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.

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.