When I woke up the other morning I could tell something was different.  Ah yes, then I remembered, I was one year older

Being born on “the first day of spring” (March 20th) definitely has it’s associated seasonal-emotion based baggage.  Still, I guess it’s also probably the reason why I love flowers, vivid colour, and warm weather so much.  Either that, or I just wasn’t ready to pop out before the very last day of winter was finally gone.  Spring actually arrives very early here on the southern tip of Vancouver Island and usually by late February we are already experiencing a growing mass of new blooms in the local neighbourhood gardens and parks.

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I thought that I would finish up 2009 with another of my favourite  topics  -  the weather.

With all eyes on Copenhagen, Denmark recently for the ”climate change” world summit – (NOT) …I think it would be appropriate to mention the weather here and how it directly influences, challenges, and effects us as photographers.  Ask any of my family or long-time friends and they will soon tell you that I have been obsessed with climate statistics ever since I was a very young kid.  So much so, that straight after completing  design/photog college (back in 1976) I went off on a mad, self imposed global travel quest to find the very best “winter” weather on the planet, however that’s a whole separate story

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When I browse the popular photography web forums these days, one of the most common topics discussed is “lens sharpness” as if  this specific element alone is the Holy Grail, and most important factor, to obtaining great image quality.  So, with that  in mind, I thought I would offer my own personal take on this intriguing and rather complex subject.

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An art teacher I know hurt my feelings a few months ago, declaring to her class that photographers become photographers because they can’t paint or draw. Now I’ve heard similar comments before about DJs becoming DJs because they can’t play an instrument or sing, and I guess there is probably a certain amount of truth in it.

So, being a computer enthusiast I wasn’t about to resort to anything as primitive as a pencil and paper, so I installed a copy of Illustrator and said to myself, how hard can it be?

What I discovered was a whole new extension to my hobby. Now you may be thinking about now, what has this got to do with photography? Well the more I look at this the more I think of it as just sort of ‘ultimate Photoshopping’. Now I know there are a lot of purists out there who think of Photoshop editing as almost cheating, but there are also those who spend a lot of time in post processing, like HDR for instance, and their finished product is a long way removed from the original photo anyway. So why not go one stage further? Read more…

Hi Everyone. It’s been a while since I’ve posted here.

The story below isn’t about photography, but then……..  it does have photo’s.

I wrote this for the garden group I manage and because I spent quite a bit of time going through my pictures looking for the right ones to go along with the story I thought I would share it around..

Don’t look too hard at the picture quality because this is about why I take photo’s, not about how good I can get them….

Enjoy..

ps.  I have paste and copied this from my garden group so I hope it has carried across without too many problems.

It all started in April 2006.
My son was living at home with his girlfriend at the time. He bought her a lovely little Maltese Shitzu X puppy for her birthday.
Chops was the odd one out in the litter. She was the only black puppy and wasn’t nearly as fluffy as her brothers and sisters.
They were all white and very boisterous. Chops would sit back and watch what was going on before making a decision whether to join in or not. Read more…

I can’t hear any @%#&$**!!! noise   Well, actually it seems that ‘digial’ noise is following ME around. First it was audio related during my guitar/music recording days, and now with photography it’s become a resident factor too. With either sound bytes or colour pixels, I guess we won’t overcome this somewhat annoying, inherent, technological digital component until we are able to invent a means of capturing images (or sound) with just ONE primary digit. In other words, recording the total sum as a single unit, and not a mix of separate bits ‘n’ pieces that create grain, particles, texture, speckles, noise (or whatever you like to call it) within the finished product.

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Apologies to anyone who found the comments closed. I don’t know what happened, the database got corrupted somehow, but comments are now working again.

It’s now just a few weeks from the start of my other life passion (running) and the 2009 road race season which got me a thinking about sporting events in general & my old post-grad studies in strategic  marketing research (way back when I was working in the travel/tourism industry) and how some of those guerrilla style tactics would also apply to the niche photography world today. 

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Hey Guys,

Sorry, I’ve been a bit re-miss of late – I’ve had the dready lurgy and not been able to get myself in gear to take decent photographs never mind posting a blog! It seems to have been one thing after another since the start of the year but, hopefully, I’m on the mend now.

I did promise in my last blog to send some action shots of the fitness class I attend and class manage and that was all good and well but the members got a little camera shy (even though I asked their permission beforehand) and the pictures turned out a little too posed. It’s very difficult, I know, to try and act normal when someone is out there with their tripod, moving about the room, trying to get the best angle – not everyone wants their faces/bodies immortalised in print on a Saturday morning when they’re not long out of bed, hungover (in some cases!) and dripping with sweat – not a pretty sight! Read more…

I had an interesting week this week with lots of different photo assignments to get my teeth into, so I thought I’d write a little blog entry and tell you all about it.

Monday

The older kids from the Art department at school are starting a new project, this usually involves thinking up scenarios which I photograph under their direction. They then compose their canvases using the photos as reference.

The theme this time was ‘treachery’ so they concocted various scenarios involving mistresses and betrayed wives. Here is one photo from the shoot, the mistress with the errant husband. We then went on to photograph the discovery by the wife and subsequent recrimination scene.

For the ‘discovery’ scene we used my wallet with a piece of paper tucked inside containing a lipstick kiss and a phone number. After the shoot I said I’d better throw away this piece of paper or I’ll be playing out this scene when I get home. To which one of the girls replied “yes, especially as it’s my phone number.”

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