Calgary Wedding Photographer Blog – byDesign Visuals

Well here we are again, 52photo time!  I’m getting to be kinda proud of myself, I’ve been doing this for 6 weeks now and each photo has turned out relatively close to how I envisioned it!  I still am having trouble coming up with concepts though, so if you have any ideas, please let me know!

For the first few weeks I wanted to keep it simple and focus on headshots, but I am now trying to spice it up a little bit and do a few more different types of things.  For this week I went really simple, and only took 2 pieces of gear along – my 5D and a 100mm 2.8 macro lens.  I LOVE this lens, as it is so versatile, as long as there is lots of light for focusing, and uber sharp!  The bokeh isn’t quite as nice as some other lenses, but hey, you can’t have everything, right?

The geek speak for this shot is that I shot at 1600 ISO at 1/100th at an aperature of 2.8, handheld.  The location (the University of Calgary’s Macewan Hall) was pretty dark, but at least they were smart enough to not mix lighting!  Yay!

Here it is, if you have been following this project and have a comment or two (good or bad), I would love to hear them!

Thanks Jaclyn for taking time out of your busy day to pose for me!

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Guess what?  It’s that time of the week again!  Time for another 52photo!

Since I knew that I would be away at the Olympics, I actually planned ahead and took this shot last week.  My friend Shyla, who is gracing the computer screen before you, is moving away and I have always wanted to do some shots with her.  So there was also a major incentive – this could be my last chance for a long time!

For this shot I wanted to do more of a posed shot, that required a little more setup. 

However, having the right gear at the right time has been the problem lately.  Working at The Camera Store, I see a lot of the options that are out there for various lights, cameras, lenses, etc…but I can’t afford to buy all the toys that I want.  I can borrow some stuff, but it has to be timed right, so that helps.  For this shot I wish I had had 2 more speedlites set up behind Shyla to wash out the backdrop.

Technically, I used my 5D for this shot with my 24-70 2.8 lens.  We were in tight quarters, so I had my main light set at about a 30 degree angle to my right, and the fill was at about a 90 degree angle to her (on my left).  I know, wierd setup, but it was a small space!

Anyways, here is the shot, I hope you like it!

Blessings, Mark

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As I’ll be gone this weekend and most of next week to the Olympics (yay!), I figured I would actually plan ahead for once and work ahead of schedule!  Amazing idea, I know! So stay tuned for an extra awesome shot next Thursday!

Last week I posted an image that was straight out of the camera, with no post processing involved (except resizing for the web).  Now that I have my computer fully up and running again, I took the time to do some basic edits to the shot to enhance it.  My goal is always to get an image as perfect in camera as possible, as it should be for everyone, and then to use Adobe Photoshop to enhance the image, not to fix my mistakes. 

For this shot I did most of the editing in Adobe Camera Raw.  I adjusted the white balance, played around with the colors, and tweaked the exposure a bit.  I then imported the image into Photoshop, did a few more minor color corrections, added a vignette, resized, added the logo, and voila!  A final image!

Here is is!  Enjoy!  I will hopefully be making a post soon containing some sweet images of my Olympic adventure!  Go Canada!

Mark

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Hello eveyone and welcome back!

My computer is now running, but not very well!  So I have decided to do something a little different this week.  Some photographers may hate this, some may want me to take this down, but to them I say “Too bad!” 

I am going to post one of my images……………………………………………………………………………………naked!

That’s right, I said it.  No retouching, no post-processing, and no Photoshop massaging.  All I did was resize the image to make it fit here, and so that it wouldn’t cause your modem to explode.  Below you will find a  shot that I took last week of Stacey, a friend of mine from work.  I must admit it wasn’t the very first shot, this was #2, but the first shot was kind of really bad.  Stacey looked great, but I didn’t do things right.  So I had to snap another, and learn from my mistakes!

What I am going to do next week, or something in the near future, is show you the power of Photoshop.  I teach classes, and my students are always impressed when they see the before and after, so I figure you guys would too!

Anyways, here it is!

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