Dave called me about three minutes before we were supposed to start the shoot to inform me that he had cut his lip shaving. Ten minutes later he showed up holding a wad of tissue against face. Thankfully Photoshop has a pretty good healing tool.

Kevin showed up early (my favourite kind of client) with his daughter and we had a few minutes to do some father-daughter photos. Once we got the ball rolling, we all had a great time together and I think that we got a ton of great photos from the day.

I never used to think I was a huge traveler, but I now realize that in my fairly young life, I’ve already had the opportunity to see and photograph some very iconic places. I’ve walked the Great Wall, seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa, gambled in Las Vegas and climbed the Eiffel Tower (to mention a few).

While traveling, I always have my camera with me and, as a minimum, I will always carry my 50mm f1.8 and often my Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 for some really spectacular wide-angle shots. I will rarely carry any lighting equipment, and other than a LensPen and some graduated ND filters, there isn’t much else in my bag.

Nikon’s 50mm f1.8 is a great, cheap lens that is perfect for traveling. It is razor sharp, lightweight, and excellent in low light. As an added bonus, if it ever got damaged or stolen, it wouldn’t break the bank to replace it. The only downfall, especially on digital sensors, is that it’s not very wide, so capturing large scenes is difficult. That’s where the Tokina 11-16 comes in. It’s a bit bigger and heavier than the 50mm and still quite good in low light. I love using this lens to capture vast landscapes and it adds some interesting perspective to clouds in the sky. It’s also great indoors for large rooms such as cathedrals and also small rooms where you wouldn’t normally be able to capture the whole scene. It’s great for photojournalistic “street photography”. You can drag the shutter a bit and show some motion without losing any sharpness in your background.

I hope to continue traveling whenever possible, and hope that I can continue to do more photoshoots in awesome places in the future.

In fact, the reason I eventually bought an iPhone was mostly because of the camera and the quality of pictures it is capable of. Straight out of the box, the iPhone takes some amazing photos, but with the help of a few cheap apps, you can create some pretty amazing photos.

Lately, my app of choice has been Hipstamatic. Their tag line hits the nail right on the head: “Digital photography has never looked so analog.” This app comes with a few built in “lenses” and “film” types, but I’ve also purchased some of the additional packs.

Here’s a good selection of some of my recent iPhone photos. Enjoy.

On the evening of the shoot, I sent Heather to meet the family in a nearby parking lot and I set up my gear, got a quick exposure and was ready to go by the time everyone showed up. Doing this allowed me to plop in the children for an ultra-fast photo shoot. With everything in place, I finished the entire shoot in under 5 minutes. The children were excited about the possibility of finding a unicorn in the field behind them, so we used this as incentive to stand still for a few seconds.

Coming home and seeing the photos, I was pleased to see that they were almost exactly what I had envisioned prior to the shoot. I’m always happy when I can create the look that I see in my head.