Canon – CameraCourage

July 19, 2011December 7, 2011

PPIHC Video Clips

I spent pretty much the entire week climbing around Pikes Peak in order to get shots for this small video project that I was working on. The project was to create a PPIHC video that features a group of smaller name, lower budget drivers and I guess I root for the underdog so I really enjoy bringing these names to the front of peoples minds if I can.

After spending that week collecting footage, you know I am going too also shoot other cars too so I put together a lot of Extra footage to put that out there as well. This is very comprehensive. It is nearly every car that practiced with the unlimited/time attack cars and a few others as well. There are a ton of locations and this was all shot by me over the 3 practice days, race day and the test and Tune day. Enjoy!

July 4, 2011December 7, 2011

PPIHC: Video Number One

Yeah, I decided after working on this first video and realizing that YouTube now allows uploads over 10 minutes that I will also put together individual race runs this year. I will work on that later today actually, for now, here is the first edit from the mountain. Ride along with Spencer Steele, Jimmy Olson, Savannah Rickli, Rebecca Greek and Dave & Allison Kern. It’s quite the adventure and keep your eyes peeled the race runs were, very eventful!

You can also see this on My Life @ Speed

March 21, 2010

Photo contest aka: taking photos the old school way.

Whenever I get a new toy it rejuvenates my excitement for that activity. So recently when I got my new camera I decided that I should participate in some of these little photo contests that I stumble upon. I participate in a few automotive forums. I am sure that doesn’t come as a surprise if you have read my posts! One of them holds a monthly Photo contest, it is pretty low key and seemed like a nice motivator to get out and take some photos. So the March contest was posted and I began putting together ideas.

The March contests title is “2 Miles.” The goal is to take a photograph within 2 miles of your house using any camera, but no additional photo editing. So no photoshop and no touching up! This is a bit of an interesting twist for me. I shoot primarily in RAW, which is also known as Digital Negative. This mode generally requires you to make the color adjustments in post. So now I have delved into the world of in camera color adjustments, sharpness adjustments. In addition the contest requires you to include in your photo your mode of transportation.

I guess I should explain why I use RAW. In my mind when you are shooting photos, there are times when something happens that is unexpected. When you are shooting film those times always look better in B&W when you were shooing color and they always would have looked better in color when you are shooting B&W. So RAW give you an unmolested color profile that you can turn into the color that Velvia film provided or you can desaturate it to the perfect B&W and you never have to compromise. In addition to that you get a lot more information, the files are uncompressed so you have a lot to work with. To give you an example the JPG files from my new camera average around 6 megabytes and the RAW files average 21 megabites! That is a huge difference in the amount of information that they provide!

There is one primary difference between shooting RAW and shooting a specific color profile. It is the way you approach the shot. You definitely need to visualize things a bit differently when you are only shooting in black and white you need to think about things that way. Or if you are shooting a very saturated color profile you need to think about things that will take advantage of that.

I realized as I left my house and began to look for some shots that I had not simply gone out looking for things to take photographs of in YEARS. I am often someplace looking for something specific to take a photo of. Now the world was my oyster, I could just go and shoot anything! I realized immediately that the surrounding area from my house isn’t terribly interesting. But I pushed on, I had some thoughts about what I could do…then I came across a simple bent piece of metal. It was an old fencepost and it just looked interesting. So I began tinkering with some shots and I began setting up more. I decided on B&W and aligned my shoes in the shot to show the direction that I was traveling at the time. Then CLICK! I got the shot that I liked. It is a simple shot but it seemed to work. I could definitely stand to do this over during a better time of day, but this is the shot, feel free to click on it to see a larger version. Hope you enjoy it!

February 13, 2010

I’ve got a new camera!

Well, it has been a long time coming but I sold my 1d MK II and bought a 5d MK II! Here is a bit of a background for you.

I held out for a long time when it came to converting to digital. I made a point of waiting until the cameras that were available would provide the appropriate quality, but also would provide high speed autofocus, frames per second and a decent crop factor. I made a pact with myself that I would get a digital camera as soon as 8fps was available and as soon as that was available in a quality body. Turns out Canon came out with the 1d MK II and I just happened to tear my ACL at the same time. Well, under the influence of pain killers and boredom from recovery I clicked the buy button and a week or so later I had a new camera! The incredible thing is the price. That camera was $4595! I can’t believe I clicked that button!

That camera took me through a huge number of adventures. Nearly every published photo I have was shot on that camera! I think we can say that it paid for itself, possibly a few times over. When I finally sold it it had nearly 50,000 photographs and never once gave me a problem.

Unfortunately it isn’t like the days of film where the primary reason to upgrade was simply because you want a new camera. Nowadays a camera goes out of date fairly quickly and it was time to upgrade. My old camera shot 8 megapixel photos and my point and shoot camera shoots 12.1 megapixel photos! So I bought a 5d MK II. I haven’t been shooting a outside of product shots at work, and we have a camera at work, so it is a bit tough to justify this purchase. But I also can’t bring myself to not have a nice SLR. So how do I justify it? Well, I sold my old camera, it paid for half of the new one and my tax return, well that pays for the other half. The camera is also multipurpose. Not only does it shoot 21.1 megapixel photos, but it also shoots full HD videos with interchangeable lenses! This opens some doors for me! Now, if I want do do a bit of video work, well I have options!

So I’ve had the camera for about a week and it has already begun to inspire me to shoot photos. I took it to Georgetown to go ice racing. I only had a few chances to take a couple shots, but it was a good start. Then yesterday I helped out a friend with some photos. We started out in the studio and I just helped him set up everything for his own photos. Then I took him out of the studio and we shot his custom motorcycle out in the real world. I’m looking forward to more opportunities but here are two shots for you to check out initially.