Moab, Utah

The majestic beauty of the landscape carved by millions and millions of years of erosion is simply breathtaking. If you have never been to Moab, Utah I highly recommend a visit. It's a place I have always wanted to visit. I finally got the chance to go a couple of weeks ago and spend a weekend there. Moab is located in the South Eastern corner of the State of Utah we flew into Salt Lake City and then drove down about four hours to get to Moab.

There are many national parks in that area and we started our adventure driving through Arches National Park. We arrived later on in the day so the sun was almost setting casting an orange glow over the already vibrant red sand and rock formations.

The following day we returned to Arches National Park and hiked an area known as Devils Garden. In this area are two well known arches. First one was Landscape Arch and it is probably one of the longest spanning arches in the park. It's fenced off so you can't really get to close to it due to the fact that in recent years there were sections of the arch that actually collapsed.

The second arch we hiked to is called Double O and you can see why. This one you can walk right up to and even climb if you're adventurous enough.

An area that we did not get a chance to hike through is called the Fiery Furnace. This is only allowed with a Park Ranger guide because there is a lot of climbing through tight areas and the trails are not marked. Unfortunately the tours were all booked up days in advance. I recommend if you do want to do the hike to register online ahead of time. Lesson learned.

The next day we drove out to Canyonlands National Park. There are amazing lookout points along the way and Dead Horse Point is one of the more iconic ones.

This is the huge valley and canyon looking down from the Grand View lookout point.

The most well known arch at Canyonlands is Mesa Arch. The view is simply incredible and this was by far my favourite spot.

The FlashBus Tour 2011 - Seattle

Last Friday in Seattle was the first stop on the 29 city tour of The Flash Bus. If you're a photographer that shoots with small strobes and haven't heard of Joe McNally or David Hobby then you have seriously been missing out and need to check out the work of these two guys. I have been following Joe and David for the last few years and watched many of their instructional videos online. I've also seen Joe in Vancouver before but this was my first time seeing David. This all day seminar kicked off with David explaining his methodology for setting up lighting. I think by accident or fluke I have taken a pretty similar approach to my lighting as David does his. He first thinks about the ambient light and refers to this as one of the principle players in setting up the scene. Next he thinks about the fill light and I found this rather interesting that he quite often uses an Orbis ring flash as a fill rather than a main light. I will definitely need to try this out on my next shoot. The next light he brings in is the main light or key light and then finishes up with a hair or accent lights. When he broke it down like this it really made so much sense and made me think of all the times when things didn't quite work for me what I was doing wrong. Next up was Joe and for him he is really big on using the Nikon flashes with TTL. I have to be honest and say that I never really use TTL all that much when I shoot with off camera strobes. I am a Canon shooter and though they have similar technology I have always preferred to do it manually. However watching Joe do the controlling of all his strobes and playing with the flash compensation and ratio of multiple flashes all from one location made me think maybe I should give this a try. I just got a Canon 7D with wireless flash capability on camera so I am dying to try it out. The day ended off with a round of Q&A and both of them offered some incredible advice. Here are some photos from the show.

Joe doesn't just have gear. He's got A LOT of gear! This is only a small portion of it.

Headshots with Caley

I had the opportunity of doing some headshots for aspiring actress Caley this past month in the studio. I wanted to keep things fairly simple so I used two background setups, one white and one dark grey. Lighting was two lights on Caley primarily using a beauty dish with diffuser and a bare strobe for the hairlight. For the photo above there are two lights behind her left and right. I pointed the strobe on her right side towards the camera just enough to get a natural lens flare effect. For the two shots below I took one of the lights and used it against the background. In the case of the dark grey background I positioned the background light directly behind her head so that there would be a nice sort of halo effect.

For these last two shots I switched up the beauty dish and used a ring light. Notice the catchlights in her eyes.

Good luck Caley with your acting career!

Model Shoot - Natalie R

Kicked off 2011 with my first photo shoot of the year with model Natalie from Charles Stuart International. Makeup was done by Jennifer Schulz and styling by Cyndy. My hat goes off to the incredible team and especially Natalie for braving the cold and being a true professional. I think it was just above freezing that day and as the sun started setting it got even colder. For this shoot I used a Profoto 7b with a five foot octabank and a bare head with a reflector. Working with portable packs and a big light source outdoors is a lot of fun and when it's almost pitch dark nothing lights up the scene better. Here are some shots from that photo shoot.

These last two shots were done when the sun had already set and it was so cold that in between takes Jennifer and Cyndy would come and wrap Natalie up in a blanket to keep her warm.

Help Portrait Vancouver

2010 is almost over and when I reflect back on what it was that moved or inspired me most as a photographer, I think the first thing that comes to mind is Help Portrait. The principal behind it is pretty simple. Find someone in need, take their portrait, print it and deliver it to them. The photographers do not keep or publicize any of the photos of the people's pictures that we take. It's not about fame or adding to your portfolio. It's about giving.

What makes it so special are the lives that you touch and the smiles that you see. This past year as part of the Help Portrait Vancouver group I got the opportunity to work with Ian Sheh and Steph Forster, the two leaders of the group along with some fellow photographers and makeup artist in two events. The first one was a smaller event held on November 23 at BC Children's Hospital. It was in the Child Life Department, a part of the hospital dedicated for terminally ill patients and their families. The small group of us took pictures of the kids and their families, printed them out a couple of 4x6 prints and then also gave them a CD with all their photos on it. The magic of seeing these kids faces light up was beyond words. Here's the group along with Diane from Children's Hospital. We have been told that they want us back and we could not be happier to do this again real soon.

A few days later the official Help Portrait event with venues all around the world was held on December 4th. Our group of volunteers this year for Help Portrait Vancouver grew by quite a bit from last year and we had an incredible turn out from the community of the downtown Eastside. This year instead of actually taking pictures I served as one of the group leads for the morning team of photographers. I think I actually had more fun watching the joy that the other photographers had taking pictures and interacting with their subjects. I also helped to hand out the photos to the guests and the look on their faces was priceless when they received them. Smiles from ear to ear and literally tears of joy were on some of their faces. Many of them had never had a portrait done before let alone to be treated with such a warm reception and attention by our volunteers. Check out the link to Help Portrait Vancouver on Facebook for videos and more photos.

Here I am with the morning crew of photographers. Lots of new faces in this group and I bet they will all be back next year. So proud of everyone.

Many volunteers stayed on for the whole day even as the afternoon crew came on to replace them. I know most of the makeup crew were on their feet all day making the women look beautiful for their pictures. They were incredible.

In the end the event was an amazing success and I am already looking forward to December 3rd, 2011.

If you want to volunteer just let me know.

Suki's Salon Shoot

A few weeks ago I did a shoot for the student stylists of Suki's Salon. The shoot itself would be done upstairs at the Granville location where we had the most space. The stylists were asked to provide eight models and to use the four elements of wind, water, fire and earth as a creative inspiration. There were two models for each element, some were friends of the stylist and some had modelling experience before. The models also had their makeup done by a team of three makeup artists comprised of Jessica, Desiree and Liz. It was really cool to see the transformations and the amazing amount of work that went into each styling. Many of their in house Senior Stylists and Artistic Directors were on hand to provide guidance. Our shooting schedule was pretty tight but we managed to fit all the models in one right after another and wrapped up our shoot in just one afternoon. Here are a few shots from that day.

Wind: Jeanna and Christina

Water: Breanne and Robyn

Fire: Emily and Rona

Earth: Jessica and Andrea

This is the team of stylist from the South Granville and Downtown location. In no particular order, Rachel, Chelsea, Hannah, Elynne, Penny, Andrew, Mitchell, Farnoosh, Aline and yeah that's me in the back!

Photo Shoot with guitarist Shane Carling

I had the pleasure this past weekend of photographing Shane Carling for his upcoming website and CD. This guy is really amazing and you must check out his performance of "Dust" on YouTube which he played for us live during the shoot. You can also find out more about Shane on his Facebook page. Shane was introduced to me by Pirabalini, a great stylist that I have worked with before and who was also the creative behind the outfits for this shoot. Rounding out the team was Kyla Charney who was in charge of makeup. We had such a fun time during the whole shoot and there was just such great chemistry with the team. Here's a small sample of the shots from that day. Only the one at the top of this blog was really edited in Photoshop. The rest below were pretty much as they were shot. I kept the lighting very simple but did mix a little bit of natural light along with flash. I shot most of these with a 50mm 1.4 wide open.

This shot above is one of my favourites because the depth of focus is so shallow. Notice how Shane's face and hands on the neck of the guitar are in focus but his shirt and vest are blurry.