Blair’s Blog

Float plane, originally uploaded by blaircook.

My photos from my last business trip, to Vancouver, Canada, are up on Flickr.

Vancouver is an amazingly beautiful city, and its proximity to world-class skiing and snowmobiling make it one of the only cities I would realistically consider moving to.

While I still love to get out and take pictures, I just hadn’t been doing it much lately. Between work, other hobbies and a waning passion for shooting professional level photos I made the decision that it was time for all the Nikon gear to go.

Getting back to a simpler camera that I could still dial-in for great shots yet travel comfortably with, and be able to use with off camera speedlights was the goal. The Canon G10 fit the bill and with most of my Nikon gear on the way out I picked up a Canon G10 from BestBuy today.

I am so impressed with the image quality, fit and finish, menus, and overall design and user experience. Tomorrow night I am going to take my new G10 out to my nieces softball game to see how it performs in an area that typically makes a DSLR shine.

Getting back to what made me fall in love with making pictures is already feeling refreshing, I cannot wait to start pushing more content to Flickr and just having fun with a camera again.

Below is one of the first images out of my G10. A photo of a Nikon lens I just put up for sale.

I wanted to get out with my camera for a little while this weekend, so the S.O. and I ran up to Mt. Rainier on Saturday. The weather was amazing - actually it scares the crap out of me to be truthful, we need snow and we need it bad. And not just for recreation; I think we may be in for a serious drought unless things change in a big way and soon.

Anyway, here are the pictures. It felt so good to pick-up my camera for a fun little outing. If anyone happens upon this post and knows of any cool events or meet-ups coming up in the Portland area please let me know, I’m going to start looking for every excuse to shoot.

Complete set is here. LINK

Afternoon on the beach, originally uploaded by blaircook.

Enjoy! It was certainly great escaping Snowpocalypse 2008!

Another time lapse experiment. I am actually not as pleased with this video. I think the initial framerate was too slow to get the results I wanted - but let me know what you think.

And if you are from the Portland area see if you can guess my route.

Quick drive over the hill from Blair Cook on Vimeo.

Next week I am shooting some photos for our company holiday card and I want to try out some new techniques. This weekend I think I will have time to build a ring flash - to keep myself on track figured I would put my intentions up here as encouragement to get it built and post example photos.

The guide I will be using comes from the wonderful corporate shooter David Tejada; check out his blog but most importantly his very informative videos.

I had watched many videos like this on Vimeo and decided to give it a try myself last night. This is about 400 images from a quick trip for Mexican food. The results are okay - however I messed up the size of the video and I think I should have used a slower shutter to capture more blur outside the truck. The next step is to build an intervalometer for my D70s so I do not rack-up shutter actuations on my D200 too quickly.

The title gets its name from the song in the video performed by Ulrich Schnauss. My colleague turned me onto Ulrich and it is perfect for listening to at work or creating a time lapse.

On my own from Blair Cook on Vimeo.