I have the good fortune of having a friend who knows the director of the Wedding Ruiner, a play at the Edmonton International Fringe Festival this year. Dave DeGagné ended up being gracious enough to comp me a ticket in exchange for some photos! I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed the show and managed to get quite a few decent shots – when I wasn’t chuckling throughout the performance. Here’s a few of the shots I took, be sure to check my Wedding Ruiner Flickr set as I’ll be uploading them over the next week just to space them out.

All shots taken without flash using 70-200 f/2.8 or 50mm f/1.8 on 800 or 1600 ISO.

Be sure to check out the show credits and info below the pictures.

Sarah Hoyle as Megan Carver in Wedding Ruiner

Ellen Chorley, Taylor Chadwick and Mark Stubbings in Wedding Ruiner

Sarah Hoyles and Mark Stubbings in Wedding Ruiner

Mark Stubbings as Felix Walsh in Wedding Ruiner

Mark Stubbings and Sarah Hoyles in Wedding Ruiner

Wedding Ruiner

A new dark comedy by Mark Stubbings.

directed by:
Dave DeGagné

performed by:
Sarah Hoyles
Ellen Chorley
Taylor Chadwick
Mark Stubbings
Ryan Mckinley

Stage managed by:
Crystal Oleksyn

Playing at the Cook County Saloon through August 23rd, shows start @ 7pm (no show August 20th) – I highly recommend it, received 4 stars in See Magazine! Tickets available online.

I recently discovered a very nice collection of long exposure night time photos – and it inspired me to try my hand at it. The photo above (viewable in the full post) was taken at 10:30pm at f/11 on ISO 100 with an exposure time of 301 seconds (5m1s). I was hoping to try longer but it started to rain so I had to pack up and head out. I can’t wait to try some of this down in Drumheller this weekend while I’m there camping, I really think some nice night sky coupled with hoodoos will make for some awesome long exposures!

Last night Edmonton and area witnessed a pretty brutal storm. Trees were uprooted, roofs collapsed, portions of the CN Tower downtown collapsed, semi’s were overturned on the highway… It was quite the lightning show though. I didn’t have a sheltered enough shot to try and get some pictures though, but I did manage to get a few shots of the impending storm clouds with the 15mm fisheye I rented for the weekend. One of these shots I did manage to capture the sheet lighting – it was so frequent it wasn’t hard to time. Fun little lens.

Lightning show

Managed to get out and shoot my first fireworks this year. All things considered, I think it went well – got a few good pictures. Headed down with Adam from Flickr, thanks for the tips!

Check out the rest of the set over on Flickr.

aHad the opportunity to visit Edmonton’s Valley Zoo after hours again through a program offered by the city back on the 23rd of June. Met up with a few other Flickr photographers after the zoo closed and were taken on an up close and personal tour which offered many photo opportunities that aren’t available during open hours. There’s been rumors that the program won’t be offered much longer which would be a real shame, even the tour guide had a lot of fun getting close and seeing some of the animals she doesn’t usually get to see during the day.

Check out more of the photos at Flickr.

This is a shot from 2002 taken with a PowerShot A20 – still one of my favorite cat shots… boosted the color and clarity a bit, much improved over the unedited version.

I’ve gone through and uploaded a bunch of “natural” textures. Rocks, walls, brick, grass, sky, metal, paint and much more. These textures are available in 3 sizes (1MP lo-res, 4MP hi-res and original) and can be purchased for personal or commercial use. Hope you find something you can use!

Textures available in the Digital Download Textures Gallery.

Just a simple shot taken through the window of the aircraft after we went through the deicing process… split toned using Adobe Lightroom.

Starting to go through my images and catch up… and hope to start posting regularly again!

Make no mistake about it, I love photography – hence this blog and my recent attempts to step things up and try to take this to a new level. One of the things I also like doing is playing around with Photoshop, and seeing what I can do – and others can do – to photos I have taken.

A short time ago, a new group called Duets was formed. The goal was for two Flickr individuals to combine separate photos into a diptych. A short while after, cre8iveaddiction asked if I would consider doing one with her. One thing led to another and we bring you Spy vs. Spy Duets!

Here’s our first entry…

Yup, Canon officially announced the release of the Canon 50D, the successor to the wildly popular 40D. The basic specs are as follows:

• 15.1 megapixel CMOS sensor
• DIGIC 4 image processor
• 6.3 frames per second
• ISO 100-12800
• 3″ 920,000 dot/VGA resolution rear display
• 9 cross-type AF sensors

Canon EOS 50D

Not only that, it has added two sRAW modes for more compact RAW files, and lets you shoot RAW in the preset/basic modes. At the sRAW1 setting, resolution is 7.1 megapixels with a file size that is approximately 25 percent smaller than a standard 15.1 megapixel RAW image. With the sRAW2 setting, resolution is 3.8 megapixels at less than half the file size of a standard RAW image, retaining all of the flexibility and creative possibilities associated with full-size, conventional RAW images. The EOS 50D is the first Canon Digital SLR that allows the use of RAW and sRAW settings in Basic Zone as well as Creative Zone shooting modes, even further improving the camera’s flexibility.

Doesn’t seem too bad of a deal, the Canon EOS 50D Digital SLR camera is scheduled for October delivery and will be sold in a body-only configuration at an estimated selling price of $1,399.00USD. It will additionally be offered in a kit version with Canon’s EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM zoom lens at an estimated selling price of $1,599.00USD.

Also available in October is a new EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS zoom lens, expected to retail for around $699.00USD. Sounds like a good all around general purpose lens!

My only question is… where the heck is the replacement for the 5D???

Read the official press release from Canon here.