Grand River Conservation Foundation Annual Report 2008, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.

Back in April, the GRCA called me and asked me if they could use this image in a clean air promotion. Which they did here. Today I got another email from them showing how they used the image in their annual report (as seen above). Pretty cool.

© Grand River Conservation Authority/Grand River Conservation Foundation

The Wonder of Babies, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.

This is from a fairly old shoot, 6 or 7 years ago, on film, couple of strobes and umbrellas. I am about to embark on a massive reorganization of my image library and I am taking stock, if you will, of the images I have, old and new. In doing so I am coming across some old stuff I’d forgotten about.

It’s interesting to look at this stuff again and see how my style has or hasn’t changed since then. I know one thing for sure, I miss the certainty I had of film, knowing just how it would respond in just about any circumstance. Knowing how many stops latitude you had with negative vs. color transparency, to push one while pulling the other, the grain on T-Max vs Tri-X… all the stuff that just catalogued in your brain after a while.

Digital is a bit more of a mysterious beast to me still. Sometimes it behaves like slide film, and sometimes like negative film and then in the end it can all be changed in post processing. I guess it’s what keeps our minds sharp, always something new to learn.

How the Time Goes By, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.

My second born child shown here on the day she was born (nearly 6 years ago). It’s looking back on images like these that make you realize just how much changes in such a short amount of time. When I think to back to this moment, I was working as a quality technician at a tool and die shop, programming a CMM, I was shooting weddings on weekends, my son still lived in town, I still lived in the first house I ever bought, I was hand coding websites using tables and some css, I was still using film…

I could write a whole book on the stuff my family has been through in just the last half decade. I dare not think of all that’s changed since my son was born 12.5 years ago.

"You in there Mr. Camera Guy?", originally uploaded by seyDoggy.

Back in May, a neighborhood squirrel I were having a bit of a territorial battle. He wanted to sleep on my fence and I figured that made him fair game for photography. He thought otherwise and on a number of occasions made it clear that he was not in this for the fame and glory. He had a strict no-paparazzi policy and he wasn’t about to let me be the exception.

He came back a few times to bark and squawk at me just to drill the point into my little human brain.

Tags: flickr, nature, squirrel

Angelic looking ferns, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.

This time of year these small, delicate looking ferns take of quite a bit of floor space in some of the darker, wetter areas in the Huron Natural area. I don’t normally bother with them but the way this one was dappled in sunlight kind of struck me as beautiful.

Lookout on the Grand River… in a box, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.

Back in April, the GRCA called me and asked me if they could use this image in a clean air promotion. Just yesterday I got this image in an email to show me the out come. I was pleased

Image credits: Grand River Conservation Authority

“[We] will be using the trailer at various community tree planting and other events. The idea was to create a shipping crate, with its ‘live trees inside’ message. Planting trees means clean air and clean water….and voila…look at the beautiful surprise that awaits you inside.”

“The co. that installed the wrap is Twin City Graphics in Kitchener. The graphics are printed on a 3M product, and Twin City plans to enter the trailer in the annual 3M vehicle wrap contest.”

“Many thanks again for the use of your most beautiful image. You likely cannot read it, but your pic is credited on the bottom right corner!”

The Ginger Sisters, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.

For mothers day I got the girls to do their own hair and outfits so I could take their pictures and present them to mom in a nice frame. Mom loved them.

The Digital Slide Sandwich, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.

It’s been a long time since I’ve done a slide sandwich, since back in the days when I use to shoot slide film I suppose. One thing I used to enjoy doing, either with two slides or a double exposed frame of film, was shoot multiple focal lengths and mash them together.

The effect, as you see here, is somewhat hard to describe. It’s cross between sureal and watercolor like. Of course with the advantage of digital I had a lot more things to play with, a lot more I had control of. It was fun to get into this again. I might try my hand at it a few more times over the summer.

Lunch in the sun, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.

The girls, so thrilled with the moderately nice weather, could not get enough of the outdoors this weekend. They spend most of Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday in the backyard. They wouldn’t even come in for their lunch.

Here they are, eating their chicken salad and and cottage cheese at their picnic table in the yard. Cold noses or not, they were not about to waste a minute indoors.

Lookout on the Grand River, originally uploaded by seyDoggy.

I just got a phone call this afternoon form the Grand River Conservation Authority asking if they could use this image in a promotional bit they have coming up. I didn’t quite catch all the details but it sounded as though this might appear on the side of (or inside) of a trailer promoting forestry and clean air.

I know these things don’t always go through, but being asked in the first place is honor enough in my books.