Photo 365

On January 1st I will start a Photo 365 project. You’ve probably heard of this before but in case you haven’t it’s pretty simple; take 1 photo a day for a full year! That’s it, one photo that will represent that day. Simple enough right? Well many people start projects like this but don’t finish them. I’ve done a little research to get some ideas and feel that I’ll be able to get it done.


In the end I hope to have improved my photographic skills. I will create a Flickr set to upload all the images and occasionally blog about my progress. I also plan on creating and printing an album to commemorate the project. To be able to look back and see my year in images should be rewarding. Who knows what will happen, what changes will occur, which events will mark the year.

Ciao for now,
Patrick

I'm making an effort to learn about black & white photography. I took a workshop recently that consisted of 3 parts; the first we discussed what interests us in black & white photography, how to see in b & w, looked at great examples of high impact images, the 2nd part was a field-trip where we were given projects and the 3rd was to look at our work and discuss things greyscale. I unfortunately missed the 3rd part but really enjoyed the first and second parts.

For a black & white image to be a "high impact" and memorable image, it needs to have great composition, the subject needs to be very clear to the viewer and the lighting really becomes more important then a color image. Some people may not agree, even I am just learning about this idea, but in our discussions we all agreed that an average color image is easier to look at than an average black & white image.

I looked at my catalog of images and sorted all the b & w images and here are a few of my favorites.

Sometimes you can save a color image that has really bad color casts by changing it to black & white. A good example is if you have a group portrait and the clothing people are wearing just doesn't work and can ruin the shot, well just turn it to grayscale and voila, problem gone!

That's it for now!

Thanks,
Patrick

My First Photo Published!!!

One of my images was selected to be published by Peachpit in a new book on the Canon G10 / G11 camera. All images in the book were submitted by Flickr users and selected by the folks at Peachpit. Check out the Flickr page for the book and see all winning images here.

My image was taken with the Canon G10, handheld at 1.6 sec at f2.8 and ISO 80. I worked pretty hard to get this shot so I'm pretty happy that it was selected for the book. I tried many different versions playing with framing and exposure times. I had to lean and support the camera on a railing while holding myself at the angle I needed to get everything in the frame. The 4 rings of this amusement ride move up and down and hold at the top for a moment which aloud me to try many variations of effects. Keep exploring and playing with angles, exposures and effects, you never what you'll get.

My next post will be on the black & white workshop I took a couple weeks ago. I'll post a few of my favorite images and talk about what I learnt.

Thanks / Merci!!

Patrick

My Big Sister Karen

Karen Viola Gervais

My sister Karen passed away on the morning of November 30th. She was only 54 years old and taken too soon.

The first snowfall of this winter was softly coming down the morning Karen passed away. I remember looking at the ground and trees as the pure white snow was covering them. It was truly beautiful just like she was. For me, the first snowfall will always be for my big sister Karen.

Ox CD release show at Le Divan Orange

Thanks to Phil at Weewerk who set me up to shoot Ox in Montreal at "Le Divan Orange" the other night. Ox are an Alt-Country Canadian band. They've just released their 3rd cd "burnout" and I took some shots of their Montreal show on November 3rd.

I wanted to rent a fast lens like a 50mm f1.4 or an 85mm f1.4 but didn't get enough time so I had to make due with my Sigma 24-70mm f2.8 which is a great lens but I would've liked to have the extra stops of light, especially because the divan orange has almost no stage lighting. I set my Nikon D300 to auto ISO and most of the shots ended up at 3200 ISO. I love the lowlight power of the D300, even at such a high ISO the shots look good. I processed them in black & white and the grain disappears and just adds to the look.

I tried to get some cool angles and new that I'd be processing them in black & white. I tried a little on camera flash with my SB600 but it ruined the shots because it was too strong. Next time I'd like to place a flash or two in a strategical spot and fire them wirelessly and maybe use some color filters to make the light more interesting.

Thanks for reading!

Patrick

Photo Talk

Well things have been hectic at work and at home. Lots to go over so here we go. I help a colleague of mine the other day by taking photos of her new collection of children’s clothing her and her husband import from Peru. Her site is www.emigo.ca so please check it out. We had 9 kids there and many different pieces of clothing to shoot. I’d never done a shoot like that and honestly it was a little much. I learnt a lot for sure. Next time I do a shoot with many kids I’ll make sure that I have an assistant and try not to have all kids there at the same time. I made the mistake of forgetting the main reason of the shoot, which was the clothing and not making nice portraits. I new this was something I may do and attempted to keep that in mind but things went so fast that I missed a few shots but in the end managed to get some nice shots. Here a few that I like and I'll post more later.

I went to the monthly breakfast conference organized by the SPPQ - http://www.sppq.com/ , the speaker was Patrick Lavoie, www.espacephotos.com who talked about monitor calibration and some of his Photoshop techniques. Lots of good stuff. I won a great door prize of a free workshop from Marsan College www.collegemarsan.qc.ca so I can’t wait to try that.

Last night we had a guest speaker at my photo club. Guy Boily - http://www.guyboily.com/ is an amazing nature and landscape photographer with a unique vision and ethic. He showed us how he plans out his images by showing us series of images that were a means to an end and ended each series with the final result, which was always an inspiring image. You can only create amazing images consistently like he does by putting in the effort, mastering his equipment, waiting for the magic light and pressing the shutter at the right time. CLICK! You need to check him out here.

Thanks for reading,

Patirck

World Press Photo Exhibition

Just got back from the World Press Photo Exhibition in Montreal. It's at the Just For Laughs museum. It was great and really worth the money, only $12. I have a great appreciation for photojournalists and how they put themselves in harms way and are able to create such stunning work. The quality of the prints was fantastic and I really was impressed by the color saturation on some of the images. We (I went with a friend) did notice a difference in sharpness of images we thought were taken with medium or large format cameras & 35mm ones. The prints were very large for some and probably pushed a bit too close to the capacity of the file. We also left there thinking how lucky we are to live in a place that is without the conditions we saw tonight. There were some photo essays and I really payed attention to the stories that were being told.

Patrick

Flash, The Strobist & Lighting 101

I'm thinking of getting a flash for my camera and went to the best online resource, The Strobist. There is tons of info there and so I started by watching the video below and it was really great and funny too!! I've got lots to learn as far as lighting and it will be fun exploring the site. Enjoy, Patrick

New season starting

My photo club is starting it's 3rd season tonight. I've got lots going on with work, the photo club, my photo projects and on top of that I've come down with a cold! Don't mean to bother anyone with useless info but not feeling very creative these past few days. Need rest. I have a photo shoot this week end so I need to be in better shape.

I want to write my "Artist Statement"

cheers,

Patrick

Inspired!

This should inspire you to push yourself further than you thought possible, it did for me anyway.

Enjoy,
Patrick

10 Traits of a Good Photographer - by Scott Bourne

Check out this great article on 10 things you need to be a good photographer. I agree with all points and feel I have most of them, just not consistently enough. Something to work for....

Cheers,
Patrick Gervais

New project

My wife and I have decided to start a little weekend business project we've discussed for almost 1 year. No details for now but we've starting planning some details. We registered the domain name and I'm working on a website. I decided to use Squarespace to build the site and I hope it will work out. So far I'm finding it difficult but I just started yesterday so will keep at it.

The project is photography related but I will wait until going into any details until we are closer to getting things started.

That's it for now,

Cheers!
Patrick

So you wanna shoot a rock and roll star....

I love music and have played drums since I was 12. Now that photography has become my main passion I want to shoot concerts as much as possible. There is a great Flickr post by Thomas Hawk on his love & experience of concert photography and how to get your foot in the door. Check it out here.

Help-Portrait

For my first post I thought I would mention that the Help-Portrait  charity idea is something that I really want to get involved in and have a bunch of people from my photo club also into it. December 12th we'll be taking portraits of people who are unable to afford family portraits and giving them away as a way to help out and allow more people to enjoy quality photos. It is a great time of year for something like this. Just waiting for more details from the people organizing it....