I’ve always been a booster for my home town, even when it was known as a steel town. After all, there’s no shame in that. The bones of this country are made of steel, so Canada owes a debt of gratitude to this lunchbox city. And now that ‪Hamilton, Ontario is transitioning from steel town to a place where art and nature take centre stage, there’s even more to be proud of.

So, this week, when I had a little time to work on upgrading my skills, I took my DJI Phantom 3 Professional Drone (Beezee) out to fly the skies above some of my favorite places. I put together this little video tribute to Hamilton in the summer.

Watch in full screen and share with anyone who loves Hamilton!

So far, so good. The camera is much more sophisticated than the Vision 2 Plus. It has a narrower field of view so it’s not as dramatic, but it’s also less likely to capture the drone’s legs and props in the shot, even when making extreme maneuvers. Also, 4K video is really a treat. When targeting 1080p as a final video format, shooting in 4K allows a little bit of latitude in cropping and panning in post production. Shooting photos in DNG format is much faster too. The Vision 2 Plus took about 5 seconds to capture a DNG. The Vision 3 Professional does it in a second or so. Probably the most welcome improvement, however, is the ability to manually set exposure. This means the camera no longer ruins your best shots with wild exposure swings as the automatic exposure tries to compensate for moving light and shadows.

I also really appreciate the much-improved FPV video feed to the Android app. DJI’s Lightbridge technology really shines, providing smooth 720p live video from the drone’s camera.

Anyway, enjoy the video I shot today at Tew’s Falls in beautiful Dundas, Ontario. There will be more to come.

I brought my new Sigma 50mm f1.4 ART lens with me. I’d heard good things about this lens from online reviews, but I didn’t expect it to be as amazing as it actually is. This lens has incredible color reproduction and sharpness, all the way through its aperture range. It was a real pleasure to get familiar with this new piece of glass in such a stunning environment that gave me lots of opportunities to play with depth of field.

A lot of what I shot there will be released later, as those images and videos are part of larger projects that I’m working on with Laura Hollick. But, I do have a few images that I can show you right now!

Another piece of gear I had fun playing with in Hawaii was my new drone “Wilson.” Wilson is a DJI Phantom 2 Vision Plus. He had a bit of a rough start in life. When I first got him from Henry’s, he had some technical issues that I didn’t discover until I had him out for his first flight. Disappointingly, Henry’s wasn’t willing to offer any support at all, and the Canadian distributor told me that they’re not allowed to fix the drones they sell, so I had to deal directly with DJI in California. After a week or so of back and forth emails and phone calls, I got authorization to send Wilson in for repairs. I got him back about a month later, just in time for my trip. Wilson didn’t let me down. Due to my inexperience, I broke some propellers on the unforgiving lava rocks at first, but once I got the hang of making a clean takeoff, Wilson and I shot some truly epic scenes. Again, a lot of stuff will come out later when my projects with Laura go live, but here are a couple of sample photos and a video I shot of some kids doing crazy stuff.

Laura Hollick and I were at it again, reaching for new heights in our latest photo/video collaboration. This time, we took a ride in a hot air balloon, which has been one of Laura’s life-long dreams.

Our flight lasted about an hour and reached about 5,000 feet into the heavens. Our pilot Graham was a steady hand on the burners, which roared like dragons and propelled us skyward. Because your direction of travel is entirely determined by the movement of the wind, and you always need to seek permission to land in someone’s farm field after you’ve landed, flying in a hot air balloon is a whimsical and impractical way to travel. Yet, there’s a charm to it that keeps people heading for the skies in baskets under air-filled bladders.

Here’s the video I made of our experience, told from Laura’s giddy perspective. I shot with a variety of lenses, including Canon 14mm f2.8L, 24-70mm f2.8L and 70-200mm f2.8L. The music is the theme song that I produced for last year’s nü Icon Movie, featuring the beautiful voice of Ariel White.

Be sure to also read Laura’s blog post about our hot air balloon ride to get her side of the story!

I traveled to the NU Hotel in Brooklyn, NY to document the creation of Laura Hollick’s mural, The Trees of nü York. My job was to capture the beauty of Laura’s creative process in photos and videos.

When working on a project like this, the secret to success is flexibility. Many artists like Laura (and myself, quite frankly) don’t have a precise vision of the final product before starting, so planning how to document it can be difficult. The art evolves during its creation, and that’s part of what gives life to a piece like this. Laura talks about it in her blog post about her process of creating the mural.

Even though things were going to be unpredictable, we did sketch out some rough plans for the final documentary video before starting. We knew, for instance, it would weigh in at about 5 minutes long. Because the painting was going to take about three days to complete, I proposed to do a time-lapse segment. We also planned to do an on-camera intro and extro so Laura could explain a little bit about the project. Finally, we planned to do some kind of artistic video sequence to tie it all together.

All in all, this project was a lot of fun and went very smoothly, although there were some minor challenges to work out. The main one was lighting. There were many different levels of light in the room, from extreme brightness near the window to dark shadow near the door. Overhead lighting was minimal. Normally, shooting in RAW can provide some mitigation for problems like this, but I was shooting medium resolution JPG files to create the time-lapse because I needed about 6000 frames to make the time lapse. The finished video also had to be produced in a very short period of time. That meant file size and ease of handling were considerations. JPG won the day.

The different levels of brightness in the room meant I had to expose for the shadow areas while being careful to avoid too many blown out areas. I set the camera up with the excellent Marvels Cine picture style for the Canon 5D Mk III, which has very flat contrast and saturation meant to be corrected in post processing. The Marvels Cine picture style made it quite easy to make very precise adjustments in Lightroom, which I could then synchronize across thousands of frames. Shooting medium sized JPG still provided files big enough to use for 1080p video. After making the Lightroom adjustments, I exported them to 2400px on the long side, which still gave me enough resolution to do some panning and zooming within the frame to add a little dynamism to the stop motion video.

Check out the finished video below. And if you’re visiting Brooklyn at any time, stay at the NU Hotel and request Laura’s art room!

1. You have a job

Many professionals these days can benefit from having a good quality corporate headshot. I’m not talking about the obvious ones like real estate agents, actors and models, who all must have a headshot in order to succeed. I’m thinking more of people like doctors, lawyers, architects and executives. Basically, anyone who is entrusted with high levels of responsibility should have a professional quality headshot to represent them. Making do with a cropped scan from a family Christmas party photo just doesn’t project the kind of professionalism you aim to exhibit every day in the workplace.

2. You don’t have a job

Looking for a job? As shallow as it might seem, people make snap judgments about each other based on appearance. It doesn’t mean that you need to look like a supermodel to get a job, but making yourself presentable online is a must in the modern competitive job market. Just as you wouldn’t show up to an important job interview in ripped jeans and with dirt all over your face, why would you show potential employers a photo of you at anything less than your best? A professional-looking headshot might not land you a job, but it might give you the edge you need to get your foot in the door, or get some actual face-time so you can really show them what you’ve got.

3. You’re single

Hey there’s nothing wrong with that. Being single can be fun. But if you’re single and you don’t want to be, your online emissary to the world of potential partners is your dating site profile picture. It works 24/7 for you, advertising your gorgeous mug to the world. A lot of people will say that you only need snapshots on your dating profile. Obviously, I have a different opinion. A professional profile photo can round out your gallery of more casual photos by adding an element of contrast and quality. A great-looking profile photo lures the viewer in for a closer look. Come hither!

4. You use social media

Do you want to elevate your social media presence? A professional portrait or headshot can really have that effect. No matter what network you’re on, you can tailor your profile picture to really show what you’re all about. Your profile pictures for various social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter might have different goals and purposes. Do you want to highlight your professional side? Your fun-loving side? Your goofy side? Your all-encompassing sexiness? A good professional photographer can help you share your best traits on social media. Besides, a new professional photo will harvest you a ton of likes and +1’s!

5. You are getting older

Let’s face it, we’re all getting older. That’s not necessarily bad, it’s just the truth. Your headshots need to reflect this. There isn’t anything sadder than seeing someone clinging desperately to a photo that was obviously taken in 1998 and pretending that’s what they look like now. A great way to respect your age and the wisdom that comes with it is to get a spanking-new headshot that beautifully captures your increasingly mature and elegant look!

6. You have a face

If none of the above apply to you, then congratulations. You belong to an extraordinarily tiny minority of people. However, you’re not out of the woods yet, because you probably have a face. And belonging to such a select group while still owning a face is really a major accomplishment. You should celebrate by getting your headshots done!

Can you think of any more reasons to get headshots? Chime in in the comments below.

And if you’d like me to help you shoot your new headshots, check out my headshots page here.

Well, my Lytro Illum arrived today. Let me tell you, from a traditional photographer’s point of view, it’s a strange beast. It’s much bigger than I’d imagined it would be, yet it’s surprisingly light. Lytro says its lens is simpler than a traditional lens, so that would explain the lower weight — there’s less heavy glass in there. But that lens is remarkable. It claims a 35mm equivalent zoom range of 30mm to 250mm, all at a constant aperture of f/2.0. If I saw this on a normal camera, it would make my head explode.

But the Illum is not a normal camera. Just playing around with it reminds you of that constantly. For one thing, it feels like it’s really working at making pictures. When I’m shooting, I get the feeling that there’s a lot of number crunching happening beneath the hood. Not that it’s bad, but you’ll occasionally wait for it to finish what it’s doing before you can proceed.

Also, it makes you think–a lot–about depth of field. You have to consider your focal length and distance to your subject in order to control where your focus lies in the image. Sometimes you’ll need to make trade-offs in composition in order to get the depth of field effect you want. Fortunately, there are on-board tools to help you with this calculation, but it’ll bend your mind a bit at first.

What are the images like? Well, that depends. The Illum reminds me of the earliest digital cameras. They could provide mediocre imagery as long as you provided them with ideal shooting conditions (lots of light, bright colors, etc.). The Illlum is kind of like that. Image quality is decent but not spectacular. Bokeh, or the area that’s out of focus, feels grainy and scratchy. This isn’t ideal, especially when you’re dealing with a camera whose stock and trade is bokeh. I have the feeling a lot of this has to do with the software that’s rendering the current image, because the scratchy/grainy effect varies quite a lot depending on where you’re viewing the image (on the back of the camera, on the computer, or on the web). The web version, like the one below, is easily the scratchiest and grainiest. Shame, since that’s where most people will be seeing these images. I believe and trust that Lytro will be working on this issue to try to improve it. I think that within a few years, Light Field cameras will be producing images as good as or better than any other digital camera.

Anyway, this is going to be a fun new tool to play with. I’ve only had it for a few hours, most of which were taken up by charging the battery. I can see there’s a lot of potential, but it’s going to require a lot of learning.

Here are a few of my first attempts with Light Field photography. Click on the play button at the bottom of the viewer to get a quick “tour” of the image. Click or drag within the image to experiment with focus and angle.

Have you got a Lytro Illum? What’s your experience with it?

My new site launches today. In my opinion, it’s better in every way. I’ll be able to communicate more clearly and expand its content more easily. Maybe I’ll even blog more.

In any case, I want to thank my old website for her years of loyal service. I’m preserving this screenshot in memorium.

Here’s a self-portrait I took just by holding the camera in front of me. Classic selfie technique.

If you’re a photographer interested in shooting people, one of the most useful educational tools you have is yourself. Taking self-portraits is a great way to learn the art of portraiture. When I first started getting serious about photography, I used myself as a subject all the time. Every time I got a new lens or piece of lighting equipment, I’d use it to snap a few selfies to get a handle on how it worked.

Why shoot yourself?

There are a lot of benefits to using self-portraiture as a learning tool. For one thing, you need not fear offending your subject. You won’t have to work too hard to convince yourself to get in front of the camera. Also, no one will feel nervous because you don’t look like you know what you’re doing. But perhaps the greatest benefit is that you can freely experiment without fear of consequence; if you don’t like the photo, just delete it. No one will ever be the wiser!

Here are a few of the things you can experiment with when shooting self-portraits:

• Light (type, angle, diffusion, brightness)
• Composition and framing
• Pose
• Use of shadows
• Lenses
• Zoom (focal length)
• Distance
• Negative space
• Focus
• Aperture
• Shutter speed

Just playing around with these few things will let you give you a great idea of what is flattering, what is not. You’ll learn a lot about yourself and your camera too. Best of all, you’ll feel more confident when you have someone else in front of your lens.

Self-portrait technique and equipment

Just like any other kind of portrait, you don’t need a lot of equipment to shoot a selfie; of course your needs will expand as you learn more about photography and want to fill in the holes in your style, but to start, all you need is your camera and (obviously) yourself. Start with the widest angle you can get and point the camera back at yourself at arm’s length. Unless you’ve got a fancy camera with a swiveling LCD that points back at you, aiming can be tricky at first. Once you start getting better at it, you can start zooming in or using longer lenses to get different crops or perspective effects.

Self-portraits get a little more difficult when you get further from the camera. The first challenge is taking the picture itself when you’re not near the camera. Check out your camera for a self-timer feature. Most cameras have one. Some cameras even allow you to adjust the amount of time between pressing the shutter release and the taking of the picture. It’s usually between 3 and 10 seconds. Read your manual because knowing how to work this feature properly can be very handy.

You might be lucky enough to have a remote control of some kind. Remote controls are great because they will often start the autofocus when you press the button on the remote control. That means you don’t have to pre-focus the camera on where you guess you’re going to be. The camera will have you in frame already and will (with any luck) focus precisely on you. Even better is the remote control that can be combined with the self timer. That way you don’t have a lot of pictures of yourself pointing a remote control at the camera.

Next, you’ll need to put the camera somewhere. A tripod is the most typical choice, and is perfectly suited to the job. However, not everyone has a tripod with them when the urge or opportunity for a great selfie presents itself. In these moments, you can improvise. In the past, I’ve used my folded up jacket, trees, my backpack, the tops of stone walls, the ground and other convenient surfaces to hold my camera. Just make sure it’s secure… otherwise you might have a photo of yourself running towards the camera looking panicked as it topples to the ground.

A note about focus

Focusing is probably the hardest thing about doing self-portraits. When using the self-timer, most cameras will focus as soon as you start the timer. This does no good if you’re not in the frame. Try putting something where you plan to be (chair, light stand, etc.) so you can focus on that when you’re behind the camera. Once you’ve started the timer, you can move that item out of the shot. If your camera has manual focus (like most SLRs,) you can set the focus once and just lock it down on that distance. Autofocus users will have to repeat the process for each shot. You can also use smaller apertures on your camera to get greater depth of field. Wide angle lenses and greater distances from the camera also produce greater depth of field.  With practice and ingenuity, you’ll find a focus technique that works best for your own selfies.

What have you learned from doing self-portraits? Tell me in the comments.

Here’s the final video. This is the first video in which I also produced the music. I dug back over 20 years to my high school days when I used to write electronic music and dusted off those rusty skills to put together an instrumental track to accompany the video. After watching the video, check out the 3 questions to unlock your inner soul artist.

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2011 was a big one for me. I learned a lot of new things and worked with many fantastic people. This was the year I took my first serious steps into the world of video production. This year, I plan to continue that work to expand my high definition video capabilities and skills. I also plan to revisit music production, something that my passionate hobby over 20 years ago. I find that my work with the amazing Laura Hollick, who is my partner in so many ways, has allowed me to dovetail all of my creative pursuits and give them direction, purpose and outlet.

Finally, I’d like to present a video collage showing some of the results of some of the many photo shoots that I did during 2011. It was great fun sorting through my archive to pull out these images. Just like last year, I want to thank everyone who entrusted me with the task of capturing a lasting image. I’m looking forward to working with you all again soon!

We shot all of this at “Golden Hour,” which is that magical period just before sunset when everything looks like a fairy tale. Unfortunately, because of cloud cover, golden hour didn’t materialize in quite the striking way it usually does at this time of year. However, it was still a good time to shoot. When it’s a little overcast, the brightness of foreground and sky are close enough at this time of day so you can get some nice sky details in your backgrounds rather than boring white.

The video is a visual poem. It was fun shooting this, because it really challenged me to find new and interesting ways to frame shots and move the camera. This was the first attempt at using our new Blackbird DSLR camera stabilizer. It was a challenging test. The Blackbird has a piece that dangles down beneath the camera. That piece has a crossbar on it. While moving through the field, the crossbar would constantly touch or impact on grasses and other plants, often making the shots waver unpredictably. In the end, because we didn’t need a lot of footage, it wasn’t a problem. However, my arm was so numb after holding this stabilized rig steady for about an hour, I could barely operate the camera for the regular photos! Using this thing regularly is going to make my left bicep humongous.

Admittedly, I’m relatively new at shooting and editing video, but today’s tools make both so easy and intuitive. It wasn’t hard to get a result that we were both happy with.

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Feel free to watch this over at Youtube in HD if that is more to your liking.

Here are the cover and the artistic shot that we also took the same day.

To see how Laura used these things, run on over to her blog and have a look.

Millions of tiny dramas are happening every day in New York City. Turn your lens in any direction, focus on even the smallest fragment, and you’re bound to capture them.

Shot with Canon 5D MkII with Hartblei 65mm f3.5 Super-Rotator. You can view it in HD on Youtube.

Music: Life with Lights by Ballerina Black – from www.musicalley.com

We brought in hair and makeup artist Tim Wilkins to help prepare Laura for the shoot. He did a great job creating a subtle, shimmering and almost elfish look to integrate her silver wig and silver leaf dress.

Once Tim was done with the hair and makeup, Laura and I hopped in cab and headed midtown and into the madness. Anyone who’s been there knows that it’s a total zoo at all hours of day and night. We quickly scouted the area and staked out some sidewalk for our shoot.

I wanted to show the very famous billboards and neon in the background, but allow a close crop that would put the focus on Laura. Shooting from a low angle allowed this to happen. I chose a low shutter speed (1/30) to slightly blur the action around her, and a wide angle lens (24mm) to create some slightly supernatural drama. The wide aperture of f/2.8 created the shallow-ish depth of field effect to separate her from the background as much as possible, but because the lens is wide, the background is still distinguishable. As you might know, the wider your lens, the harder it is to get really shallow depth of field. That was fine though, since I wanted to keep Times Square recognizable as our setting.

The general lighting of the scene was amply provided by the bright billboards all around, and I set them to be slightly over-exposed. I didn’t want the contents of the signs to be too distracting. Over-exposing them slightly allowed them to appear mostly white, with some minor details in them that weren’t terribly distinguishable. All of this meant that Laura was in silhouette, so I added a fill light to make her pop. I set up my trusty little Vivitar 283 flash up high on a light stand and put a diffusing lens in front of it to soften it a bit. With such bright backlighting and no modeling light to preview the foreground, it was like shooting in the dark. I could only see her dark form against the bright background in the viewfinder. I trusted my camera’s autofocus to keep Laura in focus, and just posed her based on her silhouetted shape.

We shot for about half an hour. I didn’t think that our little photo shoot would create even the tiniest stir amidst all of the madness of Times Square, but I was wrong. We amassed a pretty-good sized audience, who mostly stood behind me. Often, people wanted to pose with photos with Laura and ask us questions.

It was a little distracting, but also fun to think that we added something to the experience of a few New York City visitors. When we finished shooting, I was surprised by a loud round of applause that broke out behind us! It was quite a night. Here’s the final image we selected from the shoot.

Here’s another image I shot after I was sure we’d gotten what we’d intended to shoot. I experimented by putting on a super-wide lens (12mm) and moved the camera during the long exposure. I still used the flash to sort of freeze a portion of the action. I like the vibrant, semi-abstract feel of this one.

We also shot some video to promote Laura’s Soul Art® Certification program.

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If you’re interested, read more about the Soul Art® Certification program.

Here are some of my photos of the Standard Hotel and the High Line.

Here was a chance for me to combine my love of traveling to hot tropical climates with my love of capturing emotion and beauty. I didn’t want to provide typical wedding photography, so I pledged to myself that I would seek out opportunities to do things that were different and fun and would offer Rachel and Blair a variety of unique photos.

The first opportunity came up early. I had brought a waterproof camera bag, so I could shoot at the beach and in the water without worrying about saltwater and sand wrecking the camera. I saddled up my old Canon 5D with a 24mm lens and headed into the water with Rachel, Blair and a bunch of their friends. Here are a couple of photos from that sunny day in the sea.



The beach really was spectacular, with clean blue skies and azure water. I really wanted to see what it would look like early in the morning, which is why I got up at 5:45am the second day there and made the trek down to the shore. I filmed a little video of the sunrise to share. But, my real reason to be there was to scout out the location for what I imagined would be some beautiful photos of the couple. Sure enough, the first golden hour of the day provided perfect light for shooting romantic portraits. A couple of days later, I persuaded Blair and Rachel to join me at the beach for a casual session.



There were other fun events during the week too. Rachel had a bit of a bachelorette party on the beach, where she had to complete some fun and silly tasks like drawing a portrait of a stranger, and then selling it to him. She also had to retrieve drinks from the bar with a seashell tucked between her knees.



Finally, the day of the big ceremony arrived. I thought it would be fun to do a short photo session with the bride and her bridesmaids on the beach while they were all dressed up. The girls were game for it, of course. As we baked in the sun and midday heat during the short walk to the beach, it was fun to see Rachel get plenty of admiring stares and comments from supportive guests. We took a few photos, and then I hustled back to the lobby, where the guys were sequestered, waiting for the big moment. I took a few photos of them, and then went back to meet up with the girls again. There were some tense moments, broken by occasional shenanigans and imitations of the Queen. Eventually, the wedding planner arrived, and led us through the hallways of the hotel to where the ceremony was to begin. On cue, Rachel and her bridesmaids descended the stairs from the lobby. Understandably, Rachel was nervous. But as her dad escorted out into the sun and to the gazebo where Blair was waiting, her joy in the moment was irrepressible.

The ceremony was all in Spanish, led by a smiling Mexican official, and loosely translated by one of the groomsmen. It was done quite quickly, and everyone celebrated with smiles and high fives, as the newly married couple danced down the steps of the gazebo.



Later that evening, at the resort’s steakhouse, the bride and groom hosted a reception. As the gorgeous Caribbean dusk gave way to night, there were laughs, dancing, and the occasional joyful tear.



Finally, the happy couple indulged me with one final photo shoot in the spectacular lobby of the hotel. I had wanted to do this shot since first seeing the rich decor and the magnificent chandelier lit up at night.

It was incredible fun to work with Rachel and Blair. It’s not hard to see that they’re made for each other, and I was honored to be able to capture this important milestone in their lives together. My week with them and their tight-knit family and friends was enough to convince me that I should break my “no weddings” rule more often. If you’d like to talk to me about shooting your destination wedding, please contact me. I’d love to hear from you.

I just got back from a fantastic trip shooting in Playa del Carmen. I went to the beach at 5:45 one morning to check out the pre-dawn light and to see what the sunrise was like. I brought my camera and recorded the sunrise, because I had a feeling it might be kind of spectacular. Here’s what I brought back.

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The music in the video is Sol y la Luna by Criz from Music Alley.

NOTE: Our appointment to shoot doesn’t need to be before April 30.  You just have to book and confirm it before then.

Why such a big discount?

I think improv is a life-changing artform. I know that because it changed my life. I want to do what I can to promote improv and the amazing people who embrace it. The improv community has been so instrumental to my success as a photographer. This is my way of saying thanks.

What do I get?

The package comes with a headshot photo shoot. We’ll shoot headshots of you in about three different outfits. From this shoot, you’ll choose two final images for touchups and color corrections. I’ll provide these images in high res and web resolution JPG format, as well as a layout that you can print at 8×10 to hand out with your resume. If you’d like to book professional hair and makeup, that’s $100 extra.

Not an improviser?

If you’re not an improviser, maybe this is a reason for you to get started? Sign up for some improv classes and you’ll be eligible for this discount. Some of my favorite people in the world run improv classes at:

• Impatient Theatre Company
• Bad Dog Theatre Company
• Second City Training Centre Toronto
• The Staircase Theatre Hamilton

Yes, and!

Headshots day has come and gone. If you’re still interested in booking a headshots session with me, please contact me.

The Eee Slate EP121 hardware

The Asus Eee Slate EP121 is a beautiful piece of kit that seems to be tailor-made for mobile photo professionals.

The device itself is beautiful. It’s got a brilliant 12.1″ LED-backlit 1280×800 screen, which is protected by a sheet of Gorilla Glass. This screen is pretty special, because not only is it capacitive multi-touch, but it also includes a built-in pressure-sensitive Wacom digitizer. The screen is surrounded by a narrow aluminum bezel, with very thin speaker grills on either side. There’s a small grill for the built-in microphone. There’s a tiny webcam lens in the black border around the screen. There’s a half moon-shaped button on one end of the device. This button activates the Aero Flip 3D feature in Windows 7. Other buttons include a volume rocker, a sliding power switch, a button to activate the on-screen keyboard, and another slider to lock or enable automatic screen orientation. There are two USB 2.0 ports, a mini-HDMI port, an SD card slot, as well as headphone and microphone jacks. Inside the device is a Core i5 470UM processor at 1.33GHz, Bluetooth 3.0 and wifi networking (b/g/n). I chose the model that comes with 4GB of DDR3 RAM, and 64GB Intel SSD. There’s another model with 32GB of storage and 2GB of RAM, but those limited specs would pretty much cripple the pre-loaded Windows 7 Home Premium.

Included accessories

The EP121 comes with the necessary Wacom pen, along with a nib removal tool and a bundle of several spare nibs. There’s also a small and flat Bluetooth keyboard, powered by two (included) AAA batteries. The keyboard appears to be made by Microsoft, but is branded by Asus. The included power brick is quite small and white, and to my delight includes a USB port for charging devices. The best of the included accessories is the protective sleeve, which is open on the sides to allow the air vents to breathe, but flips closed to protect the screen. It can also be folded backwards so the EP121 can stand up on a table when you’re using the keyboard, and has a loop for storing the pen. There are also some flip-out panels on this sleeve that will allow you to prop it up in either horizontal or vertical orientations at the correct angle for pen use.

Using the Eee Slate EP121

The general impression of this machine is that it’s rock solid. It’s built very solidly with no flex; it feels quite rigid. Although at 2.56 lbs, it would be considered light for a laptop computer, it feels extremely substantial in the hands. I wouldn’t want to hold it with one hand for a prolonged period of time. I found the best way to hold it is to cradle it on my left forearm and use the pen with my right hand.

Speaking of the pen, this is the feature I was most excited to use. I tested it first with the included ArtRage program, which is quite a neat little painting/drawing simulator. The touch sensitivity worked beautifully in ArtRage, allowing nuanced and natural drawing directly on the screen. I was more excited, however, to try it out in Photoshop CS5. It didn’t take long to install CS5 on the EP121. Photoshop loaded pretty quickly. I’m growing to love the quick and silent performance of the SSD (if not its limited storage space). Here’s where I ran into problems. When I tried touched the screen lightly with the brush tool, it immediately made a large circular blotch. Uh oh. Touch sensitivity was clearly not working. This was exactly like using a mouse, and completely negated the usefulness of the pen. I fiddled around with Photoshop’s settings for a while with no success getting it to recognize touch input. As usual, I turned to the Internet for answers. I found help at this site. After many failed attempts with different versions of Wacom’s drivers, I found that an elderly 5.0 release from the Asian Wacom site worked brilliantly. With the correct drivers installed, Photoshop CS5 responds smoothly and quickly to touch sensitive pen input.

[UPDATE: The pen drivers from the Asian Wacom site would stop working after resuming from Hibernation. I uninstalled them and installed the Wacom pen drivers for the Fujitsu T4410 tablet. Touch is working, but the computer hasn’t hibernated yet, so I’ll let you know how it goes…]

A lack of proper drivers is not all that’s wrong with the EP121’s pen input, unfortunately. The pen included with the EP121 seems to be the cheapest possible Wacom pen. It doesn’t even have the little rocker switch on the side, which is essential for natural tablet use. On my old Bamboo tablet, and my new Wireless Intuos4, I use one side of this switch to activate the “hand” to drag the canvas around on the screen, and the other side of the switch to right-click. Without the switch, you need access to the physical keyboard to press the space bar to activate the hand. Apparently, you can buy a Wacom or a third-party pen with this switch to use with the EP121, but come on Asus, omitting the correct drivers and including a handicapped pen seem like nonsensical corners to cut. These problems aren’t impossible to overcome, but since Asus was clearly aiming this product at graphics professionals, they should have given these things some more thought.

As I spent more time with the Eee Slate EP121, I was able to appreciate some of the finer things about it. The screen is indeed quite beautiful. After calibrating it with Spyder3 Pro, the colors are rich and accurate. Although the screen is quite glossy, it doesn’t throw back any distracting reflections. Also, because it uses AFFS+ technology, it’s easy to view even in direct sunlight. In a dark room with plain black filling the screen, there’s some evidence of light leakage on the top left corner, where you can see some uneven illumination showing where it should be pitch black. It doesn’t seem to be a major issue during typical use though. When there’s a picture on the screen, I can’t even see the light leakage.

Performance is very good. I never felt like I was waiting a long time for anything to happen. Dragging 21MP images around on the screen in Photoshop was always smooth and never laggy.

Battery life is not spectacular. I haven’t run it out completely, but it seems that most people are getting less than four hours from a single charge. I expect that in most cases, I’d be using it plugged in.

Most power Photoshop users use the keyboard quite a bit. This, combined with the fact that the pen is missing that ever-important rocker switch, makes me quite glad that Asus included the Bluetooth keyboard. The keyboard is extremely light and plasticky. It feels slightly cheap, but it’s comfortble and quiet to type on, and at least it won’t weigh you down! Because it’s Bluetooth, it has some power-saving features built in. It goes to sleep after a minute or so of idle time, and you have to hit a key to wake it up again. There’s a couple seconds of delay while it reconnects to the Eee Slate, and this can be mildly annoying, but I suppose better than wasting battery power.

The built-in Intel HD video is supposed to be able to handle 1080p video. I found it had some trouble playing high definition Youtube streams. The picture would freeze, but the sound would continue. I’m not sure what that’s about. Playing HD Netflix streams was trouble-free, and 1080P video recorded on my Canon 5D Mk II was buttery smooth. The tiny speakers, evident only by their very thin grills on either side of the screen, provide surprisingly rich sound. You’re not going to fill a room with that sound, but it’s much better than I expected.

I’m glad to see that there’s an SDXC card reader built-in. My 5D Mk II uses CF cards, so I’m stuck using an external card reader dangling off of a USB cable, but I think the future lies in SD cards. Plus, the SD card reader gives the opportunity to expand the limited 64GB internal SSD storage.

Conclusion

The Eee Slate EP121 is not quite perfect, but I have to applaud Asus for being bold enough to create something like this. I think professional photographers will really appreciate the Eee Slate EP121’s unique feature set. If I were to change anything, it would be to include a better quality pen, or at least one with the switch on the side. I’d also get those pen driver issues sorted out, so that users don’t need to pull their hair out trying to figure it out themselves. I don’t know if Asus plans a followup to the EP121, but it would be nice to see a higher resolution screen. 12.1″ at 1280×800 is touch-friendly, but can feel somewhat cramped. I hope future versions will also have bigger SSD storage. 64GB is pretty tiny these days. I understand that currently, SSD storage is quite expensive, but for this machine to be really useful, I need to be augmenting its built-in storage with an SD card. Speaking of added storage, it would be nice to see a USB 3.0 port. They’re becoming increasingly common, and I for one would welcome access to speedy external hard drives.

I also hope that the Windows 7 touch experience will improve in the future. Microsoft seems to be hell-bent on competing in the tablet market with Windows 7, and personally, I’m glad. After all, it’s the only tablet OS that will run a full-fledged Adobe Creative Suite so that I can work on my raw files in the field and then come back to the studio with all of those settings intact. However, Windows 7 was not designed exclusively for touch use. Some OS elements are difficult to adjust with touch input. The on-screen keyboard can be awkward.

Overall, the EP121 is a high-quality and unique piece of gear. And, at CAD $1199, I feel like it was a very reasonable buy. I’m certain that it’ll have a valued place in my travel bag for at least a couple of years.

I did a little photo shoot with my Asus Eee Slate EP121. The images are below.

We did a few test shots to get an idea of the composition of the final image.

We had to work quickly. Although the thermometer read above zero, the wind was whipping in towards the camera, and quite violently too. I would estimate it was coming in at about 60-70 km/h, making it feel much colder than the true temperature. My light stands kept blowing over, and I had to dig them deep into the snow so that they would stay up. It’s a good thing hair and makeup artist Sue Upton affixed the wig very securely to Laura’s head, otherwise we could have had a real hair disaster that day!

Our plan was to wrap Laura tightly with white fabrics to create the tree costume. I moved as quickly as possible to clamp the fabrics around her using plastic clips. Canvas cones would create the “root” system of the tree. However, because the wind was so strong, the fabric kept blowing loose. We decided that we were going to work with what nature gave us, and I shot a number of frames of Laura dancing with the flapping fabrics. The tree quickly transformed into a winter wind angel. We couldn’t shoot for long, because it was extremely cold, and there was real risk of windburn and frostbite to Laura’s exposed skin.

After reviewing the images in the car, we decided that the canvas cones weren’t “reading” as well as we’d imagined, so we went out again to shoot some more photos of the base of the dress without the cones. I later blended one of these cone-less  bases into the image using Photoshop.

This image is technically a little different from my other ones. Usually, I shoot with lenses wide open so that I get shallow depth of field and can isolate my subject. In this case, because I needed a shutter speed of 1/200 to sync with the strobes, the aperture had to be set to the polar opposite, f/22.0. This was the about one stop underexposed for the natural light, and it gave us a very mysterious looking sky, with the winter sun struggling to gleam through the low clouds. I lit Laura using two Alien Bees B800 strobes at nearly full intensity, powered by the Vagabond II battery pack.

Here’s the final image.

• Better autofocus. I want autofocus at least as good as what’s available on the 7D. That means more autofocus points and faster performance.
• Support for SDHC cards.
• The LCD overlay of grid lines in the viewfinder, like the 7D.
• The ability to give metadata star ratings to images in camera, like the 60D.
• An articulating LCD like the 60D. I highly doubt this will happen, but maybe… just maybe…
• 100% viewfinder coverage.

That’s not so much to ask, is it? Anyway, regardless of what specs the 5D Mark III carries when it’s finally released, I’ll be the first in line to get it. Come on Canon, bring it on!

Have a wonderful holiday season, and I’m looking forward to shooting with you in the new year!

Initially, Nico wasn't convinced that she wanted to participate in the photo shoot.

Most of the time, I try to get the shot right in the camera. I’ve never thought of myself as a Photoshop artist, although I use Photoshop on a daily basis for minor things like removing blemishes and adjusting color. However, sometimes an idea just calls out for a change to the “normal” policy.

Heidi came to me with the idea of doing some fun and slightly surreal portraits with her family. We would use some Photoshop tricks to make an unusual final image. The key was to convince the talent, her daughter Nico, to go along with the shoot. Nico’s a little bit camera shy. However, with the promise that she could dress up like a princess, and wear a little makeup, a deal was struck. We decided to shoot the photos with a “tea party” theme, to match the princess outfit. The final image was going to be Nico holding a teacup with her parents inside.

Because Nico needed a little bit of encouragement to warm up to the idea of being in front of the camera, we practiced by taking some pictures of Heidi and David. Not only did seeing Mom and Dad in their photos allow Nico to get more comfortable with the studio, but it also gave me the opportunity to practice some of the techniques we’d use to create the final composite image.

Eventually, with the aid of Heidi and David’s skillful persuasive skills, Nico felt comfortable enough to pose for her photo. She did a great job imagining she was holding her parents in the cup, and keeping her pinkie fingers out like a proper lady. Next, we photographed Mom and Dad. I put them against a light colored background so that it would be easier to blend them with Nico’s dress. I had them hold a sheet of cardboard in front of them on the same angle as the edge of the teacup in Nico’s photo, so that it would keep their hands in line and help the pose look  more natural.

Finally, we put it all together in Photoshop. I cut Heidi and David out of their background and dropped them into the photo of Nico. I used a layer mask to clip around the fingers as closely as possible. I used Photoshop’s puppet warp feature to adjust David’s arm a little so it looked like he was leaning on the edge of the cup. I duplicated Heidi and David’s layer, clicked on the “preserve transparency” button, and filled it with black. This created a silhouette of them, which I dropped underneath their original image layer. By applying a Gaussian blur and dropping its opacity down to about 20%, it created a shadow. I masked out all of this shadow except the areas around the fingertips. This added a little bit of depth to that transition between them and the cup. I also brought in a little bit of this shadow under David’s elbow, so it looked like he was casting a shadow on the right side of the cup. Next, I created another shadow layer, with even more Gaussian blur, and dropped it behind David and Heidi’s layer onto Nico’s dress. The higher level of blur implies a greater distance, and I found this improved the impression of depth. Finally, I used the blur tool to blur David and Heidi’s fingertips a little bit, so they’d match the slightly out-of-focus appearance of the edge of the cup.

The final image is pretty entertaining, I think, and is definitely not your average family portrait. Thanks to Heidi and David and Nico for helping me to create something a little different.

Bonus images

Here are the two “practice images” we shot to help warm Nico up to the idea.

Here’s a full list of Best of Hamilton Gold and Silver winners.

I was a bit nervous about Laura doing these leaps in the gold high heels, but she was confident that she could do it, and they definitely added a glamorous punch to this vibrant image.

You don’t have to want to be a model to have a modeling portfolio. Sometimes you just want to have some great photos of yourself. That was the case for Laura Lim, who drove down from Kingston to shoot a beginner modeling portfolio with me. Laura’s never been in front of the camera before, at least not in a professional setting. When I met her for her pre-shoot meeting–which I think is an important step for getting both of us on the same page before the shoot–she didn’t know exactly what she was going to do with the photos. She just knew that she wanted them.

Sue Upton creating Laura Lim’s first look of the day.

Laura showed up at my studio with bags of shoes and accessories and a giant suitcase full of clothes. I encourage models to bring as much stuff as they want, because we can always sort through it to find just the right looks for the shoot. Laura took to this assignment like a fish to water, and as you can see, within a span of an afternoon, we were able to capture a number of very different photos for her. We worked with renowned hair and makeup artist Sue Upton, who is a master of transforming the girl next door into a femme fatale, sophisticated debutante, or any other look in-between. The super-sassy orange background shots are closest to Laura’s actual personality, but she easily pulled off the other looks with style and grace too.

I’m a huge fan of working with people who’ve never been professionally photographed. There’s something very appealing about unlocking a person’s photogenic potential and creating photos that make them excited about how they look on camera.

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It was Laura’s idea to create this film, to show feathers of multiple colors migrating to eventually return home as part of her rainbow feather dress. We didn’t know exactly where the feathers were going to start their journey, or how they were going to get where they were going, or what it was all going to look like, but that’s really the fun of creating something like this. The possibilities are almost endless. We hiked up to The Peak, which has a spectacular view overlooking the Dundas Valley, and talked for hours about how it might be done. We didn’t really come to any conclusions though. When we got up to leave, I saw a very interesting outcropping of rock on the edge of a cliff, just to the side of The Peak. It was entirely surrounded by lush, green vegetation. “Can you get over there?” I asked Laura.

“Yes,” she said.

“We need to put the rainbow bird on the edge of that cliff.”

“YES!”

Finally, we knew where the feathers were going to go. They were going to make a journey from their artistic origins, through the city, and into the forest, finally ending up at home as part of the rainbow bird, perched on the edge of this spectacular cliff. We were pumped.

It would have been quite possible to create enough scenes to make a feature-length film about our feather friends. We had so many ideas about where they could come from and where they could go.  We only had a few days to create this film, and I knew it was going to take a lot of time to do, so our first step in organizing all of these ideas was to create some simple sketches and select only our favorites to shoot. Here are a couple of Laura’s sketches. You might recognize the genesis of the Red Feather in these outlines, as well as a list of our “characters.”

The next step was to find the actual locations for shooting. We looked near and far, and drove around the city, finding possible spots to shoot. I snapped some quick frames to get an idea for composition so that we could create a storyboard that made visual sense. Here are the snapshots we used to compose the Red Feather scene.

With some of the initial planning done, we were ready to start shooting the next day. We didn’t stop for the next four days. I was shooting constantly, and when I wasn’t shooting, I was processing the photos and assembling them into stop-motion video clips. We shot the feather scenes at Laura’s studio, Laura’s parents’ home, my own studio, and outdoors at the beautiful Tews Falls Conservation Area, whose shady forest paths lead up to The Peak. Here’s a video of me working with Lissa Hill, who did a great job assisting us in hauling camera gear and costume materials, and animating the feathers up on The Peak. She kept her cool, even though it was often frustrating to work with our lightweight actors in very windy conditions.

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In the end, I’d shot about 1500 photos and processed them to 1080i high definition stop-motion clips of each scene. Some scenes ended up on the digital cutting-room floor. There’s this scene, for instance, that didn’t make it into the film. We shot it as an alternate beginning for the Blue Feather’s journey, just in case the weather didn’t co-operate with our plans to shoot Blue crying out of the graffiti wall.

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After assembling all of the stop-motion clips into their proper sequence, I auditioned a number of different musical tracks. I settled on Under the Kadam Tree from Stockmusic.com. It is one of those rare stock music pieces that doesn’t sound like stock music. I thought the slightly mystical feel created by the tabla and sitar instrumentation, combined with a sort of unexpected jaunty tempo really lent itself well to the mood we were trying to create in the film.

The last step was to create the credits. This was the only segment shot at my studio using studio light. The rest had all been done using natural light, to keep the feel and color as consistent as possible. I designed the credits in PowerPoint and printed them out on cream-colored textured paper. When Laura saw that I’d created one that said “The End,” she was slightly appalled. “It’s not the end,” she said, “It’s the beginning.” Of course, she was exactly right. I quickly replaced that slide with a new one that was more appropriate, and in the end, we found our beginning.

We had to shoot quickly as the sun was going down, but I think we got lots of great results from our session. Here’s a selection of my favorite photos from the day.