Cold

Went for a little walk today, as it was 'only' -20C today.

A few photos from my phone...

Thought I would post a few random photos from my cell phone.

This first one is from one of the first snow falls, if you look really carefully in this not so great image you can see at least two very blurry deer.

This photo is another that I took from my date with Olivia, I spoke about that here.

This image is from perhaps the worst cup of coffee I've ever had the displeasure of tasting.  It was purchased during our adventures to Thunder Bay to get Olivia's teeth pulled.  You can read about Tara's take on that process here.

Then this was my lunch the other day when I met one of the guys from the church for lunch.  It looked very tasty at the time.  Hearty potato bacon soup and a egg salad sandwich with coffee.  Next time, I'll go for the chicken salad sandwich though.  Good food and better conversation (that's his coat opposite me here).

Not the greatest photos I've taken, but part of the story, my story.

Pictures of Life Gallery

I've mentioned a couple of times about a project I've been working on.  It's as ready as it will ever be for the public.  It's a gallery of pictures (is this a surprise? probably not). First the pictures... then the details, along with how this might help you...


As some of you know, I'm a pastor.  I've noticed that in some churches it seems a struggle to find good photos to use as a backdrop on their powerpoint presentation, or to slip behind the words when lyrics to songs are projected for group singing.

Over the last few months I've been challenged by many things to try and find a way to help others with my photography.  So I started going through my photos to find images that would work for churches in what I've described above.  Started with over 200 gigs, first cut was just over a 1000 images.  This is a gallery of 200 images.  If you have been following my photography for awhile you'll likely recognize these photos.  They have been shared before.  I am proud of these images.

If you are apart of a church and would like to use these in your services please do so.  You can download them and size them to fit your screen and use them.  Technically I'm putting a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License on these photos.  Click the link to learn more.  However I'm not real concerned with people knowing that I took the picture.  If you do use them, it would be nice if you could send me an email or leave a comment with that photo on the photo gallery page

almost...

The little project I mentioned awhile ago?  Well, it's almost ready.  I'm kind of excited about it.  The few dozen or so people who follow my blog, will they be excited? Time will tell.  In the meantime, have a great day.

Wow

Well, I am astonished.  I have past 100k page  views on my Flickr page.  Thank you.

Long time

It's been a while since I posted anything.

Here's a couple of long (ish) exposure shots.

personal project

So I'm working on a personal project. Hopefully I'll be able to share more details soon. I started out with almost 200 Gigs of photos, pulled around a thousand photos out in the first draft. Now I'm down to five or six hundred. I hope to cut that down by a third or half by the time I'm done.

I will be making a gallery of the remaining photos. How I will host, or display the photos I am not sure yet. I hope they will be able to help some folks, but we'll see, it might be a flop of project.

I'm using the beta of Lightroom 3 for my sorting and first round of edits. In fact the vast majority (if not all) of my edits will be made in this program.

I have amazed at how well thought out this thing is.

I've heard this before, but having a project, or an end user in mind makes processing and editing your photos SO much easier.

Here's a screenie of the grid of some of the photos I'm working on....

morning coffee

A short walk

I went for a walk today. Took this picture. I wish it was a better photo, but it is what it is. I enjoyed being in the great outdoors for a short while.

It was good to take a picture, any picture, as I haven't had the chance or the inclination. More to the point, I've been overwhelmed with stuff and have felt like I'm in a rut... so today was shoot and post what you came up with...

So there you go.

Enjoy.

what do I like...

So Strobist had a post on colour palette in photos, specifically how do I use colour in my photos. I got thinking about how I tend to shoot and process my pictures. It got me thinking about my photos.

I think my I have tendency to have more saturated colours and in doing so I think many of my pictures lean to be a little underexposed. I often underexpose pictures to pull as much colour out and keep the contrast as high as I can. The lens I use the most is my 55-200VR lens.

I think this is one of the reasons I have a real hard time with shooting black and white. I don't naturally see things that way. I also seem to gravitate towards real tight crops when shooting people at events. I have come home from family or church events and realized that the only photos I really have are of individuals and not of the group function.

I think some of this reflects at least a part of who I am. The stronger colours reflect my optimistic leanings. I use photography more as an escape from my everyday life more than I do a vehicle to make statements. I use photography as a vehicle to help me pray, to see the good things in the world when I'm overwhelmed, and perhaps most importantly, give perspective the things in life I need to be thankful for.

I am drawn to photos that have a very strong and simple composition too. That center on one moment or one thing. Usually for me, it's something that is tied to a simple joy of something, or relationship, or just fun!

So what? What do I do with all of this? Do I try and go the other way and learn to be as rounded and balanced as possible? Or do I simply accept it and run with it as part of my style? Well, to start, I want to make sure that I really start working on exposure. I need to learn how to draw the colour I want out of photos without making them underexposed. I need to learn how to shoot with more than just that one lens, even if it's just to save that lens from wearing out while the others look brand-new (actually if you look at that lens you'll see it is worse for the wear, even though it is the lens I've had the longest). I also need to shoot events with an eye towards the larger event and not just the individuals within the event.

How do you use colour? How are you seeing the world? Does it come out in your photos? Do you even care? What are you looking to take pictures of?

Here's a few of my photos for fun.

1. morning dew, 2. trees v2, 3. tenacity, 4. a drive in the rain, 5. sunny, 6. raw tomato sauce, 7. finding the wind, 8. seagull 3 of 4, 9. gulp, 10. Purple on blurry green, 11. shrooms in the dark, 12. swings, 13. sucking pollen, 14. 20090805_4716-_DSC8288, 15. untitled, 16. untitled, 17. untitled, 18. grass shoots, 19. coke on the beach, 20. kiwi strobist, 21. glow, 22. sunset bumped up a bit, 23. can you find me?, 24. ladybug picnic

Waterdrops and stoplights

From a drive in the rain yesterday

some things I saw the other day

The big move. I feel like this right now as we prepare to move.

Life is tenacious. Grass, growing in a rock, right by swirling water. Often I think I need to be a little more tenacious.

water, grass light

Simple beauty, well, at least to me it is.

fly like a bird (doug's take)

Last Saturday we went to the beach. While we were there the kids started feeding the gulls their snacks (which was muffins). Tara and I both started snapping pictures. Her take is HERE.

All in all it was a lot of fun. And now between the two of us, we'll never need another picture of a gull ever. Although I'm sure we'll take more.

Some birds by the water

Went out to read and pray in the park the other day. Some of the ducks came quite close. Here's a few shots that appealed to me.

A little catching up

As I mentioned a little while ago, I have been shooting lots of stuff. Some of which I will share...

A quick headshot of Tara featuring her new haircut (she blogged about it here)

Many of these other photos below look much better seen large. If you click on the photo it will take you to the Flickr page where these photos are hosted.

Stories

Every once in awhile I come across a photo essay that I find amazing.
This one is truly excellent.

http://www.dayswithmyfather.com/

There is some powerful story telling here with a few words and a few photos.

What I fear others think of me when I geek out on cameras...

If I do that to you some day... tell me, I'll stop talking.

evening light

Set the trailer up this week. Here the kids are eating Popsicles and ice cream

Owen had finished his, so he's chewing on stick.

If you'd like to see more then view my flickr stream here.

stay tuned!!

So...I've taken so many pictures recently I am hopelessly behind in the edits/ post processing, which truthfully is my least favorite part of the whole photography thing.

Here's a shot of little mushroom I took on a family walk yesterday. This one is straight out of the picture taker machine; but stay tuned, I've shot some portrait stuff, some candid stuff, wedding kind of stuff, a buddy took pictures while I baptized a bunch of people on Sunday, lots and lots of candids, a few landscapes, and a bunch of still lifes (like this one) just for fun.

Hopefully I'll get through these soon so I can post a few.

Thanks for reading!

My evening at camp

So while I was visiting some friends I had a chance to go to a camp and watch a crazy wide game.

Kind of like what happens when you mix capture the flag and football, along with some really zealous acting. It was great fun!!

At the end the "War Chiefs" battled individually!

Then everyone went down to the water.

And had to wash off the battle paint!

It was great fun! I learned a fair bit about how to make pictures in lower light too....