Introduction:
After the last weekend’s retreat I ended up catching a cold and was too sick to work on photos. I’m finally better and had the chance to pull off a couple late night photo editing sessions and here are the results! We traveled to downtown Toronto through the TTC and walked around Union Station and the busy streets of the Financial District. Once again I was assisted by a great friend and fellow photographer Chi Yan. Thanks again Chi for all your support! It was another busy, challenging, and rewarding shoot … we even crossed paths with an elephant! YIKES!

Technique:
I am running out of useful tips to give other photographers as most of my “secrets” are already spread out along this blog … but let’s talk more about how I got the last photo in this series. Notice the couple are sharp between the bicyclists arms while most of the other people are nice human blurs. To do this I set my camera to the lowest ISO possible and stopped down my aperture until I was left with a nice slow shutter speed to blur out all the action. I held still enough that the IS of the lens kicked in and kept the non-moving objects relatively sharp. I love all the interesting things happening in this photo (blurry bicyclists, TTC bus drivers, guys crossing the street, and the people staring at the couple on the side of the street) and would love to say I planned everything but …. this was all unplanned! Take lots of photos and go through all of them to find the ones with the most interesting elements in them.

Photos:

INTRODUCTION:
I haven’t had a chance to work on Alvin and Rebecca’s first series of engagement photos yet because last weekend I was away at our church’s family retreat. This year’s event was held in Reedeemer University in Hamilton. I didn’t know what to except coming in but basically the retreat ended up being time for families to share what’s been in their lives with their family, friends, and god. It was a hugely emotional affair and tears of sadness and joy can be seen everywhere. I just got back from the trip and couldn’t help but to post a few of my favourites.

TECHNIQUE:
Before the trip I splurged and got a new Canon 135mm F2L telephoto lens which will definitely come in handy in the 2009 wedding season. I used this weekend to test drive the lens and 95% of the shots are taken with it. I really REALLY like this lens and will try to find more opportunities to use it even though it will be tough to use indoors. There’s just something magical that comes out of this lens. It is just fantastic in getting candid shots of people when they least except it because as a lens this 135mm is considered quite compact and small for the amount of reach this thing allows. The F2 aperture allows me to freeze motion and isolate my photo subjects from the background with its shallow depth of field. Unfortunately as this is still a telephoto lens without IS, I still need a fast shutter speed to negate the effects of motion blur caused by unsteady hands, and thus ISO needs to be pretty high up there when indoors. But boy are the shots worth it.

PHOTOS:

*I got a new monitor but haven’t had time to calibrate it yet. Colours and exposures may be slightly off for now*