Yes, another blog update after months and months of inactivity. It’s a couple months shy of being a year since my last blog update, and what a long year it’s been. There are a few reasons why my blog has been collecting cobwebs over the past few months… busy with work, Fallout 3, but most of all I just haven’t been that interesting. Work has recently eased up a bit, giving me more time to do the other things I enjoy in life (like sleeping, napping, and dozing-off).
This past weekend I finally managed to get out with all of my camera gear and shoot some photos for a friend. With camera in hand and pack on back I set out for adventure. Dan, my friend and model for the day, drove myself and my friend/assistant Chris to northern Burnaby where we spent the afternoon shooting. Dan wanted some photos of him and his swords as a way to document of his journey though sword training/life. I just wanted to take some pictures of a dude with some friggin’ swords.
In other news (but still related to photography)…. I finally purchased a point-and-shoot(ish) camera, the Canon G10. So far I’ve been impressed with the quality of the photos and video. It has almost everything I could want in a point-and-shoot (except for a time lapse mode). With that being said, I still haven’t sat down to try and push the G10 to it’s limits. Now that I have more free time I plan on seeing what it can really do.
Thats all I have to say for now, I have a lot more photos from yesterday’s shoot to go through and it’s starting to get late.
Until next time. Stay alert, Stay safe.
UPDATE
I almost forgot… here is a little “behind the scenes” photo I took with my iPhone.
photography
It looks like Adobe has released a new beta for Adobe Lightroom 2.0. I’m pretty excited about some of the new features.
- Merge multiple images into a panorama
- Merge multiple exposures into an HRD image
- Merge multiple files into a single PSD image with each on their own layer
All of these are pretty cool and should help speed up my workflow when doing HDR or composite shots. (The Selective Image Editing sounds pretty cool too).
I’m looking forward to trying this out tonight, I’ll post my thoughts after I spend some time with Lightroom 2.
photography
And the lack of updates continue… but I’m still chugging away on stuff. The main reason behind the lack of updates is due to my experimentation with writing OS X software… Lets just say that depending on me getting permission from my current employer to release something, I should have a little piece of useless useful software available for download very soon. Its something I wrote because I needed it. I wont go into details now, but stay tuned.
So today was pretty interesting, I just finished a photoshoot a few hours ago for a student run newspaper. One of my friends has been working for the Nanaimo Navigator for a while now, the last issue of the year is coming out next Wednesday and he wanted a “sexy” photo of himself to use for a two page spread. The shoot went pretty well and I’ll upload some of the shots after the publication date.
One last thing before I call it a night, I’ve updated the photography section of my website to include a new slideshow. Go check it out, there are a few photos in the slideshow that I’ve never posted anywhere.
Oh, one last thing…. I promise… My XBox 360 red-ringed last thursday, After shutting it down and looking for the prices of Elites online (don’t want to wait the 6-8 weeks for repair). After mentally preparing myself to fork over $450 for another XBox, I decided to to try turning on my XBox again…. ITS BACK TO LIFE!!! I’m so glad!
Thats all I have to say for now.
gaming, photography, software
So yeah, it looks like I’m bad at the whole ‘blogging’ thing… but what did you expect? Until last night I had a backlog of photos to process/upload to flickr, I’ve managed to get through some of them but still have a few more that need a little TLC.
Because I’m at work waiting for something to build I’ll only talk about the photos I took Saturday afternoon.
My friend Dave messaged me on MSN early Saturday afternoon wondering if I wanted to hang out, I had no other plans at the time so I invited him over to hang out, play xbox, and do guitar playing. When he was playing what he called “Prelude to Jason” I decided I should really pull out my camera and capitalize on the opportunity. Dave was game so I told him to throw on his shoes cause the weather was nice. We started out on my deck, I set up my strobes (see next paragraph for lighting setup) and we started shooting.
Lighting Setup: Canon Speedlight 580ex shooting through an umbrella (to soften the light) to Dave’s left, a Speedlight 430ex dropped down a few stops to Dave’s right to help balance the lighting. Another Speedlight 580ex II on camera to trigger the other two strobes and to also provide a little more fill.
For the second set of shots we walked down to the back yard, I snapped a few of him with the back yard behind him but none of those shots really tickled my fancy. I decided to get him to sit on the stairs leading up to my apartment, get a little more of a hanging out pic. I set up my lights, he lit up a cigarette, and we proceeded to give ‘er.
Lighting Setup: Speelight 580ex to the right of the camera shot through an umbrella, Speedlite 430ex to the left of the camera with the light-stand fully extended and the strobe shooting down on him. The last Speedlight 580ex II on camera to light under the stairs.
If I could change anything about this photo it would have to be…. I’d love to have a 4th flash, and a set of pocket wizards. I’d set the 4th flash behind Dave and shoot it towards him to provide a little rim lighting around him but mostly to provide light for the cigarette smoke. I’ll get my pocket wizards someday…. someday.
photography
Yeah, so I’ve been a little lazy with the blog…. what did you expect? I was going to post more pics from last Thursday’s photoshoot on the weekend, that didn’t happen. I ended up going downtown to shoot some photos with a couple friends, Jeremy and Karl. We ended up walking into an old bookstore so I could shoot some photos, it was a great little place (the name escapes me). Shelves stuffed with books with the overflow stacked on the floor, exactly the environment I was looking for. I now present you with my favorite photo from Sunday….
I was trying to go for a look that would cause people to think of Harry Potter, I showed the photo to another one of my friends the other day and he told me it reminded him of Harry Potter… WIN!
Chris and I went out last night to shoot the lunar eclipse, Jerah tagged along. Unfortunately for us the sky was filled with clouds, only allowing us to capture the moon when breaks in the clouds passed by it. I might post one of the shots tonight, unless I don’t.
On a side note, I’ve been designing a new layout for my webpage. I’m going for some kind of royal look mixed with a Gothic look, something that will remind people of Castlevania. We’ll see how it goes once I get past the CSS issues I’ve been having. (My website needs an overhaul, it doesn’t look right in IE 6… thanks IE)
photography