Another Lifestyle Session

Early this morning I met a cool couple out at Gap Lake in the Bow Valley to crank out another fun lifestyle shoot. This time our guy was Tom who is very serious about fishing. I really wanted to shoot Tom out on the water so last Monday I drove out to the mountains to check out some locations.

This was a good spot as I was able to set up my AB 800 strobes on shore and walk out to him on the boat. Thanks to my buddy Tim the night before, as he offered me his neoprene hip waders.

This is the kind of work I could see myself doing all the time, spending time taking photographs of people living out their passions, awesome.

Referals Are Great

Referrals are awesome, especially when they come from another photographer. On Thursday night I got a request to shoot a band who would be performing at Beer Fest 2010. Sounded like a good job but I new it would not pay well. Usually the terms, "band" and "pays well" never go together and I've known this for many years now.

The Referral though, came from my good buddy Sergei Belski in Airdrie. He is an amazing photographer and was in the middle of a tournament shoot so sent the band my way. I guess they liked what they saw on my site as they were pretty excited to have me come down and shoot. I was pretty excited about the fact that I could squeeze in a quick Friday night job and have all the free craft-beer I could drink.

The guys ended up being quite talented and I actually liked their music. We did two sets and I got about 400 usable images for them to use (and a 3 song demo disc). It may not seem like a good trade-off for me but you always get something extra when doing these kind of jobs. At the session I met the editor for two big Calgary magazines who is interested in my work, and a guy who is in the communications dept. at the CBC. It could always turn into something else.

Bragging Rights - Sessions

The floodgates have now opened! I am getting slammed with work and booking good sessions and assignments everyday. It's awesome!

For the last few months I have been planning a shoot with a new friend of mine, Kevin M. Kevin has been racing motorcycles for years now and when I had first met him and talked about how much I love fringe sports, he got just as excited. Turns out he is a bit of an Adrenaline junkie so it was a perfect fit when he agreed to a "Bragging Rights" session.

Basically the Bragging Rights session is a 2-3 hour, on location, magazine style setup and shoot that provides the client with high-end editorial portraits and action images for them to enjoy forever. Once we know their favorite sport or lifestyle, we develop a shot list and plan as to how the final product will look. The package comes with a large poster sized finished portrait print, 20 page book, and disk.

It doesn't matter what your into; Golf, fishing, flying, sports, whatever, we can create a full shoot based on who you are.

Very cool.

Workshop #2 Finished

This last Saturday I took another crew to Drumheller for a second lighting workshop. I had a smaller group and was able to spend more time going over other concepts besides lighting and controlling the sun.

I was a little worried this group might get a lot of shots similar to the last group but once again, everyone has their own style and idea of what they are going for. Even our models this time were not pros but just stand-ins, and they totally got into it. I am looking forward to making this a more frequent event.

Lighting Workshop

This weekend I put on an Off-Camera Lighting workshop in Drumheller for a couple of professional photographers from southern Alberta. The day was awesome and the photographers did a killer job at bringing their own style to a simple one-light formula.

Maros from Hana-Foto found a few models for us to work with so once we got shooting it was interesting seeing how everyone worked and quite funny to see 7 people gunning-down two models by the HooDoos with strobes and lenses. Overall it sounds like everyone learned something new and will no longer be afraid to use off-axis flash to create stunning and professional looking portraits.

Recent Work

Last week I was asked by Chinook Golfer Magazine to go into a yoga studio in NW Calgary and shoot some editorial content for their May issue. The shoot went extremely well and it is cool to be working for another magazine. The most recent AirdrieLIFE magazine is now out and I have a few pages in there for the ringette article as well.

It looks like I will be shooting another spot for AirdrieLIFE for the summer issue so I'll post about that when it comes out.

Other than the magazine work, I am just prepping for summer booking and trying to land some work on the island if possible. We are hoping to be down there for the 2nd week of April. Fingers are crossed.

Ready For Summer

A few years back I was designing and fabricating street luges in Calgary. Recently I pulled my final powdercoated prototype out of storage to ready it for summer.

I can't wait to ride.