Calgary Wedding Photographer Blog – byDesign Visuals

Well here we are once again, 52photo time!  This week I was a little bit better with the whole planning thing, and I found someone this afternoon!  I posted a message on twitter/facebook saying I needed a model, and Catherine said she would help me out!  It also gave us a good chance to catch up again! 

For todays shot, I wanted to have more dramatic lighting.  I used my umbrella adapter and got some gaffers tape and used it to keep the umbrella half open, and I fired  a Canon 580 EX II flash into the half open umbrella.  I also used my handy 100mm 2.8 macro lens, and another 580 EX II to trigger the one that was off camera. 

Anyways, here is the shot, I hope everyone has a great Friday!

Blessings,

Mark

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Bonjour!  Welcome back to my blog!

This week I am actually on the ball and I shot my image a night early, because tomorrow my time is already spoken for:) 

Last week though, I thought I had set my image to post during the day while I was at work, but something happenend and it didn’t work!  Of course that made the post late (as I didn’t realize it), so this time I am just going to post it tonight, to make up for lost time!

For this week I decided to give you a little snapshot into what my life is like.  Vanessa is one of my housemates, along with her kitty.  Both of them are quite the characters, and we have a lot of laughs. 

For this shot, I once again used my favorite combo of the Canon 5D and my 100mm 2.8 Macro lens.  For lighting I used a 580 EX II on my camera, which triggered another 580 EX II that was on a lightstand about 2 feet in front of Vanessa and a bit to her right, just off camera.  To soften the light, I picked up a Honl Speed Strap this week, and I used that to attach a Honl 8 inch Speed Snoot.  The snoot can be either opened up to act as a modifier, or closed to act as a snoot.  It’s a pretty neat product, and you can add other items to it like grids and filters.  If you want more information, check them out online at http://www.honlphoto.com/servlet/StoreFront

Anyways, here is the image!  Have a great night everyone!

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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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Wow…this challenge is shaping up to be quite a bit harder than I anticipated!  I found it hard this week to come up with an idea of who and what to shoot, and I left it to the last minute (as you can tell by the timestamp on this post!)

I met my friend Selena about two years ago, when her bridal shower was held at my house (I was living with her mutual friend).  I was minding my own business, trying to stay out of the way of the numerous wedding crazed girls downstairs when I hear someone shout up “Mark…do you have a camera?????” 

So of course I came trundling down the stairs with my very large and impressive SLR, and we had a good laugh.  Then I took a picture of Selena in a toilet paper wedding dress.  I could post it here, but I think that might be a little bit cruel.

I must admit though…this isn’t actually the first picture.  I made a teeny tiny mistake, and forgot to put the actual trigger on my camera to trigger the lights, so my first shot came out completely black!  Argh!  It’s actually ok though, because from the wee little bit of information that was there, I can tell she blinked – majorly! 

After meeting her that day, I have always wanted to take her portrait as I think her freckles are pretty sweet.  She says she is shy in front of the camera, but I don’t think so – in fact, we had a really great conversation while I was waiting to get the perfect shot.  It only took about 20 minutes!

Then of course my addiction reared it’s ugly head, and I couldn’t just stop at one picture.  So Nathan, her husband, came over, and we had another great conversation!  He’s a gamer like myself, and while I was prepping he was playing xbox, so of course we had to play a little bit before I took off.  It was good fun!

Thanks guys for helping me out, it was great to see you again and I look forward to our Avatar date!

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