Kerr Photography - Victoria, BC, Professional Photographer » 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.

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.

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.

Old Town

Matthew — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 14:53:42 +0000

When I was in Sydney this past October, I spent one afternoon wandering around The Rocks. It’s the oldest part of Sydney (or Australia) in terms of European views. It was also the day of the Melbourne Cup. The streets were crowded with people celebrating the race, and they were all dressed to the nines. Below is one of my pictures from this afternoon.A simple door that led to a patio. It used to be a General Store, now it’s a museum. The door doesn’t work (I tried), but I’d like to think that the deliveries came through there from the back ally.

Photos By…

Matthew — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:00:22 +0000

One photographic aspect of my life that I’ve been struggling with for the past couple weeks is my editing. That is, narrowing down which images are the best, worst, alright, etc. I have been trying to decide on a couple of pictures for the “Photos By…” competition that the Victoria Boulevard Magazine hosts each year. It’s purpose is to focus on more personal images, rather than professional work. In that case, I’ve chosen to go with some images that speak as to what I’ve done over the past year.
The first image (shown above) is something that I worked on very early in the year. I was inspired by my 4×5 work that I had accomplished in school, and having a 4×5 film holder with no camera was getting me down. So I made a camera and produced the above image of the Victoria Skyline. The next two images were taken while I was in Australia and New Zealand respectively.
The first image is from Cape Byron, on the east coast of Australia. The picture was taken looking southwest from the most easterly point of mainland Australia. The closest we were to home (via longtitude) since we arrived in Cairns. It points at the journey ahead; beautiful, rugged, and raw. The second image is from South Island, New Zealand. In an area known as Fiordland. The view is of Eglinton Valley and the Earl Mountains. A peaceful serenity. It was the end of our trip and in less than a week from taking this picture, I would be back home in Victoria.

(click on images to enlarge)

Graduation Photos!

Matthew — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 09:22:26 +0000

Are you graduating this year? Know somebody who is graduating this year? If it’s high school, college, university or kindergarten, pictures of this special occasion are becoming more and more popular.Booking starts now, and it’s as easy as emailing contact@kerrphotography.ca and requesting a quote. Prom package pricing starts at only $60, packages can be found here. Don’t want a package? Not a worry, just email with the pictures you want. It’s my belief that your pictures should be fun! Not a boring, sit-in-front-of-a-lame-library-backdrop shot, but rather an expression of who you are! Among the prom and grad promotional pricing you’ll also find wedding packages for spring and summer of 2010 and family portrait packages.

Fine Art Vision

Matthew — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 14:56:14 +0000

This past fall, my girlfriend and I took some time off work/school and traveled for 4 months in the southern hemisphere. Specifically, Australia and New Zealand. I won’t go in to where we went and what we did (if you’re curious, visit msquareddownunder.wordpress.com) but I will give some details about what I saw and how it affected me personally and professionally.

First off, my gear. If I am ever to do it again, and there is a high possibility of more traveling, I will, without a doubt, bring more gear. Regardless of what all of the travel books, offices, and the things people might say about traveling with stuff you don’t want stolen, forget it all. It may have applied 10 or even 5 years ago, but not anymore. We would be staying in hostels where people would leave their laptop, camera and mobile on their bed in a 6 person dorm and leave. For the night. Not saying that it’s very smart, but stuff doesn’t have a lot of theft appeal when there is so much around. It seems like everyone these days is backpacking with their laptop. And to think that I was worried about taking my iPhone. The camera that I did take down there was the Panasonic DMC-LX3. A decent “high-end-point-and-shoot” camera. It’s on par with the G11 variant from Canon. In my opinion, it performed admirably and to its credit, within its specifications. As soon as I tried to use the camera as I would my Nikon D3 (obviously a higher level than a point-and-shoot) I found that it lacked, immensely. I also, in my glorious spat of wisdom, didn’t bring a tripod. Why? Maybe you can answer that, I just don’t know. I did however bring a flash and a wireless transmitter for the hotshoe. I used it once. Okay, twice, but the second time was only to see if the thing was still working after three and a half months of shoving in to my backpack (it didn’t work). All said and done, there are reasons why I went with a push-here-dummy camera and why I didn’t bring my SLR and lenses: size, weight, insurance, theft-o-meter, and the massive files my camera produces would have caused me to go for broke on memory cards (they’re really expensive down-under). The camera worked for why I wanted it but there were times when I was kicking myself for not bringing a bigger camera. It would have let me take so many shots where I simply stated “I wish I had my…” but then held my tongue for fear of my girlfriend actually kicking me for bringing up that ‘issue’ one more time.

Second, I found that my vision changed quite a bit in the 3 months of Australia and 3 weeks of New Zealand. At first I was in awe of where I was, taking pictures of palm trees on beaches, which for obvious reasons we just don’t get on Vancouver Island. Halfway through the trip my vision switched from flowing water over rocks in the middle of a jungle to skyscrapers, buildings, bridges, architecture. It could be because north of Brisbane (about halfway down the coast) there aren’t any cities, unless you count Cairns (which, you can’t really). I think it was also because I was tired of that, time to move on and try something else. It changed again a number of times as we traversed the country but the thing that really stuck was the landscapes. I took those throughout the whole trip, something I wasn’t fully expecting. Obviously I was thinking that I would really dig the views but something kept me seeing them differently every time. I liked it. I started taking pictures of people on the street by the time we got to Melbourne (the end of our Aussie trip) and, unfortunately, didn’t have enough time to fulfill that genre on my trip. It’s something I’d like to do more. By the time I got to New Zealand, I figured I would enjoy my time there, but it was the ‘end’ of my trip and I was thinking of home.

New Zealand is an undersold resource of raw natural beauty. Now I know why so many photographers go there for their personal work. (By the way, I know this post is long, but thanks for sticking through it if you’ve made it this far. I won’t rant much longer.) In a quick fit of math I deduced that of all the pictures I took in Australia I only ‘like’ 18% of them. On the other hand, in New Zealand I’m in the range of 23%. I think this is due to the landscape and pure visual inspiration that NZ pukes in to your lap (note: visual inspiration, not literary inspiration).
My conclusion to this atypically long post, I like being a photographer and I liked that I was so limited with my gear while traveling. I grew in terms of my personal vision and as to what I can do professionally. Although, I wouldn’t want to do it again in the future, but if ever I were to get trapped in a spacial rift and be sent back in time, I would (more than likely) do it the same way again.

The pictures (shameless plug: for sale in print) that I’ve published with this post are a few of the fine art versions of my travels through Australia, all shot on the LX3 and converted in Bridge/Lightroom/Photoshop/Lightroom. Yes, they went through Lightroom twice.

Thanks for reading, please feel free to leave comments below, I won’t bite.

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

Project: 4×5 Pinhole Camera

Matthew — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 03:53:28 +0000

Complete! Almost. I just have to finish off the varnish on it. It’s done as far as sealing it up from light, functionality of the shutter, and the tripod mount. The first shot is pictured above. Shot at 40 seconds at f/216. A little under exposed as the shutter speed was a calculated guess. According to Mr. Pinhole dot com, the ‘actual shutter speed’ should be around 48 seconds. Nothing a curves layer can’t fix.

In my next post I’ll be putting up some production pictures as well as a shot of the final image (next post because I misplaced the production pictures somewhere on my computer). I’m going to try and do some night shots with it and some portraits. I’m also trying to figure out a good way of shooting strobes with it too. I might blind my subjects before I get them exposed, but it’s probably worth 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!