Kerr Photography - Victoria, BC, Professional Photographer » Vancouver Island

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.

Facebook vs. the Job Interview

Matthew — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 16:21:58 +0000

We’ve all been told before that story of how someone was not hired (or fired, demoted, sued, etc.) because of something that their soon-to-be employer (or former employer) saw on Facebook or some other social media site. It’s not uncommon for an employer to “Google” an applicant prior to offering them a job. So, you’ve gone and “removed” all that incriminating evidence. Now what? My thoughts are that you should flood it with good stuff. The stuff that employers want to see from a bright, committed, respectable and trustworthy team player such as yourself. I’d start off with a great profile picture from Kerr Photography (it’s the first thing I look at).

Who would you hire?

Book your portrait session with Kerr Photography before the end of February and receive 20% off the sitting fee. Refer a friend and I’ll give you another 10% back! Get your quote on prices now!

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.

Vancouver Island Logging Camps

Matthew — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 05:10:44 +0000

Last year while I was in school, a couple of my classmates and I went up to Jordan River for a photo day. This weeks Tasty Tuesday picture is from that trip.
After this trip I was inspired to go out and photograph other logging camps, working or not, around Vancouver Island. I haven’t made this trip yet, however, when I do I will be sure to make it a wonderful experience. The goal is to document the whole trip and get it down on paper in the form of a book.

Missing Pictures: Why A Workflow is Necessary

Matthew — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:30:23 +0000

I’m not sure why but for whatever reason the pictures that I took of the production of my 4×5 Pinhole camera didn’t go through my usual workflow. They are now missing. This is why a workflow is 100% absolutely necessary! Personally, my workflow is typed out, printed off, and I have a bunch of copies so that every time I have a shoot, they are next to me so I don’t miss a step. I also have it posted on my wall next to my monitor.

This is going to be a fairly long post by the sounds of it.

Ingestion
You may call this importing, getting the pictures from the camera or, collecting. I call it ingestion because that’s the program I use for the task. It’s called Image Ingester Pro 3. It’s a fairly straight forward program with an amazing capacity to be expanded to your specific criteria. You can download from half a dozen cards at the same time and upon import, all of your files get metadata and tagged so you don’t have to go in individually.
Metadata is the information stored in your picture like creator, location, copyright information, etc. Your camera adds metadata such as camera model, lens, date, time, aperture, shutter speed and so on. I can choose where I import to and what it’s called as well. I rename all of my files on import to Kerr_YYYYMMDD_0001.nef. I use my name, followed by the year, month and day, to easily find the images by date and then the original file number used by the camera. You might notice that I also use the original RAW extension as well, I convert to .dng later in the process.

Outtakes
After the Ingestion I open up the folder that I ingested it to (see the file structure above) in Bridge and start checking out the pictures for the first time. I have 5 ratings that I commonly use. The first is the green label. It tells me that this photo can be deleted and is no good. Second rating is blank, nothing to the label. Not a good shot, but something that I might use or could use. The third, fourth and fifth are star ratings 1, 2 and 3 respectively. One star is cool, two is edit this and three is wow. I don’t use the 4 or 5 star ratings because I’m using them for client choices or just when I need to expand my ratings. Once I’m done rating I add keywords backups of my ratings so that I don’t lose the rating. I do this in the form of MK:One Star, MK:Neutral (Initials:Rating). The initials just keep everything together in the keyword clouds.

Conversion
Here I’m just opening the files in Camera Raw (ctrl or cmd + R in bridge) and re-saving them further down in my workflow as .dng (Adobe’s Digital Negative format). I don’t change the filename other than the extension (.nef to .dng). The files get saved to the archive portion of my hard drive and stay there.

Catalog
Why don’t I use Lightroom from the beginning? All of the programs that I’ve used above were designed specifically for that function. Unlike Lightroom, which is designed to do all of the above, I find it doesn’t complete these tasks as well or fast enough for my liking. Although, it is possible to do most or all of the stuff above strictly in Lightroom. I use the program for cataloging only. I import to lightrooms catologs that I’ve created specifically for that shoot or that client or even as broad as the genre of the pictures. Once this is done the files never move on my drive again.

Export
I go through the final images that I’ve picked out (1 or 2 star rated) and pick a few here and there to do some post-production on in Photoshop. I export the files to a different hard drive so that my originals and my derivatives are on different disks. I export as a .psd at 300 ppi and add the new file back to the catalog so that when I look at the original file in Lightroom, a copy of the derivative is right next to it for comparison.

Post Production
Not much about post production can be said here. Save lots and always use a tonne of layers. I can go through in a future post about my workflow in Photoshop if there is enough interest.

Backup
I use a couple of programs and ways of backing up my data. First off is Microsoft Synctoy 2.0, I use this to duplicate my original files on to another drive. I also use it to copy all files to my networked server that’s running 1.5 terabytes of space.
All in all I have a 500gb drive for originals, 500gb backup of orginals and a 320gb for derivative. All of the originals get backed up to DVD and stored seperately from my computer. All of the above gets backed up to the server twice. Yes, it goes on the server on two different drives in case there is a drive failure there.

It may seem like a lot of steps and even more trouble than it worth. But believe me, if I had followed this workflow, I would have the images here in this post instead of somewhere in my array of computers, memory cards and hard drives. A couple of resources for more stuff like this is The DAM Book and the forum online as well as the Image Ingester site.

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.