Ring around Calgary

I bought a Ray ring flash ($200) the other day and tried it out last night. I was told that a ring flash will give me a shadow-less image, but you do lose a stop of flash output due to the extra distance the light has to travel. It's a neat tool, and it attracts a lot of attention.

My friend Mike posed for a few photos which allowed me to gauge the ring flash. I noticed I had to push it to +2 TTL metering, and that I was in a lot closer than I thought I would have to be. When I put on the fish-eye lens with the ring flash on, you get a neat effect where the ring flash is part of the photo.

I then used the ring flash to frame the city view and dropped the flash unit down to 1/128th power as I only needed a small burst of light. After that, with night coming on, I took off the ring and set up a tripod, waiting for the office lights to come on.

Future uses for the ring flash will be at weddings for cool portraits, photo booth photos, and generally looking a little different when using a flash.

Roses

A few months ago, I saw this terrific shot of a rose. Just the rose head, each petal perfect in shape and lit with a small amount of light. Deeps shadows stretch across the flower and the curl in the rose was without flaw. Made me wonder if I could take the same shot so I started to hunt for a perfect rose. Sadly, no such thing exists, but I did have an "ok" rose to shoot, and these are the results.

I set up shop in the kitchen with black felt as a background hanging on the wall. I had to secure the rose using clamps so it would show the side that I liked, and then had the camera on tripod with a flash externally linked with a Pocket Wizard. Too much light, and the rose turned purple, too little and you couldn't see it.

I ended up shooting the whole thing at 125/sec at F9 on ISO 100 with a 1/2 power flash bouncing off the ceiling. This combination gave me the correct color without the shadows being opened up too much.

Each month I buy a photo magazine and look at the photos and always say "I could do that" but never do. It was a cheap experiment at $7 for a rose and $5 for the felt. At least I can check that one off.

Canon's S95

Whenever I travel, I tend to bring along my usual gear. One DSLR body, a 50mm standard, a wide-angle, and my zoom. A flash and a reflector might come in handy, and I like to keep a fish-eye lens just in case. Of course this means that I am carrying around a bulky bag, and going out to dinner with friends makes me look like a pack mule. All this to say I have been wanting a pocket camera for years.

The G-series cameras from Canon have always been the one to get. They give you RAW format, they give you a hotshoe, and they give you full manual control. Thing is, they are huge. Try putting one in your pocket, and you will soon find out it isn't a pocket camera, it's an "around your neck" camera.

When I was looking at the new G12, people kept posting about the S90 and how great a camera it was. With the new S95 out in November of 2010, I went to the camera shop to see for myself. I bought it the same day. It has the same sensor as the G12, the same RAW format, and the same manual controls. No hotshoe.. but who cares!? When have you put a 580EXII on a G12? The flash is twice the size of the camera. I would use my DSLR for that.

Nov 3rd, and I'm off to Vancouver to see Gorillaz. I spent the day taking photos around town, and the S95 showed off why it's such a great camera. Colors are great, and the AF was sharp and quick. You can control the exposure with a dial, and with it shooting RAW you can always change your mind later. So, daytime shooting was a snap. Next?

Concerts. The S95 looks like a tiny camera, and as you can fit it in your pocket, security doesn't think it's a threat (my friends left their G series behind for fear it wouldn't be let in). Inside the camera worked beautifully. I shot the entire concert, used the video setting for a few songs and recorded in HD at 720p. Great results again.

After the concert, we went out for a bike ride, and I slipped the camera back in my pocket. It's a small camera but what great features. Highly recommended to anyone.

I Can Has Kitty?

In September, I visited my friend Kelly in Halifax where he raises horses with his wife Stacie. They have a huge farm on 35 acres and along with two dogs, 10 cats roam the area on the lookout for mice. I honestly didn't go to Halifax to take photos of cats, but when I got there, the setting was too perfect.

The names of these cats are like characters from "The Wire". There's Booger, Charlie, Skunk, Sly, Tiny, Vo, Itchy... the list goes on. If you ever need names for a tv show, Kelly and Stacie might be able to help out.

Four of the cats were kittens and as always they were playful and eager to investigate what was going on. They never come in the house, but they do know where the food comes from and so they are usually nearby if you go outside.

Looking at these photos you might think I was using a long lens to try and blur the background, but the long lens was too long, as the cats would move around so fast that it was hard to get a nice crisp shot of them. I used my 100mm macro lens instead and that allowed me to sit nearby and if they got close, I could take photos with amazing detail.

That farm where your parents said your pets went to when they grew old and tired exists. It's near Halifax and it's about as close to a kitty "heaven" as I think you could script.

1960's Hong Kong

My dad went to Hong Kong in the 1960's as part of the Royal Navy and came home with three packages of slides that showed various parts of the former colony. I think the package designs of the slide boxes are great, but the slides themselves are terrible. Time has aged these photos with color shifts, dust and debris all over the place, but I have a feeling that the quality of these mass produced photos wasn't great to begin with.

This photo of Hong Kong from Victoria Peak shows what a difference a few decades can make to the skyline of a city. Today HK is a huge metropolis, but back in the 1960's there are very few tall buildings to be seen and nothing what you would call a skyscraper. Compare that image with a shot I took in 2001 and the difference is startling.

Known for it's neon signs and congestion, Hong Kong hasn't changed. 1960's HK looks just about the same today with cars, people and signs shoved into a tiny area of land at the bottom of China.

Night time in HK is spectacular and from Victoria Peak you can see the entire city. The photo here shows a time-lapse of the boats in the harbor and some of the city lit up. Compared to 2001 and again the difference in how much Hong Kong was built up over the years is amazing.

Lastly, I loved this photo of two young boys bowing to each other outside of a doorway. I would like to know what happened to these men and what they are doing now.

Mexico revisited

In March of 1999, I visited my friend who was on a student exchange program in Guadalajara and immediately decided I would enroll the following semester. I spent six months (July - December) going to school and living in Mexico, loving every minute of it. In July of this year, I was invited to shoot a wedding in Puerto Vallarta and as it was only a four-hour bus ride away, I thought I would take two days and revisit GDL.

I arrived at 6am and stumbled off the bus and into a taxi. I took it to the centre of town, "El Centro" and waited for the sunrise. It had just stopped raining and so there was no where to sit and wait for the sky to lighten. Instead, I started to wander around in the dark and see what I could remember of the layout of the city. Rats ran along the gutters, a few drunks stumbled by, and then the sky finally started to lighten. I took this first photo of the town centre at 8am before the crowds arrived.

When the sun came out, I took this photo of a nearby church top. Beautiful colors. I used a 70-200mm lens, which drew a lot of attention when I took it out of my bag. I felt like the one white guy walking into a black bar where all the heads turn and the music stops. I kept smiling and talking to anyone who held my gaze and soon people stopped staring.

At 10am I went to the Starbucks where I was supposed to meet my friend. I called her, sent a text and left a voice mail. I totally forgot about "Mexican Time", and so at 1pm she arrived. Three hours.. not bad. I made friends with the security guard at Starbucks. Rutbe took me to a pretty part of town, Tlaquepaque and we had lunch. We had this huge bowl of tequila and water and ice with lemons in it. I can't explain how good this was.

One of the shots I have wanted to re-shoot was the mural of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla by Jose Clemente Orozco. When I was there in 1999, I didn't have a lens wide enough to capture the entire scene. Using my 8mm fish-eye I was able to stand at the base of the stairs looking up and finally get the full mural. This mural was painted inside the government building and celebrates the father of Mexican independence.

Lastly, this photo just reminded me of Conan O'Brien and so I include it here for your viewing.

A painful wedding day

Let me start by saying that Jason and Sarah are great people and that the headline has nothing to do with them. I pulled my back out of joint two days before the wedding, and spent the wedding day feeling like any minute my back was gonna spasm. Fun. I was walking like an old man, but we struggled through, and ended up with some very beautiful photos.

My injury was not the only one. A week before the wedding, the groom Jason had been working with a piece of wire that sprang out and punctured his right eye leaving him temporarily blind. We were the walking wounded, but this wedding was going forward.

We did the formals at a beautiful house in Mount Royal and the weather totally cooperated with a slightly cloudy day that meant no harsh shadows. I dropped ambient light by about a stop and then had a shoot-thru umbrella on camera right to add the light. I made them put their arms around each other in cheesy poses and soon the laughing began and I got this shot. Natural smiles are always the best.

At the reception, there was a nice white 9' ceiling so I was able to bounce the flash and get a more natural look to the candid shots I was hunting for. This shot of the bride and groom laughing happened as the bride's sister told one of the best stories of childhood ever.

Later in the evening there was the customary first dance. A six-piece brass band played "It had to be you" and the crowd gathered to watch the newlyweds. This photo was done with a slow shutter speed so I could get the colour of the room, and then the flash highlighted the couple at the centre of the action. In the large version of the photo, you can see all the faces of their friends smiling at them in the background. Once I had this photo in the camera I knew I could relax as I had "the shot".

A beautiful wedding day, and I hope the Jason and Sarah like these photos as much as I do.