Quick photos: Some of my photos from the final day at The 2012 Burton Canadian Open, held at Canada Olympic Park. I was busy with other shoots that weekend, so I was unfortunately only able to make the finals on the last day. Note to self: do not book a shoot the weekend of this event ever again. It was an impressive showing and I hope to make the whole event next year.

Quick photos: The new Peace Bridge opened to the public today. It has been a long overdue event, but thousands of Calgarians came out to pass over the new bridge for the first time. Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi was on hand to celebrate the grand opening.

Update: My photographs have been featured in an article on DesignBoom. See the article.

In January 2011, my girlfriend Kim Ma took me to my first paintball event. I had never seen tournament paintball before, which is known as “speedball”. It was at the Agricultural building on the Stampede grounds and after parking, we headed towards to entrance. Just before opening the door Kim stopped, turned to me, and said three words that changed my life forever: “Welcome to paintball.”

What I saw that day was a sport that instantly excited me. It was loud, fast paced, and crammed full of action. I knew right away that I wanted to photograph it. But, I could instantly see many of the challenges that lay ahead. It was very dark, paint was traveling through the air at almost 300 ft. per second, and the unpredictability of player’s actions on the field were all challenges that I knew I would have to overcome in order to document such an intense sport.

One year later, I was right there on the field, exactly where I had dreamed of being just one year prior. And I was ready for it.

Having photographed paintball all summer long (including the PPL Event #3 and Canadian Triple Crown), I can now tell where to position myself, where to point my lens and also where not to point my lens. I know the names of bunkers and have learned the playing style of many local ballers, which means I have an idea of where a player is headed on the field strictly based on their pre-break stance. I’ve also learned how to switch the focus point on my camera faster than most photographers I know. I’ve even had to learn how to operate my camera without ever getting a full view through the viewfinder, because wearing goggles means I can’t put my eye right against the camera like other sports photographers can. If you want to see what I see, hold your camera about 3-4 inches from your eye and then look through the viewfinder.

When it came time to step onto the indoor field at the CPPL Canadian Nationals, I was ready for the challenge. Being as dark as it was and wanting to freeze the action while maintaining a decent exposure, I was forced to shoot at very high ISO. Unfortunately my Canon 7D doesn’t have the greatest low-light capabilities, which meant shooting anything over 4000 would turn my images into a sloppy soup of grain and colour. In the end I was forced to sacrifice some focus in order to gain the exposure I wanted, which meant that my results were less than satisfactory. I dreamt the entire time of a day when I can shoot sports with a Canon 1DX or a Nikon D3X.

If you like paintball photography and want to see more, check out ianharding.com/paintball.

I recently had the pleasure of photographing someone who is an inspiration to anyone looking to get into shape. Claire Rae is a fitness expert, an instructor, a bikini model, and a former WBFF competitor/winner. She is currently sponsored by Fitness Gurls Magazine and runs her own bootcamps here in Calgary. We had a lot of fun on this shoot and managed to create some pretty awesome photographs. Huge thanks goes out to Tim Nguyen and my girlfriend Kim, as their hands and creative minds are always incredibly appreciated, and to Zac over at SMASH Conditioning for providing us with a solid space to work in.

Be sure to check out Claire’s Facebook page or follow Claire on Twitter.

Quick photos: This is Evelyn and her horse Pete (she calls him “Petie”). Evelyn has been training and riding horses for a very long time and she is incredibly good at it. A long time ago, she taught me how to ride. How do I know Evelyn? Simple… she’s my mother.

These are a series of Victoria’s Secret lingerie beauty shots created for my friend E. I love the movement and colour in these photos and always enjoy photographing people close up. To be honest, there are some things I would do differently concerning the model’s hair, but aside from that, I think these images turned out quite well. Lessons learned for next time, right?!

Helping others is something I am almost always willing to do, especially over the holiday season. So when the girls over at Chop Steakhouse were in need of a photographer to help them create a group photo for them to share, I came to the rescue. They were great to work with and I really enjoyed shooting at the restaurant. I love the challenge of shooting on location as opposed to in a studio. It keeps me on my feet and keeps my subjects comfortable.

After we finished the group shot, the girls let me create some individual portraits. If you haven’t been to Chop yet, go check it out and say hello. Also check them out on Twitter and Facebook.

Say hello to Grace, a beautiful Husky/Shepherd cross. She’s four years old and has more energy than a four year old human, barely sitting still for more than half a second at a time. My photograph of Maggie was a lot of fun to create, so I was eager to photograph more pets. They’re so fun, exciting, and completely adorable. I love the challenge of photographing an animal because they’re so unpredictable and energetic, and I also love how the light falls on their coats, resulting in some really dynamic and aesthetic photographs.

My girlfriend Kim had been wanting to do a Michael Jackson creative for a while now. We both grew up listening to his music and love the styles of his performances. It was no wonder the guy was the top entertainer in the world. I mean, who else creates dance moves like the moonwalk and the robot, that people will forever emulate? Not Brittany Spears, that’s for sure.

We figured what better time to do our MJ shoot than during Halloween. With our good friend and MUA, Darlene Brink, we decided that we wanted to go with a Billie Jean theme. The black sequin jacket and the striped pants are easily our favourite MJ style. In our research, we found some other creatives that other photographers had done, but none were very authentic looking. We wanted our shoot to be as authentic looking as possible, so we spent a lot of time watching music videos and researching wardrobe, styles, lighting, and poses.

Our goal with this shoot was to produce imagery that people would look at and say, “Wow, that really looks like MJ!”, and I think we accomplished that. The first image, in black and white, is one of my favourites from the shoot. At first glance, it really does look like MJ. Kim rocked the shoot and did her best to nail every pose, which was quite difficult, considering how unique Michael’s moves are (and how flexible he must’ve been).

The close-ups on the left side of each pair below are bit more fashion oriented, with Kim being much more recognizable in each photo, but the dance move shots on the right sides are what we blew ourselves away with. We really love them, and we hope you do as well.

Quick Photo: A panoramic shot of downtown Calgary. I created this image so that I could see how much has changed in the skyline from a similar shot I took three years ago. Both photos were taken right when the colours of Autumn were just reaching their peak and the poor crop of the old photo displays how much my skills as a photographer have evolved.