Posts tagged with "photography"

Broken Snail

I was on my way to work one day, walk­ing down a hill, when I noticed that there was a rather large snail on the ground. He was about an inch and a half long, his shell a delight­ful con­trast of pink and pas­tel hues to dark brown band­ing. I want­ed to take a pic­ture, but I did­n’t have some­thing to car­ry him to work (where I have an infin­i­ty board and white box), so I decid­ed I’d just grab my cam­era on break and bring him there.

Of course, my break was in a cou­ple hours, and I was pray­ing that he’d still be there when I went out­side. I grabbed the cam­era and tri­pod and ran up the hill, look­ing for a small shell cast­ing a shad­ow on the con­crete.

Thumbnail: A crushed, broken snail and his shell

I found him crushed, splayed out in strands of mucus, most like­ly stepped on by some care­less per­son. Snails can’t live with­out their shells, as the cal­ci­um car­bon­ate struc­tures hold their inter­nal organs. I took a few pic­tures of the trag­ic scene any­way.

When I got home that night, I hap­pened to look at the snaps in quick suc­ces­sion and noticed that parts of him were still mov­ing.

He was still alive.

I took a few frames and over­layed them to make this Flash ani­ma­tion, where you can see his foot wrig­gling, as well as some indis­tin­guish­able entrails that remind me of liv­er. It’s so sad to think that he was left out to die a slow death with his innards exposed.

I would have named him Shelly.

Portraits of Gosia

Thumbnail: Gosia tilts her head 
Thumbnail: Gosia's eyes 
Thumbnail: Closeup of Gosia's eyes 
Thumbnail: Gosia's face in shadow 

A few por­traits of Gosia. She’s a first-gen­er­a­tion Canadian, her par­ents being immi­grants from Poland. One can tell she has a very European look.

Thumbnail: Gosia hams it up 
Thumbnail: Gosia on a bench 

These were tak­en with the sun com­ing from behind because Gosia was squint­ing too much oth­er­wise. I tried my flash as a fill-in to bal­ance the bright­ness of the back­ground, which helped increased sat­u­ra­tion in the fore­ground. I love the colours in these shots, they’re so dreamy.

Thumbnail: Gosia awesome abs 

Another addi­tion to my body shot series. Gosia’s a com­pet­i­tive vol­ley­ball play­er, so she has awe­some abs (not to men­tion killer curves).

Thumbnail: Gosia covered 
Thumbnail: Gosia behind a fence 
Thumbnail: Gosia's reflection in a mirror 

A lot of guys are some­what blind­ed by Gosia’s beau­ti­ful big eyes and curvy fig­ure; they’re don’t real­ize that she’s quite a strong, intel­li­gent per­son with a good head on her shoul­ders. The idea of these shots was to cov­er up part of her face, not through the fram­ing of the pic­ture, but using objects to help the view­er see past her phys­i­cal beau­ty.

An Evening with Krista and Shane

Thumbnail: Krista Muir and Shane Watt perform together wide

As pre­dict­ed, I left my house feel­ing ner­vous and excit­ed, and put on my Top Rated playlist to dis­tract myself. The music of Lederhosen Lucil has nev­er touched me on a deeply inti­mate lev­el, the way, say, a Leonard Cohen or Thrice song does, but it’s still remained very per­son­al. I dis­cov­ered L.L. at a time when I was feel­ing rather jad­ed from life. The music was sil­ly, fun, and con­fi­dent, so I embraced it with delight­ful hedo­nism. It lift­ed me when I was in a strange state of numb­ness and lim­bo.

Thumbnail: Krista Muir and Shane Watt get ready to perform 
Thumbnail: Shane's North Korean guitar 
Thumbnail: Lederhosen Lucil swag 

I got there at what turned out to be an hour and a half ear­ly (though it was due to a mis­take on the venue web­site), so I wan­dered the store until the show start­ed, feel­ing like a fish out of water in a tiny room filled with hand­made wom­en’s cloth­ing and jew­el­ery. Though beau­ti­ful and impres­sive­ly unique, they would­n’t let me take pic­tures of any­thing1.

As soon as I saw Krista alone, I began to hyper­ven­ti­late, which was rather unex­pect­ed (I’m still get­ting over how hilar­i­ous­ly embar­rass­ing this was). I approached her and man­aged to spit out “Hi” in a whis­per. I did­n’t know what to say, so I just asked her to sign my CD (still whis­per­ing, unable to con­trol the vol­ume of my voice). I’m sure I’ll appre­ci­ate such a reac­tion in a cou­ple years, as not many peo­ple can cause me to be so flus­tered2.

Continue read­ing “An Evening with Krista and Shane”…

  1. I’m guess­ing to pro­tect the designs of the artists [↩]
  2. Perhaps it was the strange feel­ing that Krista, who was now sud­den­ly in front of me, had so unwit­ting­ly affect­ed me, with­out ever even being aware of my exis­tence. Or per­haps I was intim­i­dat­ed. I like to con­sid­er myself a cre­ative per­son, but by no means a pro­fes­sion­al, earn­ing a liv­ing off my cre­ativ­i­ty. Krista is, how­ev­er, a born enter­tain­er. [↩]

New Camera Gear and Twin Portraits

Thumbnail: Differences between twins
Thumbnail: Orthogonal twins
Thumbnail: Body shot
Thumbnail: See no evil, hear no evil

Okay, okay, I admit it, I bought more cam­era gear. This time it was a flash, an umbrel­la, and a com­bi­na­tion stand to hold the two. The flash is a Canon 580EX II, the most impor­tant fea­tures being:

  • Can act as mas­ter flash to trig­ger my 420EX in slave mode
  • Can turn off the flash to use bet­ter aut­o­fo­cus assist beams
  • Easy-to-use con­trol dial and set but­ton
  • Maximum guide num­ber of 58
  • Sweeeeet lock shoe stand

I was able to test it out the rig on Andrew and Alex, who hap­pened to be in town that week­end. Out of all my friends and acquain­tances, I’ve known Andrew and Alex the longest, since ele­men­tary school. We got to hang out for a night and catch up before they had to take off. I can still tell them apart from face and voice, although it got quite a bit hard­er.

It was a good prac­tice in doing por­traits of two peo­ple, and fig­ur­ing out how var­ied the same scene can look with the main light source at dif­fer­ent posi­tions. Overall, I’m very pleased with how they turned out.

Puddles

Thumbnail: Puddles sniffs
Thumbnail: Puddles on a leash
Thumbnail: Puddles yawns
Thumbnail: Puddles on the couch
Thumbnail: Sleepy Puddles
Thumbnail: Big head Puddles

Puddles was the sole sur­vivor of a lit­ter of pup­pies left in the cold of Canadian win­ter, because the own­er did­n’t want to keep them. He stayed alive by bury­ing him­self under his moth­ers body to stay warm. At a cou­ple weeks old he was tak­en to his new and per­ma­nent home, where he’s lived for over 13 years.

Puddles is cur­rent­ly suf­fer­ing from aller­gies (he’s chewed through his fur), arthri­tis, and severe dia­betes. He can’t even make it up the front steps with­out the momen­tum of a run. Once a healthy 110 pound dog, he now weighs 88lbs.

I was com­mis­sioned to take some pic­tures of him with the kids before he pass­es.

Thumbnail: Fresh baguette
Thumbnail: Shrimp pasta

In return, I was offered din­ner; a savoury pas­ta with tiger shrimp and lemon zest, along with apple crisp for dessert. All made from scratch.

This was a small exer­cise in shoot­ing RAW (used for about half the shots). It’s great to not wor­ry about white bal­ance and to have an extra stop expo­sure adjust­ment, but I still find that get­ting the pro­cess­ing right is a bit tricky.