Last night after sitting in the house all day watching two kids with colds, I decided to hit downtown to do a little street work. Despite the cold and the wind, I actually really enjoyed myself. I just bundled up, throw some killer tunes on the iPhone and walked around to see what I can see.

This is what I saw……

One thing I find really annoying about being part-time in this photography thing is that the day job gets in the way of actually taking pictures. If you look all over the internet for advice on improving your photography, the number one response is shoot and shoot a lot…Well that’s kinda hard when you work 70 hours a week in another profession.

I have found ways to work around this problem though. One way is my 18 Wheels and a Camera project, this allows me to shoot and exercises the ol’ noggin in spotting those images even while I’m driving my rig down the 402 highway. Another way is my regular photo outings, today’s outing was kind of a road trip. I wasn’t sure where to go, so I put up a vote on Twitter asking for which direction to go…They said south, so I went south and ended up at Port Stanley.

I couldn’t believe the weather for a mid December day and it was quite nice out, the light was amazing. Anyways, here are some of my favorites from today….

As I was heading out of Port Stanley with the intention of swinging east and north to hit up some of the smaller towns past London, the clouds came rolling in and killed my light. I was totally bummed, I was having such a great time. I ended up just packing it in and heading home. As I was driving along I saw this last image. The mix of light, clouds and the framing of the trees just grabbed me and I slammed on the breaks. If the guy in the blue and white late model Ford Pickup up is reading this….Sorry dude! But I think it was totally worth it

Back in May I featured the band Arctic out of British Columbia. Afterward I started chatting with them via Twitter and I offered to shoot them if they were ever in the area. Last month they got a hold of me and let me know that they were playing the Phog Lounge in Windsor. Always loving a road trip, I jumped in the car and headed down to have a little fun.

Now, I am no band photographer…Nor do I want to be. However, I do truly believe that every once in a while you should get out of your comfort zone and try something new. I’m use to dealing with singles and couples when it comes to photography. If I ever deal with larger groups, like in a family session, I tend to try a more candid approach and capture “day in the life” moments. When it comes to music photography that really doesn’t fit. So, leaning on my skills posing wedding parties and doing a lot of research with music magazines and CD covers, I headed out to see what I could do.

Between being booted from a private road by a very polite federal officer, walking through grass that purportedly is home to rattle snakes (that’s what the sign said) and meeting the cutest dog on the face of the planet, I had the time of my life with these guys and gal. Now if they would only come to the London area on a day when I can go check them out…What’s with bands playing London during the week? Have they not heard of a thing called the WEEKEND?

Check out Arctic and send them some love on Twitter, Facebook and don’t forget to stop by their website http://www.projectarctic.com/

I must apologize, It has been a few weeks since last I put up a post and I have been getting some flack from a girl at work complaining to me that she has no new images to look at when she gets bored… So Ash, here you go!

Today I would like to take you on a little tour and introduce you to a friend and co-worker of mine, Jim Patterson.

Jim is a lot of thing…blue’s lover, stereotypical Irishman and one AMAZING gardener. The great thing about working and shooting people is that you get to discover the contradictions that exist in the world. Many people are mildly surprised to find out that I am a trucker by day and a wedding photographer by night and Jim is the same way. Knowing him to be a trucker by profession, you get a shock of your life when you walk up and behind his house, when you get the image of a truck driver in your head, the last thing you think of is him having the garden of Eden in his backyard.

When I visit Jim and walk with him through his garden, I just feel tired. I look around and think of how much work it must take to maintain this amazing area. Know his hours at the day job, I really wonder when he finds time to sleep. As I was walking around shooting I asked him about how much time he spends in his backyard. he told me about 30 hours a week, which I think is a wee bit of an under estimate seeing that every time I go over there he is out back picking weeds or something. In the end though, I guess it really isn’t work. Like myself and photography, when you love something so much, it’s hard to consider it work even when it makes you sweat.

Jim’s Garden is one of the many included in the London Communities in Bloom garden tours. I started seeing images of some gardens from around London and such which to tell you the truth, I wasn’t really impressed with (the gardens, not the images). So I figured that I really needed to get pictures of Jim’s garden out for the world to see. So, if you went out and did the tour this year, but didn’t make it over to Jim’s house, make sure you make it your first stop next year.

Well I’ve gone on enough, you’re here to look at some purdy pictures, not listen to me….So lets go meet Jim.

I don’t know why, but I am drawn to the countryside. Not nature itself, but the dirt roads, farmers fields and the great old houses and barns that you drive by in the countryside. Maybe it’s because I’ve always been a city boy, well as much of a city boy as you can be in London, Ontario. Maybe it’s the colours, there is something so calming about a field of golden wheat, that rusty red used on barns and the deep greens of reeds alone the road or in a row of corn… I may not love living in London and dream of moving to away. But one thing I do love about this area is that it’s surrounded by some amazing countryside.

Today I participated in the World Wide Photowalk, this year was the second annual World Wide Photowalk started by Scott Kelby of the National Association Photoshop Professionals.

It was fun had by all and at the end we all met at Friday Night Lights on Richmond which turns out is owned by the Mayors husband. The Mayor was actually there and I can now say that the Mayor of London served me lunch!

I would like to thank Keven Van Lierop and James Wilkinson for organizing this arm of the World Wide Photowalk. These two guys actually started putting together informal photowalk about 4 months ago.

Well without any further a do, here are some of my favorites I was able to get today

Yesterday I had the pleasure to participate in the first (to my knowledge) organized photo walk here in London Ontario. If you are not sure what a photo walk is, it’s actually fairly simple, it’s basically just a bunch of people going out for a walk to take pictures and get a chance to talk and exchange ideas.

This first photo walk was organized by Kevin Van Lierop from the blog From my Bottom Step. The really cool thing about this whole thing is that it was pretty much all done over Twitter showing yet another valuable use for the social networking tool.

Although meeting up with a bunch of strangers can be a little uncomfortable, I got to meet some cool local amateurs and help strengthen the local photographic scene. I had a great time and hope there will be more photo walks in the near future.

Here are my results from this outing.

I met Shawn on MySpace a few years ago. I had just started networking and trying to find people to shoot, when I saw Shawn’s hair and his expressions I knew I wanted to shoot him. It took a while, seeing that he is a teacher at a local elementary school he is extremely busy during the school year.

When we finally got together for a shoot it rained and I mean RAINED. We decided to wait out the storm at a near by McDonald’s and of coarse the power went out. But the rain did break for a while and we took our chances and got the images you see up top. Shawn was a great guy to work with, it has been a while since we did this shot and I have been thinking of giving him a call for another.

Shawn, if you read this and your wife is cool with it, drop me a line!