…and I are going to spend some quality time at Keegans. I hope that Donna is working cause lots O coffee sounds good.

This is now the best photo of a model that I have ever taken :)


Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/125 sec
Aperture: f 4.5
Lens: 28-80mm @30mm
Date Taken: Oct 29 2003

It is a shot from the photo shoot that I had with Justyne today. I bought a slave device so I can have two flashes (Thanks so much for the loan Mike) and it seemed to work out pretty good studio wise (photos to come) but this shot came from me juggling around the two flashes on the camera. The location is in the back stairwell of our building. As we were walking out to go down the stairs our neighbors came out of the elevator. After the typical greetings that you share with your neighbors, he looks at me, at Justine, and then at my camera with two large speedlights attached with brackets and crazy stuff. (it actually looks impressive) and says “hey are you a photographer?” “Ya” I replied “what tipped you off” :) Funny stuff I tell you! Flash number one was the smaller Vivitar 2800 speedlight that had a blue diffuser plate on. I had it mounted on the hot shoe of the 10D pointed at about a 45 degree angle at the ceiling. It is this flash that accounts for the blue tinge to the walls and ceiling. The other flash was a really old (but fantastic) Vivtar 273 connected to the Canon 10D with a pc sync cord and was mounted on a side of the camera using an L bracket. It was pointed straight at the ceiling and was unfiltered & undiffused. This was a shot that when I took it I said “oh that was way over exposed” and well I like it just the way that it is. It is photos like this that reminds me of why I wanna be a photographer. Anyway I should get to bed soon for I have an even more exciting day tomorrow starting with a photo shoot with Adam followed by a photo shoot with Erin. so on that note g-night

So I am sitting in the star bucks on 170th and Man for those of you that are not in Edmonton or haven’t left your basements all day, it is snowing like crazy. I haven’t seen snow like this since March 2 (I only know the date only through a set of odd circumstances. I am not like a crazy grandpa that knows all the dates of all the major weather occurrences for the past 50 years) it’s sad to think that the non winter time in Edmonton is less then the winter time. I am sitting here waiting to meet With Justyne, a model from OMP. Oh and here she is…..

…. so the coffee went well she was a fun person that reminds me strongly of some one that I know only I cant think of whom. Ahhh another week of playing the who is that person game. We are going to do some studio work tomorrow during the day. We are working on a gothic theme so we will see how that works out. I spent the day working with numbers and figuring out business stuff. I got the copy for the Superpages ad and it was good except the background that was supposed to be white was not. So I noted the changes and fired it back to them. I do fear about the huge disclaimers everywhere that said if we don’t hear from you by X date we will print the ad as is. I guess I will bug my sales rep in a few days to make sure that they got the requested changes. I would just relax and let things take there own course but I find that every time I expect people to do their jobs and things to wok as they should they do not. I have often wondered if it is my interference that causes the issues or if the issues are always there. The limited study that I have done would say that it is not this way and that one has to be extremely proactive about everything :) But I am going to drive home soon and then perhaps for coffee at Keegans or something. Ohh I got a chance to do some photos for a Home builder. I meet on Monday to discuss the details and what have you, it will be fun to do some commissioned work. To practice those skills But the Starbucks coffee has officially given me a huge case of Gut Rot. So I am going to leave half a cup here and go home :)

“and I was curious how they got everything in french but then I realised they’re the same boxes as us only they turned them around on the shelves”
heheh

Love ya babe!

So I am hanging out in my kitchen drinking a beer (don’t ask) Miranda has disappeared to Montreal and I am here being a bachelor. SO I spent the first 24 hours that I was alone cleaning our house like from top to bottom, because I am going to paint some walls later this month and that is much more easily done when the place is clean :) I am kinda liking being alone but man o man I miss Miranda. I am getting lots of stuff done but I would prefer to be less productive and have Miranda here. Oh well what can you do :)
On a totally different note. I have hooked up with two models from OMP and have shoots and Coffee meets booked with them both. I have Erin this Thursday and I meet with Justyne tomorrow :) So we will see how that all goes. I also meet with Adam today to yak about doing some head shots over a cup of Starbucks swill. I hope to do a whack of photo shoots this week because I need the portfolio work and what have you. I also am looking for a new full/part time job to help pay the bills and stuff whatever I can get done this week the better. I have been working like mad on all these websites that I have going on as well so I am busy which I suppose is a good thing when one is Mirandaless :) I hope to have a few more ideas to Andr?a at Ruckus by the end of the week, as well as have a lot done on the Timberwolf site. Our site is basically done except for the content which is far from finished, another thing that I get to add on to my list of things.
Sunday was take Miranda and Scotty to the airport so they can fly to Montr?al day. On the way we stopped at a Booster juice for fruity goodness, and in the parking lot was a cool old Caddy. So while Scotty and Miranda were inside I hung out and took pictures.

After I dropped Miranda and Scotty of at the Airport on Sunday and on my drive home I spotted a cool old car parked off of Calgary Trail. (I mean Gateway Boulevard damn them and there dumb renaming of streets) so I fired around to take a closer look.

While I was driving down the alley to get to where the aforementioned car was I saw two others in a nearby auto body parking lot.

I had good times to say the least

So on Saturday we were driving around whyte ave area and there was a march against the Occupation of Iraq, that I had read about but the info that I had was that people were going to meet at Gazebo at 2pm. Well it was 20 after 1 and I was no where near Gazebo so it was still somewhat of a surprise to me. I stopped and grabbed a few shots but these are the only good two.

But I think it is food time so I am going to make something to eat now enjoy.

This sorta reminds me of See Magazine Funny shit.
But on another note this OMP Membership kicks ass. In two days I have had three models email me from it. Wow! I have emailed them all back and will see what happens with that. We are off to Westlock this afternoon for Miranda’s Baba’s birthday. We are having dinner at the Westlock Inn, and then we are taking family photos after the fact so it will be good times for me.
Today’s picture comes from the other day with the VW bug at southgate

Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 400
Shutter: 1/250 sec
Aperture: f5.6
Lens: 75-300mm @300mm
Date Taken: Oct 21 2003

thanks to asylus for the link this is too cool.
Me if I was on southpark.

So in other news I am to have a photo shoot with Krysten today but as things go on it is looking a lot like that is going to be a studio shoot :) We will see how the day progresses. I was up to a crazy time last night working on my rphoto site. It will be done soon I think however not soon enough. I had a model email me from OMP yesterday asking about portfolio work. I emailed her back and said sure so we will see if that turns into anything. But I have a large bowl of special K that calling my name so I will post later.

Today was a good day. I got up at 5 min to 8am and while brushing my teeth I packed my bags for the day and feed the cat. I drove Miranda to work shortly after that. You see today was the day that Mike had to take his car in to Southgate Volkswagen for some service & my task today was to pick him up. While I was waiting in the parking lot I grabbed a few shots of the dew covered Beetle next to me.


Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/45 sec
Aperture: f 5.6
Lens: 75-300mm @300mm
Date Taken: Oct 21 2003

We dropped Jetta off at her aunts and we had the entire morning to ourselves. So we drove about here are there to see what we could see. What we saw first was this huge stream of water that was rushing out of the ground like a geyser. There was as near as we could tell a water main break that didn’t just break and leak, nooooo It broke and pushed thought the asphalt and shot 20 to 30 feet in the air. So we stopped to take pictures

Near 11:30 we went to get Jared from school and take him to join Jetta at their aunts place. It was after that Mike mentioned that he hasn’t been to the new Ikea yet.


Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/125 sec
Aperture: f 5.6
Lens: 28-80mm @53mm
Date Taken: Oct 21 2003

So after resisting the urge to eat copious amounts of Swedish meat balls and plates of the crazy good torte, we got the hell out before money was spent. :)


Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/750 sec
Aperture: f 5.6
Lens: 28-80mm @75mm
Date Taken: Oct 21 2003

But I am really tired and though I really wanna write some more, and less like a four year old telling of his summer vacation, I am going to leave it like it is and go to bed.

Working on Per’s Last Shoot. I see that I used the 300mm lens almost exclusively and you can really see the difference in the quality of the shots. I have been shy of this lens since I got the canon 10D because of the whole multiplier thing. Oh I Just realized that most of you have no Idea what I am talking about :) Well in a nutshell because the Canon 10D has a smaller “film plate” then a 35mm camera (its 24mm I think) the focal length is slightly different. There is what they call a 1.6X multiplier on whatever lens you have on it, so my 70 to 300mm lens becomes a 112 to 480mm lens. So this can makes it hard to fit everything in sometimes. :) However, I think that I am going to just back up more because I really like the look of these shots.


Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 200
Shutter: 1/125 sec
Aperture: f 16
Lens: 75-300mm @75mm
Date Taken: Oct 17 2003

har Har
K i am going to bed for real now :)

So the Week has been mostly uneventful as I am basically unemployed and haven’t much else to do but business planning and the like. I did however use the time to get caught up on the plethora of untouched pictures and the other things that I have needed to do for months. I am also doing a webpage for the tour company that I worked for this summer so that should help us out financially a bunch. It is something that I have been working on for quite a while but I haven’t really had the time to get down and do it. I am also doing a free webpage for Ruckus because I am a nice guy and they have my prints up in store and stuff. I meet with Dave and Andrea this morning to talk to them about what they want, and in a manner that is highly unlike me I actually plan to get it done soon. (and Mike I am also on top of yours as well Trust me!) You see it is a kerfuckle of grand proportions. I love designing pages and doing the layout and well everything that goes with making a web page, everything except the customers that is. I really like to be free to make what I want and what I deem to be good but when we did it for money, the client or whatnot always got their sticky little fingers in the pot and would ruin everything. I have made like over 20 websites for clients that were paying gigs, and I wouldn’t even think about including any of them in a portfolio (except for the foster parents Assoc). I think that is why I redesign my sites every two weeks :) I guess the problem is that I look at them more as functional art them advertising, so when people who are most likely really good at what they do but really suck at design start sticking there 2 cents in I get a little annoyed. I suppose I could always tell them that there ideas are not in line with the design but they are after all paying for it and I do want to make them like it. Input is good and I am not perfect by any stretch of the word but I some of the things that people have asked me are crazy. My favorite is “that is great but can we make it bright pink and flashing.” Arrggg. Maybe I will do websites for worthy causes for free as long as they keep out of the design or something.
I had a photo shoot with Per yesterday as well. We did a little studio stuff & then we went out and about. I haven’t looked at the shots yet but I am sure that they rock as Per is a born model. It was actually entertaining because we went down around the Church that is across the street from the Edmonton Journal at like 5:00pm so there was all these people going home and the traffic was its usual craziness and here we were ignoring them all shooting pictures. It was fun. Miranda and I went for dinner with her Mother and Roy today; we went to Original Joes bar and grill near the Provincial Museum. It was good eats and beer, however after the meal Miranda and I promptly came home and crashed out and slept to at least 10pm. it was crazy. So being that we are now fully rested and all we decided that going to Keegans to work would be a great idea so here we are wide awake in our booth at Keegans typing and clicking away like mad. I am actually impressed to see that Miranda is out and about at 2:00 in the morning :) and here I am writing in my journal drinking coffee :)
Today’s picture of the day was actually taken on Friday. I was getting a coffee and some milk from a 7-11 and grabbed this from the car on my way out of the parking lot. (& no I didn’t take them off the hook they were just that way)


Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 400
Shutter: 1/45 sec
Aperture: f 5.6
Lens: 28-80mm @55mm
Date Taken: October 16 2003

I bet if people were to follow me around and watch me they would think I was an absolute lunatic. I often will see something that I want to photograph and slam on my breaks cross over three lanes, and pull up in such a manner that I done have to get out not a big deal except I am a huge fan of symmetry and will often move around till I find the ‘sweet spot’ and I can often be found moving my car three inches to the left & two forward to get the perfect angle and what have you. I am an odd one sometimes. I am actually really odd and I have been noticing it lately. I think I have a crazy visual recognition disorder or something. Hhahha I just thought of the movie “The Royal Tenenbaums” and the kid that Bill Murray was studying with the crazy disorder. But I think I am like that for real. I will be looking at something and see the silly stupid part while missing the obvious. For example I am an awful web surfer. For when I am at a website I can’t find the link that I am looking for even though it is flashing and bright red in 72pt font but I notice every word of the copyright that is at the bottom of the page in 2pt font. (it drives Miranda nuts) Or we will be driving around and I pick out the guy out of a crowd that is leaning on a light post smoking a cigarette while speeding by in a car and totally miss the bright spray painted pink car that passed us at a snails pace. When I was a kid my mother would send me to the garage to get a screwdriver or what have you and I would look and look and look and not be able to find it, but when she went out it would be sitting right out in the open. I don’t know maybe I am normal but I miss the blatantly obvious and see the obscure. I also have this crazy visual memory of places and things. I can see a picture that was taken in an place or an area and know where it is and how to get there. Perhaps I am overreacting. However, Miranda is ready to go now as it is quite late so I will continue this all at home.

Ok so here I am at home now I also bought dome peppers on Friday as well. I am trying to reproduce my pepper series using the 10D so they can be larger then an 8X10 if needed. I however bought the peppers on sale so they weren’t as perfect as the first ones. These were overripe and starting to get all wrinkly, we will see what I can get from them. I shot everything with the camera on a tripod and connected directly to my laptop. I was then able to use the remote capture software to do test shots and see the shots that I took in full detail before moving on to the next pose. It is an awesome way to go about doing things if you are shooting things that don’t get restless and move :) You can really relax and take your time to get the right shot.


Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/180 sec
Aperture: f 32
Lens: 75-300mm @300mm
Date Taken: October 16 2003



Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/180 sec
Aperture: f 32
Lens: 75-300mm @75mm
Date Taken: October 16 2003

you can really see the wrinkles that are on the red one in the second photo, but what can you do when they were a dollar fifty a pound instead of four. I will buy some better peppers later and try again. I suppose that I should think about going to bed sometime but I am really not tired in the least. We are going to Westlock tomorrow to have a belated Thanksgiving dinner at Miranda’s grandmothers, so I do need to be a functional human. :)

Quiz
1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Secular Humanism (97%)
3. Liberal Quakers (87%)
4. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (85%)
5. Neo-Pagan (72%)
6. Theravada Buddhism (69%)
7. Nontheist (66%)
8. New Age (61%)
9. Bah?’? Faith (53%)
10. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (50%)
11. Mahayana Buddhism (47%)
12. Taoism (46%)
13. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (46%)
14. Reform Judaism (43%)
15. Orthodox Quaker (41%)
16. Jehovah’s Witness (39%)
17. New Thought (39%)
18. Sikhism (34%)
19. Scientology (33%)
20. Jainism (32%)
21. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (31%)
22. Hinduism (20%)
23. Seventh Day Adventist (15%)
24. Orthodox Judaism (13%)
25. Eastern Orthodox (11%)
26. Islam (11%)
27. Roman Catholic (11%)

“The Lord spoke to me and said that he will lift you up into the light of heaven and fill you with his love for a single moment which will seem like an eternity, then when you are in rapture, he will cast you down into the jaws of hell to suffer like no one has ever suffered before. As you fall into the jaws of hell, you will be whipped and flagellated by the souls of our brave men in uniform are rising to heaven. “

An excerpt from the hate mail that is to be found at www.Datejesus.com Thanks Dar for reminding me of a great site. Another that I particularly enjoy & is fun filled for the entire famliy Jesus Dressup. The Halloween version @ http://www.jesusdressup.com/ & the original can be found here. I would like the fridge magnets personally.

So what do you get when you take a Human loving Robot, his retired porn star girlfriend, her promiscuous little sister, and mix them with a cast of other characters that would include Indie Rock Peter, Metal Steve, Personified computers & toasters? What about if we topped it of with an assortment of man crushing & closeted gay robots and a cute pixel kitten? You would have Diesel Sweeties I spent about a hour at 4 this morning reading these crazy comics they are Good times indeed.

My political compass
Economic Left/Right: -6.12
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.46
http://www.politicalcompass.org/

So I roll my ass out of bed this morning my usual 5 min to the time that I am to drive my darling wife to work, I fall into my clothes, and grab my keys and we are off. Miranda who I am sure has been up for a least an hour is all ready to go and is tapping her foot at the door while I groggily find my way into my shoes. We walk down the stairs get in to the car, fire it up, push the garage door opener for our parkade, wait for the door. still waiting for the door, The door hasn’t responded, punch the button again, and wait for the door, nothing. MMmmmm…. It is at this time that my sleepy mind has begun to ask all those really hard questions that need to be asked when auto pilot simply isn’t working :)
Brain: Hey why are we just sitting here?
Body: The door isn’t opening.
Brain: Why isn’t the door opening?
Body: I looks like its broken…
you get the idea… to make this silly story end slightly quicker, our garage door to our underground parking stopped working this morning. No big deal except we were unable to get our car out of the garage. It was fixed later that day but I am sure glad that I didn’t need to be anywhere this morning.
I am burning Cd’s like crazy I have burnt about 32 cd’s in the last few days in an effort to reclaim some of my 100gig of HD space. I have many Cd’s left to go. Nothing really exciting today, I got new prints from McBain Camera and made them redo some of the crappy ones from my last order. Worked some more on B-plan and Websites took some more photos of the odd mail box all relatively unexciting

So I know I said that I would post but it would seem that I have lied. Here it is almost a entire week later and I again have not been holding true to my word about posting on a regular basis. To all I am sorry and I will try to do better in the future. I have been busy you see with business stuff and catching up on photos. In fact haven’t even had the opportunity to read anyone else’s blog either, where does the day go? So Miranda and I are at coffee right now and I am just finishing processing the day’s pictures. Can you believe it I am actually almost up to date on the digital photos. I can hardly remember the last time that I was this on top of my shit. I may be able to get back to a “Pic of the day” like way back when I first started to blog photos. So today I finished up a few things here and there, worked on the rphoto.com website. I haven’t even finished the original site and I am already replacing it with an entirely new design. All this is irrelevant to any of you reading because not only will you not see the new design till it’s done but most of you haven’t even seen the original design to compare. But if you could you would agree that the newer design is a great improvement.
I dropped more framed prints of at ruckus tonight; I meet Dave and signed some contracts and such. So will be 7 prints up there till about the middle of December, which is very cool :)
I talked more the a company that makes signs about getting a rphoto sign for when you come in the door of the place. For those that have seen the digs I would love to have a huge backlight sign that is made out of bronze or copper and aluminum that is an exact representation of my logo for riht when you come in the door. I have been yakking it up with this sign company that makes all sorts of crazy signs but after their initial quote of over a thousand bux we will be looking into more ingenuous ways of doing it our self :) any one have a welder or a cutting torch that they want to lend me:)
I finally got my sunglasses fixed today I have been forgetting to take them in since heritage days, and I finally got them there today I am going to enjoy making that task off as done in Outlook as it has been poping up every damn day. I drove about a lot today and took a few shots from here and there. This one is a shot of a burnt out dumpster in the back alley behind London Drugs on 51st.


Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 400
Shutter: 1/60 sec
Aperture: f 9.5
Lens: 28-80mm @35mm
Date Taken: Oct 14 2003

But with out a doubt the days best shot is all thanks to the keen eye of my darling Sundancer, who spotted this from the car as we were driving around.


Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/200 sec
Aperture: f 11
Lens: 28-80mm @40mm
Date Taken: Oct 14 2003

I like this shot however I am going to return tomorrow to grab some more in the daylight. Well my wrist is killing me from typing at the ridiculously high tables at Keegans so I will leave it at that and stop now.

Well I dropped two prints of at Ruckus today but I still need to go in tomorrow to talk about the pricing and do the paperwork for them and such. I have printed and framed these two pictures (for those not in the know Ruckus is on whyte ave near the new Mega tunes 10351 82ave).

So if you like them go down there and BUY THEM !!
Well we will see. I have another Canoe shuttle tomorrow, kind of a special thing where I have to hang about for part of the day. It will be entertaining though. Any who it is finish my supper and Go fer coffee time for me.

So I am sorta busy as of late but I promised that I would post often So to be true to my word I am taking 5 min and Posting some pictures. See it is really nice to have this as a photo journal cause I don’t actually ever have to type any content I can just post a photo. :) kinda like a sitcoms clips show.
This is a shot from one of my wander around and take some photos wanders.


Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/30 sec
Aperture: f 3.5
Lens: 28-80mm @28mm
Date Taken: Oct 02 2003

I was getting milk and saw some peppers and Well here we are. I really like how they are all facing down cept the one lone yellow one.


Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/250 sec
Aperture: f 4.5
Lens: 75-300mm @58mm
Date Taken: Oct 07 2003

These are some shots of a semi-recent photo shoot with Jodie and Per (well it was on the 21 of Sept. See I am getting to things faster) We went out to a field on the outskirts of Edmonton and hung out for a while. But we are going to go fer coffee now but, when we are done there will be a couple of prints for us at London Drugs. :) It was also Per’s B-day yesterday and althought I was unable to make to the E&C for a drink I wish you a happy one


Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/500 sec
Aperture: f 8
Lens: 75-300mm @240mm
Date Taken: Sept 21 2003



Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/125 sec
Aperture: f 6.7
Lens: 28-80mm @28mm
Date Taken: Sept 21 2003



Camera: Canon EOS Canon 10D
ISO: 100
Shutter: 1/350 sec
Aperture: f 6.7
Lens: 75-300mm @210mm
Date Taken: Sept 21 2003