A few feature photos from the weird late-March snowfall we went through on Friday. I got very cold and wet, but came up fairly happy with the shots.

A nun at the Lingyen Mountain Buddhist Temple on No. 5 Road in Richmond enjoys a cup of tea inside her room as snow falls past her window Friday afternoon.

A nun at the Lingyen Mountain Buddhist Temple on No. 5 Road in Richmond walks through the courtyard of the sanctuary during a snowfall Friday afternoon.

In between editing the most current video I am working on, I went out looking for spring-like feature photos, this was my favourite one I came up with.

Grade seven students Shay Tabata, (left), Danielle Hartley, Ashley Chen, and Niki Glavina take advantage of their Spring Break on Easter Monday by hanging out on the rainbow-looking water fountain at the Steveston Water Park.

Here are some shots from the invitation-only concert Bryan Adams played last night at the St. Andrews Wesley Church. It was a very cool venue, but we only had 90 seconds of the first song and it was horribly dark inside. All shots on my 5D at 3200 ISO. I love this camera!

Bryan Adams performs at an invitation-only concert at St. Andrews Wesley Church in Downtown Vancouver Thursday March 20th, to promote his new album, 11. The venue was packed with special guests, including many of Adams’ family and friends.

There was an amazing sunset last night as I was driving back into Vancouver from Delta last night, and I did 180 and drove right back to right out by the airport to try to get what I thought would be a great feature picture. Unfortunately, as always, it seems like the sun sets just a little too quickly, and I missed the shot I saw before my eyes as I was speeding my car over speed bumps. After taking a breather, I realized, sometimes it’s the fact that you chase those photos when you see them rather than the end result of that chase.

One of the tougher decisions while working this job is decide what kind of picture suits the subject matter, and more importantly the story. Below are a couple of shots from Thursday and Friday, in which I tried to approach the shots with a similar mind frame but using different tools to get the shots. In the first one, they came to the office to be interviewed, which I always hate because the studio is basically in a hallway and it is difficult to get any sort of flow going while people are walking through your studio space. Instead, I drove them out to the Garden City lands, (I have done shots here before, look a few posts down) and just got them to play in a big open field. I still left them unposed, they just played for me while I took shots. The result is a flashier shot of a controlled but unposed situation, which I think works out.

In the second shot, Rob and I had talked about what we might do as a photo, and he offered to suit up his guide dog and do a picture of him walking around, but I felt that was a little too cliche’. Rob works tirelessly as an advocate for visually impaired people, (he is the reason their are bumps on the ground before Skytrain platforms, so people know when to step on.) His phone actually kept ringing non-stop from blind people who had issues with their day-to-day lives. He also works on his computer using a voice recognition software for his PC. I figured what better way to illustrate the work he does than show him in his typical work environment, answering calls and emailing people to help them improve their daily living situations.

All in all, it sometimes can be a tough to decide when to bring out the flashes, but sometimes (if not most of the time) they are better left in the bag, if you can get away with it.

Celtic folk musicians Phil O’Flaherty and Annie Brown are playing a show at the Murakami Boathouse as part of the Steveston Folk Guild on this Thursday at 7:30 p.m.

Rob Sleath answers a phone call in his Richmond home office from a visually impared man who had some trouble commuting by bus. Sleath was named as one of 45 people in B.C. to receive a B.C. community achievement award for his tireless work as an advocate on behalf of the visually impaired.

I don’t know what these guys were thinking…..

A group of boaters find themselves in rough waters after their truck got caught a little too far out past the boat launch on the side of the BC Ferries causeway at low tide Tuesday afternoon.

Skateboarder Tim Rubenfeld, who helped design the skate spot at Garden City community park, does at trick at the new-created skate spot on Tuesday afternoon.

A shot from the Vancouver protest against Scientology, which was happening all over the world on February 10th. A group of protesters were set up outside the church, referring to themselves simply as “Anonymous.”

This was shot on a Hasselblad 500C/M and Tri-X film, scanned on a Canoscan 8800f.

I just figured out how to include that sweet signature Hasselblad border on my scans, so I am very excited to post some of my more recent medium format work in the coming days and weeks.

One of the shots for Atlantis Day Spa in Tsawwassen for Look Magazine, a publication from the Delta Optimist and Richmond News. We were looking for some clean, softly lit photos that would work for the layout of the magazine, and the client was happy with the variety of shots we ended up with. There were a few other shots I think looked good, but will leave those off the blog.

Lit with one softbox, up high on a lightstand, to camera left.

I just got a new film scanner and having been spending too many hours glued to my laptop scanning negs from random shots taken on my Hasselblad in the last little while. I’m not too sure if I will end up keeping the scanner, but it has done a decent job so far for what I need.

An old shot:

Dani tells me about the time he called the police because he was robbed. It seems the culprit was one of the seagulls who frequent Kits Beach in the Vancouver where he hangs out, and it grabbed a banana he was eating. He didn’t make it sound like the 911 dispatcher was very impressed with the phone call, but I thought it was hilarious.