Kerr Photography - Victoria, BC, Professional Photographer » Travel

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)

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.

Trees and Fog

Matthew — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:40:05 +0000

I had the opportunity at the beginning of September to take my film camera on a boat trip up to Maple Bay on the west coast of British Columbia. There were few moments where I wasn’t wearing my full storm gear. It was wet. The first night we stopped at Portland Island, located just off the shores of Sidney. When we woke up, we had one of those few moments where it was sunny out. Great! Time to go explore. You’ve probably seen a few of the pictures from the Clean, Fresh and New post. After doing some rescanning and some editing, here are a few more shots from that trip.

It was an interesting experience only taking film on a 5 day trip. Picking and choosing every shot you’re going to take. Especially when your camera’s meter is broken and you have to guess the exposures. It’s not like digital, that’s for sure.

Tofino, Pt. 2

Matthew — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:59:14 +0000

Here’s some more pictures from Tofino. I won’t post them all but they’re all on flickr.

Kyrstin coming back to the beach after some pictures.

A 50 minute star trail over the west end of Lake Cowichan.

Around 6 vertical images taken with an 85mm lens stiched together to create this panoramic.

The raw power of the ocean.

More images at flickr.

you got me

Matthew — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:55:13 +0000

Alright. So I didn’t upload pictures all week like I mentioned that I would do. But, they are on their way.

I’ve got a few images that I’ll be uploading over the next 3-5 days, I’m almost done working on them, but I will only put about three on Flickr at a time. The reason being is that on flickr, your contacts can only see 5 photos a day, and I find that I really only pay attention to 3 of those. If I upload all of my images at once you might not see that killer shot. I’ll also be uploading the images to here as well, so you don’t have to miss them.

The first three shots are as follows:

This shot was taken at Cox Bay in Tofino, BC. It’s a panoramic stich of about 5 images.

Taken from the top of Incinerator Rock in the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, Quinn, a prarie boy, runs out at low tide to the Pacific Ocean.

Footsteps of a traveller. Taken on Tonquin beach in Tofino BC.