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.

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.

New Year's at MoJo's

I got a call on the 30th from Mojo's co-owner Greg Britnell asking if I'd like to come over and shoot some pics in the bar on new year's eve. I wasn't doing much else, and it sounded like a cool gig, so I said sure. It was a total blast.







Tech Stuff
This shoot was a little challenging, as it was really dark in there, and packed to the gills with drunk kids. I brought a light stand and umbrella, which I used for the shots of the fire spitting bar tender, the DJ, and the shot glasses. The fire breathing shot was nuts, as I was inside the bar, and close enough to the flames that they singed off some the hair on my right arm.

Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Nikon AF-S 17-35mm
Lighting: Nikon SB-900, on Camera and mounted on a photo umbrella.

Whistler Heli Wedding - Rainbow Mountain

I love doing helicopter weddings, they really are a lot of fun. Kirsty and Billy came out from the UK for their wedding, and flew their entire family to the top of Rainbow Mountain. It was perfect weather for it, with calm winds, and cool temperatures, unlike the last helicopter wedding I did.

This was a few years ago, but this morning, Billy posted some shots on his Facebook page and tagged me in the gallery. His Dad had a few nice shots of me at work, which is something I don't have a lot of, so I thought I'd put them up on my blog.


A view you just can't beat, with Whistler/Blackcomb in the background.


That's me waving at the helicopter pilot to move in closer for the shot. With the wide angle lens, he really needed to be on top of us for this to work. He was on his way back from dropping off the family members, so we able to set this up before he landed to pick us up.

Auto White Balance

If there's one thing I really hate, it's the over automation on modern cameras. Especially high on my list is auto white balancing. Last night I was shooting a hockey game at the Meadow Park Arena, and since I forgot to bring something to set the white balance with, I set it to Auto WB. Luckily for me, the pictures will probably run on a B&W page in the paper, as the Auto WB didn't do any good at all.

Anyways, I was out shooting some pictures this afternoon of the fall colours. For the first photo, I had forgotten change the WB back to 'Cloudy', my standard setting, from Auto WB. In the lower photo, which is was actually the first one I shot, you can see that the camera has read the all the yellow leaves, and added a pile of blue into the image to balance the colour out to neutral. In the main photos with the bike in it, it's set for 'Cloudy, which is what I almost always have the camera set on. The colour seems to be about spot on.

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

Lost Lake Wedding

Andrea and Richard are a nice couple from the UK who came to Whistler for a quiet wedding. I sent them a list of different places in Whistler where they could have quiet ceremony, and they picked Lost Lake.


There are some really great forests in the park, which make for nice portraits.




When Andrea called me and said she wanted to have thew wedding at Lost lake, I had to tell her that there was one big draw back to the area, it's a local nude bathing spot. Nobody seemed to mind too much. When I posted this photo on my Facebook page, it got 40 comments overnight.





Tech Stuff:
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Nikon AF-S 17-35mm f/2.8, Nikon AF-S 28-70mm f/2.8, Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8

Whistler Heli Wedding

Natalie and Steve, with the storm we flew through to get to the location in the background.
Helicopter weddings are a rare treat for me, and something I really enjoy doing. This one with Natalie and Steve from Kamloops almost didn't go because of the stormy weather we've been having over the last few days. Luckily, we got a small window of clear weather and Natalie decided she wanted to go for it. The original plan was to land on the Rainbow glacier, but the high winds flowing over the peak were throwing the little A-Star helicopter around like a toy boat in a storm tide, so the pilot took us to Sprout Mountain, a much lower peak, but much more sheltered.








Our window of good weather was very short, and after only two minutes of portrait shooting time, Andy the pilot was yelling at me "we gotta go NOW!" By the time we took off, the area had already started to sock in.






Since we had such a short time for portraits, we stopped off at the Green Lake board walk for some extra photos. The weather was much calmer.


Since they were staying at the Four Season's resort, and since it's such a beautiful location, I thought I'd do a few photos there to finish up.

Tech Stuff
During the helicopter ride, I put most of my equipment in the rear luggage compartment, except for a D700 with a 17-35mm lens. Sitting in the back of a helicopter is like having four people in the back seat of a Honda Civic, so you don't have a lot of room for shooting pictures. There isn't enough head room for a camera flash either, so you just have to let the outside blow out.

There's almost no flash used in any of the photos except the last on in the Four Seasons. For that, I used a SB-900 on a stand with a photo umbrella.

Camera: Nikon D700
Lenses: Nikon AF-S 17-35mm f/2.8 (inside helicopter, Green lake), Nikon AF-S 28-70mm f/2.8 (all wedding and mountain portraits), Nikon 85mm f/1.8 (B&W portrait and Four Seasons).
Lighting: Nikon SB-900 fill flash, SB-900 with SU-800 controller for Four Seasons.