Many Canon shooters like me have been anxiously awaiting the announcement of the 5D Mark III. Canon’s being characteristically mum about this, and why not? The 5D Mark II is still selling like hotcakes. No sense in killing that golden goose just yet. I’d hoped that Canon might announce the new camera at CES at the beginning of January, but that didn’t happen. I figured I’d make a wishlist of what I’d like to see in a Canon 5D Mark III.
Better autofocus. I want autofocus at least as good as what’s available on the 7D. That means more autofocus points and faster performance.
Support for SDHC cards.
The LCD overlay of grid lines in the viewfinder, like the 7D.
The ability to give metadata star ratings to images in camera, like the 60D.
An articulating LCD like the 60D. I highly doubt this will happen, but maybe… just maybe…
100% viewfinder coverage.
That’s not so much to ask, is it? Anyway, regardless of what specs the 5D Mark III carries when it’s finally released, I’ll be the first in line to get it. Come on Canon, bring it on!
I was a bit nervous about Laura doing these leaps in the gold high heels, but she was confident that she could do it, and they definitely added a glamorous punch to this vibrant image.
You don’t have to want to be a model to have a modeling portfolio. Sometimes you just want to have some great photos of yourself. That was the case for Laura Lim, who drove down from Kingston to shoot a beginner modeling portfolio with me. Laura’s never been in front of the camera before, at least not in a professional setting. When I met her for her pre-shoot meeting–which I think is an important step for getting both of us on the same page before the shoot–she didn’t know exactly what she was going to do with the photos. She just knew that she wanted them.
Sue Upton creating Laura Lim's first look of the day.
Laura showed up at my studio with bags of shoes and accessories and a giant suitcase full of clothes. I encourage models to bring as much stuff as they want, because we can always sort through it to find just the right looks for the shoot. Laura took to this assignment like a fish to water, and as you can see, within a span of an afternoon, we were able to capture a number of very different photos for her. We worked with renowned hair and makeup artist Sue Upton, who is a master of transforming the girl next door into a femme fatale, sophisticated debutante, or any other look in-between. The super-sassy orange background shots are closest to Laura’s actual personality, but she easily pulled off the other looks with style and grace too.
I’m a huge fan of working with people who’ve never been professionally photographed. There’s something very appealing about unlocking a person’s photogenic potential and creating photos that make them excited about how they look on camera.
As you might know, Laura Hollick and I recently created a stop-motion film. It was my first-ever stop motion film, not including the little flip books of the stick man running that I used to make when I was a kid. Those used to drive my mom nuts, because she’d have all kinds of mostly-unused notebooks with frayed corners and little stick men in various poses at the bottom of each page. Anyway, if you haven’t seen our film yet, have a look. It’s called The Beginning.
It was Laura’s idea to create this film, to show feathers of multiple colors migrating to eventually return home as part of her rainbow feather dress. We didn’t know exactly where the feathers were going to start their journey, or how they were going to get where they were going, or what it was all going to look like, but that’s really the fun of creating something like this. The possibilities are almost endless. We hiked up to The Peak, which has a spectacular view overlooking the Dundas Valley, and talked for hours about how it might be done. We didn’t really come to any conclusions though. When we got up to leave, I saw a very interesting outcropping of rock on the edge of a cliff, just to the side of The Peak. It was entirely surrounded by lush, green vegetation. “Can you get over there?” I asked Laura.
“Yes,” she said.
“We need to put the rainbow bird on the edge of that cliff.”
“YES!”
Finally, we knew where the feathers were going to go. They were going to make a journey from their artistic origins, through the city, and into the forest, finally ending up at home as part of the rainbow bird, perched on the edge of this spectacular cliff. We were pumped.
It would have been quite possible to create enough scenes to make a feature-length film about our feather friends. We had so many ideas about where they could come from and where they could go. We only had a few days to create this film, and I knew it was going to take a lot of time to do, so our first step in organizing all of these ideas was to create some simple sketches and select only our favorites to shoot. Here are a couple of Laura’s sketches. You might recognize the genesis of the Red Feather in these outlines, as well as a list of our “characters.”
The next step was to find the actual locations for shooting. We looked near and far, and drove around the city, finding possible spots to shoot. I snapped some quick frames to get an idea for composition so that we could create a storyboard that made visual sense. Here are the snapshots we used to compose the Red Feather scene.
With some of the initial planning done, we were ready to start shooting the next day. We didn’t stop for the next four days. I was shooting constantly, and when I wasn’t shooting, I was processing the photos and assembling them into stop-motion video clips. We shot the feather scenes at Laura’s studio, Laura’s parents’ home, my own studio, and outdoors at the beautiful Tews Falls Conservation Area, whose shady forest paths lead up to The Peak. Here’s a video of me working with Lissa Hill, who did a great job assisting us in hauling camera gear and costume materials, and animating the feathers up on The Peak. She kept her cool, even though it was often frustrating to work with our lightweight actors in very windy conditions.
In the end, I’d shot about 1500 photos and processed them to 1080i high definition stop-motion clips of each scene. Some scenes ended up on the digital cutting-room floor. There’s this scene, for instance, that didn’t make it into the film. We shot it as an alternate beginning for the Blue Feather’s journey, just in case the weather didn’t co-operate with our plans to shoot Blue crying out of the graffiti wall.
After assembling all of the stop-motion clips into their proper sequence, I auditioned a number of different musical tracks. I settled on Under the Kadam Tree from Stockmusic.com. It is one of those rare stock music pieces that doesn’t sound like stock music. I thought the slightly mystical feel created by the tabla and sitar instrumentation, combined with a sort of unexpected jaunty tempo really lent itself well to the mood we were trying to create in the film.
The last step was to create the credits. This was the only segment shot at my studio using studio light. The rest had all been done using natural light, to keep the feel and color as consistent as possible. I designed the credits in PowerPoint and printed them out on cream-colored textured paper. When Laura saw that I’d created one that said “The End,” she was slightly appalled. “It’s not the end,” she said, “It’s the beginning.” Of course, she was exactly right. I quickly replaced that slide with a new one that was more appropriate, and in the end, we found our beginning.
I had a photoshoot with Lissa Hill of Lissa Hill Leathers last week. The idea was to create some commercial images that could be used to market her line of custom motorcycle leathers. We shot a few “catalog” type shots indoors in the studio at first. We kept these shots neutral so that the images would match the look of her website, and the black and red of the clothing could really pop out. We were blessed with absolutely perfect weather that day, so shooting conditions were ideal once we headed outdoors. We’d planned the shoot so we’d be out at “Golden Hour,” just before sunset. The skies were clear, giving us beautiful, warm light. Lissa had scouted out a perfect location in Ancaster, with open skies, little traffic, and a bit of twisty road. Our gorgeous models Michael and Sarah provided just enough attitude to match the leathers and bikes. In addition to being a great model, Michael also rides, so we took some lifestyle shots of him enjoying the open road on his bike.
We had to shoot quickly as the sun was going down, but I think we got lots of great results from our session. Here’s a selection of my favorite photos from the day.
