Kerr Photography - Victoria, BC, Professional Photographer

The End of the Season – Movember

Matthew — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 01:00:28 +0000

I know, I’m a little behind the ball here. In any case, it doesn’t make a difference whether I post this now or later. This past Movember was the most successful Movember to date!
First off, I’d like to thank all the donors who helped me raise over $200.00 towards men’s health and prostate cancer:

Adriana Durian
Cathy and Bruce Kerr
Liz Kerr
Phil Jolley
Eve Ouradou
Brianne Hauff
Courtney Fiala
Suzanne Ives and Rolf Ludwig
Grant Schwartzentruber
Kris Klusmeier
And a few other anonymous donors

THANK YOU!
Second, to all those people around the world who helped raise over $111,000,000.00! And especially in Canada, we helped raise over $39,000,000.00! That’s about $160.00/moustache. Those are some expensive faces out there. All of these totals can be found by going to the “Mo Money” page at the official Movember website.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

Matthew — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 20:59:03 +0000

As I stated on my Google + profile the other day, I train in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) and Japanese Jiu Jitsu (JJJ). I’ve only been training for 5 months, however, I already have seen and felt the sense of community in the dojo. That is to say, when someone is testing for their next belt, it stands to reason that you go and support them. Above is one of the instructors, Dan, who is performing a helicopter sweep right in to an arm bar. If you don’t know what that means go check out Submissions 101. This is a technically challenging move that to my eyes, Dan pulled off flawlessly. After Dan passed his purple belt test the white belts who were testing for their blue belt lined up and began a rigorous warm up that was designed to wear them out.
Above is them demonstrating some moves to their sensei and the other blue belts during their test.
If you’d like to know more about Martial Arts, and you’re in the Victoria area, drop by Fierce Studio and watch a class. More pictures are available on the Facebook page (the link is in the side bar).

Movember 2011

Matthew — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 01:42:44 +0000

As some of you may know, Movember is the month formally known as November. The name was changed in in 2003 in Melbourne, Australia when a couple of “Bros” took it upon themselves to change the face of men’s health. That year there were 30 participants. Since then there has been over 1.1 Million registrants at Movember.com and over $176 million raised globally.

The goal is to change established habits and attitudes men have about their health. Through education about the health risks they face, getting them to act on that knowledge thereby increasing their chances of early detection, diagnosis and treatment. In 2010, nearly 119,000 Canadian Mo Bros and Mo Sistas got on board, raising $22.3 million CAD. This year, I will join them and I would love for you to assist me.

Over the next month, I will be growing, no, cultivating a mustache in support of prostate cancer and men’s health. I’ll be updating my status on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ as much as possible so you can follow along in awe. If you would like to support the cause, head on over to my donation page and drop some coin.

For more information about Movember go here or here. Pictured above is Justin Guthrie, Movember veteran (no that’s not his real ‘stache).

Olympic Sailing – Victoria, BC

Matthew — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 23:00:43 +0000

This morning I got the opportunity to photograph Canadian Olympic Hopefuls Hannah Meers (skipper) and Erin Flanagan (crew) as they practiced in the cold waters off Oak Bay. We started the morning by getting the boat ready (I drank my latte) at 7:45 and we were on the water by 8:20. The air was frigid, the clouds were dark and the sun wasn’t fully awake yet. It started to rain. Thankfully, the rain did hold off for the most part, but it was still way colder than it needed to be. I think we were on the water for about 2 hours in total while the girls trained (Hannah with bare feet). It’s been a while since I was on the water when it was this cold and photographically speaking, my hands were too numb to fully grab my lens. Not to mention that my knees are bruised from being bounced around the zodiac, I’ll remember to bring knee pads next time.
They sail the international 470 dinghy in the women’s division. The 470 first became an Olympic class in 1976, and is one of nine types of sailboats raced in the Olympics. Both Hannah and Erin grew up in southern Alberta and thus, their team name is Wild Rose Girls. You can find them and follow them on Facebook here or follow them on twitter with @Meers_Flanagan. The two are on their way to Miami in the following weeks to continue their training.

Jewelry, Tethered, Photography

Matthew — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 18:15:24 +0000

The last couple of days I`ve been working on a few test shots for some product photography. More specifically, jewelry. I was inspired to start working on this after attending a Photoshop Seminar on portrait photography. I know, how does portrait photography inspire you to shoot product? Well, it doesn’t, it just inspired me to shoot.
These pictures were all shot tethered from my D3 to my laptop and imported straight in to Lightroom so that I could touch them up immediately. I love it.

To see more pictures that I took, visit my Facebook Page or my Flickr Photostream.

Another 4×5 Experiment

Matthew — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 02:16:45 +0000

These are the “lost” images that I was referencing on twitter the other day. I’m not sure exactly what happened, but they eventually made it home. The thing is, I loaded the film in hopes of shooting it in the summer of 2010. I then traveled down to Australia and New Zealand without the film, came home, made it through the rest of winter and then rediscovered it. I couldn’t remember what I had loaded. ISO, film type, colour, black and white, negative, positive, none of it was ringing a bell. Since I only had 2 speeds of film I averaged that it would be about 300 ISO and started my guessing there. You see, with my 4×5 camera that I built out of wood, I don’t know quite what the field of view is. So I have to guess. I do know that the aperture is somewhere around f/216. I also know that my light meter works, so I can tell what the exposure time will be at f/16. Taking that into account, I use this handy chart that I made to calculate my exposure time for the pinhole.

As you can see, as soon as it’s about an f/8 day, I’m up to a 5 second exposure on the camera. Approximately, that is. I also find I have to be a lot more selective with my choice of composition because of that whole guessing my field of view thing. It worked out well in the end. And, not to toot my own horn, but they were pretty well educated guesses.
What are your thoughts? Comment below.

Is it Jujitsu or Jujutsu or Jiu Jitsu?

Matthew — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 23:29:01 +0000

In any case, I’ve starting taking some classes that a friend of mine has been going to for years. It’s at Fierce Studio where they do Brazillian Jiu Jitsu, Japanese Jiu Jitsu, 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu, Kick Boxing, Yoga and a bunch of others. The image below is from there old location where during a BJJ class you “roll” with a partner to try out your new moves that you learned.

The guy on the bottom here is Alan, my friend who is also featured here on my flickr photostream.

Expiration

Matthew — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 16:36:53 +0000

So, I was over in Vancouver a couple weeks ago (not for a hockey game) and was able to spend the morning with my lady and a friend of her family-friend who oddly enough went to the same photography school as I did. We wandered down to Granville Island and had some lunch in the market and then cruised on over the bridge. I, for the first time (just before the wedding) took my Minolta out to play. These are two of my favourite shots from that trip.

We didn’t just go over for Granville Island market food, we actually went over to see the musical Wicked. If you ever, ever get a chance to see it, I recommend it with the highest of all recommendations.

I like this. Thoughts? Post them in the comments box!

Summer Wedding

Matthew — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 15:42:23 +0000

I had the pleasure of going to my cousin’s wedding early June in Parksville. It was a very beautiful day and the Jonathan and Kathryn couldn’t have looked happier. Since I wasn’t the photographer at the wedding, I decided to shoot an old Minolta srT200 with a 50mm f/1.7 Minolta lens on some very expired Kodak Gold 200 film. The result was fantastic and I really enjoyed being so restricted by my focal length and speed.

I have talked before about not having the luxury of zoom lenses or digital ISO settings. You tend to focus more on the creativity, because, that’s all you can change.

All of the pictures were scanned on my Canon flatbed and then cropped and edited in Photoshop. Only a few minor colour corrections and the contrast was punched up a bit. I wanted to preserve the film “look”.

The happy colour changes were a complete surprise with the expired film.

As you can see, I left some dust on the negative.

Fashion for Cancer

Matthew — Thu, 26 May 2011 15:29:35 +0000

A colleague of mine decided a couple of months ago that she was going to cut off and donate her hair for the Cops for Cancer cause. A very noble thing to do. She asked me if I would take some pictures of her before she lopped it off, so she could remember what it was like. I was happy to oblige.

To view a couple more from the shoot, go to my photostream. The link is in the side bar. If you’d like to make a donation, please visit any bc cancer website or click here.