We made a special announcement Monday about a special event.
It’s been an interesting week learning about the ways of babies. If you haven’t guessed yet, our baby arrived 5 days ago.
We’d like to introduce you to our special bundle of joy – ‘Q’ – below
All are well and we are getting to know each other. As for the blog and photo work we are operating on baby schedule so we are working at slower speed than normal for another week.
Newborn photography
Join us for our Farm Photo Safari coming up as we explore the world of sheep shearing, working dogs, pigs and cows.
Farm Photo Safari - Ottawa
Meet new friends. Learn photo tips as we visit a working demo farm in the region.
We spend two and a half hours walking and exploring life on the farm with your camera and a group.
We have arranged special access to photograph a working dogs in action. There will also be some sheep shearing, cows, goats, horses and smiling faces.
Farm Photo Safari - Ottawa
Date:
Sunday, May 22, 2011; 9am-11am.
Location:
We shoot at a farm in the Ottawa area!
Cost:
$65 + taxes for the photo safari.
Register by contacting us to arrange payment and a complete registration form for the Farm Photo Safari.
We aim to bring you three blog posts a week with photo news, ideas, links and upcoming photo events and workshops.
A photo safari blog post was in development for Monday but got sidelined by a very special event – a new baby.
Harry – who writes most of this blog – and his wife got some good news very, very early Saturday morning. Their baby was coming two weeks earlier than anticipated. Everything went well and all are healthy and learning how babies work.
A special thanks to J David Andrews who stepped in to take over the Creative Fundamentals workshop practical session on Saturday.
Regular blog programming will commence once the diaper situation stabilizes.
A couple of weeks ago we visited Fulton’s Pancake House & Sugar Bush in the Ottawa Valley near Pakenham for a delicious photo safari.
Fulton's Sugar Shack and Pancake House
Participants arrived for breakfast and then warmed up their cameras to capture the sweet photos of the sugarbush.
Sugarbush Photo Safari - Ottawa Valley
People explored, clicked, and ended their photo session with a sleigh ride.
And then the photos came in. See the fun!????
We have another safari lining up for May – stay tuned – we’ll be announcing that on Monday.
Sugarbush Photo Safari - learning about sap!
Sugarbush Photo Safari - Ottawa Valley
What’s the difference between a Photo Safari and a Photo Workshop?:
• A safari emphasizes fun and friends with some photo guidance and tips included. They are short and inexpensive.
• On a workshop the emphasis is on learning specific photo skills. Fun is always included. Photo workshops are more intensive, longer and are usually more costly.
Sugarbush Photo Safari - Ottawa Valley
A big thank-you to participants, Fulton’s and Alain for helping pull this together.
Sugarbush Photo Safari - Ottawa Valley
Ottawa Sugarbush lines
Brian sent me a link to some “unusable stock photos” last week.
“What?!”
Stock photos are photos shot by photographers for the purpose of editorial, commercial or other use and usually marketed through a stock agency. The photographer usually spends a lot of time thinking about metaphors and building a photo around the theme.
Back a few years when stock produced better $sales I spent much of my time creating photos that had potential for sales. Some had good success. Some never made it.
The “unusable stock photos” have problems! Technically most are ok. They are exposed ok and are in focus but they lack in other ways – what do YOU think?!
Thanks Brian!
Harry Nowell.com Stock photo
In November I judged Canadian Geographic‘s Heritage Treasures of Parks Canada Photo Contest with Suzanne Morin, CanGeo’s Creative Directror and a rep from Parks Canada.
We spent much of the day narrowing the short list of ~350 submissions down to ~10 winners in three categories. The final selections were tough. Have good photos? Pitch them in one of Canadian Geographic’s contests!
The winner’s photos appear on the CanGeo contest page.
Past Canadian Geographic Photo Assignment
Last post we announced a new feature: Photo of the Month
We will be highlighting one of your photos every month with links and much applause. Just follow the guidelines and send us a photo. We will pick one and add some comments.
This was sent to us by KFPhotoArts, one of our students:
Photo of the Month - March
He says:
“I shot this image about a week ago while the moon was full and close; according to NASA, it was the best view of the moon in 18 years! Well lit by moonlight, my frozen fingers fumbled around at the switches and buttons as I adjusted various settings on my camera. The resultant image was good but didn’t capture the cold that my fingers felt that night. I wanted more, and so I continued tonight to add an artistic element to the photo to draw the cold out of my fingers and onto the canvas. My pick #77 of 365”
KF started taking our photo courses last year with the goal of pursuing an artistic line of work. In the photo above he has taken a raw photo and started transforming it with painting software. To be effective you need to start with a good photo!
His work makes me remember the ache of cold fingers – good narrative that adds to the visual art.
Good work!
Check the guidelines.
Send us your photo of the month!
Ok, ok, we’ve been batting this idea around for a while and would like to see how it works.
We’d like to feature more of YOU on the blog.
What that means:
Once a month we’d like to feature a reader’s photo and the story behind it on the blog.
Send us a photo.
And tell us about it!
We don’t care what specific camera, lens or how many mega-zooples your processor zapped.
We do care about your inspiration, creative process and perhaps some minor technical info – shutter speed and aperture if you wish.
Why?!
We’d like to inspire, share and promote people doing good things.
How it works
Send us a photo every month that fills you with pride. We will collect photos and select one per month that moves us in some way. That photo and supporting text will be featured on the blog with much fanfare, comments and links to your web site if applicable.
Technical details for submissions:
Photo – Please send one photo at a time. Maximum three photos per person per month. Please keep your photos small – we cannot consider photos greater than 1mb. Ideally, size photos to 450 x 300 pixels at 72 dpi. A gentle watermark is fine.
Supporting Text – This is as important as the photo. What inspired you? Why do you like it? How did you do it? Tell us about your photo!
Links – Would you like a link to your site? Please send us the specific link!
Sorry, we cannot reply to all photos submitted. Stay tuned. We will feature the Reader’s Photo of the Month at the end of each month.
Stay tuned for March’s Reader Photo of the Month on Friday.
Big news.
David Trattles’ award winning photographs come to Ottawa Studio Works for one night only – May 7th, 2011 from 8pm onwards. Boxing Ladies presentation starts at 9pm.
David’s show showcases out-takes from travels around rural Canada, Germans who live as cowboys in east Germany and a travelogue of panorama prints from a cycle trip in India.
David Trattles - Percé
The show will also feature a presentation of the Boxing Ladies, which is about the story behind the photographs of the girls who are boxing in Calcutta, and how the photographs were presented in the environment that they came from.
David Trattles - Boxing Ladies
Trattles spent months in Calcutta befriending the women and capturing their stories.
See the video below – in Hindi and English.
David Trattles has been photographing for over 20 years. He has been traveling, by bicycle, and working as a social documentary photographer. His work is about interactions between people, photographed from within the happenings.
His work has appeared in Canadian Geographic, Elle, MacLeans, the Globe and Mail, Arctic Journal, Canada Year Book and Ottawa City Magazine. His work was featured on CBC Television’s “Legacy: The Will to Survive”.
He is also a Master Black and White printer winning the Kodak Print of the Year Award in 1998.
In conjunction with the show, David will also be running a photojournalism and social documentary photography workshop from May 5-8, 2011. The workshop is a combination of in-class and in-the-field study focusing on using the camera to tell a story.
Sue Skillen, past student on David Trattles workshop glowed “I have not seen anything even close to this offered in Ottawa. David has an impressive history of capturing the personalities of people all over the world.”
Learn more about David, his adventures and the Boxing Ladies in a Canadian Geographic interview
Mark your calendars for the David Trattles’ workshop and David Trattles – Photo Exhibition and Print Sale in May, 2011.
This week, J David Andrews and I went on a road trip to investigate locations for the upcoming Landscape and Wildlife Photo Course coming up in June.
It was a fun day that included waterfalls, ice cream and we even got a brief glimpse of a bear, groggy from hibernation.
The purpose of the trip was less about shooting and more about finding a location that students wouldn’t have access to individually. We found a spot to provide privileged access to people on the course.
The re is currently one spot available. Please contact us to register. Please check our other workshops for other workshops.
On the trip I managed to capture a couple of shots of the inquisitive and unique Andrewsifus Photographes JDavid. He was quietly enjoying his natural habitat but once he detected me shooting he fled into the wilderness:
Andrewsifus Photographes JDavid
Andrewsifus Photographes JDavid