Fun with my SAIT Students

I always have a fun time when we do the location shooting class on the SAIT campus as it actually allows me a chance to shoot as well. We had two wonderful future brides today, Shantel and Laurel who did a fabulous job. It was a windy, cold day outside so we worked at two of my favorite locations on campus, the entrance to the parkade and Heritage Hall, that are indoors. The parkade was a little chilly even though it is sheltered and semi-heated. Still the girls did marvelous and the students were able to get some great shots as well as experiment with different ISO settings on their cameras.

Here are a couple of images showing my students photographing the brides in the parkade.

When we moved over to Heritage Hall I shot two images with the iPhone that I considered for toady's Instagram 366 photo. The one that leads this post is of Shantel and is the one I choose. The one below is of Laurel and was in strong consideration as well.

The following images were shot with the Canon 7D and 24-70 f2.8 lens in the parkade. Although I do like shooting with the iPhone and some of the features it has, I do prefer to work with the DSLR for shooting these type of images.

However here is one with the iPhone (above) and then with the 7D (below).

Now back to catching up some Instagram 366 Images.

March 2, 2012 One of my students had given me a box of Bernard Callebaut chocolates as a thank you and I made it the subject for the day.

March 3, 2012 Walking through Kensington on 10th street in Calgary and discovered a new candy store. Was nice to see vats of saltwater taffy.

March 4, 2012 Back to exploring shadows using kitchenware, in this case a cheese grater.

March 5, 2012 Winter returned with some heavy, wet snow. Loved the look with the leaves and berries.

March 6, 2012 Woke up this morning to find that winter had decided to give us one last blizzard. I thought the blowing snow created an interesting pattern in front of our flower barrel.

More images from my Instagram 366 project.

While waiting for Cool's glasses at Iris I saw this vase on the shelf and liked the way the it looked against the stone wall. It already had a nice warm tone to it but I enhanced it a bit in Snapseed.

February 26, 2012. Rope and chain. I am very impressed how close and how sharp the iPhone can be.

February 27, 2012. Taken at my class at SAIT using the modeling lights on the strobes.

February 28, 2012. Luke has really decided that he likes to do homework. Although in kindergarten he is already working on grade 1 math.

February 29, 2012. Playing with shadows using a spatula.

March 1, 2012. Both boy's have started piano lessons and here is Cool while he is practicing.

Finding the little things.

As I move forward with this project I have found it a little challenging as I have basically been at home for most of the last couple of years. There are instances such as the images below and over the past few days where I was away on vacation and thus had much more to see. However since my life revolves around my boys and my teaching my area of coverage is limited. So I find I have to be more observant around the house in order to find something to photograph and to make it look interesting. So seeing the little things, the knick knacks and souvenirs we have collected and using them to create my daily image is common. Today I noticed the peacock feathers that we had bought in India that were part of a small statuette. I liked the color and the texture and thus composed the image in a way that I felt was pleasing. After shooting it I brought it in to Snapseed for cropping and minor processing and Phototoaster for the frame.

February 21, 2012 Flower at Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas.

February 22, 2012. Hover Dam as seen from the new bridge.

February 23, 2012. Waiting lounge in LAX.

February 24, 2012. hen we returned home from our vacation we noticed that my father had poured water in to the vase that held our fake tulips.

February 25, 2012. Foot prints in the snow behind SAIT.

Vintage Camera, Vintage Look

One of the camera's I have in my vintage collection is this old 8mm movie camera that use to belong to my Grandfather. I remember him using it to film different family functions but do not know what happened to the film stock after he died. Would be nice to find it and have it scanned to video to show my own boy's.

February 16, 2012. Disney's California Adventure. Saw this old gas pump and had to grab a shot. Loved the final result.

February 17, 2012. Flower that I found while standing in line for the Winnie The Pooh ride in Disneyland.

February 18, 2012. Classic Coke glass at Denny's

February 19, 2012. Light fixture in the MGM Grand Las Vegas.

February 20, 2012. I have grown to look for interesting faucets and shower heads. This one was in our room at the New York, New York in Las Vegas.

Out for a walk today.

As it was the first day of Spring today I decided to take a walk in Beaumont Nature Park along the Bow River here in Calgary. It was a little windy and still cool but it was nice to get out in the sun. I have attached three images from today's walk. The above is my Instagram 366 image for today. I loved the lines of the bars and the shadow it cast. I took a little time in composing this to get the shadows of the curve to fall right between the bars. After taking the image I did the cropping and enhancing in Snapseed ans was pleased with the result.

For this shot I was looking at the way the long prairie grass had been flattened by the winter's snow and like the way the cloud and the sky worked with the photo.

I find manhole covers interesting and got down low and tight on this one to catch the light as it skimmed across it's surface.

February 15, 2012. Here is the family in front of the statue of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse with Cinderella's castle behind them.

February 14, 2012. At the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney. I loved this giant dragoon fly and the light that was on it.

February 13, 2012. Santa Monica pier and the end of Route 66. Cool, like most boys, is a fan of the Cars movies and was happy to see this marker from the highway featured in the movie.

February 12, 2012. Maple Syrup bottles in a shop at YYC airport.

February 11, 2012. More lines and shadows, this time on our kitchen floor.

Today's image and 5 earlier one's.

Spring is on the door step and our tulips are poking up in the front garden. Won't be long before I have some new flowers to photograph. March 19, 2012.

February 10, 2012. Fujinon lens on my Zone VI 4x5 Camera.

February 9, 2012. Self Portrait on the carpet at Canada Olympic Park.

February 8, 2012. Heart shaped slinky toy.

February 7, 2012. Fish at Petland Market Mall.

February 6, 2012. Green onions at Safeway.

Been a little negligent to this blog lately.

As I have been shooting this years Project 366 I had started with the intention of shooting with the iPhone only and posting it to Instgram. I kept this blog up to date until the end of January but then got a little lazy and neglected to post here for February and March. So to rectify this I will be posting 5 previous images as well as the photo from today.

A note on how I go about my post processing. My favorite app is Snapseed which is where I start after shooting the image on my iPhone. Usually the first thing I do is crop it to the square format so as to make it easier to post in to Instagram. This means at the time of shooting I have to take this crop in to consideration when framing my subject. After cropping I will use Snapseed to make most of the look for each image. I vary the filter and focus based on the photo I have before me. once this is complete I will use the Frames from Snapseed, PhotoToaster, RealCamera+ or PhotoForge2 depending what I feel suits the image. All my images will have been done by this process unless noted differently.

So the above image is from today. I will date the following photo's below them.


February 5, 2012. Luke Sleeping using the pillow case as a sleeping bag. Entirely done with Instagram.

February 4, 2012. Old gramophone and record.

February 3, 2012. Flowers shot using Ripple HD Free app and then processed as above.

February 2, 2012. Close up of a Fire extinguisher.

February 1, 2012. Flower converted to B&W in Snapseed.