Just a quick post to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. It’s also a good time to remind everyone to take some time over the Christmas break to back-up your photos from this past year. Moments captured with your camera are once in a lifetime opportunities that will never happen again so be sure to take steps to protect those valuable moments!
Here is a little Christmas moment from our family. This is our dog Neko, all worn out after a tough day of opening presents. Enjoy!
On Wednesday night I had the pleasure of attending the 4th Annual Dancing for the Kids fund raiser at the Shaw Conference Centre. This annual event is presented by the Rotary Club of Edmonton and supports the Kids with Cancer Society. Six celebrity dancers were paired with six professional dancers and each performed a different dance in front of a crowd of approximately 800 people and a panel of guest judges including Nicola Crosbie, Jamie Sale, Lynn Mandel and Katherine Frey. Celebrity dancers included Gillian Foote, Jason Gregor, Steve Hogle, Daryl McIntyre, Anna Posteraro, and Schoena Strudwick. They were paired with professional dancers Vince Davis, Samantha Gotlib, Daiana Sanchez, David Lam, Dominic LaCroix, and Delphine Romaire.
It was a great night of dancing and all of the celebrity dancers put forth an amazing effort. Dances included the Salsa, Fox Trot, Cha Cha, Argentine Tango, Lindy Hop and the Rumba. Video of each performance is available on CTV’s website at:
After each couple performed their dance, the panel of judges provided their feedback and then presented their scores. Once the judges had their say, the audience then had the ability to vote using a remote control voting system at each table. After all of the couples had performed and the results were tallied, Daryl McIntyre was crowned as the eventual champion with Gillian Foote taking 2nd place overall.
On a side-note, Daryl’s partner Samantha Gotlib was actually our dance instructor when my wife and I went to Arthur Murray to take some dance lessons for our wedding so it was great to run into her again after all these years.
Once the mirror ball trophy had been handed out, the dance floor was opened up to everyone to get up and strut their stuff. While out shooting the dances for my friend Anna Posteraro, I was approached by representatives of the Edmonton Oilers and asked to take a few photos of some of the Oiler’s players including Steve Staios and Jason Strudwick with his wife Shoena who was one of the celebrity dancers this year.
Pictured above: Steve Staios with 14 year-old Jennifer Taite who represented the Kids with Cancer Society.
Edmonton Oiler Jason Strudwick with his wife and celebrity dancer Shoena Strudwick.
More photos of Shoena’s performance can be found on the Edmonton Oilers website at http://oilers.nhl.com/team/app/?service=page&page=MediaGalleryPlayer&galleryId=8614
For more information on this event, visit http://www.dancingforthekids.com/
Sometime last year I discovered a fantastic Canadian photography magazine called Photosho. Although it has only published 3 issues so far, the quality of the magazine and the images selected are outstanding. In addition, it is a Canadian magazine for Canadians featuring Canadians so that also gets bonus points in my book.
When the editor of the magazine put a call out for submissions or ideas for columns, I decided to pitch my idea for a column dedicated to promoting some of the great on-line resources available for photographers. This includes things like blogs, podcasts, photo sharing sites, educational sites, forums, review sites, etc. The editor loved the idea and asked me to submit a column for the next issue.
I’m pleased to announce that Issue #4 of Photosho magazine is now available for just $12.99 an issue and features my new column - “Click On – Web Resources for Photoraphers”. Click this link for a preview of Issue #4 http://www.photosho.ca/ps4.pdf. If you have already had a chance to read my column, I would love to receive any feedback or comments as well as suggestions of great on-line resources for photographers.
If you love great photography and would like to support a great Canadian publication, there is also a campaign running right now looking for people to donate to the publication to keep it going. Publishing a magazine is an expensive endeavour that requires a lot of funding so if you’re interested, you can head on over to www.photosho.ca and click on the Donate tab to make a contribution. Donations of $50 or more receive a free subscription to Photosho as well as recognition in the next issue.
I am fortunate to have been selected as the official photographer for the David Foster Foundation Harmony Gala which will be held in Edmonton at the Winspear on Saturday, September 13th. Leading up the event, a talent competition was held this past weekend at the River Cree Resort and Casino where 240 talented young performers took to the stage for their chance to perform for David Foster at an exclusive VIP dinner at LUX Steakhouse this Friday. Performers were given 30 seconds to sing acappella and then the top 58 ended up being selected to return on Sunday where they were given 3 minutes to perform with accompaniment. From that group of 58, six were selected and will perform for David on Friday. David will then select the winner who will go on to perform at the gala the next evening. Here are a few shots from this past weekend.
Have you ever seen the inside of your hot-shoe flash unit? Trust me. You don't want to. I attended the Rexall Edmonton Indy this past weekend and while I was there a certain nameless individual (that's right - I'm talking to you person sitting in Grandstand C - Section D - Row 14 - Seat 8) sat on my camera and managed to snap my Canon 580 EXII Speedlite right off the hotshoe mount. 
Now I realize that there are inherent risks taking expensive camera gear into a crowded event so I wasn't expecting said person to compensate me for the damages (although it would have been nice). At the very least however I was expecting him to apologize. Instead he just looked back at me, shrugged his shoulders, put his ear plugs back in and continued to enjoy the race while I sat and fumed. Needless to say I did not enjoy the rest of the race and was tempted on a few occasions to introduce the back of his head to the business end of my 70-200mm lens.
Now with a couple of days to reflect I am going to be the bigger person and look on this event as a learning opportunity. How so you may ask? Well, for one it gives me a chance to try out the Canon repair center in Calgary. For those who ever need to send anything in for repair, here is the contact information you'll need:
Canon Canada
2828-16th Street NE
Calgary, Alberta T2E 7K7
Tel: (403)219-5939
I'd rather have to test them out with a relatively inexpensive item such as a $500 flash than to have to use their services to fix an expensive piece of glass or camera body. I will do a follow-up blog post in a few weeks once the repair has been completed commenting on my experience with the Canon repair center in Calgary.
The second thing I learned from this experience is that Canon was actually very smart in the way they designed their Speedlite. As you can see from the photos above, it looks like it was designed so that the hot-shoe mounting plate on the flash would actually break away from the body of the flash so as not to put pressure on the hot-shoe mount on the camera resulting in it being bent or broken. While I am not happy to have to send anything in for repair, better it be the flash than my brand new 40D. Hopefully it doesn't wind up being too costly of a repair and my favourite flash unit will be back in action sooner than later.
Calm down PETA. Relax Greenpeace. No animals were harmed in the creation of this blog post. On Tuesday night, my wife and I had the opportunity to photograph some of the animals at the Edmonton Valley Zoo. Throughout the summer, the zoo offers after-hours photography sessions which provides you with special access to the zoo and it's inhabitants. We were able to see several amazing creatures including Emus, Snow Leopards, Porcupines, Muir Cats, Wolves, and Lemurs. The most exciting part of the night was when we were allowed into the cage with the Red Pandas. Our group was the first group outside of the zookeepers who had been allowed into the enclosure. Below are a few shots from the evening.
Last week I entered some photos into the 2008 Metro Photography Competition. The competition was open to students who had taken classes in photography at Metro college. There were 4 Categories including: People (General, Portraits, Weddings, Photojournalism), Nature (Travel, Landscapes, Flowers, Wildlife), Commercial (Still-life, Fashion, Industrial) and Abstract (General, Macro, Experimental). I submitted six images in total in three of the categories.
The criteria used in judging the photos was as follows:
The evening began with all the photos on display. There were some truly amazing images captured by the participants. Going into the competition I wasn't expecting much and after seeing what my competition had submitted I was even less optimistic.
The Cigar Man - 1st Place - People Category. Winner of Best in Show
When the judging began, each photo was displayed in front of the three judges for approximately 30 seconds. Each judge gave their score out 10 and the combined scores were announced. It was very nerve wracking as the scores were announced. Photos that I thought should have scored higher got low marks and some photos that I didn't find that strong received some fairly high marks. It was an emotional roller coaster as my images were being judged. The first few I entered scored in the bottom or the middle of the pack. I started to get a bit disheartened and wondered if I had really learned anything over the past two years. I had to remind myself that this was a learning experience and that these things are very subjective.
Once all of the judging was complete, the judges retired to another room to pick the top 5 in each category and select the overall best in show. I had loosely been keeping track of the scores and was surprised that one of my images had garnered the highest score of the evening - a 26 out of 30. Still, the judges had to review their scores and debate which ones they liked the best so I knew that the score might not be enough to win the competition.
When the final judging was complete, to my surprise my image of the "Cigar Man" that I captured while in Barcelona, Spain won 1st place in the People category and Best in Show. I also took 2nd place in the Abstract category with my image of the shadow of a co-worker playing golf entitled "Shadow at Play" I won $300 in photo finishing from McBain Camera and $175 in Gift Certificates for more courses at Metro. Needless to say I felt very honored to have been selected. It was a nice to receive some confirmation that I had learned something in the past couple of years and that perhaps I do have a good eye for this stuff. Even though many people have told me that I do, often I am my own worst critic and allow self-doubt to get in the way sometimes.
Probably the best part of the evening was the hour or so we got to spend having the judges critiquing images and giving us some insight into what they were looking for and why the scored the images they way they did. It was a valuable learning experience and I definitely picked up a few things that I will try to incorporate into my next shoot.
If you ask any professional photographer what you should spend your money on when it comes to buying photography equipment, almost all will tell you to buy the best glass you can afford. Glass is just fancy photographer speak for lenses. All the other accessories and even your camera body you will probably replace every couple of years but if you invest in good glass it will serve you well for many years to come.
Heeding this advice, I have begun to build my collection of good glass. I've chosen to go with Canon which means I'll be sticking with Canon bodies for the foreseeable future as you cannot use Canon lenses with a different body (i.e. Nikon). In my collection I have the following 6 Canon lenses and one Tamron lens in order of price from most expensive to the least expensive.
16-35mm f/2.8 L II USM
This is a great wide-angle lens that I just recently purchased so I haven't got a great deal of shooting time in with it yet. It's a nice fast lens and it's also very light. I had the option of going with the cheaper EF-S 10-22mm f3.5 but in the end I decided to give up a bit of a wider angle in favor of a faster lens that could be used on a full-frame sensor if I ever upgrade my body to a 5D or 1DS Mark III.
24-70mm f/2.8 L USM
This is a great multi-purpose lens but I primarily use it for portrait and landscape work. This is a fast, sharp lens which performs particularly well around f5.6. It's a little on the heavy side but it produces some great results even in low light conditions. I purchased this when I upgraded to the 40D so I'm still experimenting with this lens and finding out when it's best used.
70-200mm f/2.8
This is probably my favorite lens that I've purchased so far. It produces great depth of field so I really enjoy using it for portrait shots and catching intimate moments from afar. I've used it to cover sports photography, weddings, travel, and event photography. I also have the 1.4X tele-convertor which extends the range of this lens which is handy when you need to get in that little bit closer to your subject.
Tamron 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3
This mid-range lens is a great multi-purpose lens for the photographer on the go who wants the greatest flexibility in range without having to carry several lenses with them. I bought this lens a couple of years ago and use it quite often when I'm traveling and don't want to bring my heavier lenses with me. It's great in outdoor settings with good lighting but it's not the best choice if I'm going to be in low-light conditions. It's definitely slower and noisier than my other Canon lenses and the auto-focusing system sometimes takes awhile to lock in on the subject I'm trying to photograph.
75-300mm f/4-5.6
Besides the 18-55mm kit lens that came with my Rebel XT, this was the first lens I purchased. At only $300 it's a very inexpensive lens which is great for zooming in on far away subjects or for creating a great DOF for portraits, etc. Unfortunately once I purchased the 70-200 f/2.8, this lens rarely makes it's way out of my bag these days and will most likely be sold off to any interested buyers who are looking for a like-new inexpensive telephoto lens.
18-55mm EF-S
This was the basic kit lens that came with my Rebel XT. I used it for quite sometime until I purchased the Tamron 18-200mm lens. Since then it has sat in my bag alongside my 75-300mm and will most likely wind up in the items for sale pile shortly.
50mm f/1.8
At only $100 this little wonder is fantastic in low light conditions thanks to a nice wide aperture. It is also a great portrait lens producing some tack sharp images - sometimes sharper than my much more expensive 24-70mm. It's small and light-weight so I don't mind throwing this one in the bag and pulling it out when I need it. Being that it's a fixed focal length, it's not the best lens to use in situations where the distance between you and your subjects is changing quickly and you need to get the shot. Having said that, I use it often so I am looking to upgrade to the faster 50mm f/1.4 which is still only around $380 which I think will give me good value for the money.
I'm curious to know what lenses you use and if there are any missing from my collection that you think I should have.
Well I just was informed today that the Creative Design in Photography Level II class that I was registered in at Metro has been canceled due to a lack of enrollment. The next offering won't be until February of 2009. I was really looking forward to this class as it's been almost 4 months since I completed my last class (not counting the Photoshop class I took in February). The next class I'm registered for is Designing Wedding Photography with Tracy Grabowski which starts in June. Hopefully the enrollment will be enough for them to proceed with that class otherwise I will have to wait until the fall to take some more classes.
As I gear up for a very busy spring and summer season it was time to, well, gear up! The first thing I needed to do was expand the home network. Upgrades include a new HP Core 2 Duo desktop which will be used primarily for Photoshop work and a new 22" wide-screen LCD. I also picked up a small Bamboo tablet from Wacom for photo editing.
With the photo collection growing at a rapid pace, backups are more and more important so I added an HP Home Server with mirrored drives along with 2 new external hard drives. My plan is to backup my laptop and desktop to the server and then backup those backups to one of the external drives periodically. This drive I'll leave at my parents so that in the event of a fire or theft I won't lose everything. The 2nd external drive will primarily be used to backup photos only and provide extra storage when I'm traveling with my laptop.
On the software side I decided to make the move to Lightroom. I had been experimenting with Bridge for awhile but after downloading a demo of LR I decided that it was a much better tool and provided much better organizational features than Bridge. I also liked the ability to jump right into the Develop mode and start tweaking photos without having to open them in Camera RAW.
The last big piece of the puzzle was my camera equipment. I contemplated upgrading to the Canon 1D Mark III but just couldn't justify the $5000 price tag yet. The 5D was my next option but it's been out now for a couple of years and is due to be replaced so I didn't want to get stuck buying something that will be outdated the second I buy it so I finally decided to buy a 40D. It has some great new features including Live View, automatic sensor cleaning and it uses the new Digic III processor. Of course I also had to buy new batteries a new battery grip because the one I have for my Rebel doesn't fit the 40D.
In addition to a new body, I also bought a couple of new lenses including Canon's 24-70mm f2.8 and my friend Greg sold me his 70-200mm f2.8 along with a 1.4x converter. Both lenses are great and I'm really happy with how they perform in low light conditions.
My last purchase this spring (for now anyway) was a new ball head for my tripod. Until 
now I had just been using the ball head that came with my Slik tripod and it was enough for the smaller Rebel and the glass that I had. I quickly realized that it was not strong enough to support the larger 40D and the heavier glass so I purchased the Manfrotto 322RC2 pistol grip ball head. It can hold up to 11 lbs and comes with a quick release plate. The pistol grip is great for quickly adjusting the position of the camera to move between horizontal and vertical shooting. Looking forward to testing it out this weekend on a wedding shoot that I am doing for a couple at the Legislature.
Over the course of the summer I'm sure I'll add some more glass to the collection as well as a portable light meter, a lens baby and a new cable release for the 40D because of course the current cable release that I have for the Rebel wont' work with the 40D. What a surprise.
I subscribe to several great Photography blogs covering topics from the technical to the artistic and everything in between. Most of the blogs I currently read I found via a Google search and then discovered others by following links from those blogs to other blogs.
Recently, Guy Kawasaki who was one of the original guys at Apple, started a new site called Alltop. It is basically a blog aggregator of all the best blogs on the Net organized by categories. The thing I like about Alltop is that it lists all the top blogs on a particular topic on one page with the 5 most recent posts from each blog. By surveying the most recent posts from a variety of blogs on a related topic, it's very easy to see if a particular issue or news item is bubbling to the surface in the blogosphere.
Of course one of the categories on Alltop is Photography and I have discovered some great blogs to read. Check it out at http://photography.alltop.com/
One of my new favourites that I discovered through Alltop is Scott Kelby's blog. He is the author of a great Photoshop book called The Photoshop CS3 Book for Digital Photographers. I highly recommend it if you are interested in photography and deal with an post-processing of images. Read Scott's blog at http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/
One funny side note. I was reading through their About section and found this great FAQ and I thought their response was great:
Q. Couldn’t I build my own custom aggregation using a feed reader, customizable home pages, Netvibes, etc?
A. Yes, you could—knock yourself out. While you’re at it, you could backup your hard disk, bake your own bread, iron your own shirts, floss daily, tune your own car, and bike to work.
Three little letters I never imagined owning but last week that all changed. Even though I'm not giving up my day job, I decided to incorporate my business after several weeks of research and talking to accountant and lawyer friends. I had originally intended to hang up my shingle and operate as a sole proprietor but several people I spoke to advised me to setup a corporation to limit my liabilities. Liabilities? What liabilities?
I suppose I am the ultimate optimist and I like to think that nothing bad is ever going to happen. I enjoy photography and I just want to have fun capturing moments for people and sharing my images. I don't want to worry about things like liabilities and legal matters. Luckily I have good friends who help me take off my rose colored glasses and look at the worst-case scenarios. What if my equipment failed during an important shoot? What if I accidentally photograph someone who doesn't want to be photographed and the image gets out and somehow damages their reputation? Granted, I am describing worst-case scenarios but what would happen if they came to fruition. Is it worth risking one's personal assets over? I think not.
So last Friday I headed down to a local registry office, filled out the paperwork, paid my $297 and presto - Moments in Digital Ltd. is officially born. What started out as hobby has started to get a little more complicated than I first envisioned but I'm having fun with it and definitely learning a lot about myself while gaining some valuable business experience. Where it goes from here only time will tell but at least for now I feel the proper foundation has been laid.
I was browsing around on the interwebs recently looking for some good plug-ins for Photoshop CS3 when I stumbled upon a really great set of plug-ins from optikVerve labs. Their tool is called virtualPhotographer and it is a great plug-in that allows you to apply a variety of effects to your photographs with just a few clicks. Some of the filters include film grain, soft blur, night scope, b/w, etc. Here is a photo I took of my wife playing Rock Band. The original image is on the left. I applied the soft blur filter to the photo on the right.
The set includes over 50 custom styles. The best part about these plug-ins? They are completely free and from what I can tell there are no strings attached. I have installed them on my Vista machine in Photoshop CS3 and I haven't had any issues. I can't say this for some of the other "free" plug-ins I've tried which have ended up crashing Photoshop on me.
You can download these great free plug-ins here:
If you own an iPod, chances are that you know about Podcasts and probably have already subscribed to some of your favorites. There are several great photography podcasts out there and I thought I would share some of my personal favorites.
TWiP - This week in Photography is a relatively new podcast that started around January of this year. Produced by Pixelcorps and hosted by Scott Bourne and Alex Lindsay, this weekly podcast includes news, reviews, tips, techniques, and discussions on everything related to photography. TWiP also has a blog at www.twipphoto.com as well as a Flickr group where members can contribute photographs, participate in assignments, and post images to be critiqued and discussed.
Tips from the Top Floor - Hosted by Chris Marquardt, this short podcast offers tips and advice for novice photographers to pro photographers. Chris also appears as a regular on Leo Laporte's radio show "The Tech Guy" which is also available on iTunes in a weekly podcast format. Chris's website can be found at www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com
Photography 101 hosted by Scott Wittenberg, is a video podcast which covers a wide range of techniques and tips on cameras, composition, and exposure as well as step-by-step instructions on how to manipulate images in Photoshop.
These are just a few of the podcasts that I listen to a regular basis that are related to photography. I also subscribe to several blogs on photography and Photoshop which provide me with some great tips and advice as well as information on new software and hardware. In a future blog post I'll write about some of my favorite photography blogs.
I was honoured to be selected as the official photographer for the David Foster Foundation gala event which will be held in Edmonton this September. The David Foster Foundation was started by David in 1986 to help families and their children in need of major organ transplants. Many of these families lives are turned completely upside down when they find out that their child needs a major organ transplant. According to their website, the David Foster Foundation is dedicated to two primary goals:
To provide financial assistance for non-medical expenses, which are not otherwise covered by governmental agencies, to families in Canada with children who are in need of major organ transplants, and to raise public awareness regarding organ donation.
To promote the event, David visited Edmonton on Friday, February 29th for a media event to launch this year's gala which will be held at the Winspear on September 13th. More details about the foundation and the event can be found by visiting the following websites:
Following the media event, I accompanied David over to the Stollery Children's Hospital at the University of Alberta. David and his girlfriend Yolanda spent about an hour at the hospital visiting with children who had received or were waiting for major organ transplants. The photos from that event will be published on the David Foster Foundation website in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here is just a sample of one of the images that I took during the visit:
So tonight I'm back at NAIT for the next 5 weeks to take Photoshop for Photographers Level II. Here is a brief description of the class from NAIT's website:
This course will continue to explore the versatility of Photoshop. Advanced techniques of input and output will be covered in addition to more specialized manipulating techniques. Subject areas will include masking, advance layer techniques, type, filters, and special effects. Alternate output devices will also be used.
I'm looking forward to improving my skills with Photoshop. Up until last year, everything I knew about Photoshop was pretty much self-taught and I wasn't using it with enough consistency to really improve. Hopefully with a couple of classes under my belt and more practice, my skills will improve. When I took Level I last fall, I hadn't picked up CS3 yet so this time around I should be able to practice the stuff I learn at home more.
Back in November, I also posted up a few links to some great online training resources. Refer back to http://bruceslens.blogspot.com/2007/11/great-online-training-resources.html for a list of these online resources if you're interested in Photoshop training.
Last weekend I had the privilege of being able to volunteer at the Alberta Winter Games as a photographer. There were approximately 40 photographers in all covering the 26 sports over the course of three days. I was assigned to cover Men's hockey which featured some of the top Pee-Wee teams from around the province. The games were all held at the Beaumont Recreation Centre (the 'BRAC') and I witnessed some really great hockey and some very talented kids.
This was a challenging assignment to photograph. There were several factors which made shooting quite challenging and a perfect opportunity to practice some of things I've learned during my classes.
The first challenge was finding places to shoot the action. Although I tried a few shots, I wasn't able to shoot through the glass on either sheet of ice. The glass was just too marked up to get a clear shot. At BRAC 1, there was very little room to stand on the benches and my view from the stands was obscured by the protective mesh. Fortunately someone had made a hole in the mesh at one end which was just large enough to get my lens through. Steadying the lens and being able to move the camera around was quite awkward however so I gave up on BRAC 1 and moved over to BRAC 2.
Again at BRAC 2 I was faced with horrible glass and mesh covered most of the area around the top of the glass. Fortunately there was much more room on the benches and even a low wall behind the benches that I could stand on where there was no mesh getting in the way. Probably the best spot however was down at the Zamboni gates where there was no mesh above the glass. One of the games officials was nice enough to get me a ladder which allowed me to stand above the glass and get close in on the action. From here I was able to get some really great action shots in and around the goal.
The 2nd big challenge was metering. Anytime you are trying to shoot in a snow or ice environment, the lighting can play havoc with the metering system on your camera. If it reads it as being too bright, the camera will try to darken the image resulting in the ice looking grey. The metering courses I took came in really handy in understanding this concept and as a result I was able to get my exposures almost bang on every time, avoiding having to spend hours in Photoshop trying to fix them.
Shooting indoors without flash while still trying to capture the action from far away calls for a good telephoto lens. Fortunately my friend Greg had lent me his 70-200mm f2.8 lens. What a beautiful lens it was to work with. I was able to shoot at around f4 at around 1/100 of a second resulting in great exposure while still being fast enough to capture the action. I barely had to use my flash expect when I was shooting in and around the bench trying to get some candid shots of the players and coaches.
A selection of my photos was uploaded to the games web site (www.2008albertawintergames.com). The Photobucket site they are using to host the pictures will only be up for a couple of weeks so I also posted my best shots on my Flickr site at www.flickr.com/photos/momentsindigital.
All in all it was a great experience and a great opportunity to get out there and practice many of the things I learned in my lighting and metering courses. If you get the chance to volunteer for an event like this, I would highly recommend it. It's a great chance to give back to the community, build up your portfolio, and practice the craft.
Starting tomorrow (Friday, February 15th) until Sunday, I will be volunteering as an official photographer for the Alberta Winter Games in Leduc. I have been assigned Men's hockey which takes place at the Beaumont Recreation & Athletics Centre. It's going to be a long weekend of shooting but I'm really looking forward to having the opportunity to practice my skills while giving back to the community.
I am also excited to try out a couple of lenses that my co-worker Greg was kind enough to lend me. I will be trying out his wide-angle 10-22mm f 3.5 and his 70 - 200mm 2.8 telephoto. I hope to get a good combination of candid, group, and action shots over the course of the weekend.
Photos from the games are going to be uploaded each day to a Photobucket album which will be available for 2 weeks after the games so that the participants can order prints. We've been given a limit of 100 photos per day and then they'll pick the one's they think should go up. The photos from Men's hockey will be at http://s242.photobucket.com/albums/ff172/2008awg/Hockey-Male/. I will also try to post up my favourites on my Flickr account.
On January 11th, 2008, we took a day trip from Punta Cana to the capital city of the Dominican Republic - Santo Domingo. Santo Domingo is a vibrant city with a population of approximately 3 million people. The main tourist attraction is the colonial city and it is believed that it also the site of Christopher Columbus's tomb.
Once we were finished the main part of our tour we were given about an hour to explore the area and shop. While we were walking down the main shopping street we came upon this man asleep on a park bench and I couldn't resist the photo opportunity.
While the original is in color, I converted this image to B&W in photoshop as I thought it captured the old world feel of the Colonial city and made for a more dramatic image of this man asleep on the bench.
Lens: Tamron 18-200mm handheld at 102mm
f/5.6 at 1/20th of a second
ISO 100
So now that I've been back from Punta Cana for a few weeks and my tan has all but faded, I decided it was time to start processing my photos from the trip and talk a little about each one here.
For today's photo I chose this one of two boys hanging out at one of the many gift shops that we stopped at on our various tours. On this particular day we were returning from a great day of Scuba Diving on Catalina Island. It was around 5:30 in the evening and we stopped at a roadside gift shop to shop, visit the bathroom and grab snack. As we came out of the store, my wife noticed these two boys leaning up against the front window.
Now seeing kids hanging outside the tourist stops isn't unusual but what struck me most about these boys was that the one on the right was wearing a t-shirt that said "Life begins at Hooters" I thought it was quite amusing that here we were in the Dominican Republic, and here was this boy of around 10 years of age wearing a Hooters t-shirt. Ah, the great spread of capitalism and American "Culture".
Lens: Tamron 18-200mm handheld at 67mm
f/10 at 1/50th of a second
ISO 100
Well after a very busy Christmas & New Year's, my wife and I took a couple weeks off to rest and relax on the sunny beaches of Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. It was a great chance to recharge the batteries and to practice my photography skills. Over the next few weeks I'll try to blog some of the photos I took and discuss them.
Now that we're back it's time to plan which courses I'll be taking during the remainder of the winter and spring. So far here are the courses that I am tentatively looking to take:
Hopefully my schedule and my tax refund will allow me to fit most of these in before the summer. If not, I may divert some of them to the Fall. In any event I'm looking forward to getting out and practicing more in 2008 and hopefully doing a better job of blogging more frequently.
