Pixar Short: George and AJ

... now you know the rest of the story.

CSI Mississauga

CSI Mississauga, originally uploaded by Bruce M Walker.

A shot from my very first modeling photoshoot! Great fun for me, though hard work. Hotshoe flashes are versatile little buggers, and I was using two of them remotely. But the lack of a modelling light in the setup so one can get accurate focus is a serious impediment. I had to keep turning a small gooseneck halogen lamp on and off, and that really slowed me down.

All shots were lit by one or two Pentax AF-540FGZ flashes. In this one, the main strobe is behind a Westcott 45" shoot-through umbrella, camera-right, 1/4 power. 2nd strobe is camera-left high, snooted (rolled-up black construction paper), focused to a tight beam (58mm), 1/2 power, about 10 feet back and shooting through a screen to get that interesting background.

My model is Tina Hung, an aspiring actor/singer/dancer. Tina is practicing her "serious look" here. :-)

Model: Tina Hung
Makeup & styling: Tina and Louise Peacock

Dusk

Dusk, originally uploaded by Bruce M Walker.

1937 Dodge humpback panel truck. Taken at the final evening of a 2009 Classic Car Cruise held in the parking lot of a Harvey's (decent hamburger chain) in Oakville Ontario. Tinted duotone.

This shot almost didn't happen at all. The evening was windy and cool, variable overcast, the sun had almost set and hardly any cars had shown up by the time we arrived and had our dinner. I wandered around the lot with my kit in my bag on my back and looked rather dejectedly at the classic vehicles parked there.

I was about to suggest to my wife that we just head on home when I recalled that I told her I'd like to try silhouette shots this evening. So I sighed, hauled out my K20D and looked around for a candidate. Wait! This odd looking truck was parked 90 degrees to the lines and parallel to the horizon where the sun had now disappeared -- casting fiery orange onto the strips of clouds! Oh my!

I took 46 frames, some with fill flash, but this one was the clear standout.

Cosmos

Cosmos, originally uploaded by Bruce M Walker.

The biggest Cosmos I've ever seen! Seen in Mississauga's Riverwood during a Flickr walk on Sunday.

Flight

Flight, originally uploaded by Bruce M Walker.

This is Finn. Blink and you'll miss him!

Royal

Royal, originally uploaded by Bruce M Walker.

Ahhh, classic cars ...

Emergent

Emergent, originally uploaded by Bruce M Walker.

Becoming acquainted with less than 2 week old enablement: DA* 55mm F1.4

Exp 1/100, f/1.4, ISO 200, 540FGZ flash inside Westcott 18" softbox; PP in CS4.

Too close for comfort

Too close for comfort, originally uploaded by Bruce M Walker.

This is how I spent much of my Monday night. We were woken up at 11:45 PM by loud beeping that turned out to be the UPSes going off. I got up to investigate how extensive the power failure was. When I stepped out the front door, I discovered the entire north-west sky lit up by a huge orange fireball. There's a new "luxury executive" townhouse complex being built over in that direction, and sure enough it turned out that the entire complex was up in flames. This is the second time in five months that the same complex has been torched, the first took out 8 units. This one destroyed over 75% of the site, about 57 units by one count.

The image directly above is the view from the bottom of my driveway, looking north-west. A light breeze was carrying the smoke and burning embers north-east over a church and a big park.

Anemone pulsatilla

Anemone pulsatilla, originally uploaded by Bruce M Walker.

You can see incredible detail if you view this large on Flickr.

Specialty Alium 2

Specialty Alium 2, originally uploaded by Bruce M Walker.

I like the calm, cool simplicity of this.

Redbeard

Redbeard, originally uploaded by Bruce M Walker.

I've been shooting flowers again. First of a couple.

Dead Pirates, Wood, animated topless dancing chicks

Cool animated video for the Dead Pirates. Via BoingBoing.

Secret life of tulips

I picked-up a ring flash for doing macros and, hopefully, decent portraits. Here are some initial macro shots ...

Pixel-peepers can see these much larger on Flickr -- click on the pix!

Hey, I'm in a book!

Members of a mailing list that I'm on, The Pentax Discussion Mailing List, got together recently and edited a book of some of the member's images created during 2008-2009. Everyone was encouraged to contribute one or two shots to this collaboration, and my two submissions were accepted. Sales of the book will be donated to the National Childhood Cancer Foundation.

There are 110 photographs in the book, representing every imaginable style, from photographers in fifteen countries.

You can read more about PDML Photo Annual 2008-2009 book project, and even order one if you like the idea, here ...

Air - La Femme D'Argent

I simply cannot believe it's already been 10 years since Air released Moon Safari. I refuse to believe it, in fact. Hrmph.

Her Morning Elegance / Oren Lavie

There is more creativity crammed into this video than I've seen in the last years' worth of videos. Put a huge smile on my face -- and you prolly don't appreciate how hard that is to do. :-)

As seen at Ken Brown's blog