It's Jake Time Again! North Bay Photography

A little while back, I was happy to get the chance to take some more pictures of my buddy Jake Lacourse, who I've posted about before. 

The shots were for an ad, welcoming Jake back to Clarion Resort Pinewood Park, where he had started his career in hospitality years earlier. With him working there as the Director of Sales and Marketing, it will be interesting to see how the resort will change over the next few years.

I always have a good time taking pictures, and this was definitely no exception. It was hard to stop laughing long enough to snap some shots, but in the end everything worked out great, and we got what we needed. With life, kids, business, etc... it's hard to make time for socializing, so it's nice to sometimes be able to work, and catch up with an old friend at the same time. OK, maybe we're not all that old, but it does feel like it sometimes.

Here are a few of the shots, and the little ad I whipped up for the Nugget...

QR Code Fun!

I love this stuff!  If you haven't seen these around yet, I don't think it will be too long before you start seeing them pop up everywhere you look. 

The first time I saw one of these, I was in Toronto with Mike for the screening of Oliver Sherman. It was on a poster for another movie that was showing at TIFF, and we figured it had something to do with scanning with a mobile device, but that's about as far as we got with it.

A few days ago, I was about to open a bottle of wine, when I noticed one of these cool graphics on the back, and it also gave a web address to go to with your mobile to get a free reader. I loaded the free app right away, scanned the image, and was taken to a webpage describing that particular bottle of wine, giving tips on food pairings, etc... I texted Mike right away, he had just seen one on a restaurant menu and was actually talking about it when he got my message.

I love this technology, and though I don't really expect it to pick up locally until a lot of major products are using them (if ever), I still think it will be fun to experiment with the codes. Aside from being useful in marketing efforts, I could see these linking to instructions for assembling furniture, medication warnings etc...

Not only can you have the QR Code open a webpage when a mobile user scans it, you can also set it to send an email, save your Vcard info to their address book, send a text message, dial a phone number, or play a video.

I'm really looking forward to using a QR code in a print ad soon, and seeing how much response it generates, if any.

I'd really love to have a big ol' ad in the paper that has no other content but the QR code image, just to see if the curiosity would be enough to drive people to check it out. It could be a fun experiment.

Since I first posted this, I've been looking into so many more applications for these, and I think one of my favorites is to have a QR code on your clothing. The examples I've seen all seem to have a QR code linking to the clothing designer's website, but I'm sure it's also being used for many other purposes. Single people could have a personal dating profile that you link to when you scan the code on their back for example... of course we might all look like a bunch of goofs if we went around scanning random people's clothes. hah.

Oh, and of course it's not surprising that some people have had the codes permanently embedded on their bodies. Do an image search in google for "QR code tattoo", and see the results.

If you have a cel phone and would like to test out this technology, go to skuyou.com using your mobile, and you'll be provided with a link to a free reader for your particular phone. It's quick and easy.

Once you've got it, scan this image below and see what happens!  Ok, it's really not that suspenseful, but it's still fun. Try It!

When Life Hands You Lemons... And Limes & Oranges

This post is the result of nothing more than needing a break from the project I was working on. I wandered around the house for a minute, until a bunch of lemons caught my eye.

I just happened to have a sheet of plexiglass in the basement (a leftover piece of hardware from a movie set), so I put it down like a bridge between two chairs, placed one of my softboxes underneath it, one above, sliced up some citrus and had some fun.

I didn't spend a whole lot of time experimenting with different light levels and placement, but here are some of the results of my citrus break

The Forgotten Lego

This holiday season had me putting a lot of lego sets together, and making a little town for Tristan to play with.

We still have a little bin of my old blocks from when I was a kid, so I figured I'd use them to build some houses to match the new one Tristan got for christmas. My old legos have so much wear on them that the buildings I made look like they belong in the bad part of town.

Of course when we play with the legos (or do anything else really), I can't help myself, I have to at least take a few pictures with my phone. Here are a few I've taken over the last few weeks, and one older picture I took a few years back of a forgotten lego.

I was walking in an alleyway when I noticed this old, broken lego popping out of the dirt. It made me wonder how long it had been buried there in the sand, and what kind of creations it might have been a part of once upon a time. Nobody would have cared about, or even noticed one single block going missing I guess, but there was just something about this lone lego that seemed kind of sad.

Here's the forgotten lego, and a few other silly pictures...

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.