Great Wall of China

Hey Gang,

My Olympic TaeKwonDo project is coming along just fine. Kevan Morin tells me he should have some designs later this week, so I am pretty excited to see what he has come up with, the exhibition should be complete within 2 weeks.

Anyways, while in shooting the Olympic exhibition in China I ended up shooting some travel images of the Great Wall for a client.

As to be expected I was very impressed with grandeur of the Wall. But what really amazed me was that it was very difficult to photograph.

Its not straight at all, it snakes in every which direction, which made it very difficult to use vanishing point framing.




I really like to use my 70-200 and to shoot a snaking wall with a telephoto didn’t really work.

So I chose to use my 17mm wide angle… I think it worked well. At end of the day I think I came up with some pretty cool images.

Its funny because when shooting commercial travel images, many people think that photographers shoot should off the beaten path, but in reality the best selling photos are of tourist attractions.


Most books like Lonely Planet, Lets Go or Airline Magazines need images of “popular” tourist attractions and not some landmark or local in a crazy little town in the middle of nowhere. Very few travelers go off the beaten path.

Enjoy!

C

Hair Massacure Charity Photograph Edmonton Alberta

Just before I left for China I shot a series of portraits for the charity called the Valentine's Day Hair Massacure. The Massacure is a brilliant charity effort in Edmonton Alberta, which raises money to support children with life threatening illnesses.

Participants of all ages and genders lined up in droves to get their hair died pink then have their heads shaved in order to show their support for the cause. Special guests included athletes from the Edmonton Rush and Edmonton Eskimos as well as guest entertainer Wayne Lee.

I basically shot a series of portraits for next years advertising campaigns. I choose a pretty dark and moody felling for the images. What I did with the kids was basically ask them, could you think about why you shaved your head? Dont talk just think. Then I just shot their reactions.

Nick and Trevor also helped out in assisting for this shoot, I have to thank them immensely, it turned out to be a huge endeavor, which I could not have shot alone.

In fact Nick and Trevor shot the actual event though I M P special event photography. You can see some of their work at www.impevents.ca

Enjoy!

C

CANADIAN OLYMPIC TAE KWON DO TEAM IN CHINA

Hey gang,

I just returned home from Beijing China where my shooting phase with the Canadian Olympic Tae Kwon Do team is finished. Now we are moving into the design side of the photography exhibition.

Kevan Morin from more in mind is taking up the responsibility for the exhibition design. He is also creating a website for the exhibition.

I am hoping that it is complete within the next month.

The shooting was split up into two phases one was the training phase, and the following was the Olympic pre tournament. The pre Olympic tournament was really cool because it was held at the Olympic center, which was an amazing venue for Tae Kwon Do.



Our athletes did very well brining in 1 gold and 2 bronze medals out of three athletes.

TEST SHOOT with the TIGER Taekwondo Team

Hey Gang,

I have some pretty cool news. On February 22 I will be off to Beijing China for a week or so with the Canadian Olympic Taekwondo team. The team is heading to China in a preparation tournament for the Olympics this August. During this time I will be photographing their press kits as well as a photography documentary on the team itself to be exhibited across Canada.

I am pretty excited but thought I needed to work on my timing before I leave.

So I decided to shoot a training session with the Tiger team of Tiger Taekwondo in Edmonton. These images you will see here are basically shot in two hours of training at our dojang.
I plan to shoot the Olympic documentary in high grain black and white for dramatic feel. Here are some of the "test" images I shot today. The training session was as usual very intense, so I got some pretty cool images, close to what I think I will see at the tournament in China.

I will be updating the blog of the Olympic images while in China.

Take care.

C

Edmonton at 2:54am

Here are some photographs of Edmonton, tonight at 2:54 am on Sunday, February 11, 2008.

I was watching the first season of Studio 60 (a pretty good TV show) around 1:3o am when the wind literally shook the windows of my living room. I looked outside and there was this eerie snow blowing in the wind, so I grabbed my camera got in my car and went out to shoot a few frames.

No reason, just for fun. It was cold. Damn Cold. With the wind it must have been in the minus 40s.

Although shooting these images in harsh conditions kinda sucked, my week was very good. I got some great printing on canvas done by Klyment Tan, shot a very cool billboard campaign for Hudsons with Jeff Mclean and some interesting industrial images for Chris Bolovar over at Optamedia. And got confirmation that I will be off to China on Feb 23 to shoot the Canadian Olympic Taekwondo Team for a photography exhibition.

C

Denise Lefebvre

Last week I had the please of shooting artist and painter Denise Lefebvre. www.deniselefebvre.com A talented artist Denise specializes in the areas of drawing, murals, portraits and paintings. It took a bit of time to organize a shoot with Denise as she always had something going on whether it was a mural unveiling or finishing up jobs for clients. Finally however we managed to set something up.

Since I pretty much had free reign on this shoot, I wanted to shoot Denise in black and white. But when I arrived at her studio I couldn’t help but shoot in color. I dont know why but I just made the move to color.

One thing I really enjoyed was being in Denise’s studio. It was very inspiring, paintings were all over the place, rows of oil and acrylic paint were accessible, canvasses, easles, paint brushes all of it was all there, in a messy organized manner.



I have always felt that photographers have been artists. Although while watching Denise work with paints and a brush, I suddenly felt unfortunate that we as photographers have somewhat “lost touch” with our craft. In the past we used to develop our film on our own, develop our own pictures, work on them by dodging and burning them etc… back in film days we were very much "in touch" with our creations... and now we just tap keyboards, and look at pixels on a screen. As a commercial shooter we often never actually print our own work... there’s something sad in that.

STOLEN IMAGE

This past week I was watching a hockey game on sports net and a commercial from the “Albertans for Change” came on. About 5 seconds into the commercial I noticed that this TV spot used a portrait I took of Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach for an upcoming photography exhibition.

The problem with this TV spot was that it was very slanderous towards the Premier and his government. So here was this organization using my image without my approval, in an TV spot I did not agree with. Not only did this organization infringed on copyright laws, but here is an organization which is a collation of the Alberta Building Trades Council and the Alberta Federation of Labor. These organizations preach equal labor laws, and yet here they are taking a photograph and not offering the photographer the adequate compensation.

To be honest I would have never licensed this image to this group as I do not agree with their message.

I have met Premier Stelmach in several occasions and I have to say he is a very honest and sincere man who is doing his best to make Alberta a better place to live for all of us.

Needless to say I informed my lawyer right away about the copyright infringement and we moved forward with the necessary steps to solve this problem.

The issue has since been dealt with. If you are wondering what image was used I have posted it to this blog.

Take care, C