First wedding shoot…

Ashley and Matty came over yesterday afternoon to have a look at the pictures I took at their wedding. They were both very happy with them (they sent a quick email this morning to tell me again), so in turn that made me pleased that I had done a great job in capturing their special day for them.

All in all, it was a great experience, I know I swore I’d never do a wedding, but I’m glad I took the jump. The experience was definitely made more rewarding watching Ashley and Matty go through the pictures and just listening to the comments and the additional memories it brought back - not to mention being able to capture things they hadn’t thought of as needing to be captured. I’ll be slowly uploading them over the next few days, these are two of my favorites, it was a tough call though.

I’ll also write up another post in the next couple days going into a little more detail about the shoot, how many images I took and whittled down to, and some other interesting tidbits.

Tags: ashley, bride, groom, husband, matty, wedding, wife

Maternity shoot

As if I wasn’t busy enough! My sister-in-law came in from out of town for the night so we did a quick shoot. The image below is my favorite of the night I think, I just can’t decide between the three color variations I did.

All in all, I’m pleased with the processed results, have a few more to go through yet but first I have to finish this wedding processing! She was super pleased as well, and one of her friends already wants me to do her maternity shoot and another of her friends wants to talk about family portraits. Looks like things might be getting underway… now to get real studio lighting - believe it or not this was just lit with a 430EX Speedlight on camera.

Tags: Maternity, Portrait, pregnant, processed

Portrait Photography’s Power Posing Part I: The Components

Great article over on the DPS Blog (when don’t they have great articles?) regarding portrait photography and posing.

Some of the tips include positioning for head, arms, legs, hips, joints (”if it bends, bend it!”), and more!

Check out the “Portrait Photography’s Power Posing Part I: The Components” article by Christina Nichole over at the DPS blog!

Dr. Draw

Some of you may recall my post from a couple weeks ago about the opportunity I had to shoot Dr. Draw while they performed at The Works Art & Design Festival here in town. I’ve been talking to their manager and will be sending a CD of some of the shots for them to include in the gallery on their main site.

Much to my delight, I noticed a new comment on one of the images I took at the show.

The comment came from Eugene Draw himself:

I love this photo…
I would love to post it as the profile pic on the Dr. Draw myspace page actually all of the photos look just amazing….
you are truly a real deal photographer
e

Thanks for the comment Eugene, glad you liked the shot and hope to see it gracing your myspace page soon! I’ll chalk this one up to the published column…

Tags: B&W, Black & White, black and white, dr. draw, festival, musician, performance, performer, Portrait, Published, the works, the works art & design festival

10 More Tips for Stunning Portrait Photography

To follow up the 10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits post from the other day, DPS has posted 10 more tips:

11. Frame your subject
12. Go with a wide angle
13. Play with backgrounds
14. Change the format framing
15. Hold your camera on an angle
16. Take unfocused shots
17. Introduce movement
18. Experiment with subject expressions
19. Fill the frame
20. Find an interesting subject

Seems I’ve managed a couple of these in past self-portraits, good tips for the future!

Check out the 10 More Tips for Stunning Portrait Photography for more details!

Tags: DPS, Portrait, self-portrait, Tips

10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits

Being part of the 365 Days/threesixtyfive self-portrait a day for a year project, I found this article over on the DPS Blog today very interesting. Always looking for different ways to shoot myself, and I’m sure this will come in handy for portrait shooting as well!

How do you take Portraits that have the ‘Wow’ factor?

Today and tomorrow I want to talk about taking Portraits that are a little out of the box. You see it’s all very well and good to have a portrait that follows all the rules - but it hit me as I was surfing on Flickr today that often the most striking portraits are those that break all the rules.

I want to look at some ways to break out of the mold and take striking portraits by breaking (or at least bending) the rules and adding a little randomness into your portrait photography.

In a nutshell here are the ten points from the post today:

1. Alter your perspective
2. Play with eye contact
3. Break the rules of composition
4. Experiment with lighting
5. Move your subject out of their comfort zone
6. Shoot candidly
7. Introduce a prop
8. Focus upon one body part - get up close
9. Obscure part of your subject
10. Take a series of shots

My favorite technique, as you can see, is playing with and experimenting with light (photo above). I also find some of my best portraits are when shot candidly - as can be seen in the two photos below.

Be sure to head on over to the DPS Blog and read in detail 10 Ways to Take Stunning Portraits!

Tags: 365, DPS, People, portraits, self-portraits, threesixtyfive, Tips

Pre-wedding shoot

Met up with Ashley and Matty to scout a possible location to take their wedding photos after the ceremony. While we were there we took a few shots - both for practice and to use on some Moo cards for the wedding.

The location was great, lots of green, a couple water spots - now we just need to make sure it’s sunny that day!

Any and all critique, comments, suggestions at this point would be most welcome of course!

Be sure to check out the rest of the set.

Tags: ashley, couple, engaged, engagement, matty, Portrait, wedding

The English Gents

The Edmonton International Street Performers Festival is currently on from July 4-13th. Going to be another week of lunch hour photo ops!

Denis Lock and Hamish McCann are The English Gents, two delightfully devilish and cordial English gentlemen who perform inconceivable feats of acrobatic skill, strength and balance, whilst casually sipping tea, reading the newspaper or whatever tickles one’s fancy. The act mixes highly skilled acrobatics with a dry English wit, unexpectedly climaxing with the two hilariously bearing near all for Queen and country. The English Gents. have delighted audiences all over the world, including the likes of Uma Thurman, Shakira, Geoffrey Rush, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Sondheim and Brendan Fraser, to name a few.

These guys were simply outstanding! Will be uploading more throughout the week so be sure to check out the complete set!

Tags: acrobat, acrobatics, acrobats, edmonton, english, gents, international, performer, street, street performers festival

Dr. Draw at The Works Art & Design Festival

Wednesday’s lunch hour performance at The Works Art & Design Festival in Edmonton was provided by Dr. Draw. Interesting mix of instruments - electric violin, electric guitar, electric harp, bass, keyboards and drums… was very cool though, lots of energy.

It was a much different shoot - a little harder shooting a band of 6 as opposed to two. Managed to get a few good black and white portraits in the process, and it was fun trying to figure out how to frame the different instruments.

Here’s a video but it really doesn’t do them justice, they need to be seen live to fully appreciate the talent within the group and the energy that the music provides.

Be sure to check out the entire set, twenty photos in all.

Tags: band, concert, dr. draw, live music, musician, performance, performer, the works

Curtis Santiago at The Works Art & Design Festival

Had the opportunity to shoot Curtis Santiago performing at The Works Street Stage at the annual Works Art & Design Festival in Edmonton, Alberta. Got a few good shots of Curtis and Mike Schlosser, the guitarist.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of the set, hope to have the processing done over the next couple days!

I really liked the sound coming out of these two, full of energy and the lyrics and music was great… you could really feel the energy and it was fun to shoot musicians and feeling the transference of some of that energy. What I wouldn’t give to be a full time concert photographer! Be sure to check them out, I really dug TKO and a couple of other tunes.

It’s going to be a good week for lunch shooting…

Tags: curtis santiago, guitar, mike schlosser, musician, singer, Street Photography