Quick photo: This is me dressed in soccer gear wearing my #10 Francesco Totti jersey. I was in the studio the other day playing around with capturing some action imagery and decided to jump in and try my hand at some action posing myself. I absolutely love the work by photographer Joel Grimes and greatly admire his style. His images are so gritty and engaging. Hopefully one day I will get the pleasure of photographing some top athletes like he has.

Have you ever heard of the “Pacific Garbage Patch”? If you haven’t… you can read more about it here.

In this thought-provoking video produced by Riley Morton, photographer Chris Jordan talks about his fine art photography project called The Midway Project. On a small island in the North Pacific, called Midway Island, thousands of albatross die each and every year from plastic they have ingested. Plastic that has been collected by their parents… and fed to them. It is a problem, like many others, that goes unnoticed by most of us.

Chris explains that each bird on the island he photographs has around 75 individual pieces of plastic inside their stomachs. From full toothbrushes and toys, to piping, fishing gear, lighters, and many other items. He hopes that the impact from the photographs he takes will help act as a wake up call.

View some of Chris’ work from The Midway Project.

This video was originally seen at ChaseJarvis.com

I’ve been pretty excited these past couple of weeks, as I’ve had a chance to do try some photography that I’ve been wanting to do for a while. Now that I have a dedicated space for working (more on that later), I’ve been crossing off items from my to-do list.

After shooting some beauty images with my new do-it-yourself triflector, I decided to tackle some product photography. But with there being an unlimited selection of products to photograph, I knew I wanted to photograph something that was a little unique and not something you see every day. My girlfriend used to play paintball and she still knows a lot of people in the industry, including her brother. I thought about the gear they use and I find some of it to be quite colourful and aesthetic, so I chose paintball as my theme.

There are a lot of different products and gear associated with paintball, but I decided to narrow my items list down to just a couple for now. I spent a few hours photographing some goggles and other pieces of hardware, but the most challenging (and the most fun) was shooting a gun (pun intended). This is a brand new Eclipse Ego 11 and it looks pretty damn awesome (this one has the Regal purple and gold colour scheme). For this, I really wanted to play around with capturing the reflection of the gun. I used a small piece of plexiglass that I had picked up prior to the shoot and placed it on the floor over my white seamless paper. The trick, however, is finding the right angle to shoot at. Sure you can just lay the product on the floor and shoot it from above, but that’s so… boring, and you don’t really get a nice reflection. You also have to watch the shadow of the product and ensure that the reflection and the shadow do not converge.

As you can see in the two images I posted, the gun appears to be floating. This was my goal and to achieve it, I had to use a couple of different objects, such as my assistant’s hand and some various small objects from around the studio. I wanted the gun to appear as though it were floating in space to help add a bit of creativity to the shots. I want people to look at the image and go, “Oh, it’s not just a photo of a product on the floor”. The unfortunate result was that I had to remove those supports in Photoshop afterwards. Lesson learned though. Now that I’ve done it once, my mind is already filled with other ideas for making these styles of shots easier to accomplish.

As for the final images, I’m quite pleased with the results I captured, but am undecided on which I like better. The image with the strong reflection or the image with the shadow? The reflection looks cool because you can see the underside of the gun, but the image with the shadow displays the gun much better.

So, which photo do you like better?

A friend of mine recently sent me a little tutorial video on how to create incredible beauty images using only a single beauty dish light and a do-it-yourself reflector. In the video titled “One Light Beauty Tutorial”, photographer Sean Armenta goes over the steps required to create beauty photographs. He talks about setting up the beauty dish and how to use it effectively to light the model’s “t-zone”, and what settings he uses in order to capture a “zero adjustment raw file”. The most interesting part about the tutorial is that Sean uses a reflector that he made himself. After only watching the video once, I was eager to try it out.

I picked up some foam core at a local print house, some reflective paper and silver duct tape from an art supply store, grabbed my pencil, my ruler and my exacto knife, and went to work. I cut the foam core into three pieces, attached them with the tape (creating hinges) and then attached the reflective paper to each surface. The result was a triflector that closes up nicely for storage. Here is a quick photo I took with my phone of the initial pieces.

With my newly created triflector, model Kim Ma, and make-up artist Darlene Brink, we headed off to the studio to try it all out. One big difference between my setup and Sean’s setup, is that I opted to raise each fold of my reflector instead of leaving it flat as he does in the video. The result, which you can see in my images here, was that I ended up with a tiny trio of catch-lights on the under side of Kim’s eyes. I quite liked how it looked, so I opted against using a small mirror to create the extra catch-light that Sean did. If I had kept my reflector flat, then there would have only been only one reflective surface, resulting in one catch-light.

We had a lot of fun doing this shoot. Kim’s ability to make all of the subtle movements and adjustments required to capture the beauty of her face in a really powerful image were definitely tested. I had never really shot much beauty in the past, but I really enjoyed it and I’m really happy with the results we got that day. I can definitely see myself doing a lot more of it. I also can’t wait to use my do-it-yourself reflector again.

Be sure to check out more of Sean’s videos at his Vimeo page or have a look at the amazing photographic work on his website, seanarmenta.com.

A close friend of mine had been talking about getting a dog for a while now, but was having trouble finding the perfect addition to their family. They decided they would try being a foster parent to a homeless dog and to see how things would work out with their current living arrangements. Well, the dog showed up and about 48 hours later, the foster parenting was over… and they adopted Maximus (“Max”).

I joined them for a walk to the dog park the other day and decided to bring along my camera. One part of Max that makes him so special is definitely his eyes. They make us believe that he has some Husky in his blood, while his colouring and stature appear to be from a German Shepherd, but we aren’t 100% certain. At seven months old, Max is the center of attention everywhere he goes. Everyone at the dog park commented on his eyes, and when he gets running and playing, he can make some really funny cartoon-like faces. We all had some good laughs at the last photo I took. The look in Max’s eyes have you wondering what in the world is he thinking while running with the other dogs.

After only a few minutes of grabbing shots of Max, I realized that I quite enjoy photographing dogs. I love capturing action and motion in my images, which is why I love photographing sports. But when you add a cuteness factor into the mix, photographing dogs seems like the perfect fit (I’m sure some athletes are cute, but cuter than a puppy?). Especially when they’re at the park, running, bouncing, playing, and being completely unpredictable. If you’ve got a dog that you would like photographed, get in touch with me and perhaps I will accompany you on your next trip to the park.

Quick photo: Kimberley Ma enjoys some puddle jumping on the streets of Calgary in jeans and a tank top. With the weather warming up and all of the snow melting in the past few weeks here, the resulting water has been flooding many of the city streets.