Childrens Miracle Network

I will be donating my photography services on Saturday, May 30 to support the Childrens Miracle Network. The Southside Costco will be hosting me somewhere near the front entrance, and I will be doing individual portraits from 9:30-6pm. This is the best way to get a $150 portrait session for only $20! That’s right, a mere $20 donation gets you a sitting, and an 8×10 print. All of the images from the day will be hosted on my website in the client area, so you will be able to see what images were taken, and order your print. I will also be offering additional prints online at a very reduced rates should you need more.

Edmonton Family Photographer

I went to do an in home family portrait session today way up on the north end of Edmonton. As usual, I had a great time making some wonderful images for the family, and making a new friend. I was trying to get a nice photo of an 'I'm tired of having my pictures taken' boy who is just about 2 years old. Fortunately, like everyone else in my family, he seemed to like it when I pretended to get injured. We were having a pillow fight with the cushions from the couch, and he would laugh and laugh when I would 'accidentally' drop the cushion on my own head as a cocked it back to throw at him. Somehow with all these shenanniggans, I was able to get some great expressions. I even brought the cushions into the kitchen where I set up a makeshift studio to do the family portraits to hold his attention. Thank you for the fun day, I see you have already marked 10 images as favorites in your online gallery. That is great.

Commercial Photographer

I was contacted last week to do the photography for the board of directors, and some stock shots for the annual report for AIMCo. So I went in today and spent the whole day photographing the staff and the board members as they arrived. As luck would have it, a couple of them managed to get in without me seeing them, so I had to wait until their meetings were complete to get the last few headshots. The real pressure came in when I had to get the group shot at the end of one of the meetings. Their meeting was running late, so I got a late start, and to top it off, the next meeting was already 15 minutes behind schedule. This left me no time to really set up a shot with everyone, so I quickly set up the tripod, and made this image (which is a composite), so that anyone who had to go could leave after I took their photo. The end result is fantastic. I know the client will be pleased with this one.

Photographing Realtor Headshots

I have had the pleasure to work with a bunch of realtors over the years while doing my photography. One thing I find that seems to hold true for most is that they like their photos on plain white backgrounds. I always suggest this for them as well, since it allows them to easily remove the background should they need to drop their image as an overlay onto a listing or other material. The key thing when shooting on white, is to ensure that your wrap is not too harsh. Many people think that it is easy to shoot on white, but in actuality, it can pose a few challenges. If you blast too much light on your background to make it white, and the subject is too close to it, then the wrap (that is the light comming off the cyclic and wrapping around the person) is so strong that it can blow out the details in the hair and near the edges of the subject. The other thing is making sure that the background is not left underlit, and therby going to an off white, or grey tone which can make the subject harder to separate from the background in the future. So here is a portrait I made for Nadeem last week just befor I headed out to Ontario for the Easter weekend.

Allergy Conference

I have lived with a rather severe nut allergy all my life. I don't worry about it too much, because the nut in question is the Brazil nut. Easy to identify, and not that common. My kids however have allergies to peanuts, which is a real shame. Anyway, when the director for Anaphylaxis Canada called me to see if I was available to make some images at their event, I was eager to go and check it out. There were some excellent speakers, and really good information there. I have always been a bit leery of the whole epi-pen thing, and would rather just 'wait it out' but after going to the conference, I am secretly hoping to have a reaction so that I can try it out. Sounds crazy, but I would have to give it to myself before I would be comfortable giving it to someone else. There were testimonials from kids who had to do it, and they all said it was not as bad as they thought it would be, and they felt better right away. One father who had my 'wait it out' approach but took his son to the hospital said that had he known how fast the epi-pen would make his son better, he would have done it right away. The 15 minutes of suffering his son had going to the hospital was way worse than the epi-pen, and once they gave his son epinephrine at the hospital he was fine in just a few seconds. So let that be a lesson to all of you who do have allergies, don't fear the pen!

Photography presentation

I was asked to speak to a group of people about photography about 3 weeks ago. So I agreed, and was a bit anxious about the whole thing for the last 3 weeks. I put together a short slide show outlining some of my work, then proceeded to get into the basics of photography and the terminology related to it. I have to say, it is certainly easy to speak to people who are engaged in your presentation. I fielded many questions, and had a great response form the group after the presentation. Sometimes I tend to take my knowledge for granted, thinking that if I know it, everyone does. It is nice to be tested sometimes, and come up smelling like a rose. I have had others interested in learning as well, so now I am considering doing more of this sort of thing.

Jeff