Showing posts with label Inspiration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Inspiration. Show all posts

Monday, December 7, 2009

So Proud...

Two days ago I posted as to why I was in Barbados, not just to relax, but to support my wife in her fight against arthritis and to cheer her on while she ran to support such a great cause. In total the 64 competitors here have raised well over $300,000 and more than 1/2 a million this year alone!! This alone is no easy feat, and yet they all came down to Barbados to run in a race to show their support for this cause. Not all competitors are arthritis sufferers, but they all know someone who is. My wife was diagnosed with arthritis about 4 years ago and since then she has experienced many of the ups and downs of this disease, all of which I have experienced through her. Yesterday was a very proud and emotional moment for me to watch her come down the final stretch of the course with all the Joints in Motion Cheer Team cheering her on. I cannot begin to explain how proud I am of her, she trained hard all summer and has gone through a lot of pain to get where she is today. This post is for you sweety!! No pretty pictures today, just a shot of an amazing woman who I am proud to call my wife and someone I will love and cherish for the rest of my life!! Thank you for sharing this experience with me Steph!!...And for those who care the last photo is of the guy who won the whole marathon, notice the time.... he ran over 40 kms in 2 and 1/2 hours!! WOW!! Congrats to that guy too!


Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Beauty Creek


I have been trying to get some decent shots from this area for a while now. During the summer I would work to late and not be able to get down the highway in time. I'd love to get down there for sunrise, but I seem to be rather lazy of late. So today we decided to take a bit of a drive down to see if I could get a sunset shot. As the sun went down most of the coulds disappeared, but I did happen to get a nice black and white shot of an old tree with Mt. Kitchener in the background. I would really like to shoot a sunrise here soon, as the first light of the day lights up that peak.


I have been looking for a way to get a bit more creative with blog posts lately, so I decided to download the onOne Photo Frame program and try out the 30 day trial. The second shot here is an HDR I did a few weeks ago at Tekarra Lodge. There is a "grunge" frame, as well as a "instant picture" frame that I put together in Photo Frame 4. I'm sure I'll play around with this more in the future and I'll be sure to post the results here!!

Photos: Nikon D90, 17-55mm f/2.8

Monday, October 5, 2009

Not my photographic strength.....


So I wake up to my alarms (yes..."alarms", it's painfully hard for me to get up somedays) at 6:30am this morning to get ready to go out for a sunrise shoot. I got my gear ready, dressed warm, as it was -8 celcius this morning.....yikes!! I raced up to Medicine Lake to watch the sunrise and hope to get another pano crossed off my list, but I got there to find myself extremely un-motivated to shoot. I tried a few compositions, a few HDR's and a pano. I wasn't inspired by anything I got, so shortly after the sun came up...and turned the sky almost white with no detail, I got back in the van and headed back to town. On my way back I was thinking about how this is the life of a photographer, and we can't always go out and be inspired by every little thing we see and you will not always end up with great photos just because you got outside really early in the day. The more I thought about this and how I wasn't motivated, I remembered passing a heard of elk on my way out of town, so I pulled over and put my telephoto lens on my camera and thought if the elk were still there I would try and snap a few shots and see if I could get out of my little morning mood I was in.


Turns out I was lucky enough that the elk were still there and I spent about 25 minutes with them trying to get a few shots. My lens only goes to 200mm so unless I got dangerously close, I wasn't going to make and spectacular shots, but I'm still happy with the few frames I got, plus the experience definitely took me out of my crap mood. I'm learning that motivation can be found in a number of different places, you just have to keep your eyes open and be patient and you'll find it! I know these pics are not the greatest, there are people out there who eat this wildlife photography for breakfast and are waaaayyy better than I, but I still had fun and I think it's something I'd like to pursue a little more in the future.

Photos: Nikon D90, Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 VR