abby and the old barley mill

So I just realized I never actually uploaded the rest of the photos from this shoot to this blog. They've been on Flickr for a while, so if you follow that you may have already seen them. They're also now on my Facebook Page!

time, originally uploaded by avalilly.

lean, originally uploaded by avalilly.

weightless, originally uploaded by avalilly.

glow, originally uploaded by avalilly.

The levitation image (weightless) is probably my favourite photo to date involving Photoshop to achieve the desired image. It features two different photos to make up Abby's body, one for the gallery space, and two more to create the left, foremost pillar. I'll have to do a full before and after with the in between steps to fully explain it, but I'm happy with the results, so I hope it looks good!

You'll be seeing more of this lady in the future as she's hired me for her business portraits and aerial straps photos (which I shot last night with my new red backdrop!). I'll post more about those in future.

I may upload more photos to this post in the future. There's still a couple images that I want to work on from this shoot, so whenever they get done I'll just add them to the end of this post. :)

george brown and p.l.a.r.

So last Thursday I went in for my portfolio assessment at George Brown. Now, this is a continuing education certificate that I'm going for, so one doesn't actually have to apply to take any of the courses. I just felt that the first couple courses would mostly be a waste of money for myself as I already know a good portion of what is covered in them. Because there are mandatory courses in order to achieve the certificate at the end, I had to be officially exempt from them, thus needing a portfolio assessment.

Anywho, I was given the final exam for that course at the interview and overall received an A for my assessment. I was granted exemption from the first course, so I'm super happy about that.

I took a digital photography course when I was at York University. It wasn't the most technically inclined course, but it assumed that you had a fair bit of knowledge to begin with, so I imagine that's why there weren't full on studio lectures explaining what curves and histograms are, etc. I figured that because I have my honours degree in Visual Arts, and that I had taken this course, that I'd be able to use it to exempt me from George Brown's second mandatory course in the certificate.

Apparently this was not the case. The director emailed me the course outline saying that they have a much more in depth study of Photoshop and that my 4 hours / 12 week course at York does not compare to their 3 hours / 7 week course. This is probably a fair assumption in the grand scheme of how much technical information is exchanged, however it's still all stuff that I already know.

So now I'm faced with the decision of: do I apply for another Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition (PLAR) appointment to fast track me to the next level, or do I just take the course and see if I actually do learn something?

I'm sure that I would learn some stuff. There seems to be a fair bit of study on colour management for predictable print results, which I could maybe brush up on... but is it worth the $375 price tag when I could just pay $100 for the PLAR and move on up to the next level where I know I'll be learning new things?

Ofcourse, there is the consideration that they use Mac computers in their labs and classrooms, so perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to just take it to get better aquainted with the operating system, so I'm not as slow at things once I get to the higher levels.

Oh, decisions.

learning to flash

So, as I mentioned before, I bought myself one of these for christmas. I finally stopped procrastinating about it and just tried it out for a client shoot the other day.

I was happy to see that it's dedicated to my camera, so I didn't actually have to pretend to know how to use it and fiddle around until it did something. Basically you install it onto your camera's hotshoe and away you go. All I had to do was turn it on and it examined my camera settings and fired whenever I pressed the shutter button on the camera.

Now, as convenient as that is, I do still intend to learn how it works so I can use it for more complicated set ups, but for now I'm pretty pleased that I could be an idiot and still have it work for me.

I did a quick couple before/after shots to see what the difference was:

As you can see, a pretty decent difference in lighting. I still don't like the "flash shadow" that shows up, so I did my best to minimize that throughout the shoot. Because this flash can swivel around in all directions, I had it pointed at my reflector to the left of the camera. I tried it on the silver side first, but that was too much contrast for this particular kind of portrait, so I switched it over to the opaque white side to give a lighter diffusion. It's still a bit stark in some of them, but for the most part it did what I wanted it to.

After changing to a horizontal frame for some shots, I started bouncing it off the ceiling instead. My ceiling isn't necessarily the best for this since it's that textured kind with all the bumps on it, but I liked the result none the less.

The ceiling bounce offered a better version of the kind of light I was looking for. There's enough extra light to get a brighter picture, but without the flash sacrificing the natural light coming in from the window.

So, nothing terribly complicated at all. Just a matter of finding things to bounce it off of and hopefully avoiding the ghastly flash shadow that makes everything look like a cardboard cut out. In the future hopefully I'll be able to report on using the flash's manual settings and maybe try using it off the camera. It did come with a stand! For now though, I'm happy. Winter is so overcast around here, it's hard to get a good amount of natural light shining in through the windows.

Also, that's my kitty Noelle being her usual nosey self. I believe she was looking to have an affection attack, but we were kind of busy.

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Here are a couple of the final images:

business abby, originally uploaded by avalilly.

business abby, originally uploaded by avalilly.

the facebook plunge

Blogger, meet facebook.

I think you'll be great friends.

So yes, I have made myself a facebook fan page. I didn't think I'd want to, but one really can't ignore the usefulness of that platform - especially for the local connections who spend a lot of time on there and not a lot of time learning that you take photos by other means. Much of the stuff on there you've probably already seen if you follow this blog or my flickr, but there's a few that you won't have. I'm going to add a Photo Retouching gallery to show some before and afters of my photos. So atleast that will be new!

If you like, go ahead and "like" me on facebook if you have an account! I appreciate any support. As far as I know, fan pages don't assault your notification boxes like groups do. I'm still trying to figure it out. It's linked to my personal account, so I'm finding it difficult to navigate between the two. Maybe once there's more activity on it, it'll be easier to tell.

Anywho, I thought I'd pop in with that bit of news seeing as I've been a bit lazy about taking new photos lately. I have a shoot booked for tomorrow, so I'll atleast have that to post about. Lots of new ideas in the works too, I just have to get over this cold and the feeling that my bed is the only place to be when not at work!

I hope January has been treating you well!

portfolio help!

portfolio help!, originally uploaded by avalilly.

Hello Bloggers!

I need some help putting a printed portfolio of my photographic work together in a fairly short amount of time. I have an interview with the college I'm doing a Digital Photography certificate with to get myself exempt from the first couple of mandatory courses, as I feel they don't offer much that I would learn from. To do this I have to prove that I can handle a camera already, so I have to bring in some work to show them and then do a small evaluation.

Since I have to be away working all weekend, I thought I'd ask for other people's opinions since the interview could be as early as Monday. If you'd like to help, please follow the photo link to my Flickr photostream where you can find more of my work. You can leave a link to a couple of images that you think I should include in the comments of this entry, or on the Flickr photo if you have an account. I greatly appreciate any input!

Thank you <3

a late seasons greetings

Various things that denote the warmth of the holidays to me:

last year, originally uploaded by avalilly.

candied crystal, originally uploaded by avalilly.

the lounge, originally uploaded by avalilly.

warmth, originally uploaded by avalilly.

moment, originally uploaded by avalilly.

christmas bokeh book love, originally uploaded by avalilly.

I meant to do this sooner, but I really wanted to get that shot of the candy cane heart before I made this post. Silly me, I just got around to taking that photo yesterday. The rest are just a random selection of holiday-esque photos I've taken either this season or during the 2009/2010 transition. I love this time of year. I wish it had been more festive this year for us, but current circumstances aside, it was still nice.

The new year holds a lot of good things to come. I'm very much looking forward to it. I don't really have any resolutions, as I'm not very good at them. However, I have decided my mantra this year will be to "be bold". I can't just wait for life to happen on its own. I'm going to go after the things I want and hopefully my goals won't prove to be aiming too high. I'm ready to leave 2010 behind.

Happy New Year to you and your's! <3

happy birthday, camera

My camera is now 2 years old. I purchased it on Boxing Day 2008, althought it didn't arrive until probably actually this same day two years ago haha. Last year I bought it a Canon 50mm f/1.8 II and I've had a lot of fun learning new things with that. This year I thought about it for a while and couldn't think of another lens (in my price range) that would be a useful enough addition to the repertoire, so I started looking into flashes.

This year I finally decided on a Canon Speedlite 580EX II Flash. I haven't actually used one before so it's a bit of a weird move for me, but I'm really hoping I learn a lot and benefit from this piece of equipment. Winter is so dark anyways, so generally I go to work in the dark and come home just after the sun has set. It doesn't leave me much options for photography until I get a day off and usually my priorities are to relax a bit or travel to Toronto to visit various lovely people in my life.

To go with it, I grabbed a set of these as well: Sanyo Eneloop NiMH Rechargeable Batteries. I've been in desperate need of some good rechargeables for a long time now. My current ones hold a charge for about 5 hours, if that. I think they were originally purchased in the 90's though, so they've had a long life. I researched a bit and these Sanyo Eneloops seem like they'll be a good purchase. Since I don't have a camera phone, I want to keep my point and shoot Canon A590IS in my purse so I can still use it whenever I see something interesting. They sound like they keep a charge for a really long time even when not being used, so I'm excited to try them out and see how they go.

So yes. Happy birthday, camera! I hope you enjoy the copious amounts of money I spend on you...