I’ve integrated my Flickr account with my website (finally!). It’s still in beta, more eye candy will be rolling out this week.
Saturday morning was pretty chilly at -20c with windchill, but that didn’t stop me from taking a walk around Confederation Park with my fiance; cameras in hand! I opted to use my nifty fifty (50mm f1.4), at a pretty wide aperture of f2.0 for almost all of the photos. ISO100 was required, and there was no filter on the front element.
The full series is available at http://gallery.jasonmulligan.com/winterlude-2010 and will be continually updated while the festival is under way.
I shot the fireworks display from my home last night, mostly due of the cold but also because I got home late from the office and that left little time to get myself weather proofed and outside. Regardless, the show was awesome! I dragged the shutter too long it seems at 4 seconds, so a little “live ‘n’ learn” lesson occurred; usually I get it right.
I’m also doing the final content edit for Optis wedding album. Client feedback has been great, and we both decided to change 2 spreads slightly so there’s better flow in the story telling. I can’t wait to finish the book, it’s going to look amazing once it’s printed by KISS Wedding Books.
Later today I’m hoping to have enough time to walk through the ice carving that’s going on in Confederation Park, not too far from my home. It’s always fun to see the creative ice sculptures.
So it’s that day of the week that no one really loves. It’s going alright for me so far, I start work later than usual due to an after hours meeting scheduled with a client.
This weekend was relaxing, thanks to finally collecting a pay cheque after a couple of months of being unemployed in my primary career. I took Jen to a local pub we frequent that has good burgers & fries, and a nice selection of beer on tap. On Saturday we did a little clothes shopping and I scored a great wool winter jacket that’s more office friendly compared to my (very awesome) Ripzone Trilogy snowboard jacket.
On Sunday I laid out the wedding album for Johnny & Michelle. It took longer than I had originally expected, but it is the first book I’ve done via page spreads. Setting up my template/guides was essential to getting the look I wanted with easy to deploy asset placement. Tonight I might setup a Photoshop action to batch export low resolution .jpg files for them to review, but I might wait until Tuesday when I’m doing a normal 9-5hr work day.
I’m looking forward to getting out with my camera a bit more once it warms up. I’d like to pick up another light stand/strobe for my kit; but my camera gear purchases have been delegated to lowest priority for now. Mid to late summer I should be able to get a bunch of stuff I need / want so I can do more advanced work.
Jen and I went to the national park this morning for a walk in the sun, with cameras in hand. It was very relaxing.
Shot in Jamaica at a resort wide buffet.
Yesterday I finished processing the photos from Johnny & Michelle Optis’ wedding in Jamaica. Man, what a wonderful couple! They have amazing chemistry, and it really comes across in the pictures. I’ve put a select bunch of the photos in my Weddings sample gallery.
I’ve got a week of blog worthy material and almost 1000 engagement & wedding photos to process & publish. It’s gonna be a busy weekend!
Tonight I relax with Jenz.
It was an interesting experience, mostly because I was always reacting instead of being proactive. The entire ceremony was in french, and I have a vary basic understanding of the language. What a stressful hour and a half! Overall the photos look great considering the rooms we had to work with, but I have blinking in some pictures that I didn’t catch yesterday on the camera’s lcd screen.
I’m going to see if I can make magic happen with Photoshop once I’m done processing the RAWs into TIFFs for the final work flow.
I was hired on an hourly basis, so I felt that I was obligated to get as many common “wedding” photos as possible that were applicable even though I went over my bank of time by nearly an hour. I’m going to blame the hotel room lighting and design on that issue. I spent nearly 20 minutes going through various light setups, trying to find something that’d light the room up how I wanted without causing reflections in nearly every surface in frame. It was stressful! The lack of time meant imperfection was likely, which is not something I want to give to a client.
I’m budgeting about 2-3hr on post processing today, with delivery of the final product tomorrow; just before we leave for Jamaica and my first destination wedding!
I love the bokeh produced by Pentax lenses. Snapped this last night with my 50mm wide open at f1.4, focus at infinity and about 8′ from the tree.