When you least expect it...

Obviously I travel a lot for my job. So naturally I end up staying in a lot of different hotels. Because I almost never book my hotels more often than not the accommodations I am booked in are average and consequentially never become a memorable part of the trip.

However every and then I end up being completely surprised by my accommodations and end up posting a blog on a hotel I am staying in. Last summer I posed on the Pastana hotel in London, after that was the Monaco hotel in San Fran and now the Platinum Hotel…. Where is it? Read the blog and find out. 

I arrived yesterday evening to (_________ _________) , and proceeded to this new Platinum Hotel with the expectation that it would be the average run of the mill pre-approved 4 star accommodations.

I was stunned at first when I entered to see purple trendy lights and a huge Alice in wonderland chaise in the front entrance. Things only got better as I entered the front lobby.  Chic design, trendy furniture, cool lighting, off the wall color palates fancied my senses.

When I entered the room, I was literally blown out of the water. Hard wood throughout, clean white paint, track lighting, zebra influenced tables, the kitchenette was encased in reflective white cabinetry, topped with grey granite. Bedrooms (two) had custom headboards, high thread count sheets, tiger accent pillows, and there was funky art hanging on the walls.

I guess had this hotel been in SanFran, Paris or somewhere in Rio DeJaneiro I would have been pleasantly surprised, but this hotel is smack dab in the middle of Fort McMurray Alberta. – I am here again for a 3 day magazine shoot.

Like I always say, “Your trip is what you make of it, but if you get to stay in a cool hotel your trip is always a little bit better”.

Gritty Heros...

For the past few months the Canadian economy has been picking up steam, but Alberta trumps all other provinces. The past 6 months has seen me get call from large public and private companies I haven't heard from since the crash in 08'.

Finning Canada was one of those clients who called. They have always had a go to photographer who shot pretty much everything for them. However recently they decided to change things up and vary up style.

Finning's CAT equipment has a heavy presence in the Alberta oil sands. Consequentially last week I shot over two days a fantastic collection of images to be used for a recruitment drive. Further proof the province of Alberta is once again on the upswing.

With this collection I wanted to show the workers as "Gritty Heros" if you will. The Finning team gave me pretty much carte blanch which allowed me to really light the way I wanted to. the only challenge, which is quote coming when shooting up in Fort McMurray is time.

We really only had about 10-15 minutes to light and shoot each person because we simply pulled them off of their work duties.

*Me standing behind a 767 truck.

Hope you enjoy.

busy 3 weeks...

The past 3 weeks have been just awesome. I have had the chance to work with some really fun agencies, shoot a few covers and stories for Rogers media magazines, a street level "Butter Milk Biscuit" campaign for McDonalds, an annual report for a huge international property company Grosvenor, shooting an album cover for country music artist, another annual shoot CWB shoot in Edmonton and Vancouver, a large 3 day shoot for Kiewit construction in Vancouver and a bunch of other cool shoots for West Edmonton Mall and other sizable companies in Western Canada. 

 (what buttermilk muffins on the street??? Nah, its just a newspaper box)

It was all topped off today when I shot an MMA fighter. The shoot and location was hooked up by my assistant / shoot producer Natalie. I really feel NAT nailed the location and look for this fighter portrait.They guy was really cool, but the location is what made this shoot. We hammered this out in about 1hr.     

I also wanted to mention a just published work of mine in Edmonton's Avenue magazine. The spread is a feature about designers. Its basically product and portraits..  I am super stoked because the art direction and layout was smack on! I promise to get a copy scanned and on line. 

 (michelle B) 

Unfortunately I would really like to post on each of these projects, but I am in the midst of prepping for a trip to New York I leave tomorrow. I have one major portfolio showing and few bunch of smaller meetings over the weekend - NY is truly a city that never sleeps or quits working. 

 (annual report photos)

 (dr rick neuls... magazine feature)

 (cover? not sure yet Katies agent has to choose)

*unfortunately I cant show any photos from CWB or Kiewit yet (wow Kiewit is such a large company its registered in spell check) due to confidentiality agreements* 

Syncrude Fort McMurray AB

Things have been going really well, to the point where I have to focus my direction a little more. A good friend of mine and somewhat of an unofficial mentor is reshaping his career to shoot only the jobs he wants. I think this is great because you only focus on the development of a specific area of a craft, and ten truly excel.

One of the areas I believe I excel in is industrial work. I'm not sure why, but I have no issues with working in places like Fort McMurray (for a few days). I am posting some work here that I shot for the Alberta Government at Syncrude just 10hrs after James Cameron left the site.

It's truly amazing how the aftermath of a visit from a Hollywood director can cause such a ruckus at an Oil sands plant that turns out 10milliuon dollars a day.

Because of the negative publicity the Cameron brought with him Syncrudes PR people were hyper sensitive. "You can't shoot this way.. oh no....you can't shoot in that direction either"..

Anyways the shoot worked out and here are some of the finals.



Enjoy!



C

shooting in studio

 Since the holidays just ended I thought I would post some new product photos, and of course a tear sheet of the West Edmonton Malls Holiday gift guide.


When a photographer shoots product on white, you really have to hope you work with a good designer to blend your work together well in the final project. I have shot in the past product on white only to have the images surrendered to subpar designers, resulting in a less than eye popping final product.

In the case of 2010 West Edmonton Mall gift guide the first good sign was I was given the opportunity to shoot some heavy brands like Burberry, Fossil, Coach, Armani and Boss. Then my images were turned over to their great designers who worked their magic and made solid collages of all the product. The final book ended up being a 20page guide.

I also decided to post some photographs of a new perfume from Issey Miyake. It's a reflective black bottle on a black background, so it presented a lot of challenges in studio.

I ended up lighting it with 5 light sources. Soft boxes, a snoot, and one of Trevor Schneider's fiber optic kits that attach to my elinchrom heads. Trevs work can be seen here. http://www.actionfigurecollectables.com/

This image is pretty clean out of camera, just slight post to clean up dust specs and a slight thinning of the reflection lines.

Enjoy!



C

Shooting fitness people

Hope everyone had a great Xmas and spent a lot of quality time with your family. I have so much to post in the next few weeks so keep checking back.
I was real busy with pre holiday shoots leading up to Xmas so a lot of different stuff with that, plus a lot of proprietary commercial and editorial works have been released.

One of my main goals for 2011 is to shed some pounds (18 to be exact) to regain my weight of my ideal playing shape when I played hockey (10 years ago).

Now that we are on the topic of fitness I have decided to post photo series I did for Lori Passmore.

Lori is a fitness trainer who specializes in Yoga and the hard core Kettle Bell training. She visited the studio in December and we knocked out some clean photographs that will be suited for her new brand.

Enjoy.




C

White Balance, Gels and Cell Phones.

Today we shot some real fun photographs for CWB. The one part of the shoot took us to the 24th story of the of the CWB building. We were shooting some office culture photographs in a lunch room when I looked out and saw a corner of the building that peaked out at a 90angle looking out into the distance.

I asked our art director what he thought about putting some employees in an office and shooting them from the other part of the building.

(this is pre post production... want to know why? because you can see the messy desk and the Quadra in the bottom right, we just couldnt move it ant further to the right)

The AD went for it so I sent Aaron (my assistant) around the building to set up the lights. Because the windows on the CWB building are tinted green, there were some color issues shooting through my window into Aarons window.

I really wanted to have an over the top" blue" exterior with a warm glow lighting up the office. To do this I white balanced to tungsten and doubled up the light with full tungsten orange gels. Once I nailed the warm look, we shot a few images with a custom white balance and the naked light with no gels.

(dosent Aaron look happy? No? Its ok, because we started this morning at 8:30am)

To make this happen Aaron and I were communicating via cell phones with Aaron relaying my movement directions to the employees.

I shot this with the Canon 1ds mark 3, with a 50mm 1.2 and a circular polarizer to minimize reflections in Aarons window. I triggered the Elinchrom Quadra (one) with pocket wizards.

This set up was more complex than I would typically like (I tend to like more realistic photographs), but I think this rendered some interesting results.

C