New Blog

Hi there,

I've moved my blog to a new place. I will not be updating this space. Please visit http://patrickgervais.wordpress.com/ for new posts.

Thanks,
Patrick

Wall Plant

This is day 111 of 365 and I like this image for the simplicity of it and the empty space around the plant. I hand held the Sylvania Sun Gun (man that thing gets friggin' hot)  and made sure that no shadows hit the wall. I tried some of those but they looked way too busy with all the leaf shadows.

Thanks for reading, you are reading right?? Anyone?? Anyone out there?

:-)

Patrick

:-)

Ok so I'm really tired tonight and this is my POTD. Off to read in bed.

Goodnight everyone :-)
Patrick

talk listen

Hey there! It's been a long time since I've posted anything and this post is the direct result of discussing that fact with my good friends, Kharim and Mike. Not only did Kharim push me to post more often but she inspired this shot; talk listen. We all laughed so hard tonight with her funny stories of how when she talks on the phone with "certain" people she has to sometimes put the phone down and come back later to see if she can get a word in, or not!!! Of course we ALL have phone stories of how when we speak on the phone with certain friends, work colleagues, family or whoever, we can often have difficulties communicating. We don't all have the same, eh communication skills right? Some people are "low talkers" and you have to keep asking them to repeat themselves. Others just never listen, they just keep talking and talking and talking. And then some don't even have anything to say, they call but there is this uncomfortable silence, and so you have to either start up a conversation or you have to ask: sooooooo what do you want? 

Anyway this is just all in good fun, hope you like the shot. I had fun creating it. I told Kharim that my photo of the day would be a phone. When I got home after our photo club meeting and had that funny discussion with Kharim and Mike I took a few shots of this old phone and felt that they were all crap and was about to give up. Then I saw a story in two images that could express the essence of that funny discussion we had earlier. The lighting on the "talk" image was focused on the mic area of the phone, where you talk into it, and the lighting on the "listen" image was focused on the speaker area of the phone, where you listen. So I brought them both into Photoshop, modified the color of the buttons, added the text, put both images together and voila!

This is why I am really enjoying the 365 photo project. Just when you think you have nothing, if you stick with it you may just get something worthwhile. I'm not saying this shot is anything special but only that it was a challenge and I feel good about the result. That's it and that's enough.

Thanks for reading.

Patrick

Good Enough?

I've been liberated! Well sort of anyway. Until I started my 365 project I would only post images to my Flickr page, here on the blog or wherever else, that I thought were "good enough" to be looked at by others. Well now that I need to take an image every day, I am posting images that I wouldn't normally post because they are not "good enough". This worried me at first because I didn't want people to see images that are just ok and think that well whatever they would think. It is only normal to show your best work, that is what everyone does right? The pros will take hundreds if not thousands of images and we'll only see a very small amount of those, the best, the ones that are "good enough".

My attitude towards posting images has changed a little recently in that I accept that for this 365 project not every image will be a great shot. Since I've accepted that I've had more fun. It would be a different story if I was creating a portfolio of my best images or was a working pro photographer. In that case of course I would only show my best stuff. One thing I do try to do is always attempt to be creative and make the best images I can. They wont always be "Good enough" but nobody always creates amazing shots, every day. 

One thing for sure is that the more you practice the better you get and so I'll keep at this 365 project and keep making ok images and every now and then I'll make images that are "good enough".

Thanks for reading and keep on creating...

Patrick

365 so far...

10 days into this project and so far so good. I have been able to get a pretty good shot every day so far but I know that there will be times when it will be difficult. One thing I noticed is that during the week my schedule is very limited and doesn't allow much time to take photos. For sure I could easily just shoot the first thing that comes to mind but I want each shot to stand on its own. Some shots will have to be just really quick snapshots and I will have to live with them, but that is part of the process. I decided to create a shot list that I can use when I'm having trouble finding a shot. For example one idea is to take a long exposure of a scene when the clouds in the sky are moving quickly enough to get some nice movement. Here is a great example of this:

I'd like to thank Garry for allowing me to post his stunning image. Please check out his Nocturnal Set on Flickr where you'll see lots more amazing work.

I have other ideas but will have to work at finding more.

Stay tuned and thanks for reading...

Patrick