The Old Shadow

With Jaden turning ten last month, I've been spending some time looking back through old pictures I've taken of her since she was born. I have a few favorites from the earlier days... one of those I posted not too long ago, and another one of them from a few years later is included below.

I took this shot not long after we moved to this street. I was walking to the park with Jaden, and noticed our huge shadows as we crossed the street. I always had a camera in my pocket since I got into digital photography, so I quickly pulled it out and snapped a few shots before we got to the other side.

The camera I was using back then (my first digital) was the Casio exilim ex-S2, a great little toy to start out with. At the size of a credit card, and barely 1/4 of an inch thick, it was perfect to carry around with me all the time. Looking at it now it's pretty funny, the display is about the size of a nickel, and it only shot 2mp without any ability to focus. Not a very high quality tool, but at the time, it was pretty impressive. I liked it enough to upgrade to newer exilim models in following years, right up to a 10mp credit card sized camera. Then I finally decided to make the jump to SLRs.

I definitely shot a lot of garbage with the ex-S2, but this is one simple image I still like.

A Tasty Trio - North Bay Food Photography

I figured I'd start the day with a few pictures of some little open faced sandwiches I made. I'm still trying to think of some new foods I can make to take shots of, and anytime I'm in a store like winners, I take a quick look around to see if there are interesting dishes or anything else I could use. Since I haven't really found anything different yet, I thought a little group of sandwiches might look tasty.

I think from here I'll move on to some colourful fruit or desserts. even though I don't really eat sweets, they do look nice. I'll see what I can come up with, but for now, here's the tasty trio...

Eyewhere - North Bay Photography & Web

Just recently, I wrapped up a website for a new and unique company in town, Eyewhere Mobile Optical. 

The company was started by Paul Kilfoyl, a licensed optician who decided to offer on location optical service. Rather than traveling to an optician's office to pick out frames, lenses, or to have your eyewear fixed, you can now call Paul and he'll come to you, fully equipped to meet your needs.

This service is especially useful for places like retirement homes where residents might not have easy access to transportation, or industrial facilities where several employees need to be equipped with prescription safety glasses.

I hadn't worked on this type of project before, so I was happy to be involved.  Paul's big focus with this company is excellent customer service. Building long lasting relationships with his clients is top priority, so it just made sense for his face to be right there when people visit his website. So, once I had the design of the site taken care of, it was time to get Paul's mug in front of the Canon.

As with the Judy shoot, we wanted to keep this one pretty simple, so Paul came over to my place, and with a few softboxes, the shot was taken in front of a bare wall in my office downstairs. Actually, the room was pretty much empty back then, not quite an office yet, and it has barely changed since. Maybe someday.

Here's one of the photos I took, as well as a look at the Eyewhere website design...

Shooting the Not So Willing - North Bay Photography

Over the past year I've had the chance to shoot some pretty interesting people, which has been great. The only problem is that 99% of the time, the folks I need to take pictures of hate being in front of the camera, and just can't wait for the whole thing to be done so they can get away from me. I hate to be in front of the camera too (that's why I'm always behind one!), so I don't take it too personally.

An example of this was the day I needed to get a headshot of Judy Sharpe. The shot was for the Influential Women of Northern Ontario Awards.  Judy was the Public Sector Award Winner, and was being featured in their magazine and website.

Judy is obviously a very busy woman, so the shoot would have to take place at One Kids Place, where she works as Executive Director. This was fine because the natural light there is great. I knew she was less than excited about having her picture taken, so I figured I'd keep things simple to make sure it would be nice and quick. All I brought with me was a large reflector, placed to get just the right lighting I wanted on her face, and off we went.

Even though Judy wasn't excited about being in front of the lens, she was really nice about the whole thing, and I didn't keep her long just to make sure she wouldn't get too uncomfortable.  Fortunately, she wasn't rushing me at all, and once I got the shot I needed, I even took a few seconds to get a photo with the old Yashica-A medium format film camera I had just received as a gift a few days earlier.

Below is the final shot that was used, how it looked in the magazine, and a look at the shot I took with the Yashica...

Back to the beginning - North Bay Food Photography

Last night I spent some time looking through all the work I've done since last January, and I realized it has been a year since I started this blog.  I did well in the first month, posting 25 times. Things went downhill from there until I ended up with only 2 posts in the last few months.

I'll see if I can keep the momentum going this year and put something up at least every other day. My first post last year was a shot of some soup, so I figured I'd start this year the same way with a bowl of Inferno sausage and rice soup.

It has been a while since I took shots of my food, and I wasn't sure why until I started taking pictures of this soup.  The problem is I don't have any more variety. Same foods, same colours, same dishes, same silverware, same, same, same. I guess I got about as far as I could with these quick shots and moved on to something else.

I like taking the food shots though, so I'll see what I can find to mix things up a little, and still keep things really simple (no lighting or major set up, etc...).

The first photo below was taken using a Canon 50mm 1.8 lens, and for the second shot I thought I'd try out my new Lensbaby Muse plastic lens. The muse is not ideal for food shots but it is a fun little toy, and I'll get into that later, but for now here are the shots.