Magazine DIY

Every month I get a few photography magazines to read and examine. Each month I look at 90% of the photos and sneer at them with an "I could do that" attitude and then toss them out. A few of the photos are out of my league but most (I feel) are well within my range of ability.

This month I saw one of the most basic shots, "The Water Drop" in Digital SLR Photography and decided to try my hand at one of these "easy" shots.


There wasn't much to the set up: a dark paint tray, tripod, flash, macro lens, and off you go. The only problem was setting up the hanging bag where the water would drip from. After about 10 minutes of trial and error, I was able to get water to drop consistently in a single place.

After that it was timing. I have so many shots of the pan itself (too early) or just ripples (too late).

Really cool things started to happen when I anticipated the drop and was able to catch it before it flew upwards. I was excited to be able to move the flash all around the pan thanks to my pocket wizards and that gave me creative control over where the shadows would fall.

I attached a few different colored gels on the flash to get different looks, and after I was done I looked back at the original article in the magazine with a feeling that I did a pretty good job overall. This should be the start of a new habit of mine... trying to replicate shots I admire and like.

Rugby tournament

Last weekend I was invited to shoot a friend playing rugby at a friendly tournament in town. I used this opportunity to take a loaned 100-400mm lens out and test how good the auto-focus is.

I have seen photos of rugby from South Africa where the players have their fingers in the opposing players mouths so I was really hoping to catch some good action. I was not disappointed. The faces they give as they run, or anticipate getting tackled are fantastic.

No one takes this tournament seriously and the team names showed that to be apparent. This young man was sporting a fresh "mullet" playing for the Communists. Up next was a girls game where the "Sperm Gurglers" were against the "Camel Toes".

The girls are known to dress up in crazy outfits for the tournaments too, and so we had neon green g-strings outside of silver leggings and all the hues of pink known to man. This huddle was too much of a photo opportunity to miss.

As for the camera and lens? Well, the camera did exactly what I thought it would do. Shoot fast, miss a few but hit most. I was able to capture peak action with a lens that opened up to only 5.6 under bright conditions.

As soon as I have five grand, I'll be buying a 300mm F 2.8 and then we will see how fast this camera can perform.

Fun with filters

A fun way to play with your photos is to make them look like they were shot with a tilt-shift lens. Instead of buying a $2000 lens, you can use photoshop instead. The resulting image looking as though it were a toy model set. (click on the image to see it larger)

I won't go into a step-by-step here, but check out this link: http://www.recedinghairline.co.uk/tutorials/fakemodel/

His tutorial is dead simple and it's a fun trick to play with.

A trip home

In November of 2009, I was able to get back to England for a trip home. Although I was born in Toronto, we moved to England when I was six months old and stayed there till I was five when my parents split and we moved back to Canada. My first memories are of England, and after we moved to Canada we returned annually for many years to visit all our family whenever we could.

My hometown is called Clevedon, in North Somerset in the South of England. It's a small seaside town that looks across the muddy waters of the Bristol Channel to Wales. When I knew that I was moving to Canada, I used to look at those lights and ask my mum if that was Canada. It didn't seem so bad knowing that I wasn't moving too far.

Clevedon has a pier that is the focal point for the town. In 1970 it fell down as a result of a load test, and was reconstructed in 1998. My father's name is somewhere on that long wooden walkway.

The "beach" that I remember playing on is a small patch of stones and the rest of the seaside is covered in smelly seaweed and rough rocks. The memories of childhood are totally different than reality.

The high street is called Hill Road where my mum grew up living on top of a grocery store owned by my granddad. I used to buy all my Mr. Men books from a stationary store on Hill Rd. that is still in business today. My mum's store has been renamed and is now a beauticians. But the Cambourne name is still well known in the town.

The Curzon theatre is the oldest continually running movie house in the world. If you look at the photo carefully, you can see holes in the facade from a bomb that landed during WWII. I remember the intermission during a movie where all the kids would run down to the ice cream man to get an "ice lolly". Sounds a bit "ginger beer" now.

Last place to visit is Christ church where I was baptized. It's one of those structures that I remember vividly from my childhood and it sits near a bowling green.

Cat in my trunk

It's been a long time since I last blogged on my site. I have been shooting, honest! In most cases, no news is good news, but in self-promotion it's suicide. Over the past few weeks I have been shooting for the National Post, Bank of Canada and other portraits of clients, but I am not sure if I can post those photos. So... until I get clearance, here is a photo of Xiao Z in the trunk of my car.

I find backgrounds are so hard to control, either a tree is growing out of someone's head or the ground is brown and ugly. Sure you can shoot wide open and blur the background, but finding a free black seamless backdrop is pure happiness.

I was cleaning out the car and had the hatch open whereupon my cat climbed in to enjoy a new vantage point where he could keep an eye on the birds in the yard. A cloudy warm spring day gave me perfect light to catch Z in both a horizontal and vertical shot (gotta keep the editors happy).

Lesson learned: if you see a shot, take it. I would have never thought of taking a portrait in this situation, but I think it came out as one of my favorite photos of him.

Photo was shot with a borrowed 100-400mm 4.5-5.6 lens. Such a great piece of glass.

Vancouver 2010

Last week I was able to find a cheap flight out to Vancouver and decided to head out for three days.

I knew that I wouldn't be able to see any of the events, and that most of the highlights that would remain in my memory would be free events that I would stumble upon.

The first thing that I found was that spring had come to Vancouver while Calgary and so much of Canada was still in the grip of winter. Flowers were everywhere, and the grass was green. The temperature was warm and the sun shone everyday. I know that this is not typical Vancouver weather but it was such a nice surprise coming from frost and snow everyday for the past month.

As for the Olympics... the city was putting on a hell of a show.

There were posters on buildings, flags on construction sites, and the whole downtown core was full of Olympic spirit. But if you had enough and wanted to escape, all you had to do was walk a few blocks out of the downtown core and all of a sudden you wouldn't think anything special was going on.

There was a small amount of anti-Olympic spirit going on, as demonstrated by this poster, but overall everyone was having a good time.

Steven Colbert was there doing his show The Colbert Report from Vancouver. He was very cool and attracted about 4000 people to see his show live.

Corb Lund and the Hurtin' Albertans were there putting on a free show my first night, which makes it twice now that I have seen them without paying. They had the crowd dancing and singing, and as it was a dry event, there was no fighting, and all the kids in the audience were able to have a really fun time.

While I was cycling around Stanley Park, I bumped into two Russian athletes who had recently won gold and silver in Biathlon and Cross-Country skiing. To see medals at the Canadian Mint there is a four hour wait, while I was able to see real medals just inches from my face.

A new artist has erected a group of bronze statues at the west end of Stanley Park. Really cool faces and everyone was enjoying having their picture taken with them.

It was a great time in Vancouver and if you can get out there, don't hesitate.

Olympic Fever

I'm going to the Olympics! Sadly not as a photographer for a newspaper or magazine, but just cuz. Lucky for me, my brother lives out there and his sofa hasn't been rented out. So... see you back here next Saturday and hopefully I'll have some great Olympic moments captured even if I am not going to a single event!