I dont normally take photos of cars

But when I do its for my friend Howard. Howard and I have been friends longer than any one else I know. We met in grade one and have been friends ever since. Around fifth grade was when we both got into cars and when he turned 16 he got his first car. It was an old beat up POS '92 Civic that he named Laquisha. Since then hes pretty much gotten a new car every year and would always call me out to take photos of it when he does. The lastest shoot featured his latest car, an Acura TSX. Its too bad that it happened last minute so he didnt get a chance to clean his car, but it was still lots of fun and gave us an opportunity to try some new things.

*Shoot notes

Some of these photos arent really "on brand" but it was fun experimenting, especially with off camera flash.

I completely under exposed those panning shots unintentionally, so they got kinda grainy/noisy in the edits. I think it turned out okay though as it gives the photos some grit.

I have to thank Howard for helping me hold and direct my off camera flash. He was more than accommodating. 

sea to sky explorations

Every now and then I like to take a break from photographing people and focus on another style or aspect of photography instead. This usually comes in the form of a "photo trip" with my friends Layhe and Randy.  These trips have kind of been a tradition of ours going back since high school and we normally have one other person join us; today it was my friend Alex from ECU. 

For this trip, the plan was to head up to Squamish and to take some photographs along the Squamish river while taking some stops along the way on the Sea to Sky. Our First stop along the way was Brunswick Beach. This little tucked away area is part of Lions Bay and was in a little quite neighbourhood. We arrived there just before 11AM as the morning clouds were rolling away and it was quite the peaceful experience. 

We then headed off to our next stop, which was Porteau Cove Park. Originally the intent of this trip was to come here while driving back from Squamish and take pictures of the stars at night, however due to last minute family plans, that had to be rescheduled. Regardless it was a nice spot just to hang out for a little bit. There were some divers there as well as people having barbeques. I hope to come back later this summer with the same group of guys to have a little barbeque of our own; grilling into the night then shooting the stars after.

By then we were all getting pretty hungry so we headed up to Squamish and at lunch at The Campfire Grill. I found this place on Urban Spoon and it was really as good as the reviews says it was! I've been craving ribs for the past while so I was pretty to have my fix that day.

After lunch we started our explorations around the Squamish River. It got quite windy and cold so we didnt want to hang out by the water for too long so we headed inland to some marshy kinda place. It was pretty nice there, with the Chief in the background and all. Driving in and out of that place was an interesting experience to say the least. It was a long gravel road that reminded me of a stretch of race track for rally  racing. Unfortunately we had to take it safe and slow because we were in a Civic. "Punctures!!!". 

The last stop for us that day was Shannon Falls which we saw lurking at us in the distance while at Squamish. There were quite a lot of tourists there and it was pretty difficult to get a good shot with all the surrounding greenery by I managed to snap off one. I was determined to get some fancy long (not really) exposures with my polarizer, so theres the obligatory running water shot included below.

*shoot notes

This was my first time using Photomerge in Photoshop, having used Picasa in the past. I'm pretty happy with the results, but I'm blow away by the performance of Picasa especially since its a free program. 

I dont normally edit my photos this much, but seeing as how these shots are out of the usual photos I take I decided to play around with Photoshop some more, especially employing lots of black layering, dodge/burn  and such. This is especially apparent in the waterfall and car photos.

The shutter speed for the waterfall and stream picture is 1/30th and 2.5s respectively. For the stream shot I rested my camera on a rock and pressed down on it hard to keep it steady. 

 - w