Running On Fumes

I am exhausted!  But I've had the most fulfilling day shooting.  I really start to wonder if it'd be possible to do this all the time and make a living at it.  My good friend Blair and I made plans this year to photograph the Ice Racing that takes place out at Chippewa.  He let me test out his 200mm for this and I spent the afternoon giggling with joy as we wandered up and down the bank overlooking the race track.  It was a perfect afternoon - overcast with lots of blue and grey in the skies which really helped with the lighting of all the snow.   For my first time out shooting fast cars I am just pleased with my efforts!  Here's some of the best shots I got.  I took over 900!  Culling them wasn't as bad as i thought.

Nemo

Once a week I indulge in a music project with my good friend Ken.  We've written material over the past 10 years and have been making an effort to practice them up and start playing live.  Here's one of the first songs we wrote.  It's called Nemo and it's theme is about escaping society.  Life can get so overbearing with all the bad news, dictators, social problems and overall corruption that sometimes all you want to do is retreat into isolation.  Told from an outside perspective and based on Captain Nemo we touch on his initial rational for wanting to dive deep down into the sea.

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.

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.