Canon S90

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Well, I’m pretty sure this is my next camera. Looks pretty amazing. It’s a small point and shoot Canon camera that has a 28-105mm lens and also goes down to f/2.0. Pretty awesome. Read more about it here. ...

Entry #17 – Sunsets

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Without a doubt, one of my favorite events to shoot is a sunset. I used to live a stone’s throw away from the Pacific Ocean, and walking down and watching the sun set was pretty much a weekly or a semi-weekly event during the summers. I know that many photographers think that sunset photos are a bit cliche, but I’ve never thought so. To me, watching the sun set highlights some of the real beauty of this world, and reminds me of all the great things that bring me joy in it. So, here are a few of my favorite sunset photos that I’ve taken over the years: ...

Entry #5 – Kitsilano Photo

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One of the hobbies I have that brings me a lot of enjoyment is photography. It’s something I’ve slowly honed and improved over the years to the point where I’m fairly comfortable with my camera, and with taking photos in most situations. Given how much enjoyment it’s been to me, I thought I would periodically do the odd photo-entry for blogathon and talk a bit about the photos I share. This shot of Kitsilano beach is one of the shots I’m most known for. It’s currently used on the Kitsilano.ca website, and also in a few brochures. I was actually just randomly driving back from UBC ...

Canon Back-Button Auto Focus

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I did a photoshoot the other day for a few friends of mine. The shoot was in a big field, at around 4pm in the afternoon. There was lots of light obviously, since it was a sunny day, but the sun was high in the sky and the shadows were pretty harsh. For the most part, I always take a flash outdoors with me now. A long time ago using a flash outside would have seemed silly, but I’ve photographed a few weddings now, and understand that fill flash is required in many outdoor situations to help balance the ambient light. So for this shoot, I brought along my speedlight. While the photos turned out ...

Quick Outdoor Photoshoot

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Tonight some of my old friends came for a visit, and we went down to the little park near where we grew up to take a few family photos. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t really cooperating, and we got rained on a little bit. One of the biggest challenges for taking family photos is working with children. Children are obviously full of energy, and taking photos isn’t always something they like to do, especially when there are swing sets and ducks waddling around. Thankfully Kaede was happy to accommodate a few photos in between duck feeding sessions. Since Kaede is about to be a big sister, ...

Vancouver Scenic Photography Sale – Limited Time

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About 18 months ago a few people encouraged me to put some of my photos online for sale. Given that my Vancouver scenery ones are the most popular photos in my portfolio, I’ve pretty much only focused on that. I’ve actually made a decent amount by selling them, probably enough to be able to afford a cheap lens, which is pretty cool. The next item on my wish list is the Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera, which is one of the most affordable full frame cameras on the market. Unfortunately, the list price of that camera is around $3200, so it’s a bit outside of my price range at this point. So, I’m ...

Photo Entry #5: In The City

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Somewhere in Vancouver. ...

Photo Entry #4: Final Descent

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Here’s a shot while descending into Ottawa last time I was there: ...

Photo Entry #3: Ocean

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A shot I took near English Bay last year. ...

Photo Entry #2: Orpheum

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A shot I took at a concert last summer. ...

Microstock Photography

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Just a quick question to the photography crowd out there. Does anyone have any experience selling photos on microstock websites? A couple of people have asked me if I’ve ever put any photographs on microstock sites. I haven’t, mainly because I feel pretty strange selling photos for 50 cents each. Truthfully though, most of my photos sit there collecting dust anyways and don’t make any money, so I was just curious if there’s enough volume on those sites to turn over any non-trivial cash-flow. Drop a comment if you have any idea. Thanks. ...

New Wedding Photography Section

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It’s probably because it’s been so nice these last few days at home, but I’m actually finding myself itching to shoot another wedding this summer. To that end, I’ve started assembling a wedding photography section. It needs a lot of work, but at least I have something for now until I can spend a bit more time on it. ...

A Quick Vancouver Sunset

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Felt good to shoot a few photos tonight. You can view the original over on Flickr. ...

Yes We Can

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if (is_single()) { ? } ?I did something similar in Feburary of this year for Northern Voice, and I thought it would be a good idea to try again. Given that Barack Obama was one of the first presidential candidates to embrace social media, I thought I’d do a celebratory mosaic using a public photos posted to Flickr. The image is constructed using Flickr photos from everyday, normal people, the same people who helped Obama and his grass-roots campaign to secure the presidency. The search tags used on Flickr were “obama election victory” and “obama celebration”. The result is a mosiac ...

New Photography Section

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One of the areas of my website that I lost with the last theme change was my photography section. To be honest, it wasn’t that complete before, but since photography is such a big part of my life, I miss having it around. Tonight I sat in front of the TV and put together a new one. I extended some recent code I had written for SmugMug to pull in my photos from there. I’m going to slowly add some of my photos that I think might interest organizations looking for Vancouver photos, or various photography from some of the concerts I’ve attended. So, feel free to head on over and check out the ...

Where The %*(% Is The New Canon EOS 5D?

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Ok seriously. What’s up Canon? Today you announced the new EOS 50D camera, but everyone has been waiting for the new 5D announcement. The 5D is a great camera, but it’s nearly 3 years old already. Since it came out, you’ve released the EOS 20D, the EOS 30D, the EOS 40D and now, the EOS 50D, all with APS-C sensors. We get it, you like the 1.6x crop factor. But it’s time to up the ante. While Nikon is coming out with cool features like HD video, you’re just regurgitating the same formula. At least put out a few 1.3x crop factor cameras or something. ...

I Haz Video?

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As I alluded to in my previous post today, I’m definitely looking at getting into video sometime in the near future. Considering I ordered a camera shortly after writing that post, “near future” is actually more like “early next week”. I spent a solid twenty minutes or so trying to figure out what type of camera I wanted to purchase, and eventually narrowed it down to a few different ones. In terms of features, I’ve always wanted a camera that could do 24P. Most consumer cameras shoot at 30 frames per second in an interlaced format, which is quite different than how film is shot. Most ...

New Camera And Video Purchases Soon

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I’ve been saving some money for that last little while, fully expecting to make two purchases in the not too distant future. One of the first items will be a full frame camera body. I was forced to make a purchase of the 40D last year simply because I didn’t trust my current camera enough to shoot a friend’s wedding, but truthfully really wanted to get a full-frame instead. Canon’s only affordable (at least to me) full frame is the Canon EOS 5D, but unfortunately it’s about 3 years old now and doesn’t have a lot of the new bells and whistles in it. Canon has been basically silent on ...

All's Well That Ends Well

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For those of you who follow my Flickr and my blog, you’ll remember a few weeks ago I encountered some of my photos being used commercially on the Internet without my permission. For a while there it looked like the only recourse was going to be through legal channels, but after meeting with everyone today at a coffee shop, I’m happy to say we’ve all agreed on an arrangement that should work out. I spend a lot of time trying to make sure rights of photographers are respected, and even went so far to do a podcast with the guys at Creative Commons last year. So I’m obviously glad that this ...

iPhoto vs Photoshop CS3

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It should come as no surprise that photoshop is a much better tool that iPhoto. iPhoto is a free package that ships with Tiger and Leopard, and allows you to do quick adjustments to your photos. While obviously not marketed towards a high-end market, it’s easy to use and is a fairly decent tool to have a in your photography arsenal. Unfortunately, sometime around Leopard, my iPhoto experience seemed to get a lot worse. I never really figured out exactly what happened, but there was a clean point in time where I felt iPhoto started really underperforming. The other day at the BC Festival 150 ...