Kerr Photography - Victoria, BC, Professional Photographer » bc

Competition Time

Matthew — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 05:48:39 +0000

Competition is closed

visit this post for the winner and new competition details

As I am sitting here at my computer, Herbal tea within reach and Justice in the ears, I am realizing, I should have got this post out a couple of days ago. If not weeks ago. I’m going to be holding a little competition in the next week. It’s inspired by a fellow photographer, Reuben Krabbe who put out a competition a little while back. In the spirit of the times, I’d like to do a small give-away! I’ve put together a small collection of my images and had it printed by an online printing company. The link for the book has been in the sidebar of my blog for the past couple weeks (go ahead and check, I can wait…) with a little preview.

Check out the details

Requirements:

To receive the prize, you must reside in Canada. (I just can’t be shipping this all over the world, sorry!)
You should be a fan on facebook, subscribe to the RSS feed, or follow on twitter. (I have no way of knowing this, so be honest!)
Participate!

The Goal:
I’m trying to get more people involved in photography. Post in the comments section of this post a link to a photographer or a picture that you like and explain in your comment why you like it.
Here’s where the participate thing comes in to play. You need to check out other peoples pictures/photographers and read their reasons, react and comment on their choice. Use the @ style interface to point at a certain user (example, Johnny wrote “Ipsum Lorem….” and you comment “@Johnny…”).
I will be monitoring this when I decide the winner and announcing it on Twitter and Facebook.
If you are reading this in an RSS reader or if you are reading on Facebook, please comment directly from my blog.

The Prize! (and how I decide)
I will be giving away 2 copies of my book to 2 lucky participants. Deciding will be tricky, it will be a combination of how many of the community like your choice, your explanation of why you like or dislike it and my own personal interest (to a point). I know I shouldn’t have to say this, but, please keep it clean.

The competition starts now (07-01-2010) and will end in two weeks (22-01-2010). If there are any questions, please email comp@kerrphotography.ca

Bloopers and Outtakes – Playing with Video

Matthew — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:19:00 +0000

Purely just bloopers and outtakes. This video was completely shot with my Nikon D3. I blasted away at 8fps and then threw it together for motion. The song you hear is Epic from local band and bro’s, On Call Heroes. They’re about to go record their second album, so go check them out. I hope to do more stuff like this in the future. It’s a really cool way of shooting video in my opinion.

Thanks to my friends for being the subjects, yet again, in one of my little projects. It would’ve been really boring without people in the video. Also, thanks to the band for the music. Again, really boring without it.

Halloween: Zombies, Gangters and Rorschach

Matthew — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 23:32:10 +0000

Happy Halloween Everyone! Here are a couple of images from an early Halloween party that I attended. All of the pictures here were shot, amazingly enough, with available light. Editing was done in Lightroom 3 beta and Adobe Photoshop CS3. Be safe this weekend.

Don’t forget to vote for this photoblog at the 2009 Photoblog Awards!

Lightroom 3 Public Beta – Thoughts So Far

Matthew — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 00:47:29 +0000

When a software company releases a new version of a program that is used by professionals and amateurs alike, it doesn’t always make it to a public beta test. This is not the case with Adobe’s Lightroom series. Every edition of Lightroom (Lr) is put through a public beta test. That is to say that if you have an email address, you can test this beta, provide feedback and test run the new version.

I downloaded the beta on the first day it was available. When I checked the forums for it, there was one post. Cool. So far my impressions with the new Lr have been good. It’s fast at loading, the import function has been redesigned, and switching modules is a breeze compared to previous versions.

I tried some intensive editing the other day and it hasn’t changed much. The brush function has some new features added to it and there is the renamed post-crop vignette in the effects section. The only other effect is called “film grain”. Film must truly be dead if you now have to run your digital file through a noise reduction process and then add grain. I digress. While I was doing my editing as I added more bits here and there, the program itself got slower and slower and slower. Nothing really new here. I do most of my editing in Photoshop for this very reason (white balance and general adjustments aside). So, in terms of an editing software, it’s still not as good as it could be. Don’t get me wrong though, an update is there for a reason.

All of the pictures here have been edited completely in Lr and in my opinion look as good as they would if they had been processed through Photoshop. However, I would have had this post up yesterday if I did them in Photoshop. I guess, if you’re a photographer who doesn’t need/want to do heavy processing, this is a great program and I encourage you to go to Adobe’s website and download the public beta. It’s free and it won’t hurt you.

Something else I noticed while playing with the program, you can’t view your Lr 2 catalogs just yet. Adobe has blocked them in the beta for now. I like this, it prevents me from completely destroying my current catalogs. I’ll keep playing with the program for the next couple of months and if I find anything else that is super important, I’ll post it here. Here are a couple more images that have been processed with Lr 3. Go ahead and click on the image to enlarge it.

Remember to vote for this blog a the 2009 Photoblog Awards. Link is at the top of the sidebar.

New Laforet Movie Posted by Canon, Then Taken Down

Matthew — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:28:34 +0000

Canon needs to get their act together. They just released the Canon 1d MkIV. Or, just 1d4. Seriously how do they expect people to understand which camera is which? I still don’t know the difference between Canon’s 1d2 and 1d3 are.

You may remember when the 5dMkII or 5d2 came out with 1080p video that there was a video posted by director/photographer Vincent Laforet. It was called Reverie. It was quick, to the point and a very expensive short. I liked it. And it was the first video of it’s kind to be shot on an still camera. Now, we have hundreds of great videos out there all shot on SLR cameras. One of my favourite at the moment is by a photographer in Atlanta, USA. Andrew Kornylak did a whole series on bouldering and rock climbing where he shot interviews with the Nikon D5000 and then did still-video with the Nikon D3 by just blasting away and getting a cool, stop motion like feel.

Here is one of the videos from Andrew.

You can’t always tell when it switches from the 720p video of the D5000 to the D3 which tops out at 11fps.

Unfortunately, Laforet’s newest movie Nocturne isn’t available at the moment because there seems to be some strife between Canon Inc. and Canon USA. Hopefully it will be up on the web soon. Of course you can always find it on YouTube. Because everything is on YouTube. Laforet wrote on his blog that he has agreed to take the video down until Canon gets it together. If you missed it, here is Vincent Laforet’s Reverie.

Just so you know, Nikon isn’t sitting by with there video/still cameras and not producing movies. Bill Frakes did an amazing video with the new Nikon D3s. And yes, ballerinas in Austrailia.

Wedding Photography: A Look at Traditions

Matthew — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:48:44 +0000

Not all weddings are equal. Just like not all wedding photographers are equal. You have to choose the right one. They must meet a list of criteria that suit your need. Such as: style, personality, quality, direction, passion, and of course price. Sometimes, however, it is not all about price but how well you and your significant other get along with your photographer.

Just as you should choose your photographer, you should choose your traditions. I’ve seen comedies and TV shows where they mock certain traditions like feeding each other cake and the chicken dance. I personally enjoy the chicken dance. Of course, you could have your own traditions as well. The last wedding I shot they had belly dancers perform at the reception and then after everyone had eaten, we all went out side and performed a dance for the couple in the middle to commemorate their wedding.

Rocks at Thanksgiving

Matthew — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:37:03 +0000

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time of the year. There is no pressure to spend lots of money on each other. You don’t have to dress up in a ridiculous outfit. And there is pretty healthy food involved. Don’t forget about the turkey, ham, sausage, mashed potatoes, carrots, and all those other good foods. You can leave the little green balls in the grocery store though. They don’t belong at my table.

I always go out to my cabin on the Sooke River for thanksgiving and have dinner with my extended family. I like to go about the festivities and take some pictures. We have a cousin who always makes inuksuit in the river during the summer. Sometimes they are only one rock high (as seen above), she does get some 4 or 5 rocks up and they sit in the rapids waiting for the winter to wash them away.

Another common find at my cabin. Well, at any cabin are spiders. This spider has made a web in the skylight over our kitchen. Interesting creatures, and somehow, always photogenic.

An Idea to Improve Flash Photography

Matthew — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:01:31 +0000

This idea is not mine. I want to make that clear. I’m just re-posting this idea that David Hobby of Strobist.com came up with and posted to his blog.

Say you walk in to a room that you’re going to photograph for editorial, architecture, food. Whatever. The light sucks. Plain and simple, you need to add flash but you need the ambient for fill or maybe you can’t turn it off. Matching the colour of your flash to the ambient can be a pain. Especially, if you have no idea what the colour is!

Both Nikon and Canon do a very good job of the custom white balance, based on the ambient environment. If you are shooting available light, you just shoot a white (or grey) card and set a new white balance to match your mystery ambient light. With a little in-camera calculation, the camera manufacturers out there (Nikon, Canon, Sony, Pentax, Fuji, etc.) can correct to any CC-pack (colour correct) out there. You do your white balance, it tells you what colour gel to put on your flashes and you have a colour balanced flash! Wouldn’t that be nice?

Alright, here’s the tricky part. Nikon, (or Canon, Sony, etc.) you already have the ambient offset color information available in the camera, and it works great. How about you just give us a menu option to know how to CC our flashes so we can match the ambient without buying an expensive flash color meter?

Now all that has to happen is we have to get the companies listening. So if you like the idea (I do, and I know David Hobby does) go out and re-post this blog or strobist.com, or tweet it, facebook, delicious, digg, reddit, or any thing else you can think of. Let’s see if we can get someone to see us.

Moving Wood

Matthew — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:46:51 +0000

Just something I did the other day to try and inspire myself. It’s not fancy or finished. It’s only about a minute long and there is no message or meaning for it. The only reason for it is that it inspired me to pick up my camera (well, put it on a tripod at least). During the last year at school, I felt like I had so much creative juice (I was a ripe fruit?). Recently, however, I feel like that lemon in your ice tea at the restaurant, all the juice has been squeezed out and now it just haphazardly floats just below the ice. Click here if you are using a reader to view this post, so you can view the video.
So, in forcing myself to pick up my camera and take these 1400 pictures of yours truly stacking wood, I have also put my camera on my desk so that I see it everyday. Otherwise, it might just sit in my camera bag in the corner of the room waiting to be played with. Just after finishing up all the work seen in the video, I went out climbing at the local climbing gym. Then I finished the work in the yard. Suffice it to say, I was a little sore. Then I went sailing.
This little project also progressed me towards taking my camera to the coffee shop and taking pictures there. You’ve seen some in the previous post, but here are a couple more. Don’t forget to vote in 2009 Photoblog Awards!

Coffee Shop

Matthew — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 05:05:06 +0000

I was hanging out in a local coffee shop where one of my good friends works. He was closing up the shop and I was giving him a ride home. I used this opportunity to take my camera around the shop and take some more abstract pictures. After just watching a video about photography and using only one lens. I decided to get back in to that way of thinking. Clicking on my 50/1.8 to my D3, I went in search of something to stare at.
Here are a few things that I liked, there are a few more on my flickr photostream. Also, see if you can guess what a few of these are.

Add your guess as a comment below and I’ll let you know if you’re right. Don’t forget, if you like what you see, go to the 2009 Photoblog Awards site and vote for my photoblog.