.

By Friday, I was happy that I met my goal of being completely finished with printing my entire portfolio and having my web site online – now just tweaking and helping other students.

Here is my composited Conceptual photograph.

So nice to have my portfolio finally done. Next week, I will post my entire portfolio with the results. Now, I can finally relax a little. Next week, we are going to arrange our prints in a logical order and burn DVDs of our images.

Monday evening, I photographed a fellow student named Sara.

On Tuesday, I first re-shot my background for my conceptual photo along with a ship model to composite with my conceptual. 

In the evening, I photographed another fellow student named Shannon.

Wednesday afternoon, I photographed a teenager named Melanie.

Then Wednesday evening, I photographed a high school student name Olivia.

On Thursday, I shot a sextant to add to my conceptual photo. Stay tuned for the final composite later.

Finally, Friday evening, I photographed a girlfriend of a fellow student.

The end is drawing near.

For the rest of the week we had more business, advertising, and digital imaging classes of course. Hallmark really emphasizes the business and marketing side of photography in addition to the technical and artistic side for a well-rounded photographer.

Early in the week we had a mock wedding ceremony at a small church in nearby Montique, Massachusettes to learn about photography weddings. Here are a couple of shots from that event.

On Thursday, I shot an ice tea shot with selective focus for one of my commercial electives.

Here are some other photographers working in commercial studio.

And on Thursday evening, I photographed another model, named Teddy, in a high-key setting.

On Friday, I was supposed to shoot a maternity shot during the day and another model in the evening, but they both canceled on me. Then on Saturday, I had originally planned on traveling to the coast to photograph a young girl and her dad, but that also was canceled on me. Luckily I was able to schedule two more shoots for Saturday. First up in the morning, was an occupational shoot with a sculpture. The second one was canceled on me again – very frustrating.

Sunday started off early in the morning photographing a family.

Then after church, I photographed another family in their traditional costumes from Ghana.

I was also supposed to finally shoot my bride and groom, but it was canceled due to medical problems in the groom’s family. My couple shoot also canceled on me. Are you seeing a trend in working with models? Hopefully in the real world this will not happen once they have to pay for photo sessions.

For Monday, I finally found a model to photograph  a low-key setting of a groom in the studio. Here are some photos from that shoot.

In addition to all our regular business, design, advertising, and photoshop classes, we were also taught advanced lighting.

Then on Tuesday, I had my formal review, where I met with three instructors – one from commercial studio, one from portrait studio, and one from graphics design to discuss my progress on my current portfolio.

On Wednesday, I photographed backgrounds in the commercial studio to be used for product backgrounds later in compositing. But on Thursday I had another model come into the Portrait Studio and photographed her in three different outfits. Here are some photos from that shoot.

I have been spending a lot of the week in editing my photos for my portfolio – especially my photos with the models. With good models, the shoot is much easier as it doesn’t take a lot of direction and they already know how to pose good. I am thinking that I really love shooting fashion modeling with attractive models – maybe I should go to NYC after all?

On Friday, I shot architectural interiors at a 10,000 sq. ft. house in Longmeadow, Mass. This house is to be featured in an upcoming Architectural Digest magazine and I will be the first photographer allowed to photograph this house. Is that cool or what? I plan on using one of these shots for my mandatory interior architecture photograph and an exterior shot for a commercial elective.

The weekend was spent editing my many files. The one drawback of photographing models is that you get lots of really good photographs and it is hard to edit them down and time consuming for basic retouching.