The Calendar Project…

Two years ago I offered up my services to the Alberta Mustang Auto Club to shoot a calendar of some members cars. After a couple weeks of location scouting in the Rockies I found the locations I wanted to utilize for the images… We took two full days and cruised into the mountains, for adventure and shooting. It was a great experience and the support we got from  members who didn’t even enter their cars was amazing. The project was created to raise money for The Calgary Women’s Emergency Shelter… and raise money we did. We managed to sell out of over 200 calendars at $20ea as well as collect $100 from each member for the shoot (14 members total).

Last year, the calendar project was put on hold. The recession hit many people pretty hard, and having photos of their cars were not a priority… The overall donations to the shelter also decreased last year as well due to the recession. I wanted to change that.

This year would be different… This year I would do my best to market, push and shoot for this project. We shot our first session last Sunday. This year holds a more “Industrial” feel to the photos. We wanted something new and something contrasty to all these fabulous cars.

The support has returned and I think we actually have more car owners interested than calendar pages this year. We will make it work, we will make sure that the CWES gets all the donation they can from this project.

This year we are shooting stills for the standard fee and then adding a new element thanks to the HD DSLR Revolution… We offer a short “Spec” Commercial for the car owners. This little add-on allows even more money to be raised for the Shelter.

Thanks to everyone so far for your support. We have a couple more days of shooting and are really excited to see this one through. Here are a couple samples from last weekend’s shoot.

Ryan

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Fight for the Kids…

About a month ago I volunteered my services to shoot a charity event. Several amateur and a couple Pro boxing matches were to be held along with an amazing dinner to raise money for the Big Brothers and Big Sisters foundation.

This event was top notch. There was a silent auction, entertainment and the boxing was scheduled during dinner. Nothing like a little bit of steak, potatoes and awesome fights.

There were some amazing KO’s and I just missed getting covered in blood spatter from one of them. Quite the experience for me.

Enjoy the photos!

Kelly & Darryl – An Engagement Session

This past Sunday I was able to meet up with Kelly and Darryl for their engagement session. I had the perfect location in mind to contrast our plans for their wedding day photo session… A nice decrepit old homestead home, south east of Calgary. I think the drive was well worth it for the images we captured. These two are great together, and great to work with… Here are a couple selects from the session…

Rural Alberta…

Sometime when I’m out scouting for locations, I end up with nothing left in my gas tank, and nothing on the table for ideas or locations. This last trip out east of Calgary into the rural sector left me with one usable location, or so I thought. Upon a re-visit to the location, it just didn’t suit what i needed.

Throughout the drive I pulled over to pop a couple frames here and there looking for a good landscape for a future shoot. I was surprised to find when I got back that one of the locations, was pretty sweet with a little processing.

Here’s a sample of the location off 114th Ave east of 84th St. (maybe 30min from the City centre).

I’m going to head back there for a shoot later this summer, but i’m not sure the dynamic will remain in the shot next time without the Storm on the horizon.

Anyway… what I thought was a bit of a bust as far a location scouting went, turned out to be alright. I managed to get a couple files that will hopefully make some nice Rural Art Prints.

Ryan.

The Last of “The Mill”

Here’s the last of the edits from “The Mill” shoot.

With a couple new projects on the go, I’ve noticed my editing has been pushed aside, and gets delayed a little longer than normal, but hopefully in the next week or so there will be some balance and I’ll be back on track.

Enjoy these last couple images.

Phase One at “The Mill” Pt. Deux

It’s been a couple weeks now, and it seems that i finally got around to processing a few more frames from this shoot. I’ve had a number of projects since this day and I can definitely say that I miss the Phase system. Although the workflow was a little slower than normal, it was no worse than shooting with my Hasselblad 500C (which I still do, quite often). The larger files and slower frame rate help to keep you in check. You can’t “Spray and Pray” hoping that one of the 15 frames you burst every 2 seconds will turn out. It also allowed us to use the Speedotron Power Pack on it’s full power. The Phase and the Lights seemed to recycle around the same time. So there were fewer “suprise you’re 2/3s of a stop under cause your lights didn’t get back to full, Mr. Quick on the Trigger.”

Now some of you may say, “well ya, but in RAW it doesn’t matter, I can fix it in Photoshop/Lightroom.”

I can’t live by the shoot it now fix it later code. I am/was a film guy… I had to learn this stuff from the get-go, or I would have been wasting my money blowing through rolls and rolls of film with sloppy exposures. Now I definitely use Bridge, Lightroom, Photoshop and an assortment of the Kubota, Nik, Totally Rad, etc Tools, but they are just that – a finishing tool. These programs are to aid in Workflow Efficiency, not to fix mistakes that could have been avoided on set/on location with an extra couple seconds through the prism, or at the lighting controls. Anyway, I didn’t mean to turn this in to a “holier than thou” paragraph for those Photoshoptographers…

All I was really trying to get at, was that I did in fact enjoy a slightly slower work pace.

The P45+ definitely isn’t in my budget at close to $40k, but the Leaf Aptus 5 and Hasselblad H3DII-31 are a little closer. The next test will be that of the H series… for a direct compare.

Hope you enjoy these other couple pics from The Mill session.

Photographer: Ryan HK

Assistant: Peter Olson

Make Up: Petra Berntsson

Model: Amber Marple

Location: ADM Milling – Calgary, AB

Phase One…

Got a chance to play with the PhaseOne P45+ on the weekend. All I can say about this back and Camera system is… Wow. Unbelievable colours, tonal range, and the files are crazy smooth at ISO 50. Almost too smooth.

I’ll write more on it in a bit, but here’s a teaser pic.

Let me know what you think…

Ryan.

Elbow Falls and the Ice Queen.

It’s been almost a month since my last post. We’ve been pretty busy with a couple mid winter projects. This past Wednesday I took a team of five out to Elbow falls for a mid-winter shoot. I had been planning this shoot for the last couple weeks with Petra Berntsson (MUA). We had decided to go a certain way with this shoot initially. When it came time to pick up the dress… we hit our first snag. The dress that I had seen and put aside in the morning, had in fact, sold prior to us getting back to the store. This was a little lesson in why one shouldn’t wait until the “week of” to pick up all the goodies. In searching for a suitable replacement dress, Petra came across a really elegant Black evening gown. This was not how we wanted to go, but with both of us in the store, bouncing ideas, we made a last minute change (sometimes it’s really nice to have this kind of freedom when there’s no AD assigned to the shoot). This would be a darker, more sinister Ice Queen shoot than we had initially planned. Having lived in Calgary for the last few years, you tend to not rely on the weather forecasts, but that week’s had looked promising. We were looking at a +2deg C. day and sun. Getting to bed the night before was stress free and easy. Waking up on the other hand, was less than stress free. Looking out the window as I got up led to a shocker – 6 inches of fresh snow. I immediately started sending texts and making calls to the team. We decided that there was a chance it would clear up, so we’d make the trip out to the falls.

Make up and last minute gear prep took the better part of the morning. We headed out from the house for a noon-ish arrival at the Falls. The weather seemed alright as far as the temperature was concerned, however the sky was a very ominous winter gray. This also added a dynamic to our photos in the end (although I would have liked to shot under that Alberta blue sky for this one). We hiked in with just the basics for the first location in the shoot. Couple camera bags filled with bodies, lenses and 5 speedlights. We would save all the studio lighting for the shoots closer to the cars.

I’m in the process of editing the photos right now, but here’s a little teaser pic from the 1st Location using 2 SB-80DXs (ya, i’m old school… sue me.)

I’ll be working on them over the next couple days and get a few more posted as they come along, as well as some more stories from the shoot (like Peter, throwing himself to the wolves by testing if it was ice or rocks cropping out over the falls (for the model’s safety) as it was a fresh blanket of snow and we couldn’t really tell where one ended, and the other started. Ilona (the model) was amazing during the whole shoot.

I’m only about halfway through editing this one, but it’s at least a start.

Enjoy!

Here’s a second photo from the shoot. I wanted to do some tighter headshots while I was out there, as Petra did an amazing job on the makeup. I had asked ilona for some serious and nasty looks in some of them, as I liked the idea of an “evil” Ice Queen. I saw the way a couple if the photos looked in the camera and thought… huh, I bet I can make some of those Twilighty style photos with a few of these. So Twilight type processing they got.

Here’s the First. “Ilona the Vampire”

Freelance for fun – Week II

Well, last week’s assignment went well. Got some really fun photos.

Now for this week!
Shoot food in an abstract way. No full plates, no boring set ups… get creative, get close, change your angles, let’s see what you’ve got.

Post your 6 images by Next Tuesday night… Jan 26th to the FLICKR PAGE

Just an example... it's an older photo of mine from an Ad for a restaurant in Oakville, Ontario.

Freelance for fun.

I’m currently shooting an assignment a week as a project for the next 2 months.

By the end of the 8 weeks, I hope to have a number of images that will be suitable for stock agencies.

Last week’s assignment was “The Colour Blue”. Shoot all things blue, including the emotion if you see a suitable situation. Of the photos you shoot throughout the week. Pick the top 6. I will post my top 6 here every week and link them from Twitter. I encourage you to do the same. I’ve created a Flickr Group “Freelance for Fun” for anyone to post their photos on.

I think you’ll find that within a few short weeks, you’ll be looking at things differently through the camera and always “seeing through the lens” even when you’re camera is at your side.

This will be a great little exercise and I think you’ll really get into it after the first week or so.

Get on that colour Blue! you have until Sunday night. I’ll Post the next Challenge that night for the Following week…

Here are my 6 from this week.

I look forward to seeing some contributions!

Ryan.