Leah and Jay - Wedding

Last weekend I had an amazing time shooting Leah and Jay's wedding. You might remember seeing their engagement pictures here. Leah and I go back quite a few years when we began working together during our summers. I met Jay soon after the two of them started dating, when I began dating Leah's younger sister (also the Maid of Honour in her wedding.) As I am obviously extremely close to the family, I have been involved in knowing all the little details about this wedding from start to finish. Leah and Jay asked me to shoot the photography for their wedding, as well as the videography of the ceremony. This post currently is only some of the photos of their big day and the video will come soon.

You will see that the wedding is school themed and the reception was held in an old schoolhouse. There was an incredible amount of effort put into the decorating of the reception and the church as well as planning that began more than a year in advance.

To see more photos in this post click Read More and to see the Facebook album with even more photos click here.

Interiors

I love architecture and shooting interiors. When I get the chance I like to shoot the places that I go, and get a shot that looks great. Over the summer I had a great opportunity to shoot a home re-design by Debbie Travis and her show All For One. I was shooting mostly the kitchen re-make from start to finish. It was a crazy experience to walk into a local house that was totally gutted on the main floor, with television cameras and crews. I had to blend in with the workers that were there, just in case I was in one of the television shots. It was tight quarters with lots of people inside. I took shots of the beginning, middle and end of the project.

Below you will find some of my pictures from this project, showing start to finish. After the Debbie Travis images, there are some more of my interior shots.

Click on Read More to see more images.

Still Life: Water Drops

I recently tried my hand at shooting water droplets. It turns out, it isn't that hard, as far as the set-up and equipment. The tough part it trying to actually capture a good droplet, or the droplet doing something interesting. For this set-up, I had a glass baking pan sitting on a table, above the pan I put a ziplock bag with water in it and I hung that from a chair that I set on the table. I then put different pieces of coloured paper behind the pan and set my flash to fire at the paper. The pan was filled with water so once I poked a small hole in the bag, the dripping started. At this point it was all a matter of timing.

I ended up with some shots that I like. Click on Read More to see some more pictures. Enjoy!

Corporate Headshot

Late last week I was hired to shoot a corporate headshot. Having done these sort of shots before and with my limited studio equipment, I took out my two speedlites and planned on shooting a couple white backdrop shots and a couple with some sort of other backdrop (to be determined upon arrival at the location). The location was the office in which Brent works. Since Brent works for Partners International (in-fact he is the president of the organization!), an organization that is involved with Christian ministries around the world, they had an extremely large globe/map on the wall. Click on Read More to see some more photos of Brent, including the ones with the map as the backdrop.

Michelle and Tony - Wedding Photography Preview

I recently had the great opportunity to start my wedding photography career. On Saturday I photographed the wedding of Michelle and Tony. It was a great experience and I am grateful for the opportunity. The wedding was full of family and friends. It was so easy to see the love that Michelle and Tony have for each other, and their families have for them. Enjoy the preview. (More photos will be available on dpvisuals facebook page soon!)

Click on Read More to see some more photos.

Jones Soda

This afternoon I was feeling inspired to shoot some still life photos, but this time I wanted to have reflections in the shots. I got the idea from Strobist and wanted to imitate the shots that he took, and try some that were a little different as well.

If you visit the link to the Strobist website, David Hobby outlines and illustrates how he took his pictures. I did mine following the same basic idea. I had a piece of clear plexiglass sitting on a white table. Under the table is my ghetto speedlite with a wireless remote. Above the table, camera right and almost in-front of the camera is another speedlite (Canon 430 EX) with a softbox.

The speedlite under the table is being fired at a white wall and giving a backlight to the glass bottles. The softbox in-front of the bottles then lights up the front of each bottle.







Click on Read More to see some more set-ups with black backgrounds.

Update on the craziness I call life

As I'm sure you know by now, the blog has been a little bit quiet lately and in this case, quiet has been a good thing, because quiet meant that I was busy. Busy with work. I've had a few video productions going on lately as well as ongoing ones that will continue for the next few months. I also have some great photo opportunities coming up in the next two months as well.

The biggest thing that happened to me over the past three weeks is that I got an internship. The internship was with a pretty big company, where I would be a photographer, helping to promote their internship program. The second biggest thing that happened was that I left the internship program. Ultimately I felt that there wasn't opportunity for me to learn and grow while I was working there, and it was making me lose money.

Anyways, enough of the life update. Below you will find a video that I directed, shot and edited. It was created for Harvest Bible Chapel York Region. The shots of the church services and kids services were taken during one Sunday morning, and the interview was done on another day during the week. It was shot with a Sony XDCAM EX. It was my first time using this camera and I even had to upgrade to a whole new software package in order to edit the video. Because of this upgrade, my timeframe for the editing of the movie was shrunk down into one morning, the morning before it would be shown to the church.

Enjoy!





More to come...

Camping Trip - Promo Shots

After graduating from University in the spring, I spent my summer living in my parents cottage. I worked for one of my friends, who runs his own painting business in the summer, and we also had a few other friends working with us.

During our working days, the four of us guys daydreamed about going on a camping/canoe trip (we didn't include the girls on this plan). While wondering about equipment and other logistics, we weren't entirely sure whether or not the trip would happen and during one of the conversations a date was set for the trip. Once the date was set, it was final, there was no changing it and no backing out. We were going to do it even if we had the worst equipment we could find. 

Not to worry though, because we didn't have the worst equipment we could find. Luke's Dad runs an adventure camp and through him, we were able to pick up almost all of the equipment we needed, including some much appreciated advice from experienced trippers. 

Now, jump back to the daydreaming stage of this plan and remember that I am a photographer. As a photographer I knew that there could be lots of opportunities on this trip. As someone trying to find a place in the photographic world and not being overly interested in nature photography, I wanted to come out of the trip with photos that could show my ability to market and promote an adventure/extreme sport equipment company.

Back to the story. It took almost all summer to plan (although we weren't rushing anything) and the final details came together within the last week. We rigged Mike's jeep with some u-bolts and 2x4's, so that two canoes could rest on-top, piled all of the gear inside and headed off. The route that we were taking was suggested to us by a friend, so we only knew our general area (my parents weren't too thrilled with that idea). We finally made it to the provincial park rangers' office that had our route map waiting for us. After talking to one of the rangers about our route, and getting some tips and advice we were finally into the water.

Click "Read More" to read the rest of the story and see more photos.

Night-Time Series

A couple weeks ago I was up north at my parents cottage in Huntsville, Ontario. I drove up late Saturday night with my girlfriend, and on the way I noticed a couple of newer buildings that are very nicely lit at night. Seeing these buildings sparked the idea to go out late at night and take pictures around town. Huntsville has a small town, country feel to it, and I thought that it would be perfect to capture Main St. at night with the lights.

Click "Read More" to see a couple more photos and read about the series will progress

Still Life

Last week and this week, I have been experimenting with different types of still life photos. First I started with smoke photos, shot on a black background with one flash, then taken into Photoshop for manipulation. Then I tried some exploding water-balloons, but after getting more wet than I wanted to, I quickly realized that I needed an assistant for that.

Click "Read More" to see what else I have done this week.

The Hendersons

A couple of days ago I had the amazing privilege of shooting Dan and Amanda along with their daughter Grace. I have known Dan and Amanda for about a year and a half now and I met Grace shortly after she was born, last winter. Typically Grace likes to stare at me and give me weird looks, but when I held up a big black thing in front of my face (my camera), I don't think she knew what was happening. She likes to make noises and faces, has two teeth coming in and is starting to learn to crawl. The weather for the day started off pretty chilly, but got warmer when it was time for pictures, we all had a great time. Enjoy!

A follow-up to SU Sportz, if you will, Canadian Football

For my American readers, yes, it's true, we do indeed have football in Canada. The CFL is comprised of eight teams. A large number of the players on these teams from the States. They are either players that didn't quite make it into the NFL or played in the NFL and got injured. Most of the rest of the players played at Canadian universities and then went on to play in the CFL.

As a part of my work with SU Sportz (see previous post) I covered a couple of their Real Deal events. The most recent event was at a Toronto Arognauts (CFL team) game. I covered the game as much as I could (from my seat) and also shot the post game concert and motivational speakers, from the field.

Summer Pics: SU Sportz

This past summer I had the privilege of taking photos for SU Sportz. SU Sportz is an organization that is all about building relationships with young people, through sports. They have a few different ways of doing this, through summer camps, partnering with churches and Real Deal days (professional sports events).

I approached SU at the beginning of the summer asking if they wanted any photography work done, that they could then use in their promotional materials. There was some back and forth discussions, and they agreed, and also wanted me to shoot some video footage. Throughout the summer I attended (took pictures) at some of their camps, Real Deal days, and other events.

A blog update and Leah and Jay

Where to begin... It has been way too long since I have updated the blog. Many things have changed since June. I finished off the summer, having a great time with the people I worked with, and spending time with good friends, new friends and my wonderful girlfriend.

At the end of the summer, I was offered a position with my church, so I am now working as the Graphic Design and Media intern, where I am creating graphic design projects, and helping with all forms of media, including the website, video production, photography, painting, carrying drywall, tv's and anything else when asked.

As this is a photography centred blog, I should probably leave you with some photos to look at. I recently did some engagement pictures for Leah and Jay, I then designed a book for them to use as a guest book for their showers and wedding. It was the first book I have designed from start to finish, and I am thrilled with how it turned out, so are they!

To check out some pictures of the book click here

There are more photos after the jump!

ps. my website is in the works, and should be live within the next week or so!

Photos to come

It has been a while since there was an update on this here blog. Since my last post, I have left the USA. I am currently living in Muskoka, Ontario. Summer in Canada doesn't really start until the beginning of July. There are going to be lots of local events that I will be covering, and I'm also in the process of picking up new clients. So stay tuned for some fun pictures to be posted.

This picture, taken on my cell phone, is of the calmness of the lake, that pretty much describes what life is like in Muskoka.

Inspired By Chase Jarvis

One of my favourite photographers is a man named Chase Jarvis. He is extremely talented, and so creative. He has been using his blog, videos, tweets, meetups, etc. to help grow and unify the photography and creative community. Recently, I tried to recreate one of his pictures. A picture he took for Reebok, a basketball ad. Instead of doing basketball, I chose to shoot hockey. I grew up Canada, so hockey has pretty much always been a part of my life. I played it for a long time and have been shooting it a lot as well. I haven't tried any sort of set up/editorial/commercial type photos for hockey, so this was a first. I brought out a couple of my friends, two are in the shot, one is holding a flashstand with a Canon 430ex, and umbrella, above the two players, and another friend is there for support ;)

Here is the photo that Mr. Jarvis took, that I based mine off of.

And here is my photo:

As you can see, my lighting isn't exactly that same, but still I thought I did a pretty good job.

Thanks for checking it out!

Day on the Island

A little while ago, my friends and I decided to head to the lake to test out one of the guys recently purchased jet ski. We followed another group of our friends to the lake, and we ended up at a different area than we thought we were going to, with no beach or area to hang out really. Talked to a couple people at the marina there, and they told us about an island not to far from there. It took three trips on the three-seater jet ski, but we all made it there safely and had a great day. I used my Dad's 20 year old, original, Canon Rebel, and shot 35mm film through it. 1 roll in colour and the other roll in black & white. It was a blast and a great day with friends, enjoy!

ps. there were no colour adjustments or anything done to these photos, thats just what film looks like, pretty sweet eh?

Onto the sports fun

Here are some of my favourite sports photos. I have taken them over that past few years in various locations and settings.

Event Coverage

This next series of photos are from the 2010 Olympic Torch Relay. This stop was in Huntsville, Ontario, Canada. The town really showed up with lots of people and performances. Here are some of my favourite pictures. I really tried to capture the even and the excitement.