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:: Sunset at the 61st Parallel

Alaska is most famous for its harsh winters and its Deadliest Catch Alaskan King Crabs. One can experience the complete opposite during Summer. On this balmy Summer evening I took a walk down to Lake Hood to take some photos of the sunset. It can only be described with one word… Serenity…

I wish I brought my professional photography gear during this trip. I’ve been here 6 times for work and haven’t had a chance to explore this beautiful state. Until next time…

:: Bubba’s Crib

After weeks of online shopping, days of painting and hours of procrastinating, we have finally completed decorating our baby room. It is fitting to see it all come together, because tomorrow we get to see our little ninja in “4D Ultrasound” for the first time and will be able to make out her features and hopefully will get a good look at her. She’s been extra busy doing somersaults, swinging on Tash’s rib cage like a monkey and practising her punches and kicks with Tash’s organs.

Decorating the baby room was a nice little project that gave Tash and I the opportunity to squeeze in some bonding time together since we’ve both had very hectic schedules with work and travel. After weeks of looking, we finally settled on an owls theme. There was no science or reason for the choice… they were just so damn cute! Our aim was to make the room as bright and colourful as we could because it doesn’t get direct sunlight.

The most painstaking part of the process was painting the pin stripes on the walls. In our haste and excitement to see the finished product, we ripped off the tape as soon as we could. We soon realized that the colours were too close to each other so there wasn’t a proper distinction between the stripes. So much for trusting the paint chips! We had to re-tape the whole thing again and start back at square one, only this time using a darker paint. If anyone is looking to do pin stripes with paint, I highly recommend Frog Tape. That stuff is amazing and you don’t get ANY bleeding with the paint.

So after all the hard work we were faced with the toughest job of all… convincing our dogs Candy and Jasmin that this room wasn’t theirs! They seemed to make themselves quite at home immediately! Anyway, check out the finished product…

:: Graffitti Saj

It has been a while since I’ve had a change to do some real Photoshop manipulations. I’ve always been envious of people that are able to “paint” in photo realistic portraits in Photoshop. Over the weekend I decided to do this self portrait of myself with the design inspired by the latest Chris Brown album cover for F.A.M.E. The trick was to edit the photo to look like it was a drawing and this was achieved by dodging highlights and burning shadows. In addition to this multiple layers were painted onto the photo to simulate different light sources and colour effects. The result?

:: Bumpety Bump…

This is an ultrasound picture of our little ninja in her crouching tiger hidden dragon pose. Lately she’s been using Tash’s bladder and rib cage as a sparring partner, so I’m guessing she’s going to be a handful when she gets out!

:: The Calm Before The Storm…

So I’ve had my Mini Cooper for a few months and its an absolute blast to drive. Think of it as a go kart on steroids. Tight handling, zippy acceleration and all in all an extremely comfortable ride.

I’ve been meaning to do a photo shoot of the car for a while and I came up with this concept. Having had a lack of sunshine during this “Summer” in Vancouver, I took the one clear day in a long time to take photos of the Mini. I wanted to create a production style effect that would be fit for commercial use. The theme I had in mind was “The Calm Before the Storm”, which was to imply the unleashing of power and in the case of the Mini Cooper, unleash the exhilaration and fun…

When it comes to photo manipulation the aim of the game is to be as realistic as possible without being over the top. The main rule of thumb is not to defy physics or visuals. So in this case, the final image is a car sitting on asphalt with a storm cloud overhead. The initial photo has reflections of the power lines in the glass and has the source of light almost immediately above the car. So, shadows and highlights needs to be maintained or created in the post production to make it as realistic as possible. Reflections that aren’t meant to be there are removed (in this case the power lines since there isn’t anything around the car in the final photo).

Initial Photography for the Concept

Further to that, in order to maintain the photo realism, reflections of the storm clouds are mirrored into the glass and paintwork. Another rule of thumb is to maintain, scale and vanishing points. If you chop the photo out and are incorporating it into other images make sure your scales are realistic and that you maintain correct vanishing points. When adding the cloud reflections, they were warped and skewed to maintain the curves of the glass and vehicle.

Since the car was stationary, in order to create some motion, the clouds were edited with a motion blur to give the effect that they were moving by fast in the wind. The car was colour corrected and shadows and highlights were added to enhance the storm mood of the final product. The final product is below: Let me know what you think!

Final Post Production Photograph – The Calm Before The Storm

:: Dirty Bit…

Inspired by the latest Black Eyed Peas album “The Beginning”

:: Sri Lanka – An island long described as paradise…