Lakeland College
It’s a bit of a secret that some months ago I teamed up with a friend of mine to shoot a firemen’s calendar for the Lakeland College class in Vermillion. It was an awesome (full) day of shooting – lots of baby oil, lots of tongue-in-cheek comments and lots of fun. Because I wasn’t able to post anything until the official release of the calendar, I’ve been sitting on these shots for several months and am only getting around to blogging a few of them. Very soon I’ll have a gallery available, but for now, here...
read moreChristmas Service
I love the Christmas season. I always have. A big part of it has always been the church services with the choirs and the kids singing and doing hilarious stuff. I remember myself playing a shepherd or an angel when I was a kid. And my wife and I both seem to remember getting a little paper bag full of peanuts, a “Christmas” orange, and a few pieces of candy (the peanuts were rarely eaten). These days it’s not all about the bag of treats, but about being together...
read moreSensitivity Training
The ISO capabilities of current camera models is remarkable. Sometimes I’ll go out late at night just for the fun of shooting at 25,600. But while it’s great to have the possibility of capturing a low-light shot that would not have been possible only a few years ago, many people overestimate the implications. While an expanded ISO range allows us to capitalize on a lower quantity of light, this does nothing to help us toward better quality of light. Case in point: I was asked to take a few photos at a Sunday...
read moreGoodbye To An Old Friend
This Sunday we said goodbye to our old friend Cosmos as she drifted away in the Armstrong Veterinary Clinic. This little border collie was virtually joined at the hip with my friend Eric for the 14 years she spent here. Our last memories are of her springy trot along a forest path near Salmon Arm, August 28, 2011. We miss you already, old girl! ...
read moreGarth & Meghan Married!
Wow, I just realized it’s been a while since I blogged a wedding. But I really wanted to get a few shots of Garth and Meghan up here for you all to see. I tormented them with exposure to mosquitoes for the afternoon and if said mosquitoes don’t appear in the photos it’s because I edited them out. Ha! Thanks, guys, for inviting me to a great party. I can’t wait to show you the rest! -m
read moreJet Black’s Wild Kingdom
I haven’t really spent a great deal of time in our back yard this summer. Probably because it’s too wet this year even to mow the lawn. We didn’t really plant much this year, but rather just let the beds grow up wild, and I just realized how lush and beautiful it is back there. Have you ever noticed how much more colorful things tend to look after the rain? I thought it was time for a few photos back there. Let me share a few tips. 1. Getting in close is a great way to photograph flowers or plants. This allows you...
read moreA Before & After
For the photo below, I had found a high vantage point that allowed me a downward view of the concrete staircase. This was important to the composition because it allowed me to exclude many other background elements along the grassy hillside, such as trees and other people. This greatly simplified the composition, but it still contained no real center of interest. So I waited with my camera poised until this guy came along. I took a few shots as he passed through the scene, but this is the one I liked best. So now my photograph contains a...
read moreGrad 2011
One of the great things about having nephews and nieces graduating from high school is that I get to travel out to BC to hang out with them and take their photos. This year it was Dylan’s turn and the lad looked sharp in his new and stylish suit (I think I might be partly responsible for his wearing sensible clothing these days). Let me just say that there is no better way to feel old at 32 than to hang out with a high school grad and his friends on this landmark weekend of their lives. It was almost like being cool again, but now I have...
read moreSomething A Little Different (for me)
I’ve been reading a little Ansel Adams lately and looking at a lot of his images. I’m not a big fan of all of his work, but some of his images are among my favorites. I’m certainly no Adams, but I took a crack at emulating his work a little in the last couple of days. Adams was known for his image manipulation through dodging and burning, something I had to do a fair bit of in this image, although by much simpler means. It wasn’t as easy as I expected to capture this image. I was out for a walk and discovered a...
read moreCats – Edmonton Photography
I’ve always been a cat kind of guy. We had several cats while I was growing up and I think I really relate to their self-consciousness and independence now (for better or for worse). Circumstances don’t permit me to have a cat these days, but there are a couple of them that moved in a few doors down and we’re on friendly terms now. They don’t really trust my camera just yet – I think they believe I’m stealing their souls – but they’re going to have to get used to it, because I’m devoting an...
read moreRoots
It’s difficult to say just when I became a photographer. There’s a part in the movie Sabrina (not the old one, but the remake from the ’90s) where Sabrina, who is a passionate amateur photographer, says “I think I’ve been taking pictures my whole life…long before I ever had a camera”. I’m not sure that’s exactly like me, but I know that my love affair with photography began some time before I really picked up a camera, and I think I know the exact moment. It was in grade 12 that I was in...
read moreArt Gallery
Let me admit straightaway that I have yet to step into the Art Gallery of Alberta. Maybe it’s because I feel so gratified just looking at the exterior. Well, the truth is that I’m just not really very artistic and while I am often moved by art, I am not constantly drawn to it. I suppose I’ll visit the Art Gallery this year, but for now I have discovered that its exterior is a goldmine of wonderful photographs. One of the first things I noticed about the exterior is the complete lack of color – this...
read moreGet In Close
Long before I was a photographer, I watched the movie Sabrina. Not the old one, but the one starring Harrison Ford as Linus and Julia Ormond as Sabrina. In the movie, Sabrina is something of an amateur photographer and Linus asks her to take a few shots of his apartment for sale. So she asks him what shots he wants, and he says something like, “Everything. All of it.” I never forgot her response: “You know, sometimes MORE isn’t better. Sometimes it’s just MORE.” I didn’t know that one day I would be applying the same principle to...
read moreGetting Out
It really is true that many photographers just don’t find it easy to get out in Winter. I am one of those photographers. Not that I think that’s okay. But although I haven’t been out doing much personal over the last several months, I finally did get out this past weekend to explore downtown Edmonton. I had decided in advance that I would focus on just shooting some of the buildings that I often walk by. It was a beautiful day and I knew that the light would be fairly interesting toward evening. I took my 24-70mm lens, 5D...
read moreShot Of The Day – Cloudscape
The weather was beginning to roll in as I drove home from the Tofield area today.The clouds were frothy and dense, but the sun was illuminating them from the upper left, giving them this awesome contrast. I pulled the car over, snatched three shots, and did a quick stitch in Photoshop when I got home. The blue tone was added into the shadows in Lightroom. [photos] Canon EOS 5DMkII; ISO 50; 1/1600; f/8; 70mm
read moreClassic Look
Here is an example of one of the most-requested bridal photographs. Sometimes it just comes off brilliantly, like this one from March. Thank you, Skye! Yes, you look gorgeous. ...
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App Feature – Swankolab
The Swankolab app is a slightly different sort of photo app in that it isn’t for taking photos. Rather, it allows you to choose photos from your library and process them using a cool DIY wet-lab interface. The interface is really cool and vintage. Your lab is stashed inside a little wooden closet and there’s a shelf at the top where you can select your processing chemicals and combine them for a unique processing look. Everything happens graphically, so you can see the chemicals being poured into the developing tray, the photo sliding...
read moreApp Feature- Hipstamatic
T he Hipstamatic iPhone app has been at the top of the photography app category for as long as I can remember and was the first (and still one of the best) photo app I purchased. It’s an app like this that makes iPhonography fun. After all, we’re not producing professional work here, so if it’s not fun what’s the point? What makes the Hipstamatic so cool is, first of all, its vintage rangefinder styling, which can be set between three different looks – black leather, white leather, and the Salvador Dali leather (very cool). The flash...
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