Where's My Head At: January 2020

Thursday, January 30, 2020

Floodway Walk With McGruff

The past several days have been a bleak dreary grey experience. I had just finished a 2 day business trip that had exhausted me mentally and physically. Brain overloaded from inspiring and technical presenters as well as body fatigue caused by so much sitting plus a plane delay returning home. I desired nothing more than some solitude in nature, however I had only a limited period of time to fit it in.

2020 will see me take even more time for myself to re-charge my body and soul. Hiking and photography are my number one passions at this time and they are now a top priority. Almost everything can work around it. I will spare you the psychology and physiological details of why I think it's vital.

I haven't walked the city groomed trail of one of the flood-ways leading to Lake Superior, so only having a short afternoon of time I made my way there. I took some 'okay' shots, played with Nikon's 'snap bridge' feature and shot some video to mess around with some colour settings.

The shots I took were 'minimalist' as the grey clouds muted everything. Lots of tree lines and white snow covered areas.

Snapbridge is a new feature I'm tinkering with that allows me to control the camera from my phone so i can take 'advanced selfies'.

The b-roll shots was me testing out a 'flat' colour scheme in the camera to see how well it would colour grade with Davinci Resolve. I've been digging some more and Nikon has a video 'look' by default that has very dark and contrasty edges. Color grading that is a bit trickier so a suggestion i read was to try 'flat' which has a bit of 'log' footage look which allows one to manipulate it easier in post.

Saturday, January 25, 2020

Event Photography

A friend of mine in Page38 let me shoot his band the past weekend at the Foundry. Low light photography is definitely challenging - but man it was so much fun. I really like capturing moments of artists really expressing themselves. It's infectious. I really enjoyed the experience of photographing this band. I hope to get out more and shoot local artists. These were the best of the lot. I took a ton but most were unusable as my ISO settings were so high that the images were way too grainy. I settled on black and white as I was able to control the noise a bit better. Fast shutter speeds and low light is challenging. Might be saving up for a faster lens if i'm going to pursue this.

First Go At Hockey Photography

Family from Manituwadge were in Thunder Bay for the annual Robin's Hockey Tournament. I'm always looking for opportunities to shoot. These turned out pretty good! Room for improvement always but this was a good start.

When the Light Strikes You Gotta Get That Shot

Sunset right now is just after 5PM. As I watch the little hand kill the day I glance out my office window and see some magnificent red sunlight reflect off the snow. I can sense this will be a great sunset. I pack up my stuff and almost sprint to the car. A picturesque park up on the hill over looking the bay is just blocks away.

I setup my tripod, dial in my settings and take a few test shots to make sure everything looks good. I decide to have a go at a panorama. The Sleeping Giant (the mountain formation that juts out into the lake looks like a person resting peacefully) is pretty big in scope and a panoramic of this scene is definitely worthy.