Families (in Black and White)

So earlier this week I was asked to photograph my best buddy's sister and her family again (I photographed them last fall, also). My have the girls gotten big! Avery is on the left and Hailey on the right in the below photo. Anyways, we went to the train station (as much as I try not to overuse it, it still makes a great background!), we got some great shots, and I broke part of my brand new off camera flash system (need not fear, the parts are in the mail!) It was well worth it.

The below photo is sort of an idea I've had for a year waiting to use it on Tanya, Kevin, and the kids. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Props go out to my colleague Peter for helping edit several photos!

These girls are way too adorable. Hailey is now 4 years old, and Avery is 2... really, she doesn't look like it.

I loved the lighting on Avery's hair in this one!

And a great shot of the beautiful Tanya!

Just recently I was asked by my Superstore co-worker... I mean, colleague... to do some "family" photos of her, her boyfriend, Steve, and her dog Che Che (did I spell that right?). Anyways, this was my favourite shot of the evening. We went to Waterworks park here in town, and getting this shot I stuck my hand in a thistle, but it was well worth it!

In conclusion, I've decided that I want to focus on families and kids in black and white, any takers?

LOLA Fest - Kaki King

LOLA fest comes to London, Ontario every year, and plays in Victoria Park in the heart of downtown London. This was my first year attending, and first time trying my hand at live band photography. The artist is Kaki King, she's an amazing amazing guitarist. You can find her site here. We were lucky when we got there that she was just warming up and doing sound checks with only a handful of people hanging around, so we got to watch and find our really awesome spot right in front of the stage, just to the side of where Kaki would be. Anyways, she put on an excellent show, nice set of songs, and some great drum solos to boot. These photos are my retelling of this night. Enjoy!

I definitely ended up loving the shots of Kaki talking to us and to her band the most, so I had to throw in another one of these shots.

And a sort of a fun photo of Kaki, she's huge on making faces. She smiled most when talking to the audience and when the drummer was doing one of his crazy but insanely awesome solos.

New Technique

So I got my hands on a copy of the Zack Arias One Light Workshop dvd about the multiple uses of small off camera flashes. So today I went out with my girlfriend with my Canon 430ex, and crappy Cactus V2 transmitters to try it out. I think I may try modding the V2's, see if they'll fire more accurately for me, and if they don't, I'm thinking Radio Poppers. Anyways, we went out on location looking for someplace sort of cool looking, so we found this old factory amidst all these weeds, so I have the flash and shoot through umbrella set up and I'm testing the lights, and a police cruiser shows up, asks us what we're doing, as if it wasn't clear, and surprisingly, we didn't get kicked off the property. This was a decent frame I got out of a very small handful. Also, I'm trying out a new watermark logo, what do you think?

Surrounded By Water

I was asked to second shoot a band by my friend and fellow photographer, Anna. The band is Surrounded By Water, they are local to London, and were super cool to hang out with and photograph. It was fun to photograph them, I hadn't heard of them beforehand, and didn't have any idea who played what in the band and who was the frontman. They said to treat them as equals, so we did. I loved the way these photos turned out, made me love photography again. Thanks guys! 

Above photo> from left to right: Carter (guitar), Paul (bass), Jimi James (drums), Moss (vocals), and BJ (guitar)

Above photo> Loved this shot from the set up above. This is BJ.

Wedding

I finally finished up editing some wedding photos from Mike and Nancy's wedding back in July. It was a pretty fun and very tiring wedding, shot for 9 hours. Nancy's family drove/flew in from Mexico for this event; they all spoke Spanish. It was a pretty cool experience trying to communicate with everyone. Anyways, here are a few shots from the wedding.

Latest Shoot

Welcome back again! I just recently had a shoot with these two just before their prom on Friday night. I loved working with these two, as they were very sweet together and I loved the way they interacted with one another. I wanted to do something a little different than say, get a group of dolled up teens together at Waterworks, and do plain full body shots. Instead we went to a few different locations around town (Alma College and Train Station), and tried a few things. I loved the way these photos turned out. My personal favourite is the very first one just below.

More Updates

This week my best friend came down unexpectedly, so we went out and took some more pictures for fun, nothing really serious. I've been feeling really uncreative lately (I partly blame working at Superstore photo studio). We went to the Alma College amphitheater, which is now all weeds and unkept and grown in; apparently people are only passionate about historic burnt down locations right after it happens, and a not a year after. Anyways, so these pictures are of Mike, and yes, he's actually playing the guitar in these (yay White Stripes!). I like how these turned out, nice and crisp and clear, I especially love the way I got some nice sun flare in a couple of them, those are pretty much how they looked like straight from camera, I'm pretty impressed with myself, haha.

Alright, also taken this week, a photo of my wonderful girlfriend, Erin, taken at the train station. She's oh so very cute!