NightShadows Photography

Adventure in Chapters

2011-12-30T10:00:00.000-08:00

Chapters Gift Card

For Christmas I received about four Chapters gift cards. Mainly thanks to my wife telling everyone that she was just getting me a Chapters gift card, so that I could chose my own presents. And in all fairness my procrastination in not coming up with a list of things I wanted for Christmas.

Boxing Day I walked past the store, as I do everyday, to discover it open before work. Usually I start work at 9am and they don't open till 9:30am. I walked in and the staff were busily putting up signs for the stores Boxing day sales. Huge 30% Off Hardcovers signs were going up everywhere.

In the magazine department I found a photography magazine that I wanted. A British publication collecting articles from past issues, and some new ones, cost is $34, but worth it with 200+ pages.

I walked up to the front counter to ask Chantel, whom I've dealt with a few times, if the store wasn't doing anything special for Boxing Day? Remember that there are Huge 30% off banners everywhere. Without blinking she looks up and starts to say, "Well, there's thirty-percent off all hardcovers and..." I stopped her, because I was kidding, and told her I had actually seen the signs. Her manager was walking behind her and just laughed, saying "Its too early in the morning for us to get your jokes."

I proceeded to quiz her about a Sci-Fi book that I was looking for called Fuzzy Nation. She found the name of the author, but because the book is due for a mass-market edition in the spring, Chapters as a whole is sold out of the hardcovers, no saving for me. A few more inquiries and her giving me the scoop on a hardcover Steampunk novel that I may still pick-up, I headed back to the counter to pay for my magazine.

Lisa helped me out with the multiple gift cards by combining them all into one. That saved my wallet some grief. I paid for my magazine and headed for work.

On my way out I saw Vanessa, the store manager. Stopped her and complemented her excellent staff. Every time I'm in the store I get great helpful and insightful service. She appreciated the complement, as she said it was rare to hear, and as a manager all you ever seem to get are the complaints. Having been a Retail Sales Manager for 13 years myself, I knew what she meant.

Upon opening my bag at work to look through the magazine, I discovered I had the wrong mag. I had grabbed the Photoshop Elements magazine. That does me no good what-so-ever, I don't have that program and the tips in it don't translate well to Photoshop CS3.

The store I work at generally closes at 6pm, but things were slow for the later part of the day so, we managed to get pre-shut-down procedures done early and fast. The boss wanted to go home too, so we were able to leave about five minutes to six. I headed straight to Chapters to exchange my magazine, only to discover that they closed at 6pm for the evening. Elizabeth, who was manning the door asked me if knew exactly what I wanted, to which I replied "I know exactly where the magazine is that I want to exchange, I grabbed the wrong one this morning. " As there was a bit of a line still at the till she let me in. I ran for the magazine section, got the right one, and entered the line. The girl that served me double checked with Elizabeth about the return, just because they don't normally do refunds on Magazines, but she aloud it.

The next morning I was happy to have a new Photoshop magazine with tips on layers and masks, but (you knew there had to be a but) I was missing my umbrella. On a rainy December day and I've left my brolly in Chapters. Their store wasn't open before I had to be at work on Tuesday. So, once I got to my work I called the store, and talked to Melissa, but when she went upstairs there was no sign of my umbrella. Fortunately I left my name and number and five minutes later she called back to say they had it. On my way home I picked it up and went home under a clear and starry sky.

That was my Christmas adventure at Chapters Books.

Up Above

2011-12-18T09:04:00.000-08:00

Sometimes you need to get above it all to really see what is at street level. The building to the left is the Bishops House, here in Victoria. It sits right behind St. Andrews Cathedral and on Sundays seems to attract quite a few panhandlers.

To the right we have a great angle on the Susex Building. A November morning sun to the left and behind with reflected light enhancing the blue glass windows.

The Staples building, or more precisely the building at 747 Fort, with the Staples store on the ground floor, reflects the CIBC building in the next block.

The buildings to the right are over on Yates, but this views the back of the structures. While it may look like I used my tilt shift lens with a short depth of field, it was in fact an hour of time using multiple blur layers in Photoshop. I am really liking the way this effect gives the illusion of a miniatures or diorama set.

Looking down on the Municipal Finance Authority of British Columbia, an older building on Fort St. sandwiched between much more modern ones.

All these shots were taken the same November Sunday morning from the top floor of the View St. Parkade.

SteamPunk

2011-11-20T12:56:00.001-08:00

My friend Ian Finch-Fields has had some recent notoriety in the press for his Steampunk designs.

I kept meaning to send him a high resolution version of the image of Andrew Merpaw from Sept 28th, but other things kept cropping up. Yesterday I sat down and said, 'I am going to find that photo and email it to Ian.' When I dug into my harddrive I discovered the other image that I took of Andrew and though, 'why haven't I edited this?'

Three hours of editing and an accidental reboot of the computer later, I had a new image highlighting Ian's talents as a craftsman and Steampunk Master.

Then I managed find an article that talked about how you KNOW when you've arrived. With the recent controversy over Ian's work for Justin Bieber's upcoming Christmas Video, I thought he needed a pick-me-up. The article says how when you've arrived, you'll have haters, and the recent fame and attention has brought the haters to Ian's door.

The Hudson

2011-10-15T13:18:00.000-07:00

Another Thursday night going to the VIMP coffee meet and spotting a great picture to take. This time it was The Hudson building on Douglas St.. Devoid of traffic I was able to capture an unobstructed view of the building at about 10:30PM.

The Hudson was the home to the Hudson Bay department store from 1921 -2002 when it moved to the former premises of its competitor Eaton's in the 1100 Block of Douglas.

October 4

2011-10-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

"♪October 4 we open the door, October 5 we go live.♫"

This was our slogan at CIVI (The New VI) ten years ago as we launched Canada's first 100% digital Television station. No analog equipment in the building. It was ground breaking and monumental.

About two dozen of us got together this weekend to reunite and celebrate what we had achieved, a few even still work there. I started as a studio news Camera man and graduated to News Writer and Associate Producer before my nine month contract expired. Its still one of the few jobs that I would return to in a heartbeat.

Pandora Building

2011-09-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

Over the course of the last few weeks I have managed, not by design, to come up with a few shots in HDR of the same partially torn down building on lower Pandora St..

The first one (left) was taken from the Fisgard St. side of the block before they obscured the fence. The second image (lower left) was taken a week later from Market Square entrance on Pandora St.. The last image was taken from the Store St. end of Pandora St..

Victoria Steam Expo

2011-09-28T10:39:00.000-07:00

This past weekend Craigdarroch Castle hosted the Victoria Steam Expo II. For reasons I wont go into I didn't attend, but my friend Andrew went and got all dressed up for it. He bought a Pauldron from Ian at Skin-n-Hydz a little wile ago and put it on for the Con, and so I could get a picture of it.

The HDR took a bit of work, as it wanted to give Andrew's face a coal-miner's look. I used a layer mask and brought out his cleaner face look. The second image (below) gives you a look at the original 0EV exposure before any processing, so you can see the differences.

Gorge Rd Church

2011-09-19T09:45:00.000-07:00

Every Thursday the members of the Vancouver Island Models and Photographers (VIMP) group get together at the Gorge Rd Tim Horton's coffee shop. On my way there this image presented its self to me.

The setting sun just seemed to give it the right ambiance.

Vancouver Island ArtistFest

2011-09-16T16:04:00.000-07:00

August 20th, I went Downtown with my camera. Not something I usually do on a Saturday, but today I'm glad I did. As I walked past the Pandora side of Centennial Square I spotted Niche Unique, who modeled in the 6th Annual Victoria Goth Shoot two weeks prior (see last post). Turns out she was participating in the Vancouver Island ArtistFest.
Niche and her fellow model DEVA were being bodypainted by Kristin Grant as Sexy Zombies.Having worked just recently with Niche, I expected great things in her poses, which she delivered. I wasn't expecting as great from DEVA, but I got it. Both girls were great to work with especially given the nature of the very impromptu shoot.

There were other body-painters and models there too. I never caught the name of the girl on the right in the image below, she was painted by David Lloyd and the girl next to her is first time model Audra Jones, who's painter I missed the name of.

Annual Goth Shot

2011-09-02T17:08:00.000-07:00

Models: Niche Unique & Betty Kate

Every August I gather a few models and a few photographers for a Goth themed shot. At first it was just called Goth Shoot, but now that I've been doing it for over 5 years we call it the 6th Annual Victoria Goth Shoot. This year I managed to get us access to a local metal foundry, with cool machinery and yards.

Model: Niche Unique

Other than myself, photographers Jason Tice and Steve Luckinuk showed up to photograph models

Model: Betty Kate

Betty Kate and Niche Unique. Niche's Mom even helped out as camera assistant for all of us. We enjoyed the use of the space and got three-and-a-half hours of shoot time. I don't know about the other two, but I shot 656 frames.

Model: Niche Unique
Model: Betty Kate
Corsets: Athanasia Fashions

The girls were both fantastic to work with, and while they had never met before, they worked well off each other when we had them together. Individually they posed great and were very much aware of their angles and light.

Thanks again to everyone that made it a great afternoon. Jason Tice of Geoectomy Photography and Steve Luckinuk of Steve Luckinuk Photography, models Niche Unique and Betty Kate and of course Smith Bros. Foundry. The assistance of Karren and corsets supplied by Sue McCaskill of Athanasia Fashions.

About Time

2011-07-21T16:00:00.000-07:00

I figured it was about time that I got some more of my images up from that failed shoot two weeks ago.

The previous two were taken from the old Eaton's Parkade, as is the first image in this set. This HDR image was taken from the corner of the parkade of the north-side of the Empress Hotel. You can see the scaffolding on the front of the building, where they're doing some restoration.

A look north from the Parkade gives us the Times Building, or at least a facade of it. This is a little part of the Victoria Bay Centre that I'm sure most people never notice. The building on Fort and Broad was the home of the Victoria Daily Times for forty years.

In the Bay Centre is a fantastic Brass & Copper clock with the local time as well as other locations of the British Empire. This view is of the North-West corner of the clock at nearly 10:15am.

At the bottom of the clock is a dedication to the "Victoria Eaton Centre Grand Opening 1990." Yes it was called the Eaton Center when it first opened, and was the location of the Eaton's Department Store prior to that.

"Westward the Course of Empire Goes Forth." is written bellow the right side. Above, on that side, are four smaller time-faces for London, Nassau, Zanzibar and Kowloon.

On the other side of the Bay Centre is a curios building that sits at the corner of Broad St. and Trounce Alley. I really don't know much about it. The dome sits on just the one corner of the building, and really doesn't fit the standard Victoria architecture, I would love to learn more about it.

Today's Shoot

2011-07-07T14:00:00.000-07:00

I was supposed to shoot Sun-Dresses and Swimsuits today. Facebook failed to pass me the message that one was sick, and the other had said she wasn't sure she could. So after waiting downtown for 45 minutes, I got there early, I went for a walk and ended up on top of the old Eaton's Parkade on Gordon St.

So far I've edited two images. The first image was a look south between buildings at the Olympic Mountains. To the right is the Magnolia Hotel. The green domes in the lower right are the east side of the BC Legislative Building. I believe the Peak above the Legislative Building is Mt. Pleasant, about 45 miles away.

The second image is from the opposite side of the parkade. I looked out on to Broad St, towards the Bay Centre and realized the perfect opportunity for a tilt-shift image.

A tilt-shift image uses depth-of-field focus to causes a scene to look like a miniatures diorama. See how the cars appear to be toys, and the buildings look like models.

Andrew Old Fashioned

2011-06-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

Decided to do some editing and give the latest Andrew Merpaw images an old fashioned look.

The Sepia was achieved in photoshop by creating a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer and selecting the Colorize box. I then set Hue = 25 and Saturation = 25. I added my own texture layer over-top and set the Layer Blend to Overlay and Opacity to 40%.

Tutorial: Out of the Shadows

2011-06-25T13:00:00.000-07:00

Its amazing how well the eye sees things that the camera can't, or can it? Cameras are often tricked by back-light, areas in your shot where there is ample light. This causes other areas to come-out dark, because the camera is adjusting the whole image to the lighter areas.

I'm going to show you a great way to use photoshop to get images to come out of the shadows.

To start, I always make two copies of my original image. [Ctrl+J] or LayerDuplicate Layer.

Shut off the background layer. This saves it from damage and right now you don't need it.

After selecting the top layer we need to remove the colour, so we are affecting the shadows and light. [Ctrl+Shift+U] or Image Adjustments Desaturate.

Next we need to invert the image so that we brighten the dark and darken the bright. [Ctrl+I] or Image Adjustments Invert.

Now we need to apply the effect to the layer below. We do this by adjusting the Layer Blend Mode to Overlay.

This will make our colour a little weird, but we'll fix that in the next step.

Make sure your top layer is selected.

Select FilterBlurGaussian Blur

You'll have to adjust the slider to get the desired effect. I find somewhere between 20 and 70 works best. For this image I needed 70.

Try it on you images and see if it does make you images pop just a little more. Thanks for reading, any questions or comments will be answered below.

Andrew Merpaw

2011-05-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

Made the realization that I hadn't posted my images of Andrew Merpaw, the model I was shooting with when we came across the alley cat.

Andrew and I became friends after a group shot he was in, five years ago. Since then we have done about six shoots, He always has a great sense of fashion, and I have never been disappointed by what he shows-up in for attire.

For this shoot we started in Victoria's Bastion Square and walked through the alley to Fort St. Croossed over to Waddington Alley where we discovered an amazing textured wall mural, made out of icing sugar. From there we walked to Johnson St. to discover that the street was close to cars for the TC 10K race, perfect opportunity to stand on the road and take pictures. Then it was into Market Square and over to Fan Tan Alley.

Alley Cat

2011-05-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday Andrew Merpaw and I walked around downtown and shot everywhere from Bastion Square to Chinatown's Fan Tan Alley. In the process we found this friendly Alley Cat in Fan Tan.

I spend a good chunk of teen life in this very alley. My next-door neighbor was a sculptor who shared a studio in #3 Fan Tan Alley, just to the right in this picture. Then the building was fixed up and shops were put in on the ground level and a few guys I know opened a Comic Book store in the space that I'd hang out at for hours. After they moved the store to an alley between Yates and Johnson, a friend opened a metaphysical shop in the alley.

In a lot of ways I felt like I lived in the alley for about five years. I still have friends and acquaintances that work and/or live in or very near the alley, and I always enjoy visiting.

Johnson St. Bridge

2011-04-30T07:30:00.000-07:00

Took a little walk before meeting a couple of models downtown last Sunday, and managed to get a nice angle on the Blue Bridge.

For those reading this from outside the area, the Johnson Street Bridge, or the tourist called Blue Bridge, connects Vic West and Esquimalt Rd. with downtown Victoria and Johnson Street and Pandora Avenue. Pandora runs one-way to the bridge and Johnson one-way from the bridge.

Outdoors

2011-04-23T17:55:00.000-07:00

So a nice Saturday off work and Easter Weekend. Sue and I decided to walk down to James Bay with the cameras and see what we could get some pictures of. For me it was a couple of birds. The Crow was first, he hooped into the grass near us, before being chased onto this rock by anouther crow. The final resting spot was perfect, as I managed to get a perfect amount of feather detail. Too bad I couldn't get a bit of eye.

The Heron was a good 300 feet away, hence the grain in the image. The incoming seagull just added the perfect amount of motion to balance the picture.

Chinese Public School

2011-04-21T18:15:00.000-07:00

Was walking through Centennial Square on my way to work last Sunday when I saw a great angle to shoot this from. For those of you not aware, the school is located on Fisgard, half a block from the Chinatown gate.

There is a lot of red in this image, from the brickwork to the lanterns and the painted door and stairs. Inspite of that the HDR really helped bring out the details in the image.

The smaller image to the right was taken the same morning from a different position in the square.

Janion

2011-04-17T09:30:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of February the shop that I work in changed its hours for Sundays, and I forgot. So I showed up early for a 10am shift, to discover that we don't open till 11am and no-one was there yet.

So I took a walk with my camera. I wandered down by the water below Store St. and worked on some great HDR.

This is the back-side of the Janion Building, been derilict my whole life and sits right across from Swan's Hotel. When Mosses Znamier was in Victoria, looking for a place to put CIVI (today's A-Channel) he realy like that building and its water proximity. Unfortunately the crazy person that owns it refused to sell it, or lease it at any price.

Water Dragon

2011-04-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

I had never seen this sculpture before I took this picture. The water front location by the Canoe Club is perfect for it.

I really like what the artist did in giving both a native and Chinese feel to it.

April Fools

2011-04-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

So its April 1st and I got up early to be involved in a little prank put on by 107.3 Kool FM. They hired a Limo, Bodyguard and Personal Assistant to show Lady Gaga around town. They hired Lady Gaga too.

Spreading the news that Lady Gaga was in Vancouver to shoot a music video was the easy and true part. The joke was that her plane was diverted to Victoria and she spent the night at the Empress Hotel.

For me and Jason Tice of Geoectomy Photography, the morning started at 7:00am with stalking Lady Gaga getting a coffee at the Yates and Government St. Startbucks. We set in as paparazzi, and a few people stopped and took pictures along with an A-Channel news crew.

Next stop was Bastion Square, which was a little dead. There was really no-one there but those of us in on it.

So next we got to the Inner Harbour and that's when the crowds started showing up. People stopping in the middle of the road to take pictures and running up for autographs, all which were given a "Kool FM - You've Been G-Ga'd!!!"

After that it was time for me to get me butt to work. Thanks to Kool Fm for the prank. Thanks to Jason for getting me in on it as Paparazzi and thanks to Charlotte of Victoria Costumes for playing a great Lady Gaga and inviting Jason :)

Reborn

2011-03-07T14:00:00.000-08:00

From Saturday at Tsukino Con 2011. Morgane (L) and Aimee (R) as Adelheid Suzuki and Chrome Dokuro from the Anime/Manga Reborn.

Hungary for Turkey

2011-03-06T11:10:00.000-08:00

Dylan and Alex as Turkey and Hungary from Hetalia, an animated series where the characters represent various European countries.

Taken on Sunday at Tsukino Con.

Cross Universe

2011-03-05T20:49:00.000-08:00

Managed to gather three individual cosplayers for a display of their powers. There was a Poison Ivy around that I got separately, but she's a villain anyways

Right now I don't know who any of these Cosplayers are.

Astra in Blue

2011-03-04T20:43:00.000-08:00

Astra Rae in her hand-made OC costume.

This is Erdyne from Ul-Zaorith an Original Character from her Original World and RPG.

We did this series of shots in the basement of the Elliott Building during Tsukino Con.

Want Some Tea

2011-03-03T20:36:00.000-08:00

Starting to get some images up from Tsukino Con 2011. The convention was held at UVic back on February 24 - 26 of this year. I had a great time and took over 850 images. There will be more posts from the con in the coming days.

Smith Bros

2011-02-14T14:00:00.000-08:00

Located on Pembroke St. in Victoria is this old brick building, housing the Smith Brothers Foundry. This is a very industrial part of the downtown that is slowly disappearing.

Was happy to see the two black crows stay put on the roof while I took this exposure. The rain also helped accent the image with the street reflection.

Canoe Club

2011-02-13T13:00:00.000-08:00

The Canoe Club below Store Street in Victoria. Taken on a damp Sunday morning. There were a lot of good shots taken the same day I'll try to post more soon.