Cool backlight
Posted: October 31, 2008
Filed under: Landscape
Tagged: morning, outdoor, outside, sunrise
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I was dropping off the kids to school this morning and noticed the sun coming up behind the church across the school grounds. Naturally I took a shot.
~Jamie
The Catalyst
Posted: October 30, 2008
Filed under: Blog
Tagged: beginning, start
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Along the path of my turbulent professional life I have had the privilege to meet some really great people. Some of those I still keep in close contact with to this day, and a select few I chat with on a day to day basis.
Recently I went to Toronto to meet with some friends whom I worked with at 3DNA. One of those from my group in Toronto is getting married in spring next year. Most of us are avid photographers so naturally the conversation converged on that topic. We began discussing the kinds of prices that photographers charge for full wedding coverage and I was blown away at the prices. The evening wore on and finally an idea came to mind: perhaps I can shoot his wedding.
There was some concern on the part of the groom as to if I would still enjoy his wedding if I was the wedding photographer. One thing about me all my friends know, and this is important: when I start something I really like, I get this mad obsession which is all consuming. Rosie and I love, LOVE taking pictures. I assured the groom that I would enjoy the wedding as the photographer, and probably even more so. After having spoken to the bride to be, they agreed to having us photograph their special day. There was the catalyst I needed to up my game to the next level. The quest began for gear.
And gear we got. We are treating this event with the highest level of respect, and without good gear we would not be able to do justice to their special day. Since that weekend in Toronto we have equipped ourselves with new lenses, new cameras, memory, batteries, studio lighting accessories, and much, much more. There is still more to buy, but we pretty much amassed what we feel will be required for before, during, and after the wedding day.
Rosie and I are going to Toronto this weekend to meet with the bride and groom. We will have a great time taking engagement shots, and other candid shots of the beautiful couple. I think I’ve kept you all in the dark long enough as to the identity of these two wonderful people. Derek Van Vliet and Kim Balvers will be wed May 9 2009, and we’re honored to be your photographers.
~Jamie
Welcome to our Corner
Posted: October 29, 2008
Filed under: Blog
Tagged: beginning, start
Comments: 4 Comments
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New beginnings are always hard. But slowly we adapt, we change, we grow into our the experiences. In this newer chapter of our life, Jamie and I have decided to throw ourselves into photography.
Photography has been a passion of mine for a long time, but I always stuck to film cameras.
I remember being very young and “inheriting” my parent’s old manual focus camera. The thing weighed a lot, was a pain to focus but it took great pictures. Sticking black and white film in the camera gave incredible pictures too. One of the best pictures I ever took was of a sunrise landscape, and I was only about 10 years old. It stayed with me, this slightly blurry image, perfect composed and lit just right.
Fast-forward many years later, Jamie and I got married and started a family. Kids make excellent subjects to photograph, and fortunately, they get used to cameras quickly. I always vowed that I wouldn’t be the type of Mom who took massive amounts of photographs of the first child and barely any of the last children. It was almost a mission!
A few years ago, my hubby tried to convince me to go Digital, but I resisted on the principle that digital photographs just didn’t look “right”. It wasn’t until this past summer when I borrowed a friend’s DSLR to take landscape photographs that the passion came back almost feverishly. I came home, looked at Jamie and told him I wanted to buy a good digital camera. It started a whirlwind of looking for the right camera for us, choosing what features we wanted, which ones we discounted. In the end, we realized we are Nikonians. Our film camera was Nikon, and the buttons just best-placed, most understood and very familiar.
This is only a glimpse into our journey, but since it is still so very new to us, hopefully our friends here can follow our way into this brand new venture.
~Rosie
And so it begins…
Posted: October 29, 2008
Filed under: Blog
Tagged: beginning, start
Comments: 1 Comment
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Welcome to PhotoCaptiva!
Well it has been a very long road, but we are finally starting to see our destination. Rosie and I started touting the idea of becoming photographers some time ago but we never followed through with our dream. Recently we went and bought a metric ton of camera equipment and jumped into the frigid waters of photography feet first. To our surprise the water is quite warm, and we’re definitely enjoying ourselves.
Then we started thinking, we need some kind of online presence in order to show the work we’ve done. So naturally we gravitated to the place where all photographers find themselves, flickr. We signed up for a pro account and we’ve been getting some great feedback on our photographs, but we still didn’t quite feel complete. What we needed was a personalized medium in which we can share our thoughts and feelings concerning photography. We needed our own site.
My day job if you will involves computer programming, so naturally setting up the domain would be no problem, nor any of the other various technicalities involved with site administration. However, there was a slight problem: we had no name. It took us at least a full month before we could both agree on a domain name. Finally we found ourselves with PhotoCaptiva, which is our new online home. What came next you ask? Decorating.
We decided that our needs would be best met with a blog style site so we went with the very best blogging software out there: WordPress Installing and getting WordPress running was no problem. No, the problem was finding a look that we both agreed on. My wife having had her own blog for some time at TellingMom.com offered to help with the site design. One thing about myself many of my friends know from firsthand experience is that I’m very, very picky. Things have to be a certain way, or no way at all.
After a dozen or so design iterations we finally came up with what you see today. Hopefully you enjoy the time you spend here looking at photographs and reading about our experiences as photographers.
~Jamie
