vancouver fashion and portrait photography

I've been meaning to post to this site for a while a few shoots I've worked on in the past couple months including this one with Kim Cathers of Discollection and the Torgerson sistas - Margie and Petrina. Thanks to Shai again for doing hair for this shoot. Shai's got a great new blog too BTW - you should check it out at ShaiStyle.com. Oh yeah, Kim's got one too.

Thanks to everyone who collaborated with me on the recent 'Made in Vancouver' photoshoot... especially models Margaret Torgeson and Jessie Harris. Also special thanks to the styling team of Shai from Prepwork, Kim Cathers from Discollection and Jesse from ModelMayhem. Check out some of Static's other fashion photography in our portfolio.

Kris is in Italy for the Olympics and, naturally, he's taking some amazing shots. Check out his photostream for more. Shot with: Canon 5D Exposure: .04 sec Focal Length: 17 mm iso: 3200 no flash

We've all seen really beautiful pictures. A quick glance through Time Magazine's photos of the year or National Geographic or Rolling Stone or Nylon make us very aware that there are great photographers out there. Problem is, just looking at these photos doesn't make us better photographers. I've tried to will some of their greatness into me by staring deeply into the pictures but alas, it doesn't work!

I've also done the deep diggin' into what cameras are being used, which lens the photos are taken with, the f-stop they're shot at and what kind of film is recording it all. While these are all great things to know technically they really can't help you produce better pictures any more than knowing what kind of guitar Sigur Ros uses to create such mesmerizing music. The most perfect guitar in the world couldn't make me play like them and in the same vain the best photographic equipment won't a better photographer make.

So what is it? What's that super-duper-alla-kazaam of a something that makes a photo so great? Simply - it's knowing what to look for.

If you think about the following guidelines in relation to the above picture it may help you visualise what I'm talkin' 'bout. Now...without further hesitation I give you my three basic guidelines on what to look for in order to enhance your photographic eye and use that to make compelling pictures...

I blogged awhile back about Northern Voice and how I'll be speaking on one of the panels during the saturday session.

I just wanted to get some info out there about the friday part of Northern Voice and how it'll work. Friday is called MooseCamp and the idea behind it is that it'll be a self-organized day, "for the people, by the people." You can give a presentation, lead a discussion or just attend.

Kris and I have been talking about having a PhotoCamp on this day. We're throwing around ideas about what we can do, things we can talk about and taking suggestions on what you'd like to hear or areas of photography that you're interested in.

So far some of the ideas are to do a photowalk as a group, have a photo contest of the best pictures from the conference, talk about both Canon and Nikon DSLR's, offer info on analog cams, picture storage solutions, RAW workflow, digital enhancement tools....the list goes on.

If you have any ideas, would like to participate, be a part of it either in a teaching/contributor way or just attend, let us know over at the PhotoCamp wiki

We'd love to have a bunch of people out and make this a group effort - local photographers, vandigicammers and photobloggers alike!

Photo by: Kris Krug
Shot With: Canon A2
Film: Provia 400 E6 (slide film)
Other: This shot was cross-processed. Read more about cross-processing here at Static Photography or over at KrisKrug.com.

On my recent trip to London, UK I was fortunate enough to visit the Tate Modern gallery. The Tate is Britain's new national museum of modern art.
Luckily for me, the current exhibition , which had just opened the week earlier, was that of Vancouver photographer Jeff Wall. This wasn't just an ordinary exhibit either, rather it was a major retrospective which brought together over fifty of his works produced between the late 70's to present day - providing an overview of his entire career.

I wasn't familiar with his work but quickly learned that he is a pillar of modern photography, one of the most intruiging and influential artists working today and has played a key role in establishing photography as a contemporary art form.

"I hired Kris as a photographer for a Donat Group Enterprises project. We required photographs of prominant CEOs and Investors from around British Columbia. We wanted something "more hip" than the standard corporate "head shot". But these images still needed to reflect the high standing and respect that these individuals had in the business community.

Kris nailed it.

I could not attend the shoots, but I had no hesitation letting Kris represent me and my company to these VIPs. He's a professional."

-David Gratton: President, Donat Group Enterprises. October '06

DJ Jay Parsons has been spinning for years but has just recently made Vancouver his hometown and we're happy to call him a local. We're also happy that he called static when he needed photos done for his album cover.

DJ Jay was looking for something "different" when he was scouring around for a photographer and the recommendations he got from other artists in the biz just weren't right for him. He then took it upon himself to scour the internet and what he found was one shot, by our own Kris Krug, that was just what he was looking for. He proceeded to spend hours (literally) going through every one of Kris' over 5,000 photos on flickr and met up with Kris personally before deciding that static was the right photography company for him.

My friend Ian King called me up this week and asked if I could drop everything and come take a photo of someone he was interviewing for the Terminal City News. Turns out the interview was with Sam Sullivan who is running for mayor in Vancouver. I took my Canon 20d but forgot my memory card so I decided to shoot expired slide film instead and to cross-process it. It actually made me happy that I had forgotten the flash card so that I had a good excuse to go analog and shoot something that I feel is a little more distinctively my style right now. A couple of the shots turned out and Ian ended up using this one for the cover. I think it would be fun to do more quick lil projects like this.

As anyone who has been hanging out and shooting with me has probably noticed I've been shooting a lot of slide film (E-6) this year and processing it as negative film (C-41). This is called cross-processing, or xpro if you're going for the cool factor, and has pretty crazy results. The photos turn out super contrasty and saturated and grainy and you get all sorts of unexpected artifacts and apparitions.

I've recently realized that I'm stuck in a bit of a rut when it comes to camera stores and developing labs in Vancouver. Not that that's a bad thing. I really like the places that I've decided are my faves both for labs as well as buying equipment but I also thought I should probably be more open to some other places out there. In my online searching I came across this awesome review that a local hobbyist has written on his experiences with many of the camera shops and labs in Vancouver including things like customer service and equipment knowledge, film development turn around time, quality of prints and amount of or lack of screw-ups to negs.

Static Photography, on behalf of Wicked Café, would like to invite you to the second show in their “Emerging Vancouver Photographers

I’ve been taking pics for a long time so generally I’m not really surprised by much when I sit down to view what I shot, be that on film or digital. I’ve figured out what kind of compositions I like and which aperture setting I should use to get a certain look, so you can only imagine my giddiness when I picked up my very first set of cross-processed prints from the lab a few weeks back. Not only was this the first time I had cross-processed, but it was expired film on top of that. Oh yeah! I couldn’t wait to look. Actually, I was terrified to look. I had absolutely NO IDEA what I would be getting. It was like Christmas! It’s diving into new things that keep photography really fun. It’s learning new techniques when you’ve got all the text book ones nailed and working new styles of shooting that keep me passionate about it. My camera is currently housing it’s third role of slide film that just can’t wait to get dipped and dunked into those C-41 chemicals and I’m still rather smitten with the fact that again, I have no idea what they’re going to look like. I found this site that has examples of different types of slide films shot against the same background so that you can see how the film affects the final result. Kris’ stream is FULL of great x-pro stuff as are a few of my other flickr heros Brian Milo and Pablo Korona

It’s one of those questions that people in photography circles ask each other time and again and still can’t seem to come up with a straight answer on as seen here and here.

So here’s my answer. Of course the camera matters. You’re not going to get an instant Polaroid print from a contax or the colours and vignetting of a leica from the best dslr (no matter what brand). Nor are you going to use a disposable “toy

Not that I want to limit ourselves to doing work in and around Vancouver... but with us getting this site off the ground I thought it would be a good idea to check out who else I can find online this space. There are a few working photographers I know here already, like Joshua Dunford and Gregory Crowe, but for the most part all my friends who take pictures do it for the love not necessarily for a job or for pay. Anyway, here's some of the local Vancouver photographers and photography studios I found around...

Rhonda IM'd me today to tell me she wanted to blog today on our new site but didn't really feel like she could think of anything to blog about. She's new to blogging and is just really getting her mind around how to use it as a tool for her business so I thought I'd give her a couple topic ideas and see what she comes up with. Her post on minimalism yesterday was awesome. :) Anyway, Rhonda... you could easily write about;

Where did the name Static Photography come from?
Who are you and why'd you start a photography company?
What kind of cameras do you use? Does it even matter?
What are the wedding portrait no-no's and cliches you try to avoid?
I heard you fell in love with film again?
Why do grocery store prints suck and you only use expensive pro labs?
How do you deal with kids and cameras?

Hope that helps man. Thats what you get for giving me trouble about not posting today on my blog. Hehe. What else should she write about? Leave a comment here and we'll rope her into it. :)

I've been getting a lot of questions lately as to what constitutes a minimalist photo. I feel it only fair to state right here and now that I don't consider myself an authority on the subject at all. Truth be told I've only been exploring it as a style for a couple of months now. So, that said, this is what I've learned and a sort of definition that I follow as far as minimalism goes.

Minimalism, as a philisophy, is formed around only a few elements of life as opposed to a complete spectrum. People who follow this philosophy in life practice living with only the bare minimum of what is needed to survive. Now translate this into a photographic sense.

There are some kinda interesting shots in here I thought you might like. The overall description of the contest sounds pretty lame but the photography is better than average for wedding stuff. Kinda fits with some of the stuff we were talking about. The New School of Wedding Photography Contest

“Kris's eye as a portrait photographer is amazing. I have recommended him to many friends and colleages who need portraits done for personal or professional reasons, and he has never failed to impress. He has a way of totally disarming people, so that even the reluctant end up looking great in portraits... and that's worth a lot. If you want boring standard headshots, they aren't hard to find. If you want exceptional and interesting portraits, call Kris.”

-Sarah Pullman: Web of Change. October '06.

“We've used Kris for a number of professional and personal photographic projects and have been ecstatic with the results in every case. We constantly get great feedback about Kris's work that we use on our corporate site.”