In other news I am taking most of the season off from shooting weddings (due to my own upcoming nuptials!) - I have a very limited number of dates for late summer / early fall, please give me a buzz to check availability.  That being said I do have some personal projects in mind and I'm planning to focus on building my stock portfolio - I say this a lot, but this time I am following through with it!

What else is new... well, I finally got around to adding a portfolio section to this site.  You can check out my work by clicking "portfolio" in the navigation bar above.  It's a jumble of a lot of photographic genres -  I'm not into the idea of labelling and classifying all of my work.  Maybe that will change, but for now it's all in one pot.  I will be adding a section specifically for new work as I get out shooting, so check back for updates. 

I wanted to share some links to photographer portfolios that I check frequently.  These photographers are all over the map in terms of subjects and genres but I find inspiration in all of their work. 

Micah Diamond - he has a very unique eye and a style that is distinctly his own.  Great projects that contain images strong enough to stand on their own.  His style is minimalistic and gritty, and is really about the moment more so than the technical merits we get caught up in.

Pio Fortuno - this guy walks the streets of NY looking for the "decisive moment".  If you're not familiar with the decisive moment do yourself a favor and look up Henri Cartier Bresson.  Great use of juxtaposition - I really have to visit NY.

Bobby Earle - fantastic wedding photographer out of San Francisco with a great eye and sense of style.  Bobby makes me wants to rock primes wide open all the time!  He's a constant blogger so there's always lots of reasons to go back to his site.

Lloyd Yoon - Great fellow canuck wedding photographer.  I've bumped into Lloyd on some camera forums, he's incredibly knowledgable and is disgustingly consistent as a photog.  Seriously, every wedding Lloyd churns out better images than his last.  Great use of wide angle and off camera flash.

Emin Kuliyev - Emin is pretty far from traditional wedding photography.  I'm a sucker for wide angle and he uses it to great effect.  I find his work to be really creative.  Check him out if you're in the mood for something different.

Roman Voegtli - Roman is a fantastic abstract photographer.  He can create art of things we wouldn't normally give a second glance.  Check out his concept and panorama work.

Tom Kaszuba - Tom is an amateur photog out of CT.  There's nothing amatuer about his work - his portfolio is pretty broad so there is something for any taste. Todd Klassy is another photog that has a great eye and I always find his work to be refreshing.

Maciej Dakowicz - I first stumbled upon his work a few years ago.  Maciej had done a photo story on the workers of a garbage dump in Cambodia and had captured incredible character.  He is a great travel photographer and has recently published a book of his work spanning over 16 countries.

Karl Grobl - a humanitarian and pretty much the quintessential photojournalist when it comes to travel.  Karl's work is focused on humanitarion and relief stories.  Chances are you've seen his work but didn't know who photographed it.

Tim Flach - amazing commercial work mostly involving animal portraits.  Really his work is like nothing I've ever seen before.

Joel Sartore - national geographic photographer extraordinaire!  He has my dream job, and he's damn good at it.  His is a contributing photographer to nat geo magazine and runs a busy stock photo business as well. 

Dimitri Vasiliou - Dimitri is a landscape photographer based in Scotland.  He does photo tours and cranks out some of the best landscapes imaginable.  Browsing through his portfolio is a lesson in the golden hour & composition, and will pretty much make you book a trip to Scotland. 

Brian (LordV) - hands down the best macro photography I've ever seen.  'Nuff said!

Tom England - I've written about working with Tom in previous posts.  What can I say, he's a good friend and a great photog.  Check out his daily photojournal for 2009.  Tom has been going strong and hasn't missed a day yet.

This wouldn't be a post without some sort of photo, so I'll leave you with a quick grab shot of my Larrivee D-40 that occupied my time all winter.  Cheers!

Well, it's inevitable now - Christmas is upon us and there are 16 shopping days left. I've been so busy with shooting and work that up until this weekend I hadn't given the holidays much thought. I decided to go to the malls today against my better judgement - I knew they would be packed, that I have little patience, and that I personally despise Sunday shopping. Against these odds I ventured out in the pouring rain to buy gifts for my family and friends. I minimized my pain and planned out where I was going and what I was looking for before leaving the house. This was a successful trip despite the packed parking lots, apathetic retail staff, and swarms of aimlessly wandering consumers. I was stealthy, I got in, shopped, and got out - like James Bond. I'm now pretty much done except for one last item. I figured today was the day - I was at a Christmas Party last night and realized that I had no more free weekends this year - they are filled with family events, Christmas Parties, doing Charity work, and other activities of the season. Tis the season to be busy!

With the current economy I had expected retail sales to be down. It didn't seem like the malls were any emptier than previous years, and it appeared that people were still buying like normal. We're keeping things simple in our household this year and watching our spending. This leads me to the photography portion of the post - We photographers usually want something pretty specific (which ruins the surprise) and these specific gifts are usually pretty expensive (which breaks the bank). I wanted to come up with some gift and/or stocking stuffer ideas for photographers that won't put you in the poor house.

1. Adobe Lightroom 2.0 Full or Adobe Lightroom 2.0 Upgrade - if the photog in your life is already rockin' version 1.4 then get them the upgrade, otherwise get them the full version. The full version is a bit pricey but worth every penny. This application completely changed my workflow and the way I approach post production of my images.

2. The Nifty Fifty - Canon has the 50mm F/1.8, it's an extremely good little lens for slightly over $100. At that price every photog should have one in their bag. I'm sure Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, and Sony have something similar. For many shooters this lens is their first introduction to a fast prime, and their first taste of Bokeh.

3. Graphics Tablet - I've never used one but my friends all rave about their Wacom Tablets. It's basically a pressure sensitive pen that replaces using a mouse for your photo editing - great for precise control for touch ups.

4. Scott Kelby books - this guy knows everything about Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and more. When I was first starting out I didn't know anything about processing images - I found his books to be extremely helpful and easy to follow. Processing is such a big part of the final image and it's something many photographers could improve on. Check 'em out.

5. The Strobist DVD set - David over at Strobist has released a 8 DVD set called " Strobist Lighting Seminar". This guy has really brought alot of attention to how to create dynamic lighting using off-camera techniques and inexpensive equipment. The DVD's have 10 hours of content that cover everything from lighting equipment, techniques, workshops, and setups that show how real assignment images were created.

6. Roscolux Swatchbook - the cheapest item on our list is this swatchbook that weighs in at $0.01 for cost. You can order one here and you pay the shipping. This is a swatch of small samples of gel filters meant for sampling the gels for ordering larger sizes. They are 1.75 x 2.75" and fit perfectly over your flash/strobe heads.

7. Miscellaneous Accessories - it's fun to spend a big chunk of money on a lens or a new camera. There are lots of items a photographer may need/want that let's face it, just aren't as fun to buy. Extra memory cards, filters, cable releases, bubble levels, a card reader, rocketblower, extra batteries. Why not get them this stuff that they need?

8. Monitor Calibration Tool - Make sure your photog is seeing the right colors on his/her screen. Grab them a tool like the Pantone Huey or Spyder so they can keep their monitors calibrated. This means what they see on the screen is as close as possible to what an image will look like when printed. Uber frustrating when they look different. Just so you know Mr. / Mrs. reader - your monitor probably isn't calibrated, if I looked at my images on your screen the colors and brightness would probably be all of whack!

9. GPS - yeah get your shutterbug a global positioning system for their car. It'd be great for trying to navigate to new places to shoot, and is especially nice from a business perspective. I would've killed to have a GPS this wedding season. There's nothing more stressful than bombing around in your car looking for a location while your client is waiting and the clock is ticking. Yikes!

10. Magazine Subscription - my fiancee had this idea last year and I thought it was just great. I'm a big fan of landscape/travel photography and photojournalism, so she got me a subscription to National Geographic. NG's photography is always stunning and inspirational, plus the articles are a good read. My dream job would probably be to shoot for NG. What does your shooter like to shoot (re: not what they shoot for pay, what do they actually like!)? If they shoot sports get them a subscription to sports illustrated, if they shoot bands get them a music mag for a year, if they shoot skateboarding.... well I'm sure you get the idea.

What are you getting the photographer in your life for Christmas? Photogs, what would you love to have under your tree?

Admittedly I'm playing a bit of catch up as I had a medical situation a few weeks back (now resolved) that was a wake up call for me to slow down.   I put shooting (and updating this blog) on the backburner while I got back to enjoying myself, relaxing, eating better, and just generally taking better care of myself.  I'm now back at the helm shooting and posting again.

It's winter and we just had our first major snowfall (now gone thanks to a boatload of rain), what should I shoot?  Well, surfing of course!  I got out to Lawrencetown Beach on Friday with my soon to be brother-in-law Hugh.  He's used to surfing in warmer tempetures (South Korea) and with better conditions.  So armed with toque-on-head and camera-in-hand I made my first attempt at shooting surfing.

So, if it's not painfully obvious, my surfing shots won't be winning any awards or appearing in any publications, yet.  Perhaps with some more practice and some tips I'll improve?  My buddy Josh Webb has  posted an article on shooting surfing on his blog, check it out here.  We didn't have great surfing conditions and from a photography aspect we had horrible light (overcast, rainy).  I certainly learned a few things:  firstly, shooting surfing in the winter is COLD, but actually surfing in the winter is DAMN COLD!  Secondly, my 70-200mm was not the best lens for surfing - I found 200mm was not nearly enough reach.  The few action shots I did get were heavilly cropped - next time I'll try something that goes out closer to 400mm, or somehow getting closer to the action in the water.

I've included some images from a shoot at St. Mary's Basilica that I did a couple of weeks ago.  While I came away with some standard architecture shots I  focused more on detail shots.

Gear - like any job a variety of lenses are best, but a good wide angle lens with minimal distortion is what you want to be using.  After the wide angle a telephoto lens is nice to have for getting in tight on far away details.  A macro lens isn't necessary but is nice for getting shots of very fine details up close.  I'm currently using the Canon 17-40 F/4L + 70-200 F/2.8L IS, and the 100mm F/2.8 Macro.   When shooting buildings or landscapes a sturdy tripod is a must as you'll often be shooting in dark conditions with long exposures and with your lens stopped down for maximum depth of field and sharpness.  Pick up a bubble level to make sure your camera is level and right along the axis - this avoids tilted horizons and will help avoid distortion.  You can get bubble levels that will sit in the hotshoe of your camera.   Mirror lockup, a cable release, or your camera's self-timer will help avoid camera shake.

Light & Dynamic Range - when shooting interior/exterior architecture and landscapes the light is normally constant but tricky.  Backlit scenes or scenes with wide dynamic range (very dark areas through to very bright areas) can fool your camera.  I typically shoot in full manual mode since these situations can trick the meter in your camera.   If you're not comfortable with manual give aperture or time value a go.  It is helpful to review your histogram often and to try bracketing and HDR (high dynamic range) processing.   These methods will help us create an image closer to what our eye actually saw, rather than an image with blown highlights or areas of dark shadows.  Our eye is capable of seeing much more of a range from shadow to bright than our camera is.  These techniques mimic what you can do with a set of graduated neutral density filters.  Photography is simply capturing light - so really give some thought to the time of day, the direction/source of light, shadows, how harsh (contrasty) the light is, and the mix between ambient and created light that you want to achieve.  Typically the best ambient light is near sunrise and dusk, sometimes called "The Golden Hour".

Avoiding or Creating Distortion - the biggest problem with shooting architecture is distortion - as stated earlier using a lens with good distortion control and making sure your camera is level can help with this.  There are times you may want a distorted shot for dramatic effect or to emphasize or exaggerate something in the frame.  Distortion occurs due to perspective, distance from subject,  and converging lines.  You'll notice distortion when straight lines become curved and proportions of objects become exaggerated (this is more of a problem with interiors than with exteriors & landscapes).  You may also notice distortion as 'keystoning' where objects look like they are leaning or tilted.  'Keystoning' is caused by converging lines and the way to avoid this is to insure your camera is parallel to the verticals in the scene.  To achieve this (especially in interiors) you may need to elevate the camera up higher than eye level.   Try shooting from many angles, down low, up high, up close, far away, try avoiding and creating distortion.