Skills

Two weeks ago, Fanshawe College hosted The London level of the Skills Ontario competition. The competition is comprised of about a dozen categories in the digital and physical trades where high school students compete so they can move on to the Provincial level (there are also prizes when one gets to higher levels). So the students take a day off of school and spend all day competing their respective competitions. This year, I was asked to go represent L.S.C.I. and so a good friend of mine Alexandra Eppel (the subject of the second photograph) and I hopped on a bus before the sun rose March 29th headed for Fanshawe. We spent the day editing a photo for a "client", making a thumbnail contact sheet and above all shooting photos. The criteria for the photos were: they had to be made that day, they had to incorporate the theme "point-of-view" and they all needed to include one of three household objects. The object choices were 1) a feather, 2) a piece of tubing or 3) a water bottle. I chose the latter and had to incorporate it into all of my photos. At the end of the day we needed to have a contact sheet of 24-28 of our photos from the day, one portrait and one 'everyday life' photo utilising the theme and object. At the end of the day, I had these two photos.
Archipelago Photography- islands of thought and image, connected with a name

Spring has Sprung

Finally, after one peculiar winter, it seems as if Spring is here. This is a photo of the first of the crocuses that have popped up in my yard. At my house, crocuses are the very first sign of spring and we always have about a dozen of them come up underneath the tree on my front lawn. As an announcement of spring, and the presentation of a photograph I am happy with, I give you Crocus.
Archipelago Photography- islands of thought and image, connected with a name.

Squak!

Another Toronto Zoo post for you all. This post being about birds, it is necessary to say that every bird is an entirely different photo assignment. Birds will move, turn, and fly away for almost no apparent reason. The huge standing-up bird took me almost fifteen minutes to find a good photo of. And as for the owl, how could you not love the smile on his face? He just makes me want to smile. :)
Archipelago Photography- insulae de cogitum lumenque, maritus cum nomen

Ssssssss

These here, are examples of my favourite animal to photograph. That's right, I love photographing snakes. Snakeskin contains incredible amounts of details and often unique colours and patterns, making for one great subject. Also their type of movement and relaxed positions leave them in visually interesting poses. And finally, my last reason for loving to photograph snakes, is that they are really great models; they don't move much and when they do, it is usually not very fast.
These snakes are all members of the Toronto Zoo, where my family and I went on Family Day. Be on the lookout for more pictures from that day, I made about 250.
So enjoy these three snake pictures, and if you get the chance, be sure to give snake photography a chance. It is actually really fun and satisfying (and I'm not just saying that because I am a Slytherin).
Archipelago Photography- islands of thought and image connected with a name

Leggo my Lego!

I just recently completed one of my most interesting photo assignments; I was hired by a client to photograph a Lego city. This city is about 2x2 metres with an unguessable number of pieces, that must have taken the two boys dozens of hours to create. And the coolest part is that it's all original. There are very minimal bits that are designed with instructions, and the entire rest of it is designed by them. So when they called me and told me they wanted me to photograph it before they deconstructed it and rebuilt it, so of course I said yes! After about an hour of photographing with 30 second exposures and some specific colour adjustments I came up with about 30 images of great to moderate quality that I'm pretty happy with. these are a few. For the most part the aim of the photos was for posterity, but I did take a bit of creativity with a few of them (especially the Batman photo up top).
Archipelago Photography-islands of thought and image, connected with a name

O-Town

The weekend before last my Youth Group, along with a few other Youth Groups, hopped on a coach bus and headed off to Ottawa for an event called Worshiplude (a mix of the winter-festival Winterlude and a Youth-oriented church service). We stayed the whole weekend in Ottawa, billeting at a church and took in all the sights of Winterlude, along with The Museum of Civilization, Byward Market and Ottawa itself, both on the Ontario and Quebec sides. As a photographer it was lots of fun because of the massive amount of material to shoot. one of the best parts was the Museum Of Civilization. When I went in I my camera with two lenses and my tripod. I had some difficulties a while ago at the ROM and some other museums about cameras so I wasn't sure how it would go. Right away some man stopped me and told me that I needed to go get my tripod registered at the front desk. I panicked a little bit, but it turned out that I could shoot whatever I like in the museum with whatever equipment provided I put a little sticker on my tripod and signed that I wasn't going to use any of it for professional use. I was quite impressed with this approach and I feel that it is very reasonable and understanding of an artists need to create. Over the whole weekend I made about 350 images, which for me is actually rather light. Some good images, a few great but nothing revolutionary unfortunately.
Archipelago Photography- islands of thought and image, connected with a name

Free Flying

These two seem to be my favourite models. Really, I swear I don't try to photograph them more than anyone else, but just look at how cute they are! How could I help it? So here they are again, Abby (3) and Kenny (1) Walker, my favourite little nieces (technically only nieces but that's inconsequential). Theses shots are being shot up toward the ceiling with the girls suspended above the camera, hence the hair being all everywhere. I enjoy them largely because the direction of the photo is directly forward towards the camera.
Archipelago Photography- islands of thought and image, connected with a name.