Announcing the engagement of Alanna and Les

Just wanted to take a quick minute and post some photos from an engagement shoot I did last week. As the Christmas song says "Oh the weather outside was frightful" -4 Celsius and these two kept laughing and playing right up till dark.





I thought it a nice touch given the cold to have a little nose kiss with the love heart in the Christmas tree

Nose kisses were the order of the day








These two show the love they have for each other in every smile. Such a perfect couple.








Thank you Alanna and Les for allowing me to share in this special day and I look forward to the wedding in just a few short weeks

Photoshop Tutorial

It is amazing how photographers will take a photo and shelve it based on small little errors when in reality you can use editing software to create something wonderful that makes your subject truly stand out. In this blog I will do my best to give you a blow by blow blog about a Photoshop edit from a recent photo I created.

This photo was taken at recent shoot I did for a city council hopeful and the venue was amazing. I want to first thank The Royal Hotel for allowing me to shoot in their lobby. I am really looking forward to going back there to capture more photos. I would also like to thank my subject Menu who is a super lady and a whole lot of fun. Now onto the edit.




This first photo is the original shot. I have said it before and will again a great edit starts from a great photo and I really like how this turned out. It has all the sharpness I need, the skin tones are nice and even and there is an interest that has been captured. That being said there are some negatives about it as well. I find the leaves dangling in front of the window very distracting, I don't like the sign poking out from her shoulder and lastly the phone cord drives me nuts. Finally there will be a little enhancing of Menu's already perfect smile and hair. Let's get into it.






Whenever I am editing a photo I always change what I dislike the most so for this photo I didn't like how contrasty it was. When this photo was shot I was using a flash with a 6x8 inch soft box which mounts to my speedlight. Even with the flash I still shot quite high ISO so the flash did not have to fill in so much light as to make the photo overly bright.

Step 1 the first thing I did was soften it a bit with a bit of noise reduction.

Step 2 was to bump up the exposure about 1 stop of light; it was just a bit dark but still had so much detail in the highlights and lowlights.

Step 3 was to replace the window I had a photo of this window in my catalogue of stock photos and I thought this would dramatize the photo just a bit more. Replacing the window is just a matter of cutting it from the original pasting into this photo and blending to make it look right.

Step 4 I used the clone tool to remove the phone cord

Step 5 grab the brush tool, sample the colour of her lips and "fix her lipstick" Now this step could have been done before the shot was taken but it was spur of the moment and neither of us thought about the fact her makeup was fading that late into the evening.

Step 6 is perhaps the most important. I used levels to brighten the photo and then with a layer mask I blocked out the section I didn't want brighter. What that equates to is just highlighting her hair and face.

That is pretty much it, now some purists will say that I changed the photo and they are not wrong. What they will fail to recognise is that I could have done the same things in a darkroom with film and hours upon hours of dodging and burning. Photos have always been manipulated to one degree or another and even the most amazing photographers in the world spend time cleaning up irritations in their photos. The difference between film and digital is time. What I can do now in my post editing software is instant, whereas what I did in film could take hours if not days.

Anyway here is the after post photo. As I said before, this photo had all the elements of a good photo to start with; I just perked it up a little. Hope you enjoy and please comment below and like my Facebook page to follow everything I do.

Number One Reason Not to Throw Away

Sometimes when you take a photo and look at it there is no feeling, no emotion. The photo just falls flat and dull. Throw it away. That's it save some room on your hard drive and DELETE. OMG did I just say that. What I really meant was keep it, save it, cherish it, and look at it at a different time. Today I will show exactly what I mean. I took a photo that was that dull, delete photo but looking at it later I found a surprise in that photo. That never would happen if I just hit delete. Read on to learn more.

Very often when you are out shooting you pop off a couple hundred photos. You know that there will be some jewels in that mix and you will see them right away. Others are blurry and out of focus and just not usable. Then there are the questionable photos. These photos are what I refer to as Facebook quality, standard snap shot. Nothing special. What if they are, can you see them in a different light?

Take this photo I shot recently. The performer is an amazing "Crooner" Ron Boudreau. I approached him about a month ago to take some photos of his performance and he invited me back to his latest show at Chances Casino. After sifting through about 300 photos for the evening this one struck me as not bad, but not emotion evoking.




I scrolled through the photos a few times and this photo just kept calling me. I loved the expression on his face, the background has a quality of interest but too busy for the performer. It wanted something, so I sat for a long time and really looked at it. Since it was loaded into Lightroom I finally just started playing with some of the sliders and cropping.

First off let's minimize the back ground some and move the subject to the left third of the photo. Next we need to fix the exposure some and finally let's go black and white. Some photos just lend themselves to that one treatment. It's not something that should be used every time but that was exactly what this photo kept saying to me. It matched the performer, the location, and the lighting.

Here is the result and I don't think anyone would be disappointed in this.

And there it is folks. DO NOT throw away a photo that is on the border just sit quietly and let the photo tell you what it needs. Not every photo will but sometimes you will find that jewel in the rough

Is RAW Right For You

You have your SLR Camera. You understand some of your manual settings. Now the question is what is RAW, why shoot in RAW why not just shoot in jpeg. RAW is a professional photo format right. Absolutely not. Read this week's blog to understand why shooting RAW will help you improve your photography and smooth out your editing problems.

Most SLR cameras and some higher end point and shoots allow you to shoot in jpeg format or RAW, and the biggest difference between the two formats is the amount of information that is stored. On my Canon I have the ability to shoot both at the same time which is the preference I use. The true beauty of shooting in RAW is you can control so much more of your post production work. Whenever you make adjustments to a photo in jpeg and save the file you lose just a little more information at a time, something to do with pixels being compressed. Let's face it there is nothing more frustrating than taking a photo and when you download it from the memory card you realize the white balance was a little off, or your exposure was over/under by a half stop, or any other little detail that might make the shot mediocre at best. After all you took your time, composed the shot, checked your white balance and your exposure, it should have been perfect but it's just off by a bit. In steps post production, you can see 7 Steps to Lightroom Magic for some tips. Post production is your friend and nothing makes it easier than working with a RAW file, the amount of detail that is captured and can be brought out of a photo is amazing.

This photo was taken at Harrison Lake, a place I love to wander around, and was all but lost due to the underexposure of the shot. It was a very bright back light that caused this couple, enjoying the rainy day, to become significantly underexpose. Now I realized this as soon as the shot was taken but before I could correct the problem they moved on. This is not a problem for me as I do shoot RAW and I knew that although the camera exposure sensor was tricked I could fix the photo in Lightroom and save this very candid moment. That's what the value of RAW is, saving a photo that needs just a bit of help.

There are other values to shooting RAW that I have not gotten into this week. Perhaps another time I will revisit this subject. If there is a question about the RAW vs. Jpeg please leave a comment or drop me a line.

When Shooting becomes overwhelming

Ever notice how often life gets overwhelming. I would like to give you a quick example of what a week for me looked like this past summer. I don't do this to complain, actually the opposite is true, we all get busy but when you are doing something you love it just doesn't seem that bad. So sit back read about a week in late August and next week we will get back to our tutorial on using your camera in manual.

DAY 1

 It started on a Thursday when just after 10 AM my cell phoned chirped an appointment alert. Now I wasn't that stressed about it cause anything important I give myself a 24 hour and 1 hour alert, so imagine my surprise when I checked it and discovered I had to be on location for a filming shoot for a pilot local cable TV show. No camera equipment in my vehicle I had to race home load up and head to the location arriving a mere 10 minutes late, which I blamed on traffic. We filmed all day and then I took my wife to YUK YUKS comedy club that evening for an entertaining time with friends.

 Day starts at 7:00 AM ends 2:00 AM

DAY 2

Now my day did start a little slower as I didn't have to do anything till 10 AM so slept in till 9. Then it's time to hit the computer and start work on the film that was shot Thursday.

At about noon I decided, all beit late and not smart, that the volunteer t shirt I would be wearing on Sunday shooting Chilliwacks Flight Fest should have my LOGO on it. Now if you have read earlier posts you may have seen the one about LOGOs and how important I think they are, well I also said that you should have professionals do that work and shirt logos are no different. I did not follow my own advise and due to the lateness of the hour I decided to go with an iron on printed at home. I couldn't find any iron ons in clear only white so the shirt did not turn out as nice as I had hoped but I learned from this mistake and will change things in the future.

That night I had the opportunity to shoot KAT at Party in the Park, a local Chilliwack festival. Now this girl is amazing. I have shot her in the past and love being involved in her career. She won EMI & MOA record recording contract 2012. She has been featured on Jan Arden's Being Jan  and continues writing and recording her own flavor of music. Look her up on Facebook, Twitter, You Tube. I was home about 9 and had to work the photos for her social sites that night. Post production done at 2 AM sent via WeTransfer to her manager. Off to bed.

 Day starts 9:00AM ends 2:30AM

Day 3

Preparation for Friday nights Hangar dance shoot and following airshow shoot. Now if you've never been to the Chilliwack Flight-fest hangar dance and dinner you are missing something amazing. The food is incredible with a full steak dinner with baked potato and Chilliwack grown corn on the cob. After the dinner there is an evening mini performance by some of the performers flying the next day. Shoot into the evening, have a few beverages, home late , do post on photos that are needed for the next day bed.

 Day starts 8:00 Am ends 2:00AM

Day 4

Start the day shooting the Flight-fest volunteers setting up for the day. A pancake breakfast for the community and then on with the show. Now this is my second year covering the event and it is a true honor to be the exclusive photographer for the event. Between B25 Mitchel bomber, spitfire, wing walker and stunt planes this was a photographers dream. The weather was amazing and the photo ops even more so.

Day starts at 6:30 AM ends 10:00pm

Now comes all the editing and when you shoot that many venues in that short a period of time it is very critical to get the best from your manual settings as you can so there is very little editing to be done. By Thursday, and after working at my other full time job 36 hours, my editing is done and all photos are in the hands of the clients. They are happy. I am happy. Now onto a new photographic day.

Destination Photography: Westin Bayshore, Vancouver

What a spectacular weekend!

Continuing from Friday's blog about shooting video, my wife and I attended a wedding this last weekend in Vancouver and stayed at the Westin Bayshore Inn. What an experience. The service, the comfort, the views ... incredible. You can see one of the shots I took of the area above. Is that not breathtaking?

Arriving somewhat early to video the guests arriving and the venue before the shindig got started, I felt the first stop should be to introduce myself to the photographer who was hired for the wedding. As he watched me approach (with two camera bags, lighting bag, tripods) you could see apprehension in his eyes about this "presumptuous guest" being his worst nightmare. Photographers are largely lone wolves; they might not mind working with another photographer at times, but to have a guest show up with a pile of equipment usually translates into another obstacle that needs to be navigated.

I quickly explained to him I was very close friends with the bride, and that I was here to video her wedding for her elderly grandmother. This did not change the look on his face, but my next question did.

"Where can I be so I won't impede any of your photographs?"

That, my friends, was the key. This man and his assistants have a very difficult job to do and every guest on that boat has their own special way of becoming irritating to the wedding photographer. It was an obvious relief to him that I was willing to work around him, rather than getting in his way.


I took special effort to ensure my equipment was always out of the way and not impeding on any of the shots he was taking. Towards the end of the ceremony, he and I had some time for a bit of a chat. He went through some of the stills that I took and gave some great feedback on them. One he liked in particular was this, taken at full dusk.

Keep this in mind when you are a guest or at a venue you have not been hired at. Introduce yourself, be courteous to the staff photographer, stay out of the way, and maybe you will get some gems the way I did. If you stay out of their way, they're more likely to let you get your shots after they're finished, and everyone is more likely to have a good time. It's a matter of respect, and who knows -- maybe one day the tables will be turned and you will be the staff photographer wishing that everyone would stay out of your way.

Now I can't let this blog end without explaining the full experience of staying at this grand hotel so please read on.

I booked our room about six weeks ago and speaking to the staff on the phone left me feeling that I would be enjoying a very luxurious weekend at their hotel. There were a variety of packages available and they patiently walked me through each one that interested me explaining the perks and pitfalls of each one. They were not hesitant about explaining where one package fell short or another shined based on the needs of my wife and I. Even after I had booked the room, which was a non-refundable discount, they had no problems exploring my options when I thought I had to cancel (which, luckily, I didn't). One issue that did arise was the request for corporate discount, which the staff suggested was very difficult to qualify for, seems reserved for large corporations not small business people. Some places are more welcoming of small business owners and require only a business card or other proof that you do, in fact, run a business. Unfortunately Westin Bayshore wasn't one of them, but it's not anything I was going to sweat about.

We arrived about two-and-a-half hours before check-in time, and they allowed us entry to our room which was ready without an early check-in pricing. A bellhop was assigned right away to take us and our luggage, including a formidable amount of video gear, to our room and our vehicle was taken by valet parking. En route to our room, our bellhop explained many of the features of the hotel, some of which I immediately pegged as opportunities to get some shots of Vancouver. There was a beautiful dining area overlooking the harbour of Vancouver, an exercise/fitness centre open 24 hours, indoor and outdoor pools, spa, coffee shop, and the list goes on.

In our room we were delighted with the spaciousness of it all. A stylistic tile bathroom with more than enough space for you and your travelling partner to spread out all your hair face and beauty needs. A tile and glass rainshower to  relax your fatigued muscles from the trip in and freshen up. Sitting and office area are combined with large flat screen TV and high speed wired and wireless internet. Finally, (and I leave the best for last) the most comfortable, relaxing, enveloping bed I have ever slept on in my entire life.

This bed is so comfortable that it requires its own paragraph. When I check in to a hotel I usually will flop down on the bed just to see how it feels. I am so thankful I was already dressed for the wedding my wife and I were attending because if I had of flopped onto this gem I may not have made the wedding. It is hard to describe just how this bed seems to wrap around you, as you lay under the comforter. It's not that it was an overly soft bed, which tend to be hard on your back if you sleep in them, but it just seemed to provide support all around you in just the right amount of resistance. In a nut shell this was the best bed I have ever slept on and I thought it didn't get any better than home.

I would strongly suggest if you are looking for an exceptional getaway, where you are pampered, truly looked after and made to feel like the most important client ever, stay at the Westin Bayshore Vancouver. It was a relief to check into a hotel that took care of the little details and had everything I needed nearby, so that I could focus on the wedding and on getting some leisure shots in my spare time.

Normally a photographer would end this piece with the bride and groom, but that's normal instead I would like to leave you with this photo of the bride and her new niece, and the reminder that special moments can happen any time, so just pick up the camera and see what you capture.

Giving control to the clients: the editing process

You've been approached by a client. You've met with and hashed out the details of a shoot. You've shot amazing photos of the subject and now it's time to do some editing and wrestle with the age old question: what to keep, and what to discard?

In this new age of digital photography, there are some who firmly believe in setting the camera on auto  and firing away, relying on the law of averages to get some good shots.

But you call yourself a photographer, and when you're charging a client for your skills there'd better be more to it then that.

The last shoot I did was a family of three: mom, dad, and baby girl. In all honesty, there is no real way to screw that up. They were an extremely photogenic family, and they chose their nicely manicured backyard as the shoot location. I shot for about an hour, and ended with just under a hundred shots.

Then the real work starts: I returned home to do my editing.

First of all, I deleted any photos that were grossly out of focus, which brought me down about eighty shots. Not bad. After going through the remaining photos, I found myself with about thirty-five photos that I believe delivered the wow factor I'm looking for. Burn to disk. Deliver to client. Done!

Or so I thought.

During the shoot and just after, I showed a few of the shots to the clients on the camera LCD, just to give them a small taste and make sure I was still capturing in the style that they wanted. This is something I always do in shoots; clients are usually a bit apprehensive, and nobody is going to be as picky about their appearance as they are, so giving them a little taste is not a bad thing.

But with this particular shoot, my clients took that little taste a bit further. They remembered some of the shots I had shown them, which I was not happy enough with to include on the disk, and asked after them.

So we went through the rest of the photos together, I was stunned when they specifically requested copies of another twenty shots or so. Especially when dealing with a nine-month-old baby, there's always an element of surprise with candid shooting, and you can end up with some (shall we say) "unusual" facial expressions. These were shots that I took out, but when we went over the photos a second time, the parents thought that these expressions were natural and adorable. Even if they were kind of funny, they were shots the parents wanted to keep.

I've already talked about how it's important to keep your client in the loop when choosing the circumstances of a photo shoot, and this just goes to show how important it is to have the client's feedback. In the future, I'll try to include the client in the editing process as well. It's still important to go through and cut out any blurry or out-of-focus shots first, but when it comes to subject matter, who is the photographer to judge? Again, it's important to remember the client knows what they like; you only think you do.

Remember, as always, the client needs to be in charge -- especially with candid photography. This can be a hard place to work from, but clients are starting to look for an "interactive" experience with a photographer, instead of the traditional studio shoot. All too often you'll be the only one interacting with your photographs, and you won't always have the opportunity to ask your subject what they think of the final piece. When you can ask a second opinion, do so. Involving the client will end in a more relaxed atmosphere, better photographs and a completely customized experience for your client.

Giving control to the client: candid photography

As a photographer there are many clients that we meet with on a regular basis. You might be a studio photographer and have people come to you. Maybe you're a magazine or newspaper photographer who freelances for a variety of publications. Or maybe, like me, you do a little bit of everything and wear a variety of hats. This week I did some portrait work, and I discovered that I'm photographer who prefers candid photos to formal poses.

Candid portraiture is a bit of an emerging area of photography, and the type of portrait photography I like looking at and shooting best. There are some very special shots out there to take if you watch for them and are ready to shoot, and I find that catching candid moments can be far more effective than putting people in poses and expecting them to smile.

The problem with candid portraiture, however, is relaying that style to a prospective client. When people hear the phrase "portrait photographer," their first thought is a studio environment -- and it takes some time for them to wrap their head around this candid philosophy.

I met with clients the other day who fell into this type of category. This wasn't their first time hiring a professional photographer, and they actually have a portrait sitting two or three times a year. They've had the studio experience, had portraits taken on a cruise ship, and a variety of portrait experiences. Our session together was definitely not their first time at the rodeo.

But before this, they had always been told where to be, how to stand, when to smile, what to do with their hands -- and so on. Do they have some amazing shots to show? Absolutely. That style of photography produces very nice, traditional shots that will stand up to the test of time.

But that's not my style of portrait. I'm a candid photographer, and I don't want to control anything.

So when they asked me where I preferred to do the photo shoot, I gave them an answer they probably weren't expecting.

"I've only known you folks for about five minutes," I said. "What gives me the right to tell you what you will like in an environment? What are your ideas?"

What a difference that made in the rest of our time together.

After they warmed up to the fact that they were in charge and I was there to capture their moments without interfering, the ideas came flooding out. Given the chance to explore and make their own decisions, they came up with about a thousand concepts and ideas in terms of locations, clothing choices, and subjects -- meaning their dogs were included in the photos.

This is great creatively speaking, because they'll end up with exactly what they want. But on the other side of things, this is also a great place to be in as a business: we likely won't be able to tackle all these ideas in one session, and assuming they're pleased with how the photos turn out the first time, they'll automatically turn into repeat customers. They'll not only be pleased with how the photos turned out, but proud of the role they played in the shoot -- meaning the photos will hopefully be passed around more so than they would normally and the name of my business will spread by word of mouth.

Keep this in mind. Find your niche market, study it, create it if you need to, and ultimately stay true to it. As I've said before, there are certain aspects of your business that define you as a professional. Stay true to those areas, so when a client hears about you and your work they will get the same experience and energy you provided for the person they heard about you from.