Canon 5D Mark II, 70-200 f/2.8L. 115mm, ISO 1600, 1/400 @ f/5.6.
We drove to Vancouver on Saturday to walk around and take some of the Olympic excitement before we head up in a little over a week for some actual Olympic sporting events. As we were walking back to the SkyTrain near The Bay downtown a whole fleet of these little guys went driving past.
I wonder: how much does that lens cost? And for that matter, how big is the sensor on that body?
Canon 5D Mark II, 70-200 f/2.8L IS. 70mm, ISO 1600, 1/125 sec @ f/2.8.
After a waiting impatiently for several months, I finally got to see a copy of the February 2010 issue of Seattle Magazine. There, on Page 19, was my photo! I always get a little kick out of seeing some of my work in print, and this one was particularly fun since curling is a sport near and dear to me.
The image itself was pure luck. I was shooting at the Granite Curling Club specifically for the magazine article, and just wasn’t having any success getting images that would work. Then all of a sudden Jill started to sweep the rock through the house, and I fired one shot as quickly as I could. As soon as I saw the image on the back of the camera I knew it was “the one”. Even after we tried to recreate it later in the game, it just wasn’t the same.
Sure enough, of all the photos I submitted to the magazine, they picked the one that just felt right the moment I took it.
Have you ever been at an event where take a picture and just know it’s the right one? Where was the event, and what was the shot?
Canon 5D Mark II, 70-200 f/2.8L IS. 70mm, ISO 200, 1/10 @ f/11. Photo courtesy of Vlad Sadovsky, post-processing by David Pitcher.
One thing I learned about photography on my trip to Antarctica last year was how important nap time is. When you are waking up early every day for sunrise, staying up late every night for sunset, and backing up images in-between, there is very little time for sleeping and eating. When the opportunity for a nap presents itself, you need to take it.
This afternoon while we were shooting in the Hoh Rainforest, Vlad and David became quite enthralled with a stream. The stream smelled like rotting salmon, probably because of the rotting salmon on the riverbanks. I took a few photos and gave up. Then I spotted a nice little spot on the opposing hillside, where a tiny bit of sun was shining (the first real sun we’d seen all weekend). I bailed on the stinky river, curled up, and went to sleep.
Have you ever taken a nap while out photographing? Where were you, and was it as refreshing as my nap was?
Canon 5D Mark II, 24-70 f/2.8L. 70mm, ISO 800, 1/80 @ f/5.0.
The only thing worse than rain and wind is rain at 6:30am after a 5:15am wake up. There was no sunrise this morning. Only rain. Our original plan was to visit Second Beach, but once we got there and looked at the sky we had no desire to walk 30 minutes each way. The radar report showed the rain was mostly north, so David and Vlad suggested driving south to Ruby Beach in the hopes of better weather.
The weather was marginally better (no rain) but the sky still wasn’t great and the beach had changed dramatically since the last time David had visited. There was no way to cross the stream to get to some of the more interesting angles. We made do, but honestly I didn’t find any of it interesting.
However, as I mentioned yesterday, you still try and shoot something. Anything. I messed around with some long exposure shots that I’m happy with. Then I saw the bubbles left on the beach by the outgoing tide.
Have you ever done a self-portrait? What did you do to make it special (besides having you in it, of course)?
Canon 5D Mark II, Lensbaby Composer, soft focus optic and an unreleased funky attachment. ISO 1600, 1/30 sec.
It rained today. A lot. And wind? Yeah, we had wind too. A lot. David and Vlad weren’t the happiest photographers in the world when we visited Second Beach. I was on a mission to capture photos for my abstract folio project (more on that in another post sometime), so I shot photos like crazy in between spats of rain and wind. We didn’t last long though.
So what do you do when it’s raining and windy? Pile back in the car and drive 20 minutes to Rialto Beach and hope the weather is better. Even though the actual distance between the two beaches is tiny. But it was raining less! I wasn’t particularly inspired by the scenery, but then David whipped out his Lensbaby. Let the fun begin.
Have you ever been caught out photographing in bad weather? What did you do? Did you manage to get good photos anyway?
Canon 5D Mark II, 70-200 f/2.8L IS. 200mm, ISO 50, 242 sec @ f/8.0.
My first photo trip to the La Push area of the Washington coast was just after Christmas, 2009, and most of the time shooting was spent at Second Beach.
One of the challenges of shooting at Second Beach is that it’s a pretty popular photography location, particularly at sunset. I was determined to come away with something different than the standard sunset with islands shot. One way to help that was the restrictions I placed on my shooting prior to leaving on the trip: every image had to be black and white, and cropped square.
Those two restrictions completely changed how I looked at Second Beach. The visits were no longer about waiting for perfect sunset light (I didn’t care, the photo was going to be black and white anyway), and instead became all about looking for curves, textures, and tones.
The above photo was taken about an hour before sunset on our first day at the beach, and what drew me to the shot was not only the curves of the rocks but the green seaweed. I knew that the contrast of the green against the rocks would give me all sorts of interesting post-processing opportunities. Working on the image after the fact was a joy, and when this photo is printed the seaweed glows on the page.
Have you ever visited a popular beach location? Did you come up with a new way to interpret the scene? What was it?
This weekend I’m off to Forks, WA for a three day photo session with a couple of friends from work. The area is much better known for vampires, thanks to the popularity of the Twilight series of books, but we’re not going for vampires. We’re going for the beautiful scenery of the beaches around the Quileute town of La Push. In particular we will be spending quite a bit of time shooting at Second Beach, even though low tide and sunrise/sunset times don’t exactly match. The weather looks to be just about what we expected: rain, rain, and more rain. But we won’t let that stop us!
Our last trip to the area was in very late December, just after Christmas. We spent three dedicated days shooting, and while there I forced myself to shoot everything in black and white, with a square crop. It’s amazing how a couple of simple restrictions on how you can photograph make such a difference. I was completely re-energized and had a ton of fun exploring textures and forms rather than smashing colour.
I haven’t yet decided what restrictions I’ll put on my shooting this time, but I’m thinking it will be something to do with odd numbers. We’ll see.
Have you ever put arbitrary restrictions on yourself when photographing? What were the restrictions? Did they help or hinder your creativity?
Canon 5D Mark II, 70-200 f/2.8L IS. 173mm, ISO 100, 1/60 sec @ f/8.0.
The last stop on our nine-day vacation to Utah was a visit to Dead Horse Point State Park and Canyonlands: Islands in the Sky. One day is nowhere near enough time to spend in these two locations, but we tried to make the best of it.
Alas, the day was the first true overcast day of the whole trip which made the photography challenging. I remember not being particularly inspired by anything I saw, and felt like I was just going through the motions when shooting. I think we’ve all had days like that.
Looking back through the photos afterwards was a good reminder of why it’s important to keep shooting even if the vibe isn’t quite there. The above photo was buried among a bunch of uninspiring junk, and in its raw state a complete washed out mess. But the line of the river and the hint of greenery made me stop and take another look. I’m glad I did, because it wound up being one of my favourite photos from the trip.
I haven’t printed it yet. Something is still nagging me, saying it isn’t ready for a print. Maybe printing it out will help figure out what’s missing. I did do a digital negative of it with the intention of making a lith print in the darkroom, but on further reflection it’s just not right for lith.
Have you ever found a hidden gem in your photos after a shoot? What was it? Did you remember seeing it when you took the picture, or was it a complete surprise after?
It all started at lunch one day when Peter said he hated marshmallow peeps. Quite conveniently his birthday takes place just shortly after Easter. At work we’re never one to pass up a good office prank (this wound up being the second of many), so we figured we’d do something with peeps and his office
One advantage of being right after Easter is that tons of stores want to offload their leftover peep packages. We went all over town wheeling and dealing, often getting 3-packs of peeps for $0.11. When we were done with purchasing we had enough boxes to completely block off the fireplace in our appartment
It took about six people five hours to do all the work in the picture below. The hardeset part was removing all the ceiling tiles and affixing the peeps to the tiles. We wound up using short lengths of bamboo skewers, although in hindsight a hot-melt glue gun would have worked faster and been easier on our fingers. Some things to note in the pictures below:
We did mail Just Born, manufacturers of Peeps, but sadly they never got back to us. The peeps wound up staying in the office for about two years, through at least two occupant changes. Even six months after they were up we had people coming by and eating them off the ceiling. Ugh.
Jessie went on a market research trip to Asia. While in Japan she mailed back and commented on Hello Kitty was everywhere. Voila, a prank was born. The best part of this prank is the stickers on the ethernet hub. A year after the prank was done we were moving offices. Jessie was packing things up and crawled under the table to pack the hub. You could hear her yell “THEY GOT MY HUB TOO!” all the way down the hall.
We felt really bad about Jessie’s pink office, so we decided to make it up to her. While she was on vacation we moved offices. We had enough time to paint the office tan, but that was it. When she got back she said “Tan!? Why TAN!?”. Two days later we finished the prank. You can’t see in the pictures but we did give her MREs and whatnot to chew on too. The bumper stickers read “I’m out of estrogen and I have a gun” and “Gun control means using both hands”. Note that some of the cammo spots have an errie resemblance to Hello Kitty’s head.
This one wasn’t too big. We painted David’s office pink to celebrate the birth of his new baby girl, and added some stenciled butterflies.
I went to Hawaii on vacation and when I came back my Office was an igloo. The door is particularly amusing: anyone who wanted to visit me had to crawl in. The crazy part about this prank is how quiet it made the office. All the cotton batting totally deadened noise.
Ms Abad loves to dance so we turned her office into a dance club for her birthday. This is the only prank we’ve done where the building maintenance guys really were unhappy (black paint is a pain to cover up). We distributed grand opening invites to all 500 people in the building. note the parquet floor in the corner. With some black lights and disco balls it’s a built-in party!
It’s a long story, but Mark made a reference to carrots one day and came in the next to find 20 lbs. of carrots hanging from his ceiling. Man, they smelled BAD after day two.
Amy said at lunch she wanted to be showered with adoration for her birthday. We made up 5 garbage bags full of confetti that were printed with the the word “adoration”. All 500 offices in the building got a little brown paper bag with instructions on how to deliver the confetti to Amy. The two leftover garbage bags of confetti were dumped in her office. All day she had people coming by and dumping confetti on her. It was great 🙂
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