It's amazing how a little bit of sunshine in Vancouver in October amidst some really wet weather will get everybody out of the house.  Daughter Isabelle and I went to the Reifel Bird Sanctuary to see what we could shoot, er, photograph.  While it could be more accurately called the duck sanctuary, we did spot a maybe a dozen different kinds of birds (the true birder would probably have noticed hundreds).  If it kinda looks like a duck, kinda makes noises like a duck, it's probably a duck, but his friends probably make fun of him because of his funny colour and different shaped head (thankfully, 8 year-olds don't care).

Birds are infuriatingly small and, despite the Bird Sanctuary label on their surroundings, very suspicious.  You need horribly expensive lenses to take pictures of them, unless they're ducks, in which case you have to step around them as they don't get out of your way.  On that topic, if you want to feel hopelessly inadequate with your $9000 camera and lens combo, go hang out with some bird photographers ("Is that a 300/2.8?  It's so cuuuute!  Bill over there has a 600/4 VR and a sherpa to lug it around.  He lives in one of the side pockets of his camera bag.").  OK, I'm exaggerating -- they were really nice to talk to, and it's nice to see a few more Nikonians/Nikonistas out there; it's been a little lonely.

I was reminded that I don't really have the patience to sit in a blind all day waiting for the Black-crowned Night Heron to do something interesting.  Apparently it's quite common, but you wouldn't have believed it from the crowd of gigantic lenses that were set up around the one example that was present. 

OK...  looking over my shoulder, tilt your beak down a little bit, yess.....gorgeous!   Left shoulder up...no, your other left...  Good!

Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax hoactli) aka Leave me alone; I need some ME time

Favourite shot of the day (possibly a Black-capped Chickadee, but I'd be guessing.  I'm pretty sure it's a bird, at least)

I had the great pleasure of working with Jade Lavallee last week.  I had a last-minute cancellation, leaving me with studio time and no model.  I'd only spoken to Jade, a relatively new model, for the first time earlier that day, and amazingly enough, when I called her again after I found out about the cancellation, she was a good enough sport to drop everything and make it down to the studio in record time.  Though we had fairly limited time, we got a great variety of poses and looks in just over 90 minutes.  Jade's definitely a gem (groan) and one of the most fun models I've worked with.  We'd been wanting to work together for a while now but our schedules were tough to match up previously.

I've just gotten home from Rolando Gomez's very first Back to the Ranch glamour workshop event.  I got to meet and be mentored by some of the greats in photography: Rolando, Harrison Funk, Eli Reed, Shelly Katz, and Jim Lewchuk.  And of course I got to work with tremendously talented professional models who made it extremely easy to get great pictures -- like shooting fish in a barrel, I said on a few occasions.  I can't forget to thank the MUAs as well, who got the girls looking positively radiant.  While the event and the photography were great, it'll always be the new friendships I've made as well as the nuggets of information I learned or that were reinforced, and the confidence gained that will always stay with me.  I also had the great fortune to have spend both some extra shooting time and downtime with Marinda Thomas and Rika Hollings, two talented, beautiful, and incredibly fun women to work with, and I expect we'll find some way to get together again.

Above all, I was impressed by the level of integrity of the greats, the passion for their work, but also the commitment towards the well-being and dignity of their client, very many of whom are public figures.  And as Rolando has said before in his phototherapy articles, photographers have a very powerful tool at their disposal to affect both positively and negatively the psychological well-being of their subject, and that is a power to be used carefully.  Jim Lewchuk, whom I had the great fortune to spend a good amount of time with and respect immensely, wrote a great article in JPG magazine about fleeting moments in time and the photographer's privilege in capturing these forever.

Technically, what I really got back into was available light shooting under tough conditions.  It gets really, really easy to fall back to supplemental lighting or to scurry for the safety of the indoor studio when the lighting is tough midday sun.  The majority of the images were done available light only and very limited use of reflectors, given them a very clean, realistic feel.  The D3's huge dynamic range at low ISOs allowed me to really back off the exposure to save highlight detail and compensate in post.

Here are some pictures that haven't already been posted to my Model Mayhem portfolio.

KT

Marinda Thomas
 

Jenni
 

Katy Johnson

Amy Davis

Holley Dorrough

Laura O