Scott Kelby's Light It. Shoot It. Retouch It. Live! Tour Lands in Toronto

Today is going to start out as a normal day for me, get up and out of the house at the usual time, head down to the train station to catch the usual train and arrive at Union Station in downtown Toronto with all of the other "train zombies." But for this day, and this day only, that's where my normal routine takes a left turn... a left turn towards the Convention Centre instead of Bay Street.

Today I'm heading to see Scott Kelby's Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It Live tour. Toronto is one of only three stops in Canada, the others are Calgary on July 21st, and Vancouver on July 22nd. The Toronto session is also sold out so it's going to be a full house. There's still space available for Calgary and Vancouver. You can find out more and register at Kelby Training.

 Cheers!

DC

Happy Canada Day Everyone!

Extra nice that this year Canada Day falls on a Friday, which means a long weekend. Started the day with our annual Canada Day 5k race down by the lake. Beautiful sunny morning, clear blue sky... not a bad way to start.

Cheers!

DC

50th Anniversary Couple

A couple of weeks ago I photographed a couple for their 50th Anniversary. This was no ordinary couple; it was my parents who will be celebrating their 50th Wedding Anniversary in June. So first of all I have to say Happy Anniversary!

My mother had talked about getting a current photo for the occasion so I decided to turn the living room into a makeshift studio and invite them up. Besides, it’s not every day the kid gets to be the director and tell the parents what to do.

I was told that I only had 30 minutes as they were on tight schedule (you know how retired people are). So we got started and did some typical stand up poses first and then they got somewhat comfortable on the floor for some sitting shots, both done against a simple backdrop.

I also wanted to do something a little more casual so we headed to the kitchen as we have a large set of sliding glass doors going out into the back yard, which let in a lot of light, so I was hoping to use that to my advantage.

Set-up... I was basically using 2 lights, both SB900s. My main light was the 24 in. Lastolite Easy Box and my fill came from a small shoot through umbrella. In the last 2 photos, I used just the umbrella as my main.

Oh yeah… I did get this all done within 30 minutes so they were able to keep to their busy social schedule.

Cheers!

DC

St. Louis and The Flash Bus Tour 2011

I took a short trip to St. Louis last week. Why St. Louis? It was the last chance to catch David Hobby and Joe McNally and their Flash Bus Tour 2011. One day with these two and your brain goes into sensory overload... kinda like when your SB900 hits that thermal cut-off point...and then explodes into tiny little pieces.

True to form, David Hobby put it in manual and took on the morning with a balanced and methodical approach laying out his key rules for layering with light. Then in the afternoon McNally took the stage... took a few pot shots at Hobby, and then as he tweeted earlier in the day, went completely TTL haywire. You know that Hulk roller coaster at Universal Islands of Adventure park in Orlando? It goes from 0 to 40 mph in like 2 seconds... well that's what happened next, the only difference was the roller coaster only lasts 2 minutes, whereas Joe kept this up for next few hours.

Here are couple of quick snaps of David explaining one of his location set-ups, and Joe working it with Mike Cali along with some help from Drew Gurian. Both Mike and Drew were working hard and moving fast just trying to keep up.

I flew into St. Louis late Sunday afternoon and had a little bit of time to do some shooting the night before the session. However, it was overcast for most of that night and things came out somewhat flat. While I liked the composition of what I was shooting, I decided that black and white would be the best way to deal the flat grey sky. I think it was a good decision.

Enjoy!

DC