Los Angeles, A California Experience and The New Home

Just came back from a business trip, Gartner conference (Application Architecture, Development & Integration Summit) at Los Angeles, LA.  This is the first time I've been to California, quite a different experience. To use 3 words to summarize the trip, sunshine beach and the Hollywood.

LA is 7 hours' flight away from Ottawa and as a movie fan, Hollywood, Sunset Blvd, Boardwalk are away the places that I wanted to visit. Now, I can officially scratch those from my To-Do list.

Here are some pictures from the trip.

Pacific Ocean Sunset at St-Monica.

Lookout from Griffith Obervatory, LA.

Downtown LA

The famous and also chaos Boardwalk

 

And of course, Bo wouldn't past a good opportunity for shopping...

And I visited Madam Tussauds' Wax Museum

With Steven:

With Bruce:

We closed our trip with a Red Eye...

Meanwhile, after 3 weeks of moving and settling, I started to get used to and A place that I can finally call, the home !

Thanks for reading. The End !

Wedding and Portraits

First, there was the wedding from Dana and Todd, who are my ex-colleague, Jason Winter's parents in law. They got married on Oct 16 after spending the past 14 years together. Congratulations ! BTW, who said the marriage is just the end of a fairy tale :-) At least not for Todd and Dana :-)

Although the event was sweet, fun and well planned. It was a bit challenging for me. The venue was quite dark with black ceiling. This made it very hard to bouncing lights off the ceiling simply because black absorbs everything. The only thing I could do was 1) cramp up ISO, 2) increase flash power, 3) more time on post processes.  The second lesson was one camera body is just not enough for events such as wedding. Great moments can pop up anytime. Unless you use a travel lens like 18-200, it's hard to get wide and close at the same time. I brought my Nikon 24-70 and Nikon 70-200 (which are much much more superior than 18-200), but only one body D700. It was good at the beginning since I expected the things were happening, ceremony, group shot, etc. but when it hit dancing, throwing bouquet, etc. It was just terrible to switch lens... However, I was quite pleased with the outcome.

Secondly, there were 2 portrait sessions, both with my wife's friends, Julia and Lucy. Julia is pregnant, she and her husband would like to memorize the moments. The shoot was at Sunday afternoon around Julia's house at Morgan's Grant. The equipment includes Nikon D700, Nikon 70-200 VR1, SB800 and reflector.

The second portrait was with Lucy. It was taking place at my house. The equipment includes Nikon D700, Nikon 85mm 1.4, Nikon 70-200, SB800, SB600. The 85mm 1.4 is such a great lens. It gives photographers all the freedom to emphasize the point of view. It's just simply a magnificent lens!

Thanks for reading. The end.

Fall Colors with 360 ArtZone

The most beautiful and magnificent time in Canada has arrived. Every year, from the end of September to mid of October, Ottawa and Gatineau areas are painted by red, orange, yellow, green and blue. If you have never been to Canada before (like myself about 10 years), you can never imagine what it looks like and how magically all these color meet each others to form a painting made by mother nature. I feel very fortunate to be in the middle of this every year.

Recently, I joined a photography club, 360 ArtZone, a group of passionate individuals who share the same interest. Sunday morning, we had our first field trip to Gatineau Park for sunrise. The following is a group shot at Pink Lake. You can probably tell from the picture, the team was well equipped with uniforms. To be honest, I never thought I would look so cool in the picture. And strange enough, our clothes were color coordinated. Maybe that's because we all appreciate colors in an elegant manner ? or simply to match the colors of our equipment :-)

Take another close look at the picture. There are 2 generates. The ones who were born before 70s and the ones after 80s. I thought I would never say this, but I am the elderly now. Looking at young people jumping up and down with lots of energy, you will realize what is the most precious and what is something you will never find again...

Let's get back to the fall colors. We gathered at Pink Lake parking lot around 6:30am, setting up equipment and waiting for the sunrise. It's freezing cold but things looked better and better by the minutes. Around 7:00am, the sunrise is right on time. Although, there were different moments, to me, the magic moment only last for about 10 minutes, which was from the time the sun just started to be visible until the time it's completed visible in the sky. The following pictures show what exactly I meant.

Right after the sunset, (and the group shot,) we decided to stay a bit longer at other spots for the fall colors. 

Our first field trip was ended at a Chinese restaurant on Somerset. A typical Chinese ending. It was quite great experience.

Wait, my day didn't end yet, after Bo came back from Church, we decided to take a walk at one of our favorite places, Pinhey's Point at Dunrobin, ON. While we were stroking along Ottawa river, a large area of purple wild flowers and milk weeds caught my attention. This could be something really special. Without hesitation, I took the following shot. It is quite unique!

Thanks for reading. The end...

Volunteer at McKellar Park Fall Festival

Never being asked to be a photographer as a volunteer before, McKellar Park fall festival was my first experience. Nominated by fellow colleagues, not knowing what the festival was about, I brought the Nikon 24-70 (for group shot) and 70-200 (for portraits) with me on the way. 

The weather wasn't idea for a community gathering. Actually, the weather was pretty bad, rainy and very cold. I arrived at 11:00am Sunday morning, the activity has already started. There were a performing stage under a tent, a beverage and food dispensing centre, face painting, bloom arts, video games, carriage ride, fire trucks (with real fire fighters), maze and those bloom like facility where kids can jump as hard as they and won't get hurt. (I always wanted to try that. I never had such things when I was young and now I am too old...)

The above was one of the performers in the tent. While I was wandering around to catch moments, I was always listening to her singing, very sweet voice.

Face painting was always with long line up from the beginning. In addition to having a vivid face, the process itself was quite enjoyable... At least I think so.

As it was quite chilly in the morning, the coffee lady was very busy. Volunteers have their own privileges, i.e. tickets for lunch. I am not a coffee person, but this was the only way to warm me up. I used 2 tickets for coffee and the rest 3 for a slice of Pizza. 

  
Those lovely girls are Emma Scott's daughters. Emma was one of my clients at work. She invited me to be the volunteer. I was told the event had collected about $2500 and it's enough to keep this community event going. I am happy to hear that and I am happy to be a party of it.

House For Sale (Sold !)

Starting to sell my beloved, sweet home.  There were so many happy memories and moments, with Bo, my friends and being alone, especially after a long hard working day, sitting in my home theatre, watching HD movies on my 120" screen and drinking beer with less than 4% alcohol :-) What a life!

I have to move forward, family grows whether you want it or not. With 5 people could join the family within the next 2-3 years, I have to look for a bigger place. I have been looking for houses in Kanata Lakes, Stonebridge, Centrepoint and Westboro areas for more than a year, still decided to stay in Kanata Lakes. It's just a great place to live, play and raise a family. However, during my searching, with my limited budget range, I've never seen any places equipped/updated as much as my house. Too bad, I couldn't afford two homes. Wining lottery could help but the odds is low...

Nevertheless, all my attention are focusing on selling my house. I hope that I can find someone who (can afford and) and knows the value of the property and will take good care of it.

PS: Surprise, Alex Galitzine, who sold me this property was actually a prince, 613th in line to the British throne.  A royal family, that explained why he had some wine cost several thousand dollars each. It turns out that I am living in a "royal palace" :-) You don't believe this ? Check out the following link: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/life/winnipegger_marries_into_british_royalty-40020377.html

And this is a picture of Alex Galitzine and Lisa's wedding in March, 2009 (when I met them, they were not married yet). What a nice person and a humble prince he was ! I was making cheesy jokes in front of him ...

For property details, visit: http://169goldridge.blogspot.com/ .

Latest update. With 3 offers in one week, my house has just been sold to a young Chinese couple. My best wishes and I am sure they will enjoy the place!

Thanks for reading. The end.

Another Sunset at Shirley's Bay

After yesterday's 3 hour zip-lining, every inch of my muscle was sore, including those on my "tummy". Therefore, I've made a new "by-law" at home, no jokes for a week... Although my muscle wasn't in ideal condition, I've managed to fix my garage door in the afternoon, installing reinforcement bars on the frame. Drilling holes on the metal was tough... At the end of day, I was so tired that almost felt a bit sick, a sign of lacking exercise...

Anyway, since I started photography, I find myself start to pay much attention to wired details, like the pattern of broken tree branches or stones lying on the ground, the shape of creases on Bo's or other people's clothes (or faces:-), the formation of clouds... especially the clouds, I am so interested that I always look forward to the sunset everyday. Today is the same, after dinner, I drove all the way to Shirley's bay. My favorite place for sunset (I believe I mentioned this before). It didn't disappoint me, when it started, it was beautiful and serene, worth every minute of waiting.

Golden hour, magic colors.

3 minutes later...

Thanks for reading. The end.

Family Portrait with the Bekking's

Sunday night, I had a family portrait session with the Bekking's. Bill is a friend/colleague of mine. At work, his desk is right beside mine. Not sure if this is accurate, but the time we see each other probably is longer than the time he sees his wife since we started to work together back to about 5-6 years ago... :-) Bill has a beautiful family, 3 young daughters and a recent and new addition, Twister, a German Shepherd and Husky mix. 

Although I've started to look into this, my place is not set up for portrait studio. Not mentioning that I don't have any strobes, I don't even have big enough space for a proper portrait lens to be used, such as 85mm 1.4.  Therefore, during the whole session, I was using the Nikon 24-70, a remote speed-light, SB-800, triggered by the pop-up flash on the camera. Since it was at night, I needed all the lights that I could get. ( Note: most of the light sources in my house produce warm ambient light which created a lot of trouble during the post process later.) The speed-light was mounted on a Manfrotto tripod with white diffuse on. I pointed the flash towards the ceiling.

The following are some of the samples. Bill and Veronica Bekking.

Bill, Kristine and Twister. Note: you would think it's hard to get the dog ready for the picture, it was actual harder to get Kristine to pose... 

Veronica and Frances Bekking.

Kristine and Twister.

Frances Bekking.

Veronica Bekking.

Lyliane and Veronica Bekking.

Finally, many people asked me about my post process (with Photoshop). The following is a side by side comparison (some adjustment has already been made to the original one such as cropping, contract, white balance, etc). I hope you will understand why it usually takes me at least 30 minutes to process each picture, especially for portraits... Nevertheless, the lighting, the technical side of each picture(shutter, aperture,exposure,etc), composition and the models have already defined 70% of if it comes out as a good picture or not.

Sorry Bill and Veronica, I use your pictures as an example :-)

For more pictures, visit my flickr site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/haofeng/

Thanks for reading. The end.