The trials of the Photo a Day challenge.

While I have been faithful in shooting a photo a day for around 870 days I have been neglecting my blog and sharing the photo's.  Over the next four or five days I will share images I created over the past 5 weeks. 

Some day's the project is more trying then others and a lot depends on where I am at and how busy I am with my family.  Still I try to keep my eyes open and to have at least my iPhone and it's camera available to me.  Other times I use my Canon 7D and the various tools that I have available with that system.  Still it becomes difficult on those day when I am around my home then when I have a chance to get out and about. Yet I will continue to persist and keep this project going as long as I can.

April 17 - Sand dollar in macro.  Canon 7D, 24-70 with extension tubes.

April 18 - A walk around the neighbourhood.  As preparation for running the marathon I started to do long walks.  The first photo of the cactus was taken at the Walmart at Northland Mall.

The next five were on the pathway between my home and the mall all these photo's were taken with the iPhone.

This photo was taken with the 7D and the extension tubes once again of this strange little bug as it climbed up our front window.  I combined two of the photo's in frametastic after I transferred the files to my iPhone.

April 19 - Three more iPhone photo's on my daily walk along a different route.

April 20 - Canon 7D photo of a starfish from our shell collection on a black piece of velvet.

April 21 -  Discarded mini liquor bottle on the pathway behind my house.  iPhone photo using the Hipstamatic app and the tintype filter.

April 22 - Another photo taken late on a busy day of one of the toys from my boy's Skylander's collection.  Canon 7D.

April 23 - A walk around the neighbourhood of Kensington here in Calgary.  Dome of the buildings and street scenes from the area captured with the iPhone.

This bowl of shells was in my youngest son's classroom and I took this iPhone capture when I was helping there in the afternoon.

Another weeks worth of photo's will be shared tomorrow.

My Marathon experience.

It has been a while since I posted last and this post will be a little different from the usual.  Today I would like to share my experience in running the Calgary Marathon on Sunday May 26, 2013.

I had registered for this years 49th annual race last October with full intention of training to have a good run.  I started well but over the next six months I had a number of different set backs that through the whole training regime off.  It was not until about 5 weeks ago that I was able to get back to a regular routine.  Now this might not seem like a lot of time to train for a race of 42.2 km's but in a way it did prepare me for my race day strategy.

Even leading up to race day I was not sure, but when I woke up early that Sunday morning and saw that the weather was going to be perfect that I made the decision to head down to Stampede park.  Now it had been four years (2009) since I last ran and completed the Calgary Marathon and my chip time was 6:00:56.  Knowing that with the way the training had gone I set what I felt was a realistic goal of just trying to better my previous result.

I arrived downtown on a brisk morning and joined the 11,000 other participants in the Marathon, half-marathon and 10 k run that would start at 7:00 am.  I walked around the grounds and stretched out being careful to conserve my energy.  I checked my jacket and sweat pants and moved to the back of the pack since I didn't want to interfere with any of the more serious runners. When the gun sounded we all surged forward and I snapped this one shot as I neared the start line.

 I wanted to keep a nice steady pace through the entire race but knew I had to have a good first 10 km when I still had my highest energy levels.  So with a combination of light running and fast walking I set a very good 7 min per km pace.  A number of the runners in the half-marathon commented on the fact that my walking pace was as quick as their running speed.  It was just before the 10 K mark that the half-marathoner's peeled of to follow their course and those of us doing the full headed of on our long trek.

This was when two things happened the first is that the pack thinned out considerably and now there were less of us on the trail.  At this point and for the next 20 km this was not a big problem as I still had other runners around me.  The second thing that happened is that I knew from my 5 weeks of training that I had to set a pace that was more of a brisk walk then a run thus slowing my pace down to about 8:30 minutes per km.  This I was able to keep up until the 30 k mark.

It was at this point I did slow down as the body aches started to become more intense and the pack really thinned out.  Now I found myself running down Memorial Drive, a normally busy roadway, all on my own with no one close by and only the people at the aid stations stationed 3 kms apart there to cheer and encourage me on.  This is when the mental fatigue really sets in, especially as we are running west and away from downtown.  All I could do at this point was focus on small victories and goals such as reaching the turn around point.  When I did the turn I felt a little boost as now we were heading back towards the Stampede grounds and the finish line.  At about the 35 km mark I passed a young man who was hobbling along as he tried to keep going (I do believe he finished as I saw a time in the final standing that would have been consistent with the pace he was at).  I felt for this guy as I had an injury the first time I attempted the Marathon in 2008 and was pulled by the medical staff at about this same distance.

At this point I was all alone and the km's seemed farther apart.  At any point I could have just given up and shut it down.  Yet this is when mental stamina takes over and one has to just keep pushing forward.  It is my feeling that those of us who complete a marathon in times higher then 4:30:00 hours actually have a greater accomplishment as they are the ones who have to fight a different mental challenge then other's.  When you are bringing up the rear and the encouragement is farther apart the will to go on is severely tested and it takes a lot of fortitude to reach the finish.

This struggle entailed until I hit the 39 km mark and soon found myself in the middle of the 5k and children's marathon which had started at 12:00.  Being around others again, even if they were going at a relaxing pace and enjoying the experience, gave me a burst of energy and I was able to bring my pace up to 8 min per km.  I also knew that at this pace I would be close to beating my personal best from 2009.  As I reached the final turn into the grandstand and the last couple of 100 meters I heard the announcer calling the name of a runner whom I had started to catch up on.  I also noticed that the time clock had reached 6:01:00 and knew that if I wanted to to have a new PB I would have to sprint.  To hear the announcer you would have thought I was trying to beat the guy in front of me, but I really just wanted to be across as soon as possible.  I did this as I knew that my chip time would be under 6 hours if I could just give that final burst.

Although it took a lot out of me I hit the finish in full stride and a gun time of 6:01:31 giving me the adjust chip time from when I crossed the start to when I finished at a nice 5:57:32.  This gave me a 3:24 faster time then in 2009 when I was 4 years younger.  Even though I was exhausted and sore I found that I was in better shape then in 2009 and had a quicker recovery.  I learned something from the first two races and also discovered that developing a race plan ahead has a lot of benefits. Below I am holding my finisher belt buckle medal.

Thank you for reading my insights.  Tomorrow I will start posting photo's once again and try and catch up with stories and images from the last five weeks.

Looking at the door.

One thing about trying to create a photo a day is that it makes one look at everyday objects with a more intuitive eye.  This is even more true when one has a pretty set routine and the variety of life is limited   Today while waiting for my boys at their choir I noticed a few little details as I waited by the door.  I made these grabs with the iPhone and used the Noir app to make the conversion to monochrome and added the border in PhotoToaster.

For the door handle I used Pic Grunger to add the texture and Laminar for the frame.

A few student portraits.

One of the fun things about my classes at SAIT is that I believe on the Hands On approach.  That is why I schedule three days of shooting in the basic lighting class and 5 in the advanced lighting class (these are 6 week courses).  AS such I am always looking for people to come in and be subjects.

Tonight's advanced lighting class we were working mixing light sources using strobe on our subjects and tungsten light sources and cookies on the background.  A former student, Cooper, has been kind enough to come in to class in the past and returned tonight.  I created this profile shot as I liked the way his mohawk stood out from this angle.

I usually set up to rooms so that we can split the group up and give more opportunities to shoot.  We didn't have a subject for this side so the students took turns posing for each other.  I photographed two of them, Nikki and Matt and enjoyed these results.

A few minutes outside the McCaig Tower.

Sometimes one has to make the most of limited opportunities. That is a situation what I find myself in most day's.  I'm no different then many of you who have busy lives with work and families so when I find a few minutes to search out a subject for the days photo's I work quickly.  While I was waiting to pick up my wife from work this afternoon I took a quick walk around the side of the McCaig Tower at the Foothills Medical Centre.  I noticed the empty bike rack and was intrigued by the design.  So using the iPhone I looked for some unique angles on the row of racks.  Once I took the photo's I used the Snapseed app on the iPhone to add a few different effects that I felt suited each shot.

The joy's of teaching.

I have had the honour and privilege of teaching at SAIT for 13 years now.  Even though it may seem to be old hat, each session always is different and has it's own flow. Now I have been fortunate to have great students over the years and they have brought wonderful subjects to work with.  Someday's there is a nice rhythm to the lecture or shoot.

On other's things seem to take time to develop and the energy level is different.  These can be a challenge and there is no real reason as to why this happens.  Today was one of those days and it took a bit of work for me to get things on track.  Once I dealt with some of technical questions about working on location with available light I was able to move on to suggestions of how to make some more unique images.

We had two lovely couples. Don and Denean who have been married 10 years came in dressed in their wedding outfits.  I took these two shots of Denean as she jumped and moved around so the student's could see that photo's don't have to be static

Our other couple, Tina and Brian, are getting married next month and we did engagement type photo's for them.  In these three shots we looked for different angles and moods of the happy young couple.  Working in Heritage hall on the SAIT campus provided many opportunities to have fun with especially on a cold and wet day.

A few thoughts.

Over the last month or so I have been busy with my teaching and family duties.  I still managed to do my photo of the day (today is 824 consecutive days) and I managed to look at a lot of photographs on a variety of photo sharing sites.  What this has done may have had an effect that I had not fully anticipated.

Now while there are lots of average photographs out there, I have seen a great amount of creative and beautiful images.  This has been a humbling thing.  I have always felt that I am a decent photographer yet when I see the great work being done by others, I sometimes question what it mine is worth.  Digital has opened the flood gates and thus the creativity has also grown substantially. Now I'm not trying to be negative, just realistic.  What I have discovered is that it takes more then passion to be successful in photography.

For the last few years I have been trying to find my place/role in the industry.  I am a good teacher and enjoy my classes at SAIT.  I love to talk photography and share ideas. As I move forward these next few months I am optimistic that I will find something that will help me establish where I want to go in the industry.  I will share these here as well as in my Calgary Institute for Photography blog as I try to re-establish that group.   I hope you will follow and support me if you can.

Here are some of my photo's from today.  I spent a few hours downtown talking to a few individuals whom I respect and hope will be involved in some future projects.  I walked along the Stephen Avenue mall and in the Devonian Gardens where the first two photo's were taken.  The last was taken at the Bow Building of the giant head that sits in front of the property.