blog

Burlington Sound of Music Festival

2011-06-16T20:51:23Z

You know it's Father's Day weekend in Burlington when the Sound of Music Festival is on! It's a great, free concert the city puts on annually. There are a lot of great bands playing this year. Including Bedouin Soundclash, Emerson Drive, Crash Karma, Stereos, Jimmy Rankin, and Tokyo Police Club, just to name a few! There are tons of things to do with the family including, rides, vendors, food, you name it, it's there. Luckily, for me, I was able to get media access this year and look forward to bringing you guys some great photos from the concerts and events that will be going on over the weekend. I encourage you all to bring your family down for the fun this weekend. I look forward to seeing you there! If you see me there, feel free to say hello.

/dg

Back from Snowmobiling

2011-03-07T09:43:48Z

Alrighty! I'm back from my holiday. Had a great time with great friends and family. Time to get back to reality though. I have to go to work today! Blah! But before I go here are some samples of my trip. Non-edited

Snowmobiling 2011

2011-03-01T02:57:23Z

So, I'm officially on my way to Newfoundland for my annual snowmobiling trip with my father and uncles! Seven days of being completely unreachable and disconnected from the outside world! Tough stuff for a tech junkie. All is not lost however. I'll be shooting a tonne of photos and can't wait to share them with you all upon my return. See you in a week friends!
/DG

DIY Light Tent

2010-07-12T01:43:30Z

Want that professional looking photo of a product you're going to sell on ebay? Or maybe just a great looking photo of a nicknack you like? Don't want to pay ~$100 for a light box/tent? Build one yourself! It's super-easy! I made mine in about an hour and it cost me all of $12. Borrowing from the idea set out on the strobist website, here. I set out to make my own light box to just practice on shooting products. It was a lot easier to do that I thought it would be. All you need is a box, preferably equal to, or greater than, 12"x12"x12". The more square, the box, the easier it is. Tape, tape measure, scissors, box cutter, tissue paper, Bristol board, and time. Basically, you just cut out 3 windows into the box, and tape them over with tissue paper. The paper acts as a diffuser for your flash(es). The Bristol board acts as your seamless background, so you'll want to curve it in the box without creasing it. Then you just setup your flashes on either side of the box, or on top and fire away! The results are pretty great! Here's a picture of my ghetto light tent, and a sample picture to go with it. You don't need to spend a lot to get great results, you just need the right ideas!

/DG

FD to m4/3 Adapter

2010-06-25T01:18:21Z

As many of you know already, I own a Panasonic GF1. I really love this little camera it's fantastic. If you're in the market for a camera that's big on quality but small on side. You really owe it to yourself to check one out. The lenses are interchangeable (similar to a DSLR), but there's no mirror inside and the image sensor is about half that of a 35mm sensor you'd find on a high end Canon or Nikon SLR. But, the ability to change lenses really opens up a whole new (old) world for you. There are tons of adapters for these micro 4/3rds cameras. You can convert pretty much any lens onto one of these with ease. Recently, I purchased an adapter to convert Canon's old FD mount lenses to my GF1. I had a 50mm f/3.5 macro lens in my possession I just had to try out with it. I was extremely impressed by how well it works! I should note though, that you need to use manual lenses to do this, meaning that you can't use autofocus or lenses with motors for the diaphragm to change the aperture. It has to be manual (You can use auto focus/auto aperture lenses but you have to shoot with them wide open all the time, which isn't ideal, or you can set the aperture on your Canon/Nikon, press the depth of field preview button and then disconnect the lens with your finger still on the DOF preview button, but that's a kluge). Anyway, the real great thing about using these older lenses is that you can by them for cheap on ebay, kijiji, or your local camera store. To get a macro lens from Panasonic/Leica it would run you about $1000 for their 45mm Macro with image stabilization. You can pick up one of these Canon 50mm for about $100-$150 used in good condition. This is a great idea if you're not interested in always carrying around your DSLR when you go out. Or, if you don't want to buy a DSLR this is a great route to go. You can check out some of the pictures I shot with it on my Flickr account, here. Enjoy!

/DG

Still Alive and Kicking!

2010-04-01T01:38:10Z

Hello all, sorry for the long-time-no-post thing. It's been a long winter and I have been keeping busy at work. I did get in some nice vacation time, snowmobiling in Newfoundland. It was a lot of fun, and I got some great photos. You can view some of the photos in my flickr feed here. I also did a photo shoot recently for a young lady to submit some photos to Sutherland Models. We had a great time. Her name is Caitlin, she's from Burlington, Ontario. Her makeup was done by a mutual friend, Sabrina Carter. I used a simple one-light setup. It consisted of a Canon 430EX speedlite on a stand with an umbrella on camera left. Behind me is a large patio door which let in a lot of natural light from the overcast day. Caitlin has beautiful eyes which just draw your attention. I vignetted this photo to narrow the viewer's eyes to her face. You can view more photos from the shoot here.

/dg

blog comments powered by Disqus

Photographing Products or Food

2009-10-14T02:23:12Z

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I've started jogging (You can see my times in my twitter feed, no olympics for me). It's pretty tough but totally worth it! Well to start jogging and get motivated I bought a new pair of Nike shoes with the Nike+ system. It's a little sensor that goes into a pocket in the sole of the shoe. It links to my iPhone 3Gs and gives you feedback on your time, calories and distance. It's all really fun and helps me stay motivated since I can see my progress on the nikerunning.com site. Anyway, my point is, these are some really sweet looking shoes and I thought they'd make for a good project to show what you can do with a simple lighting setup. Here they are!

Pretty sweet, huh?! Ok, I know what you're thinking, "That's great Dave, but HOW did you do it?". Well here's the two setups I used to make it happen. As you can see, it's dead simple. I'm using an old Vivitar flash with a hotshoe to PC sync adapter and a PC sync cord running to my camera. On the opposite side of the shoe I'm using a silver Lasolite reflector. It would've been helpful to have another person to hold the reflector, but hey, if you can do it yourself, why not? The real key to getting the photo to look good was getting the shoes as close to both the flash (my key light) and the reflector (my fill light) as possible, without being in frame.
I added the orange shirt for effect, as the yellowed cover of the ironing board doesn't make for a good photo! Another thing to keep in mind, be alert to the things surrounding your photo, like your background, foreground, the corners of your frame, etc. The background really didn't matter much for me because I was shooting at around 1/200 sec at around f/13. So, anything that isn't well light won't be showing up. Now, these same concepts can be applied to photographing food as well. Although I doubt you'd want to use such dark images for your food. Window light and a reflector would do just as good a job to show off your delicious cake, pie, steak, (insert favourite food here). Just remember, you don't need a thousand dollar light setup to get a great product shot.

blog comments powered by Disqus

Fun with Flash

2009-09-14T01:56:51Z

Sorry it's been such a long time for an update. I have been caught up with other things and haven't had much time for blogging. In this entry, I'd like to talk a little about flash. Flash can be a difficult concept to grasp. It has been for me. I have found it so hard to get a decent looking photo with flash. It takes lots of practice and lots of patience to get good at it. Luckily there are lots of websites out there that can help you along. For the strobist style movement (using speedlites to do some or all of your lighting), there's a great website called strobist.com. It's run by a man named David Hobby. It's an abundance of information for anyone who would like to start doing this type of flash photography. It will even show you how to do it on a very low budget.

With summer getting shorter and the nights starting to get longer and cooler. It's hot tub season. It's really quite relaxing to get into a hot tub when it's cool outside and so warm in the hot tub. When you get out, interesting things happen, aside from the obvious "pruning". The water is so warm that your body actually steams on a cool night. I noticed this effect a couple of weeks ago and decided I would have some fun with it. I decided I'd like a couple of shots really showing off the steam in the night. In order to do this I knew I would need a light behind my subject, to illuminate the steam and create a nice rim light. Also, I would need one in front, to light my subject. Although as you'll see, the light in the front wasn't necessary. So, in the first shot I had Nicole stand in front of the flash that was firing back towards the camera and attached my Orbis ring flash to my 430EX for my front flash, to give a nice even light to the front. Obviously, I've "Photoshopped" this image. I gave it a nice high contrast look and smoothed out Nicole's skin. This image was shot at 1/160th of a second at f/7.1. The ISO was set to 200 and the focal length is 36mm on a 1.6 crop sensor. I wasn't worried about depth of field here as I knew the background would end up black anyway since it was night and I wasn't using any ambient lighting. Luckily when Nicole got cold she could just jump back into the hot tub and get warm again. Something she took advantage of quite a bit during the shoot.
looking over the images I was getting by illuminating Nicole from the front and back, I thought it might be interesting to do a silhouette

shot with just the rim light showing through the steam and around Nicole. The settings for this shot are exactly the same 1/160th at f/7.1, ISO 200 and 36mm. The steam really shows up this way and gives an excellent effect. I converted the image to black and white to really give it a contrasting effect since the colours weren't really going to be exposed well in her swimsuit anyway.

blog comments powered by Disqus

Keeping Busy

2009-08-18T18:45:24Z

Now that my wedding photography classes have ended, I find myself not getting as much use out of my camera as I did before. Like any profession however, if you don't keep up with it you start to forget things. Not good. So, to prove I haven't been slacking (too much). I have shot a few things throughout the month of August and I thought I'd share some with you! I'm trying to take at least one photo everyday as I promise to myself. First up we have a plant. Yeah, I know, it's boring. But, I thought the way that the light comes in the kitchen window in the evening really helped backlight this leaf and make a really cool image. Remember, any subject matter can be made a little less boring with some good lighting! Next up, is a cardinal that nests in our backyard every year. Faithfully, this cardinal returns every spring and graces us with his presence and song. I have not been able to get a great picture of this little guy until this year when I caught him bathing from a tree in the mist of our sprinkler. Finally, I saw this horse while I was driving to my friends place from the side of the road. I pulled over and grabbed my camera and took some shots. The barn that they use for shelter is pretty dilapidated but that makes for an interesting shot.

blog comments powered by Disqus

The Beauty of Analogue

2009-07-29T03:25:47Z

Technology has really changed the way we produce and consume media (for better or for worse). For instance, 10 years ago hardly anyone knew what an mp3 was. Digital cameras were just coming into mainstream at that point as well. It has been so long since I have actually shot a photo on a 35mm negative that I completely forgot how "bad" it is compared to an image from a digital camera. But I absolutely love how "bad" it is. Analogue media provides a warmth that you just can't find in digital. For example, this photo which I took a week ago using a Canon Rebel S and Fujifilm 400 ISO film. It's grainy as hell, but it's gorgeous. I could shoot the same picture with my 40D and it would not feel like the same picture at all. Maybe we (I) love analogue so much because it's a reflection of how imperfect reality is. I know audiophiles who prefer records over CD's or mp3's. So, it's not surprising that many people still love film over digital. However, while taking the photos I had the terrible habit of looking at the back of the camera thinking that I could still preview the images for some reason (silly me). Also, you have to finish the entire roll before you can get your photos back, after a day of processing. It's a test of one's patience as well.