The Richmond Olympic Oval designed and built for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics has been short listed for the World Building of the Year Award, part of the 2009 World Architecture Festival Awards.
Cannon Design Architecture has leased my daylight long exposure images, along with a few others to be used in marketing and award applications. It is fantastic to be a part of an application for such a prestigious award.
The 2010 Olympic Oval has already been honoured several times, including recognition from the Globe Foundation and World Green Building Council for projects that employ Green Building Practices, and the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada's 2009 Award of Excellence for Innovation in Architecture. The RAIC award is partly due to the use of more than a million board feet pine beetle kill lumber that forms the 100 meter span gluelam roof supports. In addition to the RAIC and green building awards, the Richmond Olympic Oval was recently the recipient of the Sustainability Star award. Given by the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games Organizing Committee (VANOC), which recognizes the innovative efforts Games partners and sponsors are taking to be sustainable.
The 2010 Olympic Oval is a spectacular building, and a marvel of modern construction that blends function and aesthetics. If you can, get yourself to Richmond and take a look for yourself.
Hopefully we will see the Richmond Oval walk away with the World Building of the Year Award. (with an ever so little help from my photos )
Micro Sculptor Willard Wiggan was an undiagnosed dyslexic 5 year old when he started skipping school, and escaping to a miniature fantasy world, where he became an architect for the ants in his garden shed. His talent has grown into an ability that can only be described as amazing. Willard creates sculptures on the heads of pins, and in the eyes of needles using his hands, a microscope, and tools he fashions from the likes of the hair of a fly, or an eyelash. His work, which has been described as “the eighth wonder of the world”, can take up to three month to create, and is sometimes so small it can't be seen by the human eye! Listen to his talk at TED, and check out his mindboggling art at his website, willard-wigan.com
A while back I finally got a chance to get out ans shoot with my 10 stop neutral density filter. It allows me to take photos with 30 second - 2 minute long exposures in daylight. you can see my first attempts in the original post here.
I bought this filter to experiment with, and to use for personal work, photos that might end up as art, or shots that might be just for me. I had fun experementing, and was pretty happy with the results. I left the filter in my most used gear bag, and forgot about it for a while.
When my brother asked me for a ride to the Vancouver Airport a few weeks ago, I grabbed my gear, remembering that the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Speed Skating Oval had recently been completed near the airport, and was supposed to be a unique and spectacular building. I thought I'd take a look at it after dropping my bro at YVR. Great Architecture always intrigues me, that's why I became an Architectural Photographer. Sometimes I just go out and look at buildings, sometimes I photograph them for fun, even if it's not a work assignment. When I arrived at the Olympic Oval, the conditions could not have been better. The light was in just the right place, still quite low in the sky, but with a bright daytime look. The blue sky and clouds mirrored the brilliant colours of the ice blue architecture, accented with orange wooden beams for a dash of contrast.
In a case like this, I have to take photos, I don't have a choice. It's like an addiction, looks.....soooo.....goood,........must.....take......photos....! It's the same feeling that would compel a tourist to take 2 dozen shots of a beautiful sunset, even though each one looks just like the one before. It just looks so good.
I took about 150 frames, wandering around, exploring angles, different lenses, from far and near, low and high. I was just about to pack up and move on, when I remembered the 10 stop ND filter in my gear bag ( I use a Lowe Pro Photo Trekker in case you were wondering - Free plug for Lowe Pro cause their stuff is so good, and has a lifetime warranty) It was a pretty windy day, so the clouds and trees were moving quickly, if I made a long exposure I would probably get a unique look to the architecture image. And did I? Yes.
Now, I'm not the first to take a daylight long exposure of a building, and I won't be the last. But, what I did was add a technique to my photography style quiver. I learned something new by experimenting, and applied it to my personal style. I really love the results, they add an bit of artistic flair to a standard assignment result. I will experiment more with the technique, and refine it, learn how to use it as a tool to provide my architectural clients with a better, more unique product. I will definitely use it on assignments in the future, for the right clients.
The take away here? No matter what your discipline, your style is not static, it grows and evolves. If you try something new, and it feels right, then go with it. Experiment, learn, apply, repeat.
At about 7:30 this morning, (which is pretty early for me) I came across a link to Dave Carroll's youtube video about United Airlines, and how baggage handlers broke his guitar by throwing it onto the tarmac as he watched. For a year United refused to compensate him for the damage.
When he had finally had enough and had been told "No" for the last time, instead of getting mad, Dave Carroll got creative. He wrote a song, filmed a video with his band "Sons of Maxwell", and posted it online for the world to see.
Here it is:
Well wouldn't you know it, it went viral. More than 500,000 views is 3 days, and featured on tons of blogs, and CNN, and even Fox news. Surprise, surprise, after about 50,000 views Dave gets a call from United who wants to "make it right". Apparently when the enitre world can see how you treat people, suddenly it matters.
I could go on about how United's response is reactive not proactive, to little to late, or mention that integrity is defined by what you do when no one is watching, not what you do when the whole world is watching. I could also talk about how Dave taking his complaint viral really got results. Should United Airlines have stepped up to the plate before Dave wrote his song, of course they should have, and they are now probably wishing they had. But that's not why I'm posting.
The real success here is how Social Multimedia can be an agent of change. This is only a consumer example, who didn't see photos from the protests in Iran shortly after the election there.
There are a few key factors here, that helped Dave's video to go viral and get results. His message was simple, "United Breaks Guitars". He told a story that almost anyone who has to fly regularly can relate to, we can put ourselves in his shoes. He was telling a story we all know, little guy vs corporate giant, David vs Goliath. Not to mention a catchy tune.
Here's the thing, his video will work. Most likely it will work in ways he never expected. Sure thousands if not eventually millions of people will hear his story and say "shame on United". He will likely get compensation from United for his Guitar, what he wanted in the first place. He has been inundated with inquiries about his music. But, the most important and most powerful result will likely be United's long term response. The company said this:
"Dave Carroll's excellent video provides United with a unique learning opportunity that we would like to use for training purposes to ensure all customers receive better service from us."
United either has some excellent PR people that should perhaps be transferred to the Customer Service Department to do some training, or they are actually going to do something about the way they deal with customers. Image how many complaints a day a company like United Airlines gets. They have opportunities daily to implement positive change in their customer service, but it takes a viral county music video complaint shown to the world, and a PR catastrophe for them to really take a look at themselves and think about change. THAT'S the real power of Social Multimedia. Let's hope they follow through!
ps. I learned about "United Breaks Guitars" from a Twitter post by David Meerman Scott. I recently read Scott's book "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" a fantastic insight into the growing importance of new media in marketing, and PR through interactive customer feedback.
Over the past few months, a lot of the well known blogging photographers like Chase Jarvis, David Hobby, Joe McNally, and Drew Gardner have been talking a lot about the value of shooting for yourself. Personal work is good for the soul.
Well, it happens that a few days ago I was in a real funk. I couldn't get motivated to slog through the pile of office work I had stacked in my in-box, or the editing waiting for me in the depths of the hard drive. I find that times like these, when I ' not being very productive anyway are perfect times to get out an revive the creative juice flow by trying to shoot something new. My subject of choice is usually some type of abstract nature. The weather was lousy, gray and overcast with a little bit of rain. Not perfect landscape shoot weather, but then again, is there ever such a thing as perfect landscape weather? Suddenly I remembered the B+W 110 3.0 (10 stop Neutral Density filter) I bought months ago. I have been meaning to try it out for ages, it's still in the box. It's just the type of thing that would lend itself to shooting on a less than perfect day. The filter would allow me to to take quite long exposures (2 minutes I discovered) which would blur the clouds, and water, while stationary objects remained sharp. All of a sudden, the funk was gone, replaced by creative excitement.
here are a couple of the results...
This is the Squamish Estuary, looking south towards the ocean
The same estuary area, looking east towards the Stawamus Chief, the second largest granite monolith in the world(Gibraltar is 1st)
I had planned to go to the old docks by the ocean too, but I got so into it at the estuary that I ran out of daylight. The sky even co-operated a bit, and opened some late in the day blue patches, providing me with some interesting cloud movement. Exposures were f22 @ 2 min.
No matter what your creative outlet is, taking some time to do something just for yourself always energizes. Write a poem, or a song, design you ultimate kitchen, paint, take some photos, whatever gets your mind going. After this little selfish outing, I came back to the office refreshed, and was able to tackle my work with enthusiasm. I also have a couple of new pieces that will likely end up on my wall.
I have been playing around with some time lapse photography in my spare time. Trial and error and online learning. As an architectural photographer, it's something I could see offering to my clients for the right exterior projects. This one was just for fun, and is far from perfect, so I played around with some "Tilt-Shift" depth of field effects. Let me know what you think in the comments. Don't forget, if your connection can handle it, click the HD button to see it in the best quality.
Vancouver Police announced today (June 17th 2009) that they will be officially updating their policy manual to prevent officers from confiscating cameras and other recording devices from the public without consent, a warrant, or a lawful arrest.
While they say the policy has always been in place, they are now putting it in writing, and enforcing it. Nice of them to bring thier policies in line with Canadian law, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The announcement of Vancouver Police to update their camera seizure policy is a big step in the right direction. I'm not a press photographer, but this is a victory not just for the freedom of the press, but for all Canadians. Everyone has the right to take photos of Police officers at work, or anything else that happens in public. Compared to what's going on in the UK where police can arrest anyone with a camera if they have a "suspicion" that the photos may be used for any type of terrorist purpose. It's a very vague and dangerous law as far a free speech goes. Especially when many authorities think they can tell you to stop taking photos for any reason.
It's good to see that at least some Police Departments are doing the right thing, and reminding their officers of our freedoms. Let's hope other jurisdictions follow their lead.
I don't end up with tons of time these days to shoot things for fun, so when my brother Paul showed up yesterday with a surprise day off and asked if I wanted to join him for an afternoon in the Whistler Mountain Bike Park, how could I refuse? but, still being extremely sore from my bike park visit last Saturday, I decided to take it a bit easy, and take some gear along to try and can a few shots for fun. Turned out that I was having such a good time that we only stopped twice to shoot a quick shot.
I wanted to do a little strobist thing in the trees, to reduce the ambient, and light Paul comming off a little rock drop on the trail. I was reminiscing a bit about shooting film, as I realized that the D40x I brought, combined with the strobes would only be fast enough to shoot one frame. For about 4 min set up, I think I got a decent one.
Shot with 2 SB-80DX units on slave mode both behind the action, pointing 45° towards the camera at full power. one on the rock, camera left, and one balanced on a tree branch camera right (you can see the flare on the right side of the frame). The remote strobes were triggered by a SB-28 at 1/2 power on the hot-shoe from about 10m (30 feet) away. exposure was 5.6 @ 1/200th for a bit of motion blur shot at about 170mm. A bit of high pass filter for added drama.
Probably not mag cover material, but really fun for a quick little 5 min shoot. I can't say how good it feels just to get out and shoot something different for a change. It really is important to go out a do something creative just for fun. We had a blast biking yesterday, and I have inspired myself to dream up a couple of more produced bike shots to try and pull off before the end of the summer.
Grab your camera, and go shoot something new, just for fun!
The Guggenheim has a great competition going on. Titled "Design It: Shelter Competition", it's inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright's tendency to make apprentice architects design, build, and live and study in a shelter in the Arizona Desert. The competition invites anyone to follow in the footsteps of Architectural Students at Taliesin, the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture and design a shelter that relates to the outside. The shelter must have a study space, and a sleeping space, and may not have any utilities (no AC in the Arizona desert will motivate you to design a well shaded shelter with good airflow!).
Tetrahedron Tent in Google Earth, Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1937
Google is in on the competition, to enter the contest, you will design your shelter using Google Sketchup, and then pin it to Google Earth, so it can be viewed in the setting you intended, anywhere in the world. I usually just photograph architecture, but I might try my hand, just for fun! Entries can be made by anyone, and are being accepted until August 23rd. ENTER HERE, Good Luck!
Also, just in time for the 50th anniversary of the passing of Frank Lloyd Wright (and since the Guggenheim Opened) you can order a Lego kit of Falling Water, one of Wright's most famous designs.
At TED, Yann Arthus-Bertrand talks about global sustainability accented by some of his amazing aerial photographs. He also shows off a teaser for his new film HOME which is an aerial extravaganza to show the damage we are doing to the planet, and what we need to do to help the planet rather than hurt it. All of his work on the film is carbon offset, and the film will be provided to anyone for free without any copyright restrictions for viewing or distribution. It was released today, and you can watch it online at the "HOME" movie website.
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