Parks and Recreation

I recently finished another Parks and Recreation project for The Municipality of North Cowichan. Along the way I encountered new challenges, met new people and had a great time!

 

I did a bunch of photos at the Aquatic centre which was a real challenge since half of the pool area is lit with warm coloured lights and the other half is cool coloured lighting. Ad to this, my lights and you have a lot going on. And as it happened, both days I shot there, the natural light coming in the windows was very little. Big rainy-nasty weather was keeping it dark. Not very often I need to shoot at ISO 8000!

 

 I'm tempted to let people guess the locations of these following parks. I will make it a bit easier by breaking the parks down, one by one.

Park 1.

Park 2.

Park 3.

Park 4.

 

This is the pool for another session.  

This is an easy one! A whole town of murals...

Park 5.

Park 6.

Park 7.

Park 9.

Park 10.

Thanks once again to all those who made this possible! Without the help of people volunteering to model for these photos, this project would not have turned out as it did. You will be seeing these and other photos around the Cowichan Valley in print and online as promotions for North Cowichan Parks and Recreation.

kurtknock.com

Photos for a Photographer

 

Doing photos for fellow photographers is always fun. I get the added pressure of the analyzing eye on everything I do plus the end result must meet expectations!

I had the pleasure of being the first photographer to do photos for Toad Hollow Photography' Scott Johnson. Scott Johnson, the man who will no longer be a faceless enigma behind the camera, saw some of my work and decided I was the one for the job. 

 

Scott is big into shooting historical sites and buildings and employs HDR (multiple exposure layering) in his style. HDR photos are capable of capturing tonal ranges that are not really there, the way our eyes see in normal light and the colour vibrancy tends to be quite extreme.

To tie Scott's shooting style in with my photos of him, I decided to go a bit crazy! I got a bunch of lights shooting a bunch of crazy colour on Scott and his surroundings. For locations, we decided on some buildings with character, texture and maybe even some history.

 

 

 

 

This guy just had to take an iphone photo of his bike while I was setting up to shoot Scott. I had everything ready in time to grab this one of him riding off...

 

This is probably one of the oldest buildings in the Cowichan Valley, the old Butter Church in Cowichan Bay. I,m pretty sure every photographer around has done photos here!

Thanks to Scott for his vision and trust in me! And all the best to Toad Hollow Photography in documenting historic sites and scenes here and abroad! 

 

kurtknock.com



Kidding Around

This past summer I put a lot of time and effort into creating a photo exhibition for Coffee on the Moon (A fantastic coffee shop in Duncan). Coffee on the Moon was the first place I ever had my work shown and that is going back three years now. I wanted this new show to be something fresh and different than what I typically shoot. Plus, being that this show was going to start in September, I thought of kids. September is back to school month and also a busy time for a coffee shop as parents suddenly have more free time :)

 

I had an idea of doing these photos in the evening to get the nice, warm, summer look I was looking for. After a couple shoots like this, I found I had to challenge myself more and I found myself working harder to come up with unique settings and shot ideas.

Anyone who has a child knows that evening can be a tough time for little ones. They want to have a snack and go to bed. They don't really want to be out doing a photo shoot. I guess they just don't appreciate the subtleties of good lighting...

Kids also like to run around and explore when in new surroundings. Kids sometimes poop their diapers when you are in the middle of a shoot. You just never know what might happen. But what I learned is that if you just keep your cool, and you make it fun rather than a high-stress situation, you will get some good shots.

I met some really great families from this project. I learned a lot. And some kids got some really cool photos!

If you get a chance to stop by the Moon, please do so. The photos will be on display until the end of October.

Thanks to all the moms, dads and kids who took part!

kurtknock.com