Two boats head full speed towards each other, and the jousters’ spears make contact with each others’ shields. One monsieur puts all of his effort into knocking the other monsieur off of his boat. Sometimes they both go off, sometimes neither do, and if one jouster stays on and the other tumbles into the water, we have a winner! I’ll boire une verre to that.

More pictures and details can be found here.

Check out this awesome piece that I photographed tonight for New Orleans-based artist Elizabeth Chen. The deer’s head is made up of thread embroidered onto sheets of plastic that are hung with strings, and lit with a black light. To see more of her beautiful work, check out www.elizabeth-chen.com

My friend Nathan took me out on his canoe one gorgeous autumn day. We drove west on I-10 for half an hour and hopped into the blind river. Nathan is a great swamp photographer, but I was having trouble translating the beauty I was seeing into nice photographs. Those familiar with my work know that I prefer to inject a human element into the photographic stories I’m telling, so I asked Nathan to pose for me.

We discovered a half-sunken raft, providing us with a flat surface to shoot on. Nathan was happy to play around in the muck, but I wanted to set up a strobe and   was not in the mood to test my last Speedlight against the swamp’s sinkholes. As I drifted around in the anchor-less canoe, we took some shots with a shoot-thru umbrella. With no ND filter, I had to blast at full power while shooting at f/11 to match the strong sunlight. An assistant would have been much appreciated, because I could never get the light where I wanted, and finally decided to go with natural light. Nate was a champion with the poses despite never having modeled before, and he was a good sport, willing to work the camera until I got what I wanted.

As I’ve mentioned before, I have been watching some great tutorials and I’m really getting into compositing. The process of combining images to make one photograph takes a lot of time, but it can really improve an image. I decided to add some alligators next to Nathan just to increase his badassness factor. After looking for hours through the Alligator group on flickr, I found a few that worked with lighting and perspective. No, I didn’t license these images, but this is not a Nike ad, so kindly forget about it.

In the end, I worked on this image well past the stage of being tired of it! It was a learning process, and based on comments I’m seeing on Facebook, some people believe that the gators were right next to Nathan. Mission accomplished! Here’s the original image for reference:

Photography as a Cure for the Blues

I’ve discovered another reason why I love photography: it is great therapy. The week leading up to this photograph was mired in uncertainty and stress, as I discovered that my plan of going to South Korea to teach English with an awesome lady friend might fall through.  Feeling low, I turned to my camera and started coming up with ideas for a shoot. I have a collection of old film cameras, and have always wanted to use them as a prop. As the sun set on a beautiful, clear, fall evening, I set up my home-made beauty dish with a Nikon SB-26. Sunlight beamed through the open door  just at the right moment, and within 5 shots, I had it. The excitement I got from making an image I loved was the cure for my blues!

Photoshop Edits

For anyone interested, here’s a “before Photoshop” image, highlighting some of the post-processing I did on this image to get it to look the way I wanted it to.

A fisherman in Goa after a long day at sea.

Towards the end of my trip in India, I headed down to the beaches of Goa. I had heard good things about it, but was wary of having a similar experience to my visit to the islands of Thailand (wherein I encountered more drunken sunburned 18-year-old Brits than I care to admit). I arrived at Palolem Beach and was pleasantly surprised at the awesomeness of it. A super laid-back beach with huts and delicious cheap food and beer. It was paradise.

At the end of the day, the fishermen would arrive with their hauls and the fresh fish would be served up at the restaurants that lined the beach. Speaking with the fishermen, you start to get a sense of what hard work really is. Their back-breaking work earns them less in a 16-hour day than a half hour’s work at minimum wage in the USA.

A small sign outside the the Refugee Center reads, “Made possible with funds provided by the U.S. Government.” Seeing that sign was the first time in my many years of travel that I really felt a sense of pride in seeing the results of the American government’s involvements abroad. (Yay! Finally I won’t have to tell people I’m Canadian!) Inside the Center was a dorm where the refugees lived, and factories where they made the scarves, carpets, and handicrafts that were sold in the complex’s shop. I spoke with an old Tibetan man as he put the finishing touches on a carpet. He had a terribly sad story about his experience during the Chinese invasion. His whole family was killed, and he was forced to flee his homeland to avoid meeting the same fate. As the Buddha taught, happiness only comes with forgiveness, and he has completely forgiven the individuals who killed his family. He lives a modest life, but the key is that he is alive and he is happy. He won the war.

Taken in the beautiful hill-station town of Darjeeling, India exactly 1 year ago today.