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Dave

Henrique and Moritz

We've got a couple of Grade 10 exchange students staying with us for the winter.  Henrique from Brazil, and Moritz from Germany.  Since they weren't around to get their school photos at the beginning of the year, I thought I'd just grad a couple of quick ones in the studio.  For kicks, I thought we'd do something more interesting as well.

Henrique

Moritz

Tech Stuff

I lit the guys with an Alien Bee B1600 with the stock 7 inch silver reflector on it.  Another Alien Bee with an extra small softbox was used as a fill light to soften the effect of the hard main light.  This is not something you want to do with someone much older than a teenager unless they have perfect make-up on.

Camera:  Nikon D700

Lens:  Nikon AF-S 28-70mm f/2.8

Lighting:  Alien Bee B1600 x 2

Note

If it seems that I've haven't done any blog postings in a while, it's that we're in the shoulder season between winter and summer here and I'm not that busy.  Alan at the Urban Pie toodled off to thailand for a long vacation as well, so I haven't been doing much with those guys either.  I've been filling my time with long walks with my wife, fixing some badly needed things on my pick-up truck, and finishing some wedding albums for clients, and generally goofing off.  Come June, I get busy again for the summer season.

Peak2Peak Wedding, Josh and Paul

Josh and Paul came out to Whistler for their wedding on the Peak2Peak gondola from Australia. Paul had a large group of friends from Dublin Ireland, and Josh's mother came out from Australia.


The wedding inside the Peak2Peak gondola at Whistler. There aren't a lot of places you really need a fisheye lens, but this is one of them.


Paul and his Irish friends serenade Josh as the gondola comes into the Blackcomb station.


Heavy snow on the way to Champaign at Christine's at Blackcomb.




We finished up the wedding at the Nita Lake Lodge. It's a nice spot, and I always like to do some non-alpine shots with these weddings.

Tech Stuff
A big part of planning for a wedding is knowing the equipment you'll need for a certain job. Often I'll pack specialized gear, like the fisheye lens I used in the gondola car, if I know I'll be in a tricky situation.

Cameras: Nikon D2x, Nikon D700
Lens: Nikon 10.5mm DX, AF-S Nikon 17-35mm f/2.8, AF-S Nikon 28-70 f/2.8
Lighting: Nikon SB-800 bounced into a photo umbrella (last photo). Controlled by the SU-800.

Whistler Helicopter Wedding

Ashley and Duncan are from the UK, and came out to Whistler for an extended vacation, and thought they would get married while they were out here. To make it really special, they decided to get Blackcomb Aviation fly them up to Beverly Lake on the back side of Rainbow Mountain for a high altitude wedding.

Here's a link to the wedding album I designed for them.

I don't to photograph in a lot of cathedrals, but this is way better.


Ashley gets a new hairdo as the helicopter takes off.


I love doing black and white landscapes, and it was a beautiful day for it.


Dale the mountain guide leads the parents over from the helicopter. It made for quite the entry.




Ashley and Duncan get a lashing as the helicopter lands to collect us.


While I love being in the high alpine for weddings, if there's a lot of snow, it's sometimes tough to get a good portrait, so we stopped off at Green Lake for a quick portrait session.


I put this little animation together of the helicopter taking off and landing. I thought it looked pretty cool.

Tech Stuff
A helicopter wedding is tough thing to co-ordinate, especially in the winter. Before Ashley and Duncan arrived, I had a long talk with Dale, the mountain guide, to make sure we were in a safe area, and to see if he had any off limits areas to keep out of. Avalanches and steep slopes are a real hazards in the back country. Helicopters, especially when they're running, are very dangerous to be moving around, so you want to have someone there who really knows their stuff.

I packed all my gear in a backpack, as the rotor blast from the helicopter blows snow into pretty much every crevice imaginable, and you want to have as much as possible packed away.

Rainbow Park in Winter

Sharon and Ed came to Whistler from Washington state for small low key wedding with their close friends and family. Sharon made an advance trip out in February and toured every outdoor wedding location in Whistler I could think of before finally settling on Rainbow Park, on the west side of Alta Lake, and about as far removed from things in Whistler as you can get. I love Rainbow in the winter. There's almost nobody there, and the views can't be beat.


The Bridge of Sighs over the River of Golden Dreams and no, I'm not making up those names).


With family in from Florida and Texas, I had to get a group shot with everyone on the frozen lake.

Tech Stuff
Camera: Nikon D700
Lenses: Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8

Nicklaus North Winter Wedding

Trina and Mark came to Whistler from Washington State to have a intimate wedding at a Nicklaus North Chalet. If Trina looks a little cold in the outside pictures, it was -11 degrees outside when we did the portrait session.







Tech Stuff:
The pictures are a little misleading, as we shot the portraits the morning after the wedding. The ceremony was 8:00 in the evening, and there was no natural light at all for portraits. For the pictures of the ceremony, I turned the camera flash off and turned up the camera ISO up to 3200 for a few photos. It was so dark that the guy doing the ceremony couldn't read the vows, so he grabbed one of the candles for light, and that made the photo. For the group photo, I brought an alien Bee strobe unit with a softbox mounted on it. My camera flash just didn't have the juice to do a photo like this.

Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Nikon AF-S 28-70mm f/2.8 (ceremony) , Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8 (portraits)
Lighting: Alien Bee B1600 Studio Strobe, Medium six softbox.

CabaRadio with Teddy Smooth

CabaRadio at CITR radio at UBC, (L-R) Iona Beerwagon, Teddy Smooth, Miss Fitt, eRoc, Suzy Shameless.
I did a late night shoot at UBC's student radio station, CITR, on the CabaRadio show with DJ's Teddy Smooth and eRoc. They cover the cabaret scene in Vancouver, so we had local burlesque dancer Miss Fitt, and roller derby queens Iona Beerwagon and Suzy Shameless (to see them in action, check out my blog posting on the Faster Pussycats roller derby).

Arriving at the studio in UBC's student Union building (despite all the new construction at UBC, the Sub looks like it could be a set from Animal House) at 10:30 for the start of the show. We shot until 1:00 in the morning, and then Urban Pie publisher Alan Forsythe and I headed to a 24 hour coffee shop to edit and process the photos, as the Pie was going to press the next day. Leaving Vancouver at 3:00 AM, I finally got to bed at 5:30 in the morning. I did get some nice photos though.


Teddy Smooth and eRoc in the radio station's record room.


Hello Ladies. Iona Beerwagon and Suzy Shameless.


Urban Pie publisher Alan Forsythe gets sandwiched.

Tech Stuff
The main shot was lit with two Alien Bee B1600 lights, one as a key in front, and a kicker off to camera right. The key light had a medium softbox, and the kicker an extra small 12x16" softbox.

The photos in the hallway and record room were shot with an alien Bee and extra small softbox. In the hallway, I took the light off the stand and put it on the floor to get some low angle lighting.

Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Nikon AF-S 17-35mm f/2.8
Lighting: Alien Bee B-1600 lights x 2

Chateau Whistler Wedding - Melissa and Keith

This giant Percheron draft horse took a bib bite out of Melissa's wedding bouquet during our wedding portrait session.
Australians Melissa and Keith came out to the Fairmont Chateau Whistler hotel for an intimate wedding at the Chateau rooftop wedding chapel. It's a great location for small weddings, especially in the winter, as it has glass sides, a terrific view from the roof, and the Fairmont staff do an awesome wedding service.






The Fairmont wine sommelier sabred a bottle of champaign for the wedding.




Portraits on the Fairmont's roof.




Melissa and Keith went for a sleigh ride that evening at the Fairmont's golf club. They had a big gas fired bonfire going that made for nice photos in the low, late afternoon light.




And to finish things off, a sleigh ride around the Fairmont Chateau Whistler's golf course.

Tech Stuff:
Camera: Nikon D700
Lenses: Nikon AF-S 17-35mm f/2.8, Nikon AF-S 28-70mm f/2.8, Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8
Lighting: Nikon SB-900 flash, controlled by SU-800

Whistler Peak2Peak Wedding

Catriona and John came out from Manchester in the UK and had a nice wedding on Whistler's Peak2Peak Gondola. Interestingly, it's my second wedding on the Peak2Peak in a row.

Damien and Harold, Peak2Peak gondola

Harold and Damien had a nice Wedding on the Peak2Peak Whistler gondola on December 26th. There's a funny story that goes with, but I'll let Harold and Damien tell it themselves.