Pictures of Grandparents

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Sadly, I was not into photography before 3 of my 4 grandparents passed away. My mothers father is still with us, and had his 90th birthday party a couple of weeks ago. I have been trying to get a good picture of him for quite sometime. I find that people of his generation always move into a serious type look which I wasn’t looking for. I wanted something that still showed life, humor, and fun. With the picture above, I believe I got what I was looking for.

I was waiting in the wings while he talked to friends and family, and at this time, he was less conscious of the camera, and I got the moment I was looking for. I managed to get some pictures of a few other family members as well in those candid moments that don’t result from pointing a camera and saying “smile”.

You may be looking for a different look than what I wanted here, and that’s fine, but I encourage you to get out and take pictures of your grandparents, parents, uncles, or other family members older than you. I take pictures of our extended family’s younger generation all the time, but our older generation deserve a good picture to be remembered by.

St Boniface Cathedral at Night

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I have always liked the St. Boniface Cathedral, or at least what is left of it. I have been trying to photograph it at night for several years now. Every time I am in Winnipeg, something comes up that prevents me from getting there. Usually time. I have even gone to the grounds to find that the lights were not turned on that night!

At least I got there this time. But to do it, I had to borrow an old, slightly broken, and not very stable tripod I found in my parents basement. It was better than nothing. I got a couple of pictures, but didn’t hang out quite as long as I would have liked. I will try again to get there a bit earlier too. I didn’t get enough blue in the sky for what I was looking for.

Anyway, the Cathedral you see is just a facade. It was burned twice. The structure that remains was built in 1906. In 1972 a new Cathedral was built on the grounds. It appears to be inside some of the original stone building, behind this facade.

The Cathedral is within what is considered the “french section” of Winnipeg. There are many other French cultural and historical buildings within the St. Boniface  area of Winnipeg. I grew up at the other end (south) of St. Boniface.

One thing I appreciate about the location, is that photography appears to be encouraged. There are lights on the building, and photographers always seem to be around. The grounds also contain a grave yard, but no one guarding or ushering people away. On the grounds, Louis Riel is buried, a very important  French/Metis historical figure. I would imagine that all Canadian kids, not just Manitobans would have learned about him in school.

Some of this information was taken from this wikipedia article

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Nikki and Steve’s Engagement Pictures

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I have a location in the Nicollet Island area that I like to take pictures at. I usually think of it as a place for Senior Photos, but Nikki and Steve wanted something a little different, and I think it worked out great for them. Their wedding is coming up soon in August too, which should be a fun time.

Nikki and Steve were a lot of fun to shoot. We walked around the area to a few different places to take pictures. Did I mention it was hot last weekend. We were out in the morning, so it wasn’t the hottest part of the day, but it got to 90 degrees mid afternoon. They were great sports about being out in the heat.

Anyway, here are a few pictures from the day last weekend.

Looking forward to the wedding in August! See you then.

Brainerd Racing

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I was up at the Brainerd International Raceway (BIR) to shoot some pictures for Pat Rounds, the Orange 27 car. It was a lot of fun. It was quite a bit different type of shooing than I was used to. I got to work on my panning again.

I found out which corners where going to be where the action was, and tried to set up there, but I always seemed to be one corner ahead of where something exciting happened. You really need to be paying attention too. At one point in the race, the start officials had to hit the deck when a car came straight at them. And I had been right there earlier in the day!

Panning consistently was key to getting a lot of the shots, but these guys are almost always accelerating or breaking or shifting, so it was hard to stick with them smoothly. I think I got some that worked though.

At the beginning of the day, I saw another photographer with a longer lens, and went to say hi. He was inside the “hot zone” where spectators were not allowed to be, but I had been put on the pit crew for Pat, so I was supposed to be allowed to be there. Anyway, this photographer wouldn’t shake my hand, and wouldn’t give me the time of day, other than to tell me that if I wanted to shoot there I needed a media pass. I told him I had a pit crew pass, and he told me that wasn’t good enough. Fine.

I headed over to the registration tent, and asked for a media pass. They said sure, I should them a business card and $15 dollars. I was now legit. I headed back to show off my pass, but he was gone. Didn’t see him for the rest of the day. It was helpful to have though. I would walk up to the race volunteers, say “I have a media pass, can I shoot from over there?” and I always got to go in front of the fence, but behind the concrete barrier.

Well, I think I will try to get back sometime, just not sure when. I have lots of the pictures up on photoshelter, and I trying to contact some of the racers. Here is a small sampling.

New Version of bgStretcher2

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Yea, we have a new version of the bgStretcher2 script. The version has been bumped from 2.0 to 2.1 and it is available for download right now. See the bgStretcher page.

What is bgStretcher?

Well, check out the official page, but simply, it is a way to have a javascript based photo gallery and slideshow that appears full screen in your browser.

So, what’s new?

  • First, there was a general rewrite to clean up and remove duplicate code.
  • The code was documented, so it should be easier to follow.
  • Fixed the issues people were having when clicking on albums quickly. (The slideshow would appear to stop working)
  • Moved some setup code from the html page to the bgStretcher2.js script.

You should be able to just drop the new bgStretcher2.js file in. I would advise cleaning up the html page that you are using to avoid conflicts. I have moved a lot of the setup code that was here into the main script file, which makes the html look much cleaner and simpler.

Taking a Shot at Shooting Baseball

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I had some time before my daughters soccer practice started, so I thought I would take a shot at some baseball pictures. All were taken with a 70-200 at f/4.

The first thing I did was try to get some images of the pitcher. To do this I was standing just off to the side, behind the plate, and shooting through the fence. With the sun shade off, and the lens right against the fence, they come out fine. I don’t see any lines.

Well, those aren’t too exciting really. I need some real action. Well, wouldn’t you know it, a pop up that the catcher and the pitcher ran to get.

I got it, I got it! Boom!

I almost had a great shot there. Two players colliding, the ball in the picture, and the focus on the back of the closest player. Oh well. Have to use a smaller focal length, or get the person looking at me in focus.

Then I moved over to the first base line. There was an opening in the gate that I could peek through. They walked a player to first, so no play at the plate. Then this:

Again, I like the shot. I was waiting for this one. The guy was taking quite a lead, and I was just waiting for the pitcher to throw it to first. But, as luck would have it, the pitcher doesn’t throw to first very well. This is the actual picture I got.

Somehow I don’t think that cutting someone off at the head is a good sports shot. I was surprised how sharp the image looked when I cropped 2/3 of the picture away, but I can’t imagine it prints all that well.

Anyway, that was only about 15min of shooting, and quite fun. I am definitely going to try to get back and shoot some more.

Ben and Alexa’s Wedding

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This last weekend, I had some family getting married. Alexa, who I have known for a while and is great with our girls (She watched Hanna Montana with them) and Ben, my wife’s cousin had their big day this past Saturday. My girls were also the flower girls.

I was not the official photographer, and so I tried to stay out of their way, and not poach any of their shots, but I was there… and other family members were expecting me to take pictures. I suppose not that many guests at weddings have a 70-200mm lens on their camera, and were playing with a remote flash during the dance, but hey, it was a good opportunity to practice, and this photographer wasn’t doing candids anyway.

I have more pictures up in an album in facebook too if you are interested.

How A Photographer Can Use an iPad

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The main reason that I got an iPad was to present photographs to people. I wanted to use it as an electronic portfolio. That by it’s self would be a pretty good use, but it has come to be so much more useful.

I had photographed a gymnastics event for the Richfield Gymnastics Club, and had taken stills and some video that I put into 7 videos of the event, from rehearsal to warm-ups to the actual event. The videos were put together into a DVD that the club will sell. I could have put the DVD into a computer, and pulled that out, set it on a table, and had people lean over to try to see the screen. Instead, I handed them an iPad with the videos on it and let them hold the device. It makes a world of difference. As the two people I had brought the iPad to show watched the videos, other came and looked over their shoulders. I really think the iPad was more effective than a laptop would be.

I was taking pictures at a wedding this last weekend, and I was not the official photographer, so I had some time in between the ceremony and the reception. I went home, did a quick Lightroom edit, hard drive export, iPad sync, and I was off to the reception. When I got there, I started passing the iPad around. People were flipping out. They loved being able to see pictures of an event they had just attended. Even better, some people hadn’t been able to attend the ceremony, but were at the reception, and were able to see what had just happened.

Later in the evening, after taking some reception and dance shots, I downloaded images from my memory card to the iPad with the camera connection kit, and then made the rounds again. The challenge will be to do the same thing at a wedding where I am the official photographer, and I don’t know most of the people there. I think it is worth giving it a shot though. It was so well received.

I also have images and video at the ready to pull out and show people as a portfolio. I have done this several times where I wouldn’t of likely had a book with me. Instead of just handing out a card and saying check out my website, I can show them the images I have on my site right there.

There are lots of apps that photographers can use that are not just for photographers. I have created blog posts while on the move, checked out Twitter, my RSS feeds, and verified some content from my website. I have even used the iPad via an app called iSSH to get a command prompt at my web service provider and correct some html on my site. Yes you can do these things on a net book, but you can’t do the portfolio things as well.

If I can get it out of the hands of my family, I take where ever I go.