ellipsis…

Judy and her new Aussie husband Mark braved the cold of January in Edmonton to grab the shot that Judy dreamt up; the bride & groom on a chairlift. i was more than a bit worried about Mark, he was shivering earlier that morning and we were still inside. we just made it onto the chairlift before they shutdown for the day. usually you have cars honking on your wedding, Judy & Mark had skiers & snowboarders hollering on the hill. i enlisted my buddy Brad, who’s actually Judy’s brother-in-law, to make sure i didn’t fall off the chair. he came prepared; Sorel boots, snowpants, down jacket and big mittens, all overtop of his suit. we rode the chairlift all the way around (first time i’ve ever done that), which gave me enough time to figure out how to shoot backwards on a chairlift. it was cold, but it was definitely fun. checked this off my list of locations to shoot. congratulation Judy & Mark!

a couple of weekends back i had the privilege of photographing my bestfriend’s sister’s wedding, Sharon & Jordan. it’s always fun when you know the people you are working for. it’s even better when you know a lot of people you’ll be around. the day couldn’t have been better… except for the police. i’m not going to get into the specifics of what happened, but during my family session a couple wasn’t very happy with us and decided to call the cops. we weren’t disturbing anyone or doing anything wrong, we were in a public park. really just seemed like they needed a bone to pick, so they decided it would be us. luckily one of the groomsmen is a cop and actually knew the officer that arrived on scene. i was only able to snap a couple of pictures with the cop car before we were told it was probably best we were on our way.

the fun didn’t stop there. one of the locations we had decided on was McDougall School in downtown Calgary. after grabbing images of the party and a couple of just Sharon & Jordan, a huge crew of BMXers descended onto the grounds. it was quite the scene actually. we ended up asking if we could take some pictures with them. one of them, Mr. Michael Poos, even offered up his bike for a couple of the shot. really really fun, and very Sharon, who is a super spontaneous tomboy.

it was a wedding of firsts. first time someone called the cops on my wedding party. first time having a crew of BMXers descend on my bride & groom. and… first time using a slave flash at the reception. i’ve always seen it done by the pros, like the legendary Mike Colon, but i have never tried it myself. i must say it works really really well. it adds a nice dimension to the images. i didn’t really do anything special; threw a SB-800 up on a stand, set it on TTL and let the the Nikon Creative Lighting System (CLS) do the rest. the results were quite nice. the only beef i have with CLS is that the signal is transferred via IR which is line-of-sight, so sometime the slave wouldn’t fire because something or someone was blocking the signal. all of that will be remedied when the new Pocket Wizards TT1n and TT5n are released later this summer.

SB-800 is behind and to the left.

i’ve cut down my weddings this year so that i can start to concentrate on more commercial work, but i must say i love the amount of creative freedom a wedding has. plus everyone you’re working with is dressed to the nines and looking their absolute best. here a couple more images from the day.

shot my first wedding with my D3 last weekend. the results are pretty amazing! it’s an odd feeling shooting with a full-frame camera again. things look… well.. right. i know people are going to yap at me about DX vs FX, but really full-frame images just look proper. the DOF is what it’s suppose to look like at the actual focal length. until now i’ve been shooting DX or 6×7. yeah, a bit of an extreme. anyways, the images look great. it’s nice to shoot a camera that is sharp right off the sensor (the D200 is soft soft soft). and colors seems to be a bit better. all that really means is that there is less post! WOO HOO!!!!

tash is a friend of mine, and i have to admit that she and her man sean had the most beautiful wedding party ever! The OC here we come!!! she also kept posing for me all day too! so much fun!