I’m so excited about these because I love how multiple photos tell a story and better capture that special moment in time. I love how, through a few photos together, different emotions and expressions can be shown, and personalities and the feelings of the moment are shown a little more than in one static photo. That’s why I tend to put SO MANY photos in each post, because I love the story they tell and the emotions they show. So I’m super excited about these, and about getting some printed for our house as well!!

My friend Jackie asked about the storyboards recently, so I made some up for her to give her an idea of different layouts, and then I decided to make up a few more to show even more possible layouts. I randomly opened a few of my finished photo files, and I could have easily kept making more layouts for each shoot I’ve done over the past few months but then I’d be doing it all day! Jody and I printed out three of the storyboards for his clients/friends Jason and Maryanne, and I took a photo of one of the printed versions so I’ll include that below as well.

Please email me if you’re interested in getting some of these prints made. I can send you more complete information on all the possible layouts within the sizes of prints you’re interested in. I won’t be including a frame so keep that in mind when looking at the different sizes of prints (for example, I love the 20×10 prints but I’m not sure how easy it is to get a frame for that size). You can choose which photos you want in the storyboard, or I can design a few options for you.

I’ll include more photos when I get some printed and framed for our house. And now here are examples of some of the layouts for four of the available print sizes: (Note – the black outer borders below were added by me to make the size more apparent for the blog (since the background for most of these is white and so is my blog background)).

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Anyway, last week Monday Jody was checking out any new news on some of his favorite bands and performers, and I happened to go over when he was checking out Ashes Divide and I saw that they were playing in Winnipeg in two days, so we bought tickets and went!  It was at a cool little bar downtown called The Pyramid Club, and unfortunately there weren’t many people there – Billy thanked everyone for coming to “their secret performance”.  It was very cool though, and although loud and with very heavy bass, my throat and esophagus got used to the bass after a few songs, and their music was really very good (I’ve listened to it on iTunes since then and really like many of their songs) and I love watching performers play the guitar and bass cause it’s incredibly cool for me to see how good they are at it!

I called before the performance to ask whether I could bring my camera and they said yes, so of course I loved that!  It’s not every day that I get to try taking photos of a moving band in super low light!  I had the ISO boosted to 1600 so all the photos have a super-cool grainy look, and I’m so happy with how almost all the photos turned out so it was hard to choose the best ones.

Before the band went on, we met a couple who told us they came to see the band for their friend, who was in a car accident a couple months ago and just recently emerged from the coma.  Ashes Divide is his favorite band and he had actually been, I think, fiddling with the CD in the car so the two of them could hear the band when they got in the accident.  Anyway, they had come to see the band in their friend’s honor, and had both forgotten their cameras so asked if I could email them some photos of the performance to show their friend.  It gave me much more incentive to try to get some great photos, so I hope their friend likes them and I hope he’s okay in the long run and hopefully is able to make a full recovery.

EDIT: I’ve decided to add a few more. Thank you to Jaimie from ashesdivideonline.com for finding my photos and linking to them, and for all the lovely things she said!!!

I posted in backwards order of the events I attended, so that the last event would be the lowest on the blog and thus would actually be in order.  So this is my final post on the MPAX events.  On Thursday, the first day of the Expo, I attended a workshop where we got to shoot at the Railway Museum.  There were so so so many cool things there, such cool light, so many textures and wonderful peeling paint and old wood, and they also had some old cars there (some in fabulous condition, some in pretty bad condition) and old bicycles, and of course lots of old trains.  I can’t say that I learned anything from the workshop, but I did find inspiration in the museum with all the textures and wonderful details, so it was very worthwhile.

Here are some photos from the museum.  Some of them don’t look very sharp resized and saved for the web, and I’m not sure why because they’re very sharp in the originals.  However, I’m not going to go back and try to redo them all, so just know that the originals of all of these look wonderful!

He has three children of his own and showed us some wonderful photos of them, and also told how he discovered various lighting techniques just from photographing them all the time.  I can’t even tell you how helpful and informative his talk and the subsequent photo shoot was, because he showed us how we can get great photographs of children even in the harsh light of the middle of the day.  And he told us so many little tricks, and what lens he usually uses, and what focal length and aperture, and just so many little things.  And the best part was that he was such a fun speaker and seems so so cool, and just like such a fun and good person.

I have all his lessons in my head so much and I’m very excited about trying them all out.  And he’s also made me really want a second lens (Craig Koshyk from the next day also uses the same lens, and Rob Bye from two days later uses the same as well (although the more expensive, lower aperture version)).  I created my “photography wishlist” on Sunday night and priced out all the various things I’d love on Amazon and also at a local photo store (WAY more expensive at the local store).  I do know that the next lens I’ll be getting will be the Canon 70-200, f/4.0 image stabilization lens.  It’s just over $1,000 on Amazon.  Holy crap.  The non-image-stabilization version is only $560 on Amazon.  But I think the image stabilization would be a really good thing.

Anyway, I absolutely loved this workshop.  I learned so much.  And of course I really want to photograph children so this was so relevant for me.  We had two little girls, sisters Kayla and Samantha, who were our models when we went outside.  They were adorable, and I especially completely fell in love with the younger one, Samantha.  She was both soooooo adorable and at the same time looked almost mature sometimes.  And she liked me, too, and kept looking at me and smiling (not just for the camera), so of course I loved that as well!!!  Here are a few photos from that morning:

After the workshop I headed home to start getting ready for Jody’s birthday dinner!! The night before I had made an apple pie from scratch, and for dinner I made a baked brie appetizer, roasted potatos & onions, sauteed mushrooms, and Jody’s favorite steak – rib eye (I actually had him grill the steaks but I at least picked them out and put the Lawry’s seasoning salt on them!)! It all turned out pretty good! The apples in the pie were a bit too crisp, I’m not sure why, but they tasted good and the homemade pie crust was fabulous!!! I also bought some new little flowers for our kitchen cause the old ones were looking a little, well, old. It was a good night, and Jody had a happily full stomach, and I was so happy to cook a whole complete meal for him!! Happy Birthday, honey!!!

I put a heart in the middle of the pie!

It’s still pretty foreign, but now I feel like I have a basic understanding of all the various pieces and how they work together, and the lecturer, Dan Harper, went through all the basics from even camera equipment we should have to the minimum lights we should buy, to what types of backdrop material he prefers.  He gave us a handout with it all written out, too, which was wonderful and I have tons of extra notes written in the margins and between paragraphs.

I don’t have the money yet to set up a proper studio in our house, but it’s also summer so I can happily shoot outside.  But this was the perfect introduction mini-course to let me know what I’ll need to get eventually.

We all were able to hook our cameras up to the lights and take a few shots of the model, I was so in love with how the light turned out!  Here are one in color and one in a tinted monotone:

After the Studio Lighting lecture, I walked back to the main area with two women I met at the lecture, Sharon and Marian, and the three of us had lunch together. It was fun and of course we had tons of photography stuff to talk about! Also, both of them grew up on farms and I was so interested to hear and imagine what daily life was like for them.

After lunch, I went to a Pet Portraiture Workshop, taught by Craig Koshyk (who also started and runs the Prairie View School of Photography). I took tons of notes as he was talking about getting good dog portraits, good dog action shots, and also ways of getting dogs’ attention. I loved that he told us exactly what settings he generally uses, I like hearing what seasoned photographers do for their own photos. And I also discovered some new settings on my camera that I need to learn how to use much better. It started raining during class, but the rain thankfully let up for just a little while so we could go outside and shoot photos of our model dog, the sweetest black & white Border Collie!! I need to review my notes from this class, practice with my new settings, and then get Ferd and Enzo outside to practice with them! And I’ll try using some of the same tricks and techniques with James and Emma, too!

Here are a few photos from that afternoon:

This past Sunday I went to a workshop on sports & action photography, taught by Winnipeg sports photographer Rob Bye.  It was a great workshop, first in the classroom because Rob talked so much and gave us so many tips and pointers and information, and I was being a big dork and writing down everything he said!  :)  But that’s how I can remember it!  Second, it was great because I loved being outside at the skate park at The Forks watching and trying to photograph the skateboarders and bikers.  It’s amazing what they can do and I was always to much of a scaredy-cat to even ride on straight flat ground on a skateboard (and I have terrible balance, too), so watching what these guys (and girls – I didn’t see any girls doing it, but I know some can!) can do was incredible.  I also talked quite a bit with Rob and with some of the other people in the class and it was really cool getting to know them, and hearing stories, and learning more.

So, I also discovered that it can be pretty hard to get a perfect action shot!  These guys move so fast so it’s hard to get a well-composed shot, and I liked to try to get shots when they were really close to me but then I had the problem of part of them being out of the photo.  Still, I’m happy with a few of my photos, and especially of this one hard-core-looking skateboarder who had such an intense look, so I loved editing the photos of him even though none of them are technically perfect.

I definitely want to go back because now I so want to get some really cool skateboarding photos, and when I do I’ll be so excited!!!  :)  Also, I know we can post any photos on the Winnipeg skateboarding site and the guys all go to look, so I’d love to be able to give them some great shots of themselves in action!

And this was a REALLY cool thing – these three older Amish couples came walking by and stopped to watch this biker, and they were all smiling and clapped for him afterward, and the lady to the far left in the picture turned to us and said she wouldn’t be trying that. It was so cute!!! I won’t forget that cuteness and sweetness for a very long time!