My girls

Black and White Lights

Time Lapse/Stop Motion Ice Cubes to Steam

Big Sugar

Big Sugar came by one of the radio stations that I work at the other day.  I got the opportunity to shoot some photos while they did an interview and recorded a song and I couldn't pass it up!

My favorites of the Skate Park Light Painting

And more...

Light Painting Action Shots

More Sparky light painting

Sparky Video

Scott made a video of our sparky photo shoot from the other night.  It documents how we setup and got the effects we were created in our photos.  Check it out here:

Light Painting at the Local Skate Park

I went out last night with Scotty MacGregor to light things on fire and take pictures of those things in the dark.  We were well armed with a bag of steel wool, a whisk with a wire connected to it (I'll elaborate on this in a future post), multiple lighters, 26 sparklers, a bucket of water, a fire extinguisher, two tripods, multiple lenses, a remote shutter release (I finally got to put that thing to use), one still photo camera and one video camera.

This shoot was probably the most fun that I've ever had with a camera!  We started off by lugging all our gear down a path, up a hill, across a bridge and through a tunnel only to find out that the tunnel was lit at night (!!).  We experimented with a few shots but decided on heading over to the skate park, which met most of our criteria (non-flammable cement, away from people who may want to call the cops and completely dark).  The tunnel just wasn't providing the contrast that we needed it to.  So, we packed the gear up and then drove over to the skate park and found it empty.  Scott documented most of the shoot with his video camera and is going to post it soon on his blog.  I'll provide a link once he does.

In the meantime, here's one shot that I've finished working on.  It was accomplished by lighting two sparklers (one in each hand) and going crazy waving them all over the place while keeping my feet planted in one position.  Scott worked the camera on this one, I believe the exposure time was 13 seconds, F stop at about 13 and ISO was at 200.  I'll post more in the days to come.  Stay tuned!

Shake!

Check this out: Carli Davidson Photography.

By the way, I haven't forgotten about this blog...just been busy building a fence!

Canon Rebel Remote Shutter Release

I recently ordered a remote shutter release for my camera (Canon Rebel XS).  It's an essential accessory for the star trail photography that I'd talked about here as well as macro work.  Not to mention self portraits and anything low light where camera shake is an issue.  My aim is to get out and use it for some start trail work initially.  Can't wait!

Shading Illusion

Check out this illusion here.  I can't tell if it's real or fake.  Can you?

House of Air

How fun does This Place look?

Death By Dustbuster

No more explanation required.

Stop Motion

I've been experimenting with stop motion film/photography this past week or so.  Here's the first of a couple that I'm going to post.  It's just a quick short that I made on Saturday night with some of my kids' alphabet blocks.

Motorized Slider for Time Lapse Video

Thought I'd share a great link on how to build a motorized slider for some really cool time lapse video: Time Lapse Slider Tutorial.  Just one more thing to spend my money and time on! 

Caterpillar

We were out for a family walk in the coulees the other day and came across the caterpillar pictured below.  I didn't have my macro tubes with me and it's not my best picture ever, but he was so intricately patterned that I had to take his picture.  He was huge too!  He was at least 3.5 - 4 inches long.

Guest Photographer!

Hey!  I've been pretty busy lately and haven't had much of a chance to do any shooting lately.  My wife captured a really cool shot of our daughter and her best friend.  I asked her if she'd like to post it on my blog as a guest photographer and she agreed.  So, check out the picture below and let her know what you think.  Also, if any other photographers that follow this blog want to submit photos for review and possible posting, let me know!

Lil' Toes

Gelatin Photos

Check out the link below.  It's a description of how to get some pretty amazing shots with gelatin, water and a piece of glass.  Apparently it can be done with mineral oil too.  And, you can combine light painting as well!

Gelatin Photography Tutorial

Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 Lens Review

Back in this post I had posted a few pictures from a wedding shoot that I had done with a fellow photog.  He had rented a couple of lenses for us to use, and the one that I ended up using for the shoot was a Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L.

This was a great lens and I can't say enough good things about it.  It had great clarity and was much more versatile than the 50 mm 1.8 that I'm used to using.  The 50mm is a prime lens, which means it has no zoom capabilities.  In other words, you zoom with your feet.  The Canon pictured above however was in the perfect range for wedding type photography as it was a fairly wide shot when zoomed all the way out but had the capability of getting in fairly close when the scene changed as we were shooting.  I found that it was pretty difficult to move freely around the church during the ceremony so having a nice zoom was very practical.  Colour and saturation were also as good as I've ever seen in a lens.

There is some very, very slight distortion at the wide end of the zoom, but I could hardly pick it up at all.  It's a great (probably the best) general purpose lens that Canon makes.  If I had the money, this would be the first lens I would buy.  

I should also mention that the lens was rented from Lethbridge Lens Rentals.  This is a great family run business here in Lethbridge.  They rent lenses, camera bodies and other photography gear out of their home in West Lethbridge.  It's a great service for a part-time photographer like me as I get to use high-end lenses that I couldn't otherwise justify spending the money on (yet!).

Lightning in Lethbridge

We've had some pretty incredibly powerful thunderstorms this summer.  I was sitting at home on Saturday night reading about how to go about photographing star trails when I started to hear some thunder rolling in.  I grabbed my camera and new tripod and jumped in the truck.  I drove to a newly devoloped road with no lights that leads to the top of the coulees.  The following shot was the first one I took.  Several other attempts later and I nearly got hit by lightning, so I decided it was time to pack up and head in.  That, and it had started to rain by then!  I left the exposure on a little too long so the city lights in the distance are somewhat blurry.  Other than that, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Lightning on the coulees

New Photography Gear and Spider Webs for a Lethbridge Photographer!

I saved up my nickels and dimes and got some new gear!

I ordered this: Muslin and Backdrop from a company on Ebay.  It's pretty cheap, in terms of cost and build.  The muslin backdrop is wayyyy too thin to be useable so I need to get a second sheet to hang behind it.  I complained to the company that their product was not as advertised and there were happy to give me a partial refund.  So, I'll use the partial refund to buy a secondary sheet to hang behind it.  It's a bit of a hassle, but I didn't pay much to begin with so I knew what I was getting into when I bought it.

I also picked up this tripod .  Again, a bit of a compromise in quality so that I could get it for the price I needed.  I've been testing it out around the house the past couple of days and it does the job!

My next project with the tripod is to get some macro spider web shots.  This is proving pretty difficult in a place like Lethbridge.  Macro shots, by their very nature, have an extremely short depth of field.  So, when trying to get a shot of something like a spider web in a windy climate is your goal, it gets pretty tough.  I've been trying to find webs in sheltered areas, and there are plenty around my place, but the wind really throws the webs around which makes it really difficult to focus.  I'll keep trying though and hopefully will get a calm day again soon!

Radio Guy

A buddy from work asked me to take a few photos of him at work at the radio station that we work at.  I dug up a couple tonight, here they are:

Landslide

Last weekend I did a shoot with a local band here in Lethbridge.  It was in there jam space in the singer's basement.  The following are a few of the photos from the shoot.

Reading