Edmonton Skyline Night Cityscape
These two clips are part of an upcoming project, but considering this is more of a traditional photo type thing (compared to the straight video stuff I’ve been cracking away with) it seems fitting to have them up here. The process was relatively simple, I went on google earth, found a few spots where I could grab a good skyline of Edmonton without being in the middle of a road. Went there, parked a tripod with my D7000 and a an intervalometer attached and shot in aperture mode while checking the screen every now and then to make subtle adjustments. Processing the 240+ raw photos for each shot on my blazing fast mac mini with raid 0 ssd setup still chugged to apply my color corrections and compress to a jpeg series. Anyhow, it’s tedious and time consuming but, overall not much more difficult than taking a single shot. Oh yes, I used some software to produce a near realistic camera movements (not sure if that’s staying in yet). This is a non skyline shot taken at K-Days this summer, similar settings (more than twice as long though), for a different music video
Read More
I’v been a big fan of this guy for quite some time. These photos are from an installment of ‘Felt Up’, it’s a series that Simon has been working on for a while. From what I understand, Simon records his friends and acquaintances on his iPhone describing embarrassing stories where afterward, he storyboards and plays the stories out with puppets. They’re fantastic reenactments, and you should check them out here Simon Glassman’s Felt Up. Actually while I’m at it, I might as well take this opportunity for some shameless self promotion, listen to our podcast interview on Robocop Vs the Nazis Simon Glassman talks about ‘Felt Up’ | Robocop Vs the Nazis
Read More
Just before shooting this I spent about a week in bed with some kind of weird flu… well maybe it was cancer? aids?… hmm cancer-aids? Yeah… I’ll stop here, we know where this is headed.  Anyway, here are the shots from 4 weeks ago. I struggled quite a bit with these, my D7000 is backfocusing a silly amount, with some tinkering on the AF-fine tuning it’ll work until I get it serviced. I’m not tying to blame my gear here, I actually found the challenge gave me some positive pressure. I’m really far too proud to let something like this prevent me from taking a decent shot. I ended up putting more energy and focus into getting a good image than I have in a very long time. They’re not my best shots, but I enjoyed taking them. Oh… well, it’d be a little self serving if I just talked about myself and my own feelings and completely neglect the film maker here, so I guess I’ll break that habit. This was made by some old friends of mine, Tyler MacIntrye (director) and John Negropontes (Producer). These guys moved to LA a few years back to further their film educations […]
Read More
James Cadden needed a place to shoot one weekend a while back, so Ryan and I offered our place up. I’ve known James for years from working with him on various projects but I’ve never really had the “James Cadden Experience”… it started with unloading, and filling our upstairs with toolboxes full of make-up supplies, a tripod mounted camera dolly, lights, light stands, a smoke machine (wasn’t used), and various slices of preformed latex and fingertips. After everything was finally inside, Ben Dextraze showed up with his squeeze Jessica and we all proceeded to apply heavy amounts of make-up and latex… I think we finished shooting with the final stage around 4am the first night and repeated the entire thing the next day. I have to say, Ben Dextraze is a really good sport. He spent several hours with plastic glued to his face and unable to move his neck during which two creepy guys were rubbing more makeup into his skin and whispering things like “Ben, I really want to fuck your neck vagina right now”. Well done sir. If you want to see James’s short check it out here Leash – A body horror short film
Read More
Three weeks last spring Ryan Byrne and Chris Hill shot a 10 part webseries called The People That Touch Your Food in Edmonton Classic norwegian dinnerware . It’s pretty neato that I’m friends with these guys, they managed to pull this off with only a pair of cheap dslrs (Canon T2i), a tripod, one mic with boom, some borrowed lights, and a handful of friends. It came together and actually ended up being pretty super swell, I could ramble off about it but, you might as well just go to the website <a href=”foodseries.tv>FoodSeries.tv (designed by me)</a> and check it out. Anyway, I hope these Willow And Everett Copper Mugs products tickle you.                                                                      
Read More
Most of this is just some new filler for the Classic norwegian dinnerware. I took these a long while ago back when I was working 70 hour weeks at a non-photo job. Like many things around that time, these shots fell through the cracks to only recently surface. I always bring a camera with me but, for most of these shoots I was too busy holding a mic, setting up a light, or eating some of the free food to snap many shots. Anyhoo here they are.                                  
Read More
It’s taken me quite some time to gather up my creative bits and get things going on here. In fact I think I’ve moved twice since the last time you’ve seen any of my shots. Anyway, this is Tito’s upcoming short, and although I haven’t watched it yet, his last year of short films has been stellar, this will be nothing less. Enjoy the shots and be sure to like Tito’s page on facebook.
Read More
A roll from my last shoot with the old Nikon D70. It’s funny, I think I regressed a little after this shoot for a while after replacing this 200 dollar used ebay purchase for a more grown up Nikon D7000. I had to really pay attention to what I was doing in order to work within the limitations of such a primitive sensor… anyway.. yeah, I guess you probably don’t care about all that, I’ll just finish up by saying I miss that piece of junk.  I dragged jess out with me to go scout for locations and play with my 35 dollar speedlights and this is what I came up with… well there were more on another card but I managed to put it down on a table in Grant Mac and completely forgot about it… yeesh. Done. Enjoy.  
Read More
It might be time for me to revist this stuff. I took this shot for CSG (the marketing company I work for). I was sent out to get shots of this townhome without any art direction, so I recall looking at the 3D rendering for a good 20 minutes before I left, I wanted to see how close I could get with a photograph and this is how I did. The windows look a bit weird and the electrical plugs haven’t been hooked up yet but not bad.    
Read More
So, I recently discovered if cut my sleep hours down from 6 to 4 hours I get 14 hours a week back, awesome hey? Well, not really but, that’s how it goes right now. With this new found abundance of time I was able to shoot more, this is my friend Erin, she’s one of them normal types so, conversation throughout the shoot probably just made things awkward for her(I tend to talk too much for the first part of a shoot and weird out normies). Regardless of what was probably inappropriate conversation, the pictures turned out quite well, check it out.  
Read More
I met Brendan last winter on a Tito Guillen short called “The Woman Upstairs” where he was both acting and doing blood effects. I knew he made movies but, sadly I hadn’t really checked out any of them (I will now of course!), I’ve been out of the indie film circle for a while. I was causally invited to come on set this last weekend and I neglected to even ask what the movie was about. I was simply interested in the idea of mixing with more film nerds, see what people are doing, and so on. I showed up about 15 minutes late as I do for pretty much everything I attend and I wasn’t quite sure if I had the right address. I arrived at what looked to be a 70 year old house with a couch on the porch and no visible street number. For some reason I didn’t bother with ringing a doorbell or even knocking, I just walked in… something was up me that day, and I was more out-of-it than usual. Upon my first few steps, I see a huge mess of old puppets and costumes, and could hear familiar film type racket coming […]
Read More
Back to the basics, I literary had no responsibility on this set, haha so it was more fun. I was just there to hang out and commentate between cuts. It was nice to get back to just taking pictures some times, I felt like I have been losing a bit of my drive as I hardly have time for projects these days. Anyway, these movies seem to be getting better, and with these guys there are always costumes, niicce. So, this show will be called ‘Lost Hero” and it being made by my friend Ryan Byrne. (the guy in the cupid wings from the previous post) It’s still in editing, although I imagine there should be a cut of it online soon. Enjoy                                                                                                    
Read More
Well I drove out to Waterton Park last weekend (close to the US border) and went camping for the first time since I rolled a car in an accident a few years back. Anyway, I’m still not a great driver but, again I survived and with some photos I don’t normally take. I’m not much when it comes to nature and geography, so this is what I’ve got.                    
Read More
Looks like I forgot to publish this one, I believe this was the beginning of the year. During some extraordinarily busy weeks at my day job, I had the chance to do some low ball indie film work, I put on my lazy director of photography hat, and shot another Tito short film with some friends. In between setups I had a few chances to get stills with my hobo kit.
Read More
So, this post is back-dated, meaning I forgot I took these photos back in May 2010. Anyway, Carey (my brother and boss when it comes to wedding photos) knew I could take a photo but from what I can tell felt I was pretty sloppy when it came to actually creating a shot, and directing my subject. On this Saturday he tasked me to find a model and do a shoot using his gear and him as the assistant for a change. I realized after the shoot I was terrible with people and great with the camera, using the light went exactly as expected throughout the day but, I was incredibly awkward. Working with my brother has always been a bit of a struggle for me as he’s always been an outgoing and confident guy. Myself, I’m a strange guy, with a foul and dark sense of humor, and baby rape jokes just aren’t palletable with everyone. I’m sure I was making Jess uncomfortable all day, and my shots read that, so in short, this was a learning experience. Know you audience. The end result however, I still got good shots but, we spent all day doing what would now take an […]
Read More
Alright so, I tried out my cheap ebay speedlights and triggers for the first time. The good news is the $35 yn460 light seemed to work as well as a $300 dollar SB-600 for my uses, the bad news is I failed to get the corresponding light stands so I fumbled quite a bit trying to wield my old d70 in one hand and an umbrella with a light tapped to it in the other. I came out with some good shots but, I lacked the variety I wanted with that light setup. Anyhow, being a free practice shoot n’ all I had no trouble coaxing Anna into doing a re-shoot, where I left the lights in the trunk and just got back to good ol’ point shoot. Let me know what you think. jesse                                              
Read More
So, I guess I like laundromats…. well, somehow this was the first time I was in one (two actually). I should be shooting every couple of days but, I always seem to find excuses, one being I’m far too poor to have the proper gear. I can put that to rest now… sure I can’t do everything I want but, with a modest 300 dollars worth of gear but it certainly does simplify things. This was a couple months back after purchasing my very first DSLR…. that’s right, I’ve been borrowing for the last 2 years. Anyway, I swiped an old noisy Nikon d70 for around 200 bones on ebay and a cheap 50mm f1.8 portrait lens for another 100.  With the exception of the last three shots that’s all I was working with, not too shabby. jesse                                    
Read More
Alright, so I’m a little hesitant to post these as I’m not sure if those in the ad world want to reveal what I assume everyone already knows, every advert image is photoshopped to death. In fact, these aren’t even the finished images, they’re just how far I went before handing them off to our graphic artists at work. Anyway, questions comments…etc. Jesse    
Read More
Without the possession of a camera for about 6 months I had been getting a bit antsy and finally scratched together about 300 and a change to buy a d70 and a cheap portrait lens. A friend of mine invited me out as an extra pair of hands making a short film. So, when I wasn’t carrying anything I was trying to get my photo barrings back, I think it was a good start.                                  
Read More
These are some shots of a luxury condo downtown Edmonton, this was my first attempt at architecture photo jazz. I’ve gotten a lot of practice since snapping these, and gotten much better, these were educational for me. Being a completely new kind of shoot, I was a little out of my comfort zone but, I think I’ve gotten the hang of it.                         Yes, it has been literally months since my last post, I’ve had my web design hat on for a while, but I’m still shooting, and will be like crazy in the coming months so stay tuned.
Read More