Thirsty, Chuck?

Bryan and I went for a quick mountain bike ride at the Dump today. Bry brings water for Charlie the Safety Dog so she doesn't get thirsty. Charlie is probably the antithesis of 'safety,' however. Yes, she's great at retrieving either one of us if we get too far apart, but she also likes to come rescue me when I'm picking my way down a gnarly section of trail, or about the jump off of something. I think I'll now refer to her as Chucky (due to her murderous tendencies.)

Anyway, this is a one shot post:

Failblog.

A group of skier girls have decided to get together and make a fundraising ski calendar to raise money for breast cancer research. Each month will feature one ski girl, with a lifestyle shot plus one or two ski action shots. We went out shooting tonight for lifestyles, and since we're trying to keep it on the down-low, here are some out-takes!

The calendar is coming to a ski-resort or ski shop near you, so keep your eyes open for them in the fall. We'll also be traveling around to various resorts to distribute the calendars and offer ski clinics in exchange for donations toward breast cancer research.

Featured in the following failures are Tessa Treadway, Kirsten Lyle, Sarah Frood, and yours truly.

We came, we gapered, we conquered, we spiral fractured our tibias.

Hey all, remember how I went climbing 2 days ago with the Treadways? Dave broke his tibia today, spiral fracture, ouch. Over fifty amazingly outfitted individuals gave'er on Blackcomb today after a leisurely 11:00am meeting time at the Longhorn.

There were mullets, skullets, skinny skis, and even figure skating uniforms. The pictures really speak for themselves. I'm pleased to announce I won Gaper Day 2009 Female Best Trick for some fun pond skimming action on Zig Zag in the afternoon. It's just like waterskiing... I made sure not to drown my cellphone again.

By the way, I'm pretty sure the chairlift takes only 4 people, oops. Oh, and I blew up a picture of my boyfriend and had him silk screened on the back of my vest. Just saying...

Baloo the Adventure Cat

The littlest Treadways are trying to convince me to move to Pemberton. It won't take much convincing, because the place is amazing. We went climbing yesterday somewhere in the valley near the train tracks, and of course the Treadways brought their cat, Baloo. He had a good time chillin in the bushes watching everyone try to be spiders.

That was Product-ive.

We had an assignment to do some product shots for school. Our instructor had this really epic/fancy setup that he showed us, complete with a fancy black synthetic surface to shoot on, and a table-top mini studio... OR a massive scrim tilted 45 degrees away from a big window, all of which I don't have at home.

So, being the thrifty daughter of a home economist that I am, I got creative. I stopped by Home Hardware to buy some veneer (wood, black or otherwise) to shoot on. They had none. They did, however, have white sticky drawer liner. It was sold in a 9' roll for $6. How could I resist?

I had to move fast because the assignment was due the next day and I was quickly running out of daylight. I figured I could use the drawer liner as both a scrim and surface to shoot on. I ended up sticking one half to a table that I placed in front of my window, and stuck the long end up the window (so it ended up like a studio backdrop would look, but miniature sized.)

Thank heavens for photoshop, because I was getting raindrop shadows on my background and tiny bubbles on the 'ground,' as it were.

Here they are:

A necklace, shot with daylight


My Grandpa's (my) 1955 Leica M3



I won't quit my day job, but if I need to sell stuff on Ebay, I may use that again.

Fresh (prince of Bel) Air.

I spent Thursday evening and all afternoon Saturday snapping photos at Jordie Lunn's fantastic new dj course. He held a rider-judged competition called Fresh Air, sponsored by Blackbox Labs.

There were lots of other photographers there, including Adrian Marcoux, Ian Hylands, Dan Barham, Baxter Redfern, Reuben Krabbe, Mike Reid, and many more. Check out their sites if you get the chance.

Jordie and the boys.


The winner, Brandon Semeniuk



Some other snaps





Okay that was fun. Again, again!

My teacher stole my bike, so I shot him.

This week was action sports week at Western. Ian Hylands, a mountain bike photographer, enlightened us to the secrets of sports photography. I finally got my pocket wizards working so I played with flash + action + outdoors for the first time. It was fun.

We didn't have anyone willing to ride the muddy trail so Hylands ponied up and did it, on my bike. He's 40lbs heavier than me and kept mentioning that he was bottoming out my fork. The bike is good though, I went for a ride after class and it was working fine.

I am aware that one of them is crooked and the rider is sketching out on the corner. oops.




Afterward we checked out the new dirt jump course in jordie lunn's backyard and I sniped some shots:

So, you got my back and everything, right?

"Napoleon, don't be jealous that I've been chatting online with babes all day. Besides, we both know that I'm training to be a cage fighter."



"Take a look at what I'm wearing, people. You think anybody wants a roundhouse kick to the face while I'm wearing these bad boys? Forget about it."

Architecture, Omaha, and Bill Gates.

So last week was fairly eventful. After returning to Victoria from Tofino, I had 1.5 days of classes then a quick turnaround to the airport for a weekend adventure. At school we went to the provincial Legislature building to snap some shots, as seen here:






Then, on Thursday evening I flew back to Calgary to say hi to Mum and Dad, then Dad and I woke up at 3:30am to head to the airport to fly to Omaha, Nebraska. We had a stopover in Chicago and arrived in Omaha in the early afternoon. The airport is ridiculously close to downtown, and we were at our hotel within 20 minutes of landing.

We looked around and checked out the Old Market and Durham Rail Station, then my older brother and sister flew in from London (via Chicago) to meet us.

The highlight of the trip was going to the Woodstock of Capitalism, the Berkshire Hathaway AGM, where I sniped some photos of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Both of them are, undubitably, righteous dudes.







That curvy shot is a bridge that crosses the Missouri River, which divides Nebraska and Iowa. We walked to Iowa and back. It was thrilling.