You are guaranteed to see wildlife if you bring your own!
With John Marriott in Yellowknife a few of us really wanted to see some wildlife. Seeing John in his element would have been amazing. However, we knew that the chance of us actually seeing something with about twenty people wandering around was not very likely. A good friend of mine, Trudy Hause, had other ideas. Trudy said if we wanted to see wildlife then we just needed to bring our own. Trudy arranged for a model (Arielle Taekema) to appear during our field work. Arielle would be made up to look like a lynx. I am not sure how much time Trudy and Arielle spent preparing but, based on the results I would guess it was quite a bit. I don’t shoot people very often and I wasn’t really sure how Trudy’s plan would go but, I thought in would be fun. I just didn’t think it would be that interesting for me to photography. Well, I was wrong! Once the process began, I couldn’t seem to get enough of the photo shoot. I took just over four hundred images and had a blast doing it. Here are the images I liked from our Sunday morning Lynx shoot. I hope you have as much fun looking at them as I did shooting. Well that’s all for now, enjoy, thanks for being here and as always Happy Shooting!
Aurora Storm April 13, 2013
April 13, and 14, 2013 were really good days. Daryl Benson and John Marriott were in Yellowknife leading what I believe was the tenth Workshop I have organized. While in Yellowknife, John was watching the sky and any Aurora news in hopes of getting some Aurora images. On Saturday April 13, 2013 we discussed with the Workshop group that we would all go out and photograph the Northern Lights if they were out. We were sure they would be as all reports stated we would have a solar storm that would increase the Aurora’s intensity. We all met at around 10:00 pm and went out with cameras in hand. Some people decided to go to different locations to get more original shots and to be a little more free (traffic gets busy when the Northern Lights are out). I stayed with Daryl and John. We were out until around 2:00 am and got a few good images. Fun times were had by all. Here are the images I decided to keep. Enjoy, thanks for hanging around and as always Happy Shooting.
Ingraham Trial Images
As this weekends workshop with Daryl Benson and John Marriott gets closer, one of the things Daryl, John and I did was to scout out locations to go shoot. We did a quick drive around Yellowknife and then proceeded out the Ingraham Trail. As we passed locations I am familiar with, I thought of all the images I must have taken on the trail. Daryl even asked if I had any idea as to how many times I have driven this road. I didn’t know but, it has to be a crazy high number. After arriving back to my place we had some time to look through images for the critique part of the workshop (Sunday afternoon). That lead to a lot of time viewing images with Daryl and John both discussing what they like and didn’t like from images I have posted here on this blog. The learning for me began early. All of that got me thinking about this post. Below are images I have taken in the past few months while drive on the Ingraham Trail. Some are even re-edited images that have previously been shown here. Let me know what you think. Well, I have some more workshop stuff to do so, enjoy the images, thanks for hangin’ and as always Happy Shooting.
The Skilled Kids from Skills
I do quite a bit of work with Skills Canada Northwest Territories, during the day I look after their finances (along with Lynnette and Garry from my office) and the rest of the time I am the Photography Tech Chair (a role I now share with Adam Hill). It is enjoyable work. Last September I went on a trip with the Executive Director (Jan Fullerton) of Skills NWT to Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories. The purpose of the trip was to teach a small group of students a CTS Photography course. We (Jan and I) ran the course from Tuesday to Friday, had nine students and even included some evening time for shooting. It was an amazing trip. You may have even read an earlier post I did about the trip and there is an upcoming magazine article soon to be released about the trip as well. In my earlier discussions I had posted only images that I had taken. Today I wanted to display images from the nine amazing students. I have done some editing of the images for this post and the magazine piece but, all images are taken by the students. Get ready because there are quite a few, maybe the largest number of images of any post I have ever done. Anyway let’s get started.
@ Natalja Bristow
@ Rhea Klengenberg
@ Phylicia Kagtuk
@ Tamara Oloakyok
@ Juliet Klengenberg
@ Topsy Banksland
@ Simon Kudlak
@ Laura Akoakhion
@ Tyson Klengenberg
@ Natalja Bristow
@ Juliet Klengenberg
@ Topsy Banksland
@ SImon Kudlak
@ Topsy Banksland
@ Tyson Klengenberg
@ Tamara Oloakyok
As you can see, this group just seemed to absorb the information Jan and I had taught. They were very engaged and their commitment to our little course was inspiring. I can say I was very impressed. The timing of this post is done for a reason. On April 16, 2013, Skills Canada NWT will hold its annual Territorial Skills Competition. Photography will be one of the events held and I will be there as the Tech Chair. It will be an enjoyable day. We are fortunate to have Daryl Benson join us as a judge for the event. This will be Daryl’s second Skills event in Yellowknife and we couldn’t be happier that he is willing to provide his time. If you are in Yellowknife on the 16th drop by the event and say hello, we will be happy to see you there. To all the competitors (in all the events) good luck and have fun. For those of you visiting here, thanks for taking the time, enjoy the images and as always Happy Shooting.
My work travel
This is the time of year that my day job keeps me pretty busy. With tax season and government year-end my office is a little crazy. There is also quite a bit of travel required. Usually when I travel I take my camera gear and when I get time from work I try to capture some of the sights around me. Some of those sights I capture happen to be Mother Nature’s Aurora. I like having Aurora shots from different places in the NWT. Recently I have been to Lutsel K’e, Jean Marie River and I have traveled south to Grande Prairie and Edmonton. Here are some images from my recent trips. I hope you find them enjoyable. Thanks for checking in and as always Happy Shooting.
The winter shoreline in Lutsel K’e, NWT
Jean Marie River Aurora # 1
Jean Marie River Aurora # 2
My good friend Trace always tells me that if I didn’t capture an image of something it didn’t exist or happen, on my way to Grande Prairie I spotted a Moose walking across a snow-covered field. Although, it isn’t the great Moose image ever, I can prove I saw it. Take that Trace, lol.
Alberta Moose
World Snow Day 2013!
January 20, 2013 was World Snow Day and my oldest Daughter Kyla was hired by the City of Yellowknife to doing some shooting of the events. Kyla certainly made me aware that she had a paying photography gig but, was also nice enough to ask me to tag along. I will say I never really expected to be her photo assistant, lol. Kyla and I did some shooting at the Yellowknife Ski Club, Bristol Pit and on Frame Lake near City Hall. It was a cold but fun day. It was cold enough that Kyla’s camera battery would run down in a couple of minutes. She would leave the battery out of here camera and place it in a warm pocket. Just before she was ready to shoot she would put the battery in the camera and fire away. The battery would run down quickly and even with two Kyla had to resort to the warm pocket plan, lol. I believe between the both of us we had around 750 images. Like I said it was a fun day. Here are a few of the images I captured during our World Snow Day events. Enjoy, thanks for hanging here and as always Happy Shooting.
Workshop Shots!
Back in February Adam Hill and I put on a workshop called Expose Yourself to Photography. It was a great weekend with great people. The workshop poster Adam did was just to funny, maybe I should post it sometime. Anyway, back on track. For part of the weekend we all went to Grace Lake here in Yellowknife and did some shooting. I didn’t display any of my shots that weekend so, I decided I would post a few here. Here they are and if you are wondering about any up coming workshops there are a couple. On April 13 and 14, 2013 Daryl Benson and John E. Marriott will be teaming up to do a weekend workshop here in Yellowknife. It is going to be great. Send me an email if you are near by and are interested. In the works is an October 2014 weekend workshop with the great and amazing Freeman Patterson. Stay tuned for that. For now here are my Grace Lake images. Enjoy, thanks for stopping by and as always Happy Shooting.
