Jun
17
Here’s the link to the best photos according to Photo District News magazine. There’s some amazing work there so totally worth the click. Even with the utterly atrocious Flash interface (PDN needs to get with the times…and some designers).
Jun
13
I’ve been wanting to upgrade the focusing screen on my camera (original Canon 5D) for the longest time and I finally got around to doing it. Since some of you out there might also be interested in getting a nice grid in your viewfinder instead of just focusing points I thought I would shoot a little video while I installed the new screen.
I have a Canon 5D (original) and this couldn’t have been easier. Canon makes the whole process painless and even though you are actually moving things around inside the camera body, if you take it slow and like me use a cotton glove, you should be done in less time than it has taken you to read this post. Here’s the process in 1 minute.
Click here for HD quality video or watch below in regular quality.
Jun
08
I’m excited to see one of my photographs has made an appearance in Pacific Yachting magazine. It’s from a race I covered for my friend Court a couple of months ago. Always good to see your work in print or web.
Jun
05
“Murphy was an optimist”. I read this once about Murphy’s Law and I confirmed that statement a couple of weeks ago when my Canon 5D mirror detached from its support inside my camera. Like the Old Spice guy says, I was on a boat with no replacement camera and shooting a race.
To say that I was shocked when it happened would be an understatement. The first sign of trouble happened when I took a shot and my viewfinder showed a distorted image. The next shot I took my viewfinder showed half the image in the viewfinder. This made me very nervous. I was sure my lens had failed somehow which would be bad but I had 2 more lenses with me so I could at least keep taking photos. I took the lens off of my camera and like a jack in a box, surprise!…the mirror came sliding out of the camera body. That’s when I knew I was in trouble.
I had never seen or heard about this before. I checked to see if the mirror was held inside the camera by some sort of clip system but I saw that it was actually held by glue. Glue? With the number of times that the mirror flips up and down and the speed at which it does I was very surprised to see it was held with glue. So now I’m stuck on a boat shooting a race for a friend with no camera and it’s only 30 minutes into the 4 hour excursion. Again, not good. Lucky for me another person on the boat had brought her camera and it was a Canon, the only “luck” I had that day. It was a Rebel…something or other and she generously let me use it for the rest of the day. Everything worked out and I ended up shooting with my lenses which helped with the quality of the shots and I had a great time the rest of the day although in the back of my mind I was worried about the mirror situation.
The following Monday I called Canon Canada and found out that the mirror detachment problem was happening to many owners of 5D’s, that they were aware of the problem and that they would fix it for free. Free is good. That was great news. The repair would have been around $300 plus shipping back and forth. After a couple of days I got a shipping courier code via email, I packaged my camera with bubble wrap and off it went to Ontario to get repaired at the mothership. 10 days later my camera was back with the mirror glued to the support (with what I hope is the strongest glue known to mankind) and I also got a new focusing screen. I guess mine got scratched when the mirror came off so that was also replaced. I’ve been shooting without a problem since then and everything is back to normal. Except…
I’ve been spoiled. While my camera was being repaired I had to rent a 5D Mark II for a job and I fell in love with it. The camera is very similar while shooting but the file size and quality made me wish I had a couple thousand dollars laying around to upgrade to the Mark II. Reality doesn’t support this fantasy right now though so I’ll have to start saving and maybe get a deal on the Mark II when the Mark III comes out this summer (if the rumors are true). Meanwhile my trusty 5D is back in my hands working perfectly.
May
31
Here’s just a couple of the images from the makeup session with Livia. What you don’t see is the time it takes to make it look natural or dramatic. Great stuff.
May
16
This spring semester I had the pleasure of having Liv as a student in my Photoshop class. She’s a makeup artists and a few days ago she mentioned she would be entering a contest to showcase her skills and asked everyone in the class if we could help her get some shots for her. We all got together last week and had a blast watching the process Liv goes through when creating beautiful makeup as well as captured some cool images. Here are some behind the scenes images, some of the final shots I’ll post in a couple of days.
