One thing I notice a lot with people who take pictures is that they stand back and try to capture the excitement, energy and action from people. Now there are a few things that are interesting about this. One, if you were to stand back and watch people play a game would you feel the excitement of the game the same way the players would?

For example, when the Stanely Cup finals come around and there’s a Canadian team playing and they’re actually winning series and going for the cup, the amount of people engaging into the action that the team is creating is intense. People cheer, cry, scream, flail limbs and eat lots of chips to ease nervous tension. They are engaging the moment.

I feel the same is true when you are taking pictures. Engaging into a moment can bring about great success, while at the same time sometimes creating risky situations for yourself. Although the outcome will be simplistically real, authentic and emotional. Not only does it make you engage into the energy of the situation but it encapsulates you. Making the viewer feel like they are looking at an event from a personal viewpoint rather then one of a “on looker”. Again this comes back to creating images that are “alive” and the “process, absorb, distill and create” methodology.

I am very passionate about this type of photography. It requires the photographer to get out of their personal bubble to engage people, but the outcome will show through on the images. Give it a try!

For the past 6 months I have had these things called light disks hanging on my wall. Every time I look at them I keep wonder how I’d use them! Then today I had a moment of inspiration to take one out and run around at Tuck Time (aka. everyone sitting on the field, eating candy together) with a light disk and my 50mm f1.8 lens.As soon as I got out onto the main field with my white disk of glory, I got the looks!“Woah that’s a sweet frisbee!”“What the heck is that for?”“Is that a hat?”Then once I showed people what it could do they suddenly wanted to become fun subjects to shoot. Ryan, in the photos that are shown just had some serious fun with the idea. The interaction between camera and Ryan was obviously a clean and smooth one. But again it was also fun between the two of us, since we work together.Ok so on with the topic of light diffusion. If you ever get a chance to just use the sun and a light disk for a day, take it! Don’t pull out the flash, just leave it at home. The natural, smooth lighting combined with a good interaction between photographer and person being photographed really creates a wonderfully organic image.As a tip, the closer the disk to the subject the brighter the light and smoother as well. It feels natural to hold it far back, keep it close and you’ll like the light a lot more.Give it a try, keep the flash at home…I dare you!

Below is a list of equipment that Jordan is currently using to capture, edit and archive incredible moments. Feel free to drop any questions to Jordan.

Cameras: Canon 5D Canon 30D Canon XT Canon Powershot G9

Lenses: 17-40MM F4.0 L 70-200MM F2.8 L 50MM F1.8

Accessories: Canon 430EX Flash SanDisk 2GB cards SanDisk Extreme Firewire CF card reader

Bags/Carrying Cases: Think Tank Modulus Speed Set Lowepro CompuTrekker AW

Computer: MacBook Pro 15″ 20″ LG LCD Display Western Digital MyBook Pro 500GB HD’s Wacom Graphics Tablet

Software: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Adobe Photoshop CS3 Disco for DVD back-ups Superduper for HD back-ups

Random: Toastess percolator coffee machine DeLonghi Bean Grinder (Because we all know that caffeine really drives the creative spirit!)

If you are like me the lure of the immediate interaction with a picture that you just took is overwhelming in digital photography. This is really what drew me into this art form. Then once I got that satisfaction addiction I immediately began to love expressing myself through photography.

This post is not for a veteran of the photography world, this is for someone who is new to the space. In the preceding post I will lay out some places to visit, audio programs to listen to and great photographers to be inspired by. First lets start with good camera manufacturers. To research which model you feel would be best for you I would suggest going to http://www.dpreview.com and look up the recommended manufacturers cameras from below.

Recommended Camera Manufacturers for Beginners:

Canon (http://www.canon.com): Of course I will start with my favorite of them all Canon Inc. They have a very large line of Point and Shoot cameras that are easy to use, very well built and good price points.

Olympus (http://www.olympus.com): While I’m not a huge fan of their dSLR line of cameras, their consumer line of cameras are very well built. All their cameras are “weather sealed”, meaning that they have gaskets around all the nooks and crevasses to keep out pesky water and dust. This isn’t waterproof, just slightly water resistant! I have also been impressed with their optical quality, although their ISO noise levels are much more prominent then most other manufacturers.

Panasonic (http://www.panasonic.com): This is one brand that is over looked in the digital camera market. This brand has a secret weapon in their arsenal, Leica branded lenses. This is one spot that most manufacturers hope their consumers don’t notice, without good glass what’s the point of a high megapixel sensor? If long zooms in a compact body are what you’re looking for this is the brand to follow closely.

Leica (http://www.leica.com): While this brand is marketed in the higher price ranges, they make cameras that are extremely well built. From sensor to lens to body. Not to mention they have some very great retro looks to their cameras.

While you’re list top cameras may be different from mine, take it or leave it. These are manufacturers that I have seen consistently generate a good product for a good price.

Next up - Knowledge. I get a lot of people asking me what I went to school for and when I respond with “BA in Youth Work” they look at me with a perplexed expression. “You mean you never went to photography school?” While I’m sure photography schools are great things and you can learn a lot from them, there’s nothing like being in the world of photography and gaining knowledge in the field and from others who are in the field toughing it out. All my knowledge on photography (and I would not call it extensive) comes from books, the internet and personal experiences (trail and fail and sometimes succeed). Here is a list of great websites on the internet that will help you gain the basic knowledge you need to become a better photographer.

Recommended Photography Internet Sites for Beginners: Tips from the Top Floor (http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com): This is an amazing set of over 200 audio instructions and interviews for becoming a better photographer. Chris Marquart the host of the show takes a very simplistic and easy to listen to approach at photography. A must listen to podcast!

Lexar’s Pro Photographer Corner (http://lexar.com/dp/pro_photo/index.html): This site is filled with amazing insight from the brains of some of the most influential photographers around right now. Read, re-read, re-read again. Every time I go back after a couple of months I always gain new insight into a philosophy on photography I had forgotten about before.

National Geographic (http://www.nationalgeographic.com): One of the best inspirational photography websites. I often go here just to spend a couple hours looking at images, understanding how they did it, ask why they took it, and what the story was behind each image. You’ll do yourself a favor to admire professional photographers work.

Cambridge in Color (http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials.htm): Not only does this site have some mind blowing photography on it. The author, Sean McGugh, has some amazingly insightful posts on how take and edit amazing pictures. Studying these will help you understand not only the technology of a digital camera but as well the way in which you use the more advanced options available on most digital cameras.

Next - displaying your work. Often the best way to get better is to display your work to others and get feedback. There are many websites to do this through. I will post ones with a great environment and great services.

Recommended Photography Presentation Websites for Beginners:

Flickr (http://www.flickr.com): This site is extremely popular in the photography world. It’s free (to an extent) and it is very easy to use. I have used their service for 3 years and have never had a complaint against them. The community is great, joining content specific groups will help you display your work against others of the same content. One thing with this community is that you will have to give back as well. If someone critiques your image, give back to the community and give uplifting critiques as well. No one likes a pointless critique of “sucks!” or “needs a crop”. Be specific in your critiques and please don’t end with a negative comment. Be happy, be helpful!

Tips from the Top Floor Forums (http://www.tipsfromthetopfloor.com/forum): To accompany a great website and podcast, Chris Marquart has given the TFTTF community an amazing amount of usability in the forums. The community is great, the images are good and the over all atmosphere is cheerful. Post images there for critique or just to show off. Have a discussion about equipment, techniques, etc.

Travel Photographers Network (http://www.travelphotographersnetwork.net): This is a website that I was directed to back in summer of 2006 by a fellow photographer, David duChemin. If you’re into travel photography then this is the place to be for you! There is an amazing wealth of knowledge that the staff and contributors have here. Not to mention some great photos from all around the world to see.

These are among a few great websites to check out and be inspired by. Remember to give back to these communities as well. If you see a technique and aren’t sure how to do it, ask them, most photographers now days are very open to sharing their ideas and techniques with others.

Next - Software. So you shoot and shoot but how do you display and organize all this stuff. Just as a quick note, this is were we’ll be going into the Apple realm and out of the PC realm. Sorry PC users, get a Mac

Recommended Photography Software for Beginners: iPhoto (http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/): This is a program that I used for thousands of photos until my needs exceeded it. For the beginner this has everything you’ll need in a clean package. You can post to the web with it, make fun books, cards, calendars, etc. with it. If all you want is easy organization and fun tools, iPhoto is it.

Photoshop Elements (Win - http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin/) (Mac - http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelmac/): If you have the itch to edit your images, this is a great beginner program for that. Not only does it come with a decent photo organizer program but the ability to do local adjustments to images.

Some people would say GIMP is a great program, but from my use of it, I would say stay away from this program. It’s overly complicated for what you get.

Well that is it for now for my “getting your toes wet” post for beginning photographers. Make sure to check out all the websites and feel free to toss me a comment or an email. And remember that great images aren’t always in-front of you! Unique eyes create unique images!

If there is one thing that is becoming more and more annoying it’s the fact that we now have to decide how we will back-up and archive our pictures on digital media. The ways in which you can go about doing this are nearly endless. Here are a few ways in which I have streamlined my process.

Import: Using a program like Lightroom ($299.99 US) I have the ability to back-up my photos upon import to a default location of my choice. As well the photos will be placed into my Lightroom catalogue. With the photos from my Lightroom catalogue I will quickly and efficiently weed out the bad and so-so images to just display the best of the best.

Backing Up:  To back-up my Lightroom catalogue I use a program called Superduper($27.95 US). It is a very to use drive clone utility that willbasically clone one hard-drive exactly to another. So using this on asetup schedule once or twice a day is great. Plus doing redundantback-ups to multiple drives on-site and off-site. I use one 500GBexternal as my Image Vault. Then I have two others as back-ups of thatdrive. One on-site and one off-site. The on-site will back-up once aday while my off-site is backed-up twice a week.

Archiving: So we have our good images backed up along with the Lightroom Catalogue, but what about those originals that were backed up on import within Lightroom? Well this is where the fun comes in. I have decided to archive all my originals to DVDs, so this brings up another issue. How to fit roughly 20-30GB of pictures on DVD’s easily (for myself, this represents a weeks worth of images). Within the Mac OS there is no simple solution to do this, you will have to manually sort out the pictures into 4.5GB sizes then burn each folder. UGH! This is where the simplicity of Disco ($29.95 US) comes in! This is another very simplistic program to use. Simply drop the files you need burned into the program window, insert your media (DVD, CD, etc) and hit “burn”. The program will then sort out how many of the media type you need and start burning all the files. Easy, simple, and has a very cool smoke effect when burning!

Now you may be thinking, “Wow thats a lot of money just to back-up and archive your images!” Here’s my reasoning. If you got the time to sit around the do this manually, how much is your time worth? For myself, I’d rather spend the time out shooting and editing images rather then worrying if my images are backed-up. So it is definitely worth it for the amount of time is saves. Like I stated before, this is the way in which I have streamlined the process, your way may be different, which is great, I just find the simplest line from A to B to C is the best.

While the 5D may not be meant for action, it definitely doesn’t disappoint. It may only have 3 frames per second as opposed to the 5 fps that my 30D has, there shouldn’t be any grumbling from the action addicts out there. Yes it’s slower, will you lose out because of those 2 less frames per second? Marginally. If anything, it keeps you shooting less “I hope I got that” bursts and more comprehensive shooting.

This afternoon I had a chance to take it down to the waterfront and jump into a boat for 2.5 hours and shoot the action on the tube rides. After shooting that long on 4 - 2GB cards, I’ve realized it isn’t enough space. But besides that, the camera preformed amazingly well. Full frame crop is great on a 70-200mm lens. And of course my biggest praise of all…it actually focuses!

On the other news front, I have also entered the Evrium photo contest today. So here’s to hoping for a top five position. I’ve been watching the software evolve over the past little bit and it seems to be working towards a great website suite for photographers to really display their photographs in a sleek easy to use way.

Lately I have been into my catalogue of photography reading material and a couple of things have stuck out to me. If there is one subject that most people talk about and struggle with, it’s the art of seeing. Being able to view and compose a shot around a subject of interest and make it “come alive”.A couple nights ago I was reading in my Outdoor Photography magazine on an article about shooting landscapes. Within this article there was a couple distinct lines that caught me. It was about the seeing process and what we need to do to involve ourselves into a situation to create a moving image. The process was: process, absorb, distill and create.While this was talked about in the context of landscape photography I feel this is almost like a universal truth for photography. In any situation you will always come out with a better photograph if you go through these steps in your mind and through the work with the camera. I find myself all to often distilling and creating before actually processing and absorbing a situation/environment. It can be a tempting trap to get into. Things are happening, things you see as being significant so you move to take a shot. While the shot in turn shows a great deal of action or emotion, it has very little to do with actually went on. Taking a second or two to actually process and absorb brings the meaning into a great photograph.I find this as well goes along with a comment a fellow photographer, David deChemin stated on his blog. He quoted a question that an old photographer had been asked, “is it alive?” I think that this has a direct connection with the previous steps of creating a great image.As I am finishing up writing this, I decided that I would walk to the top of the steps here at the Q, to try and gain a bit of insight into what I just wrote about. A step to which I find I am going into more is absorb. Absorbing the atmosphere, the sounds, the smells, the way people interact with the environment. It’s an interesting process to actually sit down and practice. I challenge any reader to do this, dare I say, without your camera in hand.There are the thoughts of an overly worked photographer.

I have entered into a world of the full frame. A world that is vastly wider then the one I had once known. Yes that is right, I got some 5D lovin.

Towards the start of last week I had noticed that something within my focus system on my 30D was going terribly wrong. By the end of the week…it was all about manual focusing. So pressed with a decision, it came down to: Wear out my XT by using it for the rest of summer or save it to sell and get a 5D. Of course the later of the two happened.

I must say, I wasn’t really getting my hopes up a lot for it. As soon as I popped on my 70-200 and walked around for 2 hours, I was simply blown away. Not only is my biggest praise for the fact that it actually focuses (yippie!) but the fact that this cameras sensor is a beauty!

After 2 days of having it in my hands to shoot with, and 1500 images later (that’s about average shooting per day here at Qwanoes) I am still being impressed with what I can do with it. 50MM f1.8 portraits are fun again! 17MM wide-angles are fun again! It’s all just fun again!

Excuse the happy nature, but actually being taken back by how well a technology works is few and far between these days. So I must say, thus far the 5D was the perfect choice. Now to just get this 30D fixed…

I don’t know if there is much to say about this image. It basically speaks for itself. There once was a girl, she came to Camp Qwanoes, she flew down our slip-n-slide, she got soap on her, she saw the camera man (me), she ran over to him and jumped in-front of him. The End.I talk a lot about getting “that” image. You may know the kind, where you connect, either by it warming your heart, hardening it or it just makes you crack a smile. Kids are amazing creatures (I say creatures because of my corny humor), they have very little sense of what people think of them. Magnify that when they come to a safe environment and they just seem to be.We as adults have a lot to learn from children. Is the world really complicated? Or did we bring unneeded complexity into it? Look into a kids eyes and you’ll see purpose, vision and passion. Different from an adults no doubt, but no less important.Remember what it felt like to be a kid? If you can’t…I pity that fact.

It happened, I finally broke over the threshold of sanity to being completely insane. Not only am I trusting a $300 plastic bag to keep my camera equipment safe, I took it on a tube ride behind a very powerful boat. Not only was it 5 minutes of pure joy, it was 5 minutes of pure muscle aching hell. Holding on for dear life with one hand while in the other white knuckled, griped around this plastic bag inclosed around my camera. Then there were the boys riding with me, screaming their lungs out higher then a bunch of girls.So here’s the aftermath…While these aren’t perfect in focus and the fact that there is water on the lens, I kept them mainly because of the fact that it adds to the real effect of what its like on the tube ride. You never really know whats about to happen and water is constantly spilling into your face and stinging your eyes.

It has come to the point where I update this year Qwanoes 2007 folio again. Much to my surprise it has grown to nearly 60 images and the summer is only 1/2 done. Make sure to check out the new layout and of course the new images.I hope these images impact your life as much as they have mine.Cheers!- Jordan N.