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.

Happy Birthday Jaden!

It's a big day! Our oldest girl Jaden is celebrating her 10th birthday today. It's hard to believe that time has gone by so quickly, but really I can barely remember what life was like without kids.

I'm sure it was quite easy and stress-free, but still, I can't imagine things being any different than they are now.

Having a 10 year old kid might take a bit of getting used to though... Her birthday makes ME feel quite a bit older. Not far from dealing with the teen years now!

I'll stop worrying about the future for a minute, and look back to the day that changed our lives... Here's a photo I took exactly 10 years ago.

Happy birthday Jaden!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I'm Yours - North Bay Film

Here I am again posting after a very loooong break. Since i'm currently a passenger on a two hour trip to a Foraco mine site, I guess I'll take the opprtunity to start playing catch up and post about what's been happening.

I still want to talk more about the shoots I showed snippets of in my last post, as well as all the work I've done since then, but for now, I'll talk a bit about "I'm Yours".

I got a call about 6 weeks ago from someone letting me know there was a Toronto production company (New Real Films) getting ready to shoot a feature in town, and they needed a designer/set dresser. I obviously had some film experience, but had never done this particular job before, and already had plenty on my plate.

I agreed to go to a meeting to find out more, and to see if I was interested. It turned out this was a production meeting with a good part of the crew talking about what needed to be done, and I was instantly on board.

The next three and a half weeks were taken over from that point on. Shopping for building supplies, furniture, transforming rooms, stores, pubs, outdoor spaces, producing props like signage, fake bus tickets, driver's licenses, etc... The list goes on and on.

The cast (led by Rossif Sutherland and Karine Vanasse) and crew were great, and it was nice to get the opportunity to be a part of it all.

I took a whole lot of pictures throughout, but i don't really want to show much until the movie's out.

I do have a bunch of random shots I took on set with my phone that don't really give anything away though, and here are a just few of them...















- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Where did summer go? - North Bay Photography

The past few months have been really crazy, which is great. Business is going really well, and I can't complain. What I'm most happy about is that on top of my usual web and design work, I've been getting a lot of photography jobs lately.  This welcome addition to the workload has been partly responsible for my lack of posts, and my lack of regular sleep.

A lot of this photography has been for the City of North Bay's Tourism and Economic Development departments. There have also been some athletics, coins, political figures, an author, and a wedding thrown in the mix... oh, and a pretty cool dentist too!

I could say, and show a lot about each of these, but there just isn't enough time in the day for that right now. Instead, I'll just say how happy I am to have the opportunity to work on such a wide variety of projects from one day to the next.

Here's a little sneak peek at some of shots I've taken over the past few months (click the image to open it in a new window, then click it again to enlarge)...