The Nation's Capital - Big City Night-time Shoot - Ottawa, Ontario

A few weeks ago I was in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada's Capital City. I was there for a wedding (in the wedding, not shooting the wedding), but we went a few days early to help out with the preparations. The night we arrived, three of us went downtown Ottawa for a few hours to shoot some night-time scenery. I think we stayed out until about 1:30 am... Here are some of the shots, I hope you enjoy them! Please feel free to use the comments area for any questions or, of course, comments.

Click Read More to see the rest of the photos!

Hawii - Recap Part 1

The blog has been a little quiet lately, I know. There is reason for this, work has been a bit crazy and so has catching up on everything since getting back from Hawaii. This is going to be a two part blog post where I recap my time spent in Hawaii.

In the vein of not talking too much and rather just showing photos, I will stop talking, err...writing. Take a look below for my favorites from the rest of the trip. Recap Part 2 will come at a later date when I have a chance to edit all of the video I shot during the trip.

Day 4: A beach

Click here to view the rest of the post and all the photos.

The Kauakahis

While I was in Hawaii, I had the opportunity to take photos for a great family, the Kauahakis. Obviously, being in Hawaii, we shot near a beach. It was a crazy sunny day, the day following the rainy day for the wedding. Here are just a few of the photos that I took. I had a great time shooting these guys, they are great people and were a blast to hang out with!

Enjoy!

Make sure to click Read More to see more of the photos. And follow the link at the bottom of the post to see some more photos on Facebook.

Kenny and Bonnie - Hawaii Beach Wedding

If you have been following along with my recent blog posts, then you know that I am currently in Hawaii. If not... I am in Kauai, Hawaii. The reason that I am here is to shoot Kenny and Bonnie's wedding. I met these two about two months ago when they approached me to shoot their wedding. We worked out the details and before I knew it, the flights were booked.

During the winter in Hawaii, it is the rain season. In a jungle climate, that makes it very likely for...rain. The three days leading up to the wedding, were very consistently rainy days. Here in Hawaii, it doesn't rain throughout the whole day, it will rain off and on all day and everywhere on the island will be different. For this reason, I think we were all apprehensive as the wedding day began. It all turned out great, the day started and ended with rain, but the rain held off during most of the time that we set aside for the photo shoot and during the ceremony, which was held on the beach.

I have been having a great time while here in Hawaii. I have met lots of great people and done a lot of really fun thing. While I was shooting the wedding, it was so easy to tell how much these two love each other and how much everyone who attended love these two.

Enjoy the following preview of photos from the Kenny and Bonnie's wedding day.

Be sure to click Read More to see more photos, and scroll to the bottom of the post to see more on the dpvisuals Facebook page.

Hawaii - Day Three

Day 3 was pretty much focused on surfing. There are quite a few friends around here that are willing to take you out for a surf, use one of their boards and give you some instructions. Trust me, its harder than it looks. It requires a whole lot of arm strength to paddle out into the waves and then some more to paddle with the wave so it picks you up for a ride.

We drove out to meet some friends who were going to teach me to surf. As it turned out, we were slightly ahead of them in our timing, so Jordan and I stopped at the lighthouse and took some pictures from the lookout. We were going to go closer to the lighthouse, but it cost money and we didn't have cash with us (apparently a lot of the island only deals in cash).

After that we drove the rest of the way to the beach and got started with the surfing. Lets just say I was unsuccessful today (check out the picture at the bottom of the post to see what I mean), but I kind of know more of what I should be doing. Hopefully I will do better next time!

I also got the chance to shoot some surfing and grab some pictures of the palm trees that are all around here. Click on Read More to see more of the photos from today! (Thanks to Jordan for taking the pictures of me!)

Hawaii - Day Two

Today started off with home made breakfast, orange juice, etc. It was delicious! Next up we drove down the road to play some tennis. The courts were in an amazing location with mountains for a backdrop. We had the place to ourselves and played a few games.

After getting a hearty work-out from tennis, we headed back to the house for a bit and then off to hit the beaches. Beach number one was where we snorkelled and also watched some whales jumping out of the water. Beach number two had a cliff to jump off. I was the only one that jumped. But check out the video below to see me jump.

Click on Read More to see some more pictures and the video.

Hawaii - Day One

Today so far has been pretty chill. Yesterday I awake for about 24 hours, so today I am taking it easy. Woke up around 8 am local time. I had a pretty decent sleep considering the time change. The heat here is crazy compared to back home in Ontario. It was about 75 degrees here this morning at 10 am and has only gotten hotter as the day goes on. There are roosters all over the place here, and although they didn't wake me up during the night or in the morning, they are incredibly loud during the day.

This afternoon I went on a hike with James, up Sleeping Giant (Nounou Mountain). It was a very hot and sweaty hike, due to the humidity here. I'm not sure how long the hike was or how high it was, but you could clearly see the ocean and a lot of other mountains. This time I didn't take my camera, but I will be taking it with me to all the other places we go.

After hiking was time for a bit of sitting around and then headed to Jordan and James' soccer practice. I got to play with them, despite the fact that I haven't played soccer in many many year. Lets just say I am slightly out of shape and my muscles are pretty sore now.

Below is a video that I created with some quick clips that I shot on my iPhone 4. Enjoy!

Goin' on a trip!

Well hello everyone. I know it's been a little bit of a while since I last posted. There is very good reason for that I promise. I got a full-time job! (up until this point, I had only been working part-time as well as my own freelance work.)

What this means is that I don't have quite as much time to post on this here blog, although I am going to do my best.

The reason of this post, is to let you all know that I will be going on a trip, to HAWAII! I have the opportunity to be a photographer at a wedding, as well as visit a good friend of mine and hang around for a while. So for the next coming weeks, be sure to check out the blog and the dpvisuals facebook page to stay up to date on what is going on. My plan as of right now is to be doing a whole lots of adventurous things as well as get a bit of work done while I am away. I will be taking as many pictures and videos as I can, and hopefully I will get some good content to show you.

I am currently writing this from the Toronto airport, waiting for my flight to LA and from there I will head to Hawaii.

This is all for now, but I will leave you with a video that I worked on at my new job. I only did the actual filming and none of the editing or anything, but enjoy!

More to come soon!

35mm - Big City, Small Town Feel

You might be able to consider the following pictures as part of the Small Town - Night Series or you might just consider them as some photos that have their own category, you decide. I finally got around to developing some film that I have been dying to see. Some of these shots were taken back in the Fall of 2010, either September, October or November, I really have no idea when it was. It was a day that my girlfriend took me apple picking, something I had not done since a field-trip in kindergarten. I only took a few photos that day,  as I needed to help with carrying the giant bag of apples. We went apple picking at a farm out in the country (that makes sense I guess) called Pingle's and then also checked out the store-front that they had at the farm. It was a great day, and we were eating and baking with apples for the next few weeks!

The other photos in the post (this is where it is more like the Small Town/Night pics) are from downtown Toronto, in the Distillery District. Back in December there was a Christmas Market (apparently something more common in Europe?). It was a lot of fun, and we ended up going twice. There were vendors on the streets selling mostly home made food, pies, cakes and other treats. Along with the outside set-ups, all of the stores in the area were open extended hours, there were also many art-galleries open to walk through and enjoy. Santa also made the appearance for some photos with kids. There were carollers, clowns and lots of jolly people. I took more photos here because we went twice. Since it was at night I really had no idea what I was going to come home with, and since it was on 35mm film, it made it even more of a guessing game. Overall I am pretty happy with some of the shots that I got.

Enjoy!

Click on Read More to see the rest of the photos

Night-Time Series Part 2

This is the second part of an on-going series of photos that are of small towns, or places with small town feels to them, taken at night (see the first post here). There is something totally different about going out late at night, to take pictures. Often times a tripod is required as well as long exposures. When you hit the shutter button with a long exposure, for myself anyways, I am not sure exactly what is going to show up at the end of the exposure. It's not like taking portraits, covering events or shooting sports. It is a slower process and I think that's why I am enjoying it so much. I get to think through exactly what I am doing, before I do it, or while I picture is being taken. So far, the times that I have gone out for this series, I have been out for quite a while (a few hours) but taken only a handful of photos (only 21 photos in total this last time). Since this is something I am just getting into, it is a lot of experimenting and trial and error.

When I headed out for this trip, the plan was to photograph a local firehall that I have driven by many times at night, each time noticing the bright contrast of the lighting of the building against the dark woods all around. I wanted to try to capture this erie feeling. It was a little past midnight when I went, so the roads were pretty much deserted in this area, but it was also a rainy night. The snow was melting, it wasn't the most pleasant of conditions. Anyways I came out with a few shots that I like. The last photo in this post is from the following day when we went on a hike to a set of waterfalls, I didn't especially like any of the shots I took there, but this one turned out alright.

Click on Read More to see the rest.

Amy and Mike + 1 (Maternity Photos)

This past weekend I had the opportunity to take some photos and Amy and Mike. Amy is pregnant and is due in February. They wanted me to take these pictures so that they can look back and remember this time in their lives. They also didn't have engagement photos done before their wedding, so this was another chance for them to have some photos taken together. When I do a shoot like this, I really try to bring out the love between the couple or family. I want to catch them being natural and comfortable with each other in front of me. Hopefully this shows through in my photographs.

Click Read More to see get a full taste of their photos.

SU Sportz Promo Video #1

I am currently working on a series of videos for SU Sportz (you may remember a previous post about them, here). This video is to be sent out to potential partners of SU Sportz' summer camps. The idea is to send it out to a pastor/church, to get them involved in hosting a camp.

Click Read More to check out this first video. Stay tuned for more videos about SU Sportz in the future!

Jay and Leah - Wedding Photo Time Lapse

This is a video of every picture that I took at Jay and Leah's wedding.

Cinco De Mayo - Liberty University Selah Yearbook release party 2010

Christmas Extended

Despite the fact that the holiday season has ended, I have decided to share a few pictures from the Santa Claus parade that I attended back in November. Considering the parade was in November, it wasn't too cold and there wasn't any snow on the ground. It was the first night-time parade that I have ever attended and I wanted to take some good pictures. I chose a spot near where the local news station was broadcasting from, because they had their huge video lights set-up and I thought they might add some additional light as well as some more interest to my photos. I hope you enjoy the pics!

Here is a video from the night.




Click Read More to view some more shots from the parade.