Beautiful Hamilton

Ok folks, so here's the deal. I want to do a series of shots of Hamilton and it's immediately surrounding area (i.e. if it's not commonly considered Hamilton, I'm not interested, no offense to anyone intended).

What I'm looking for from all of you is, where are these great places hidden away. Don't let the type of content limit you. It could be an interesting old building, it could be a waterfall, it could be some ancient tree in the middle of acres and acres of flat farm land. What I want to know is:

• What is it?
• Where is it? how do I get there, is it private property or public (if you know).
• Why is it? Is there history to it, a back story of any kind, what makes it magical worth the time/effort.

If you happen to have a cell phone picture or similar of the area you are free to include that. You can submit your suggestions in many ways;

• Respond to the Facebook post that linked to this blog.
• Respond as a comment on this blog.
• Email admin@photoqui.com with your suggestions.
  

I'm looking for a minimum of 30 locations to shoot with a rough maximum of 60 locations, *but* if people come up with more great locations I'm not going to stop shooting. The goal of this project is to put together an online gallery of interesting images of Hamilton. I'm continually scouting locations myself, but I'm sure so many of you have seen so many worthy things that I might never see or miss due to my travel directions.

Now as for what's in it for you; 5 people will be selected at random (who's submissions were chosen). Each of these 5 people will be given their choice of any 3 prints from the set of images. These prints will be hand signed, 8x10 (or thereabouts), full color, hand color balanced and optimized for print by the original artist (yours truly). Now seeing as I'm not made of money they will be unframed, but I will also be happy to hand deliver them to you in the general downtown area (or I can drop them in Canada Post).

So what are you waiting for? Let's hear those suggestions.

- Steve (PhotoQui)

From that to this...

Shhhhhheeeeeeeeeshhhhhhhhhh!

Back from Vacation with a few shots in hand...

Well it was a lovely 'vacation', but it's very late and even though I've been back for nearly a week work has kept me quite busy. That said there are a few shots here and there that I like, and a WHOLE lot more I have to go through.

Now I'm eager to try and crank out some high quality material that has been stuck in my head for while.. that will be my next 'task' for myself and hopefully another trip down south in March.

T minus 36 hours

In 36 hours my ass will be firmly planted in the seat of a Westjet 737 which will hopefully be getting ready to pull back from the gate at YYZ (Toronto Pearson) with a final destination of BGI (TBPB, Barbados, Grantley Adams International Airport).

Expected flight time is just over 5 hours and a distance of about 2,400 miles. Upon arrival in Barbados I shall be doing the following:

Thanking (insert your favorite deity here) that such a place exists.

Clearing customs.

Parking all my gear at my uncle's house (with the hellos etc. that one would expect after over a year).

Preparing to photograph the ever living &^%t out of the island.

Eating.. sleeping and then acting on the immediately prior item ;)

Oh and I might go for a swim in there somewhere :P

FINALLY!

Thank God...

I was finally able to get my hands on a BG-E9 grip for my 60D.

Initial thoughts; The grip is deeper than I thought it would be, decent to hold, certainly adds an awful lot of heft to the unit, which can be nice from a balance standpoint, but I have a feeling it will over power the smaller light weight primes.

As an aside, Henry's in Ancaster has some great folks working there, but man their prices are steep. If I wasn't so lazy I could have made my way to Aden in Toronto, but what a PITA.

Anyway, that's it for now..

Office clowning around.. it's fun

I happen to have a day job somewhere that can be very interesting... ended up pulling 18 hours last night, and then the better part of a full shift today.. actually damn near a full shift.. let's call it a full shift today.. 3+ days of hours in 36 clock hours.. not healthy, but what can ya do.

But that's not the reason I'm posting about work. The reason I'm posting is far more interesting. People are always asking me why I bring my camera everywhere (and I pretty much do bring it everywhere). Well the reason is you never know what you're going to see..

Everything on this page was shot because I've bothered carrying my camera to work everyday. Now bringing your camera to work everyday needn't be an arduous exercise. I usually travel with just my body and either my general purpose 28-75 lens or a little 50mm prime. Nothing fancy but it gets the job done. I especially like the prime since the office is dim and it forces me to be less lazy composing my shots.

Late night editting again

Well I had the pleasure of shooting two really solid bands last night. Good old fashioned honest music. Problem with shooting a live show is; there's about 20 good unique shots, maybe 40 if you're lucky and it's a huge mega stadium show. The rest all look the same...

So then you get bored and things like this happen;



Anyway bed time.. more playing tomorrow.. always nice to have some interesting shots to play with in your down time... It's almost as much fun as shooting them like this in the first place.