I did a pet photography session with my Chris’ new little kitten a couple of weeks ago. Her name is Two and she is adorable! She didn’t sit still for very long, but we managed to get some great shots of her anyway.
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I mentioned the other day that I had done a shoot with Dave and his sister Jessica – it was for their parent’s Christmas present and the above photo is possibly my favourite from the day. I am sure there will be more to come from this shoot.
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A shot I stole while at the office Christmas party.
Assignment 8 was another small flash assignment – specifically small flash while doing an environmental portrait. I like environmental portraits as it shows the subject in their surroundings (environment). These photos can be found on Flickr as well. 
Fill Flash was used for most of the remaining assignments. In this assignment we were to use it as Fill Flash in an outdoor photo. Chris came down for a few days last month and stayed with Dave and I. On the first day she was hear we ploughed through my assignments and the majority of them turned out quite nicely. The first photo below is the traditional use of fill-flash where the lighting on background and the subject are balanced with the use of a small flash. The second photo shows the technique sometimes called day-to-night where the flash and background lighting are not balance producing a darker background and therefore giving the feeling of haven taken the shot at night. The photos can be found on Flickr as well. 
I have attended two sessions of my current Algonquin College course entitled Lighting Techniques and I absolutely love it so far! I have been looking forward to this course for some time now and it does not look like I am going to be disappointed whatsoever. Throughout the next few months I will obviously be learning lighting techniques, but I will be doing so both in and out of the studio and with both animate and inanimate objects. Last week and this upcoming week are for inanimate, non-metallic, non-glass objects. Then we move onto metallic then glass and then onto portraits (formal and environmental). There are some other categories that I can’t seem to remember right now but I am looking forward to all of them.
I put this course off as I wanted to ensure I got the most out of it and felt that other courses were essential to take prior to this one.
Algonquin’s website describes the course as:
"Students learn to use a variety of lighting techniques in regards to subject matter; desired effect are discussed and demonstrated. This course includes the use of electronic flash lighting equipment, lighting ratios, portrait lighting, product lighting, exposure determination using a studio flash meter, and a variety of specialized lighting techniques for studio and location photography."
I will of course be posting my assignments here as I complete them. All of our assignments have to be submitted in hardcopy – prints rather than electronic files, so that should be interesting too.
A wonderful location I enjoy going to on a regular basis is much closer to my home in Ottawa. The Ottawa Greenbelt walkways are simply beautiful no matter what time of year you venture out in. There is lots of adorable animals to see and tons of great locations for environmental portraits. The photo I have included for this area (which is actually a series of paths and trails across Ottawa) is another photo of Dave taken in the Prince of Wales walkway just as you are leaving the city.
A third 'location' is the City of Ottawa and its wonderful festivals. The Winterlude Festival, to me, is associated with the skating on the Rideau Canal and all the joy that brings for me and my friends and family. Last year Dave and I took his sister skating on the canal and I was able to capture some really great family moments there. The Tulip Festival has to be one of my favourite times in this city, though I take very few photos of people at this time of the year. Ottawa has so many wonderful festivals and events going on throughout the year that offer its residents and tourists huge amounts of entertainment and overall enjoyment. I really love living in this city and can really see myself making a real, long-term home here.
In general, the places I love are calm, quiet ones where I can reflect and think without distraction. Usually they are places I can take photos as photography is something that brings me a great deal of joy. There are a few places in the world though that I absolutely love that are very far from the nature walks that I like in and around Ottawa. My trip to London with Chris a few years ago was just wonderful and included many areas I have been wanting to see since I was very young - the most significant (to me) was Stonehenge.
Right before the snow hit, Dave and I took a walk down near Prince of Wales in Ottawa (actually right near the CHEO Dream Home). There is a little nature path there that was really quite nice. Dave jumped off the bridge and down onto the rocks and let me take a few photos of him, which is really quite rare for him. I really want to go back here once the weather is warm again as there was a bridge extending the path onto the islands in the middle of the water that was closed for the season.
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