I was privileged to be the official photographer for the welcoming ceremony of two new BC supreme court justices - Justices Harvey and Verhoeven.  The ceremony was held in one of the heritage criminal courtrooms at the New Westminster courthouse and was one of the rare times cameras are allowed into the courthouse.  Basically, the way it goes is the justices all attend, dignitaries such as the Chief Justice and Attorney General make glowing and often humourous speeches about the appointees, and the new appointees respond in kind.  After the shoot, we retired to the judges' chambers to get some shots of friends and family.  This shoot was definitely interesting in that I switched between available light (ISO 3200 on the D3 and D700) and portable studio light with the Hensel to get a variety of natural, yet dramatic looks in the windowless courtroom.

I had a chance to work with the lovely and versatile Brenda Bezell, a local Vancouver model.  One of our goals was to achieve a bit of a retro Hollywood sort of look, and I'm very happy with the results.  It's hard to believe the pictures are of the same person!

I attended a 5-day lighting workshop in Vancouver (organized through Vancouver Photo Workshops) with Joe McNally a couple of weeks ago.  Joe's a great, down-to-earth, self-effacing guy, pretty much as he comes across in his blog, and he worked us and himself hard.  Beyond his huge volume of published work with National Geographic and Life magazines, he's well known for his mastery of flash photography, in particular the use of Nikon's Creative Lighting System.

Probably the best part of the workshop was seeing the thought patterns and the methodical approach he uses -- sizing up a location, working one light at a time, tweaking, and adding more lights as needed.  As an event photographer and photojournalist at heart, I'm used to having to work quickly with what I'm given, and it's instructive to watch something done methodically, one element at a time.  I plan more creative shoots in future and to work this way.  Also, I plan to work harder to nail the picture in-camera to reduce the amount of post-processing work; Joe's ability (and National Geographic's requirement) to deliver completed shots in-camera would shame everybody.

The workshop was well equipped with all manner of lighting gear, from C-stands, reflectors, softboxes (including an Octa) to Elinchrom monoheads and Ranger portable packs.  As a result, there was little need to wait for other teams to finish with certain limited bits of gear.  I did find the Elinchrom bayonet system a bit frustrating to work with, so I feel better with my decision to go with Hensel.  There are a lot of nifty little things I ran across that I'd consider picking up in future, including some small flash softboxes, and various clamps and modifiers.  I brought several of my SB-800 flashes and my SU-800 commander, which ended up being valuable additions to the arsenal.  In the midst of the class, I also picked up a D700 and SB-900.

Each day was spent working in teams along with various models and areas in the studio and small or large flash.  Our last day was spent on mock assignments that Joe set for us.  Ours was to photograph a self-absorbed Bollywood star newly arrived in North America.  We spent 3 hours setting up for just two shots.  Joe's a hard marker when he puts on his photo editor hat, but I appreciate that!

All in all, it was an exhausting but tremendous experience.  It was a great opportunity to network with Joe and the other photograpers.  Kudos go to Marc, the organizer, and to my various team mates over the last week!   It was definitely worth the price for the smaller class size and overall quality of the instruction.

On my way to Cliff Mautner's excellent photography workshop outside Philadelphia, I took the chance to visit The City -- New York City (what else?) for those that live outside NYC -- for a few hours.  The whirlwind tour started just outside Camden, NJ, onto the River Line train to Trenton, then onto the NJTransit express train to The City, through Secaucus, New Brunswick, Newark, and finally ending at Penn Station.  Two and half hours and $13 after I left, I was in The City!  All this on less then 4 hours of sleep. 

Going up the Empire State Building consumed about two hours passing through security, the endless snaking lineups, photo booth, and tourist shop, though the view was certainly breathtaking.  Afterwards, I continued on 34th through Macy's, then hopped the subway up to 57th and Central Park, over to the Trump Hotel and Tower, back down on Broadway, through Times Square, over to Grand Central Station (by a fortuitous subway mistake), down to visit the Ground Zero and Battery Park, then back to Penn station.  The NJ countryside and small towns were charming and beautiful with the turning leaves still on trees.  The City is amazingly clean and so full of people energy, a contrast to its grubby, mugger-infested reputation that seems very antiquated.

Food grabbed on the run: a bagel, hotdog, a pizza, and a pretzel -- my own NYC combo!

The Creative Company Name Award goes to "Mr. Driving School", sighted somewhere outside Newark.

The ESB

View from atop the ESB

Central Park

Times Square (picture courtesty of some passing photography students)

Battery Park (a little sparsely populated oasis of calm -- just a handful of people there)

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)