Thursday, January 31, 2013

Family Shoot from November

Back in November I had a really enjoyable family photo shoot. Family portraits involving kids can be challenging for sure, especially with younger kids. This shoot didn't involve younger kids though, the two boys were older, which is fantastic because they get the drill - cooperate and you get out sooner. :)

Oh, and besides their excellent cooperation they were really funny guys, which made the whole thing really fun.

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Keep shooting.

Keeping With a Theme...

In early January I made a post about trying some different things to kick off a new year. About a week after that I trekked out late on a cold snowy night to work on that same theme.

I focused on a structure close to home, Calgary's Peace Bridge. I cannot even begin to imagine how many times that bridge has been photographed since it opened. Nearly every time I cross it, I see someone snapping photos. I have taken dozens of pictures of it myself and browsed through countless others. So many of them are unique but so many of them are much the same. When I ventured out on a crisp January night, I wanted to capture something a bit unqiue.

My first keeper shot was a scene I had passed by countless times before but never photographed. On this particular night a cloudy sky was all aglow from the city's light pollution and the freshly fallen snow joined together to create a uniquely surreal scene. I chose to shoot from further away with a wide angle lens to dimmish the bridge's dominance in the frame.

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My second shot was taken not very far from the first. I noticed an abandoned shopping cart, likely too hard to push through the snow, and I loved its juxtaposition next to the new, costly and atheistically pleasing structure.

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By the time I had finished my second shot my toes and hands were freezing, it was late and I briskly walked back home to warm up and download my bounty.

Keep shooting.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Different...

It's a new year and a good time to try some different things and shake it up a bit.

I love shooting Calgary Transit trains at night. They have become my favourite nighttime subjects. However, I felt that I was shooting the same images over and over. Sure the locations were different but the pictures themselves were beginning to have the same look and feel about them.

Tonight I tried to do something a bit different. I tried finding locations where I could sneak a train in to the shot but in a more subtle way. It didn't have to be the most dominant item in the frame and perhaps, unless you looked close, you wouldn't know it was there at all.

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Keep shooting.