Wedding Bells

Just over 2 weeks ago I did my first major wedding shoot for a friends cousin. I had never met Jeff & Megan until the day itself which made me extremely nervous because I know how important it can be and the fear of ruining someones special day never left my mind. The wedding itself was a small affair of about 150 guests situated in an apple orchard in the north valley of Nova Scotia.

Everyone made me feel very welcome and I was treated like a guest with a place at a table and a meal from the buffet. The day was long, shooting for at least 6 hours, and my legs and back ached due to the constant crouching to get the right angles. I left the event feeling positive as I had glimpsed at a few shots before packing my kit away.

Megan & Jeff, originally uploaded by Fanboy30.

All that was left to do was edit down the 1000 shots to 200 and process them, a task that I only just finished today (hence the blog post). People forget just how much work is involved to make a perfect image, no matter what they tell you, 99% of the time it never comes straight out of the camera.

I use a couple of processing techniques in Photoshop incorporating layers and colour treatments to saturate and highlight the important parts of an image. Luckily most of the photos required the same minor tweaks and patch ups because they were shot in the same lighting conditions. All in all I am happy with the results, I posted a few on Facebook so Jeff and Megan could get a glimpse of what was to come, I heard good things back from them so that put my mind at rest.

Its hard to say that this is an area of photography I want to do often but it sure can pay the bills.

B-Day Boy!

My Birthday Gifts, originally uploaded by Fanboy30.

I would simply like to thank everyone for their comments and well wishes on my Birthday last Thursday. I had a lovely day and received some great gifts. Who said growing older meant no more toys? Pfft

We Feel Fine

Day 54: Close to hand and heart, originally uploaded by Fanboy30.

"Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.)."

I have been lucky to be featured on the website with my 365 image about my Mum, where I used the sentence " I feel I have lost one of my best friends, a super mum that touched everyone she met. ".
Over the past couple of years a book has been in development and I was lucky enough to be asked to be included.

The book is titled We Feel Fine: an Almanac of Human Emotion and is scheduled for a December release. It will be published by Scriber and a launch party will be held in New York. The authors have been very good at keeping me informed and promising me free copies and invites to the party (although its unlikely I will attend due to work).

It's always a boost to the ego when your work is recognized and this particular image means a lot to me so I gladly share it with the world.

Check out their website for more details

The Carleton

The Bar, originally uploaded by Fanboy30.

Recently I was contacted by a graphics company called Concrete Orange which I had spoken to around the time I moved to Canada last October. They were currently redoing a website for a local bar/restaurant called The Carleton and needed some interior shots. I gladly took the project even though my style of photography is usually about detail rather than the wide open spaces.

I took two cameras with me, armed with a wide angle, 50mm and zoom lens because you never really know what you will be faced with when entering a shoot blind. I met with the owner Mike whose background is in the music industry and on MTV. He welcomed me warmly and was very excited after seeing my website.

The main areas to shoot were the bar, restaurant and function room so I set up my tripod and composed some test shots using the wide angle. The place is an L shape so it was hard to get the whole space in a single shot so I suggested that if needed I could composite two shots later on Photoshop.

It's very hard to give a still room life, so we added some candles to the bar area to create some ambiance. This was repeated in the function room because the only room that was fully lit was the restaurant.

After two hours and three hundred shots I decided to call it a day. I managed to send Mike eight shots fully processed which he was extremely happy with and asked for a disc of the rest.

The image you see on this post was used for an advert in an in-flight magazine so maybe I will get to see it when I fly home in October for a holiday?

Update: Did another shoot for them this week, this time at night to capture the place busy.

Other Worlds

Swollen, originally uploaded by Fanboy30.

I am still accepting portraits for my current Photoshop project called 'Other Worlds'.

Basically the rules are as follows: Shoot a self portrait (either head and shoulders or full body) in front of a blank wall or fabric so its easier for me to mask in Photoshop.
Then send me the full res image (raw if possible) to my email matt@matthewjamesparsons.com

So far I have had a lot of fun and its great to never know what image I am going to receive. Why not take part and try to surprise me, give me a real challenge.

Red Bubble

Finally I have got around to trying to sell my work through a site called Red Bubble which is an Aussie site with distribution in many places including Germany and America. The site seems simple enough and works a lot like Flickr in the sense that you can add contacts, add to groups and comment on other peoples work.

Currently I am still uploading images but there is a small collection available already. Please take a look and link my bubble page to anyone you might think would be interested in owning a piece of Fanboy30.

Just click on this button to head over there.



If there are any images you want to purchase and I don't have them on Red Bubble then let me know and I will get right on it, thanks.

Lets All Go To The Lobby!

Lets All Go To The Lobby!, originally uploaded by Fanboy30.

Chris challenged me last night to create a vignette from Lego with a movie theme. His actual words were "build something with people waiting to see a movie" and after a number of ideas I came up with a brightly colored foyer filled with eager customers.

A ticket booth is on the right with a sweet kiosk to the left. The screen entrance is at the back of the model with a number eight above and a movie poster to the side suggesting that this is a multiplex. A couple in the foreground collect their tickets and the girls Popsicle drips on the floor much to the annoyance of the usher behind cleaning up spills.

I am very happy with this fun little set which allowed my imagination to run wild. There is bound to be more to follow considering the amount of Lego collecting in the apartment.

I wonder what movie they are going to see?