kylewith

Mar 19 2011

An Eye for photography

I have dabbled in photography for some time now, about four years. I definitely think I’ve gotten better over the years, but I’m still not the best I can be. I kind of understand a lot of the technical stuff, but again there is lots I can learn. The one thing I can’t grasp though is how to set up a good shot. I guess you could say that I don’t quite have that “Eye” for photography, that some do.

Just this morning I did a photo shoot with singer-songwriter Dayna Manning. Disclosure I also work with Dayna at Motion Media. We were doing the shoot because coming up in April, I believe about April 15(?), She will be doing a performance at the North Peace Cultural Centre here in Fort St. John, so this is some promotional material for her poster.

The one thing that I couldn’t wrap my mind around, was how to properly set her up with the surrounding. Her living room is very bright with lots of colors and it was a good set up, but I couldn’t see its. This is why I rely a lot on the subject explaining to me what it is that they want. I suppose this is why many photographers read books on photography, follow other photographers and take in what everyone else is doing, but I haven’t been able to do that lately.

I’m not completely satisfied with how I performed at the shoot, although it was very casual. I often think when people ask me to be a photographer, they expect me to know or at least have an idea of what I’m going to do. As I went through the some hundred photos that I took, I do think some of them actually did turn out well and was able to edit them down to about 39.

Practice will help me get better, so well the advice of others and research. As long as I continue to do it I can only really get better, for now it’s a good thing I’ve got a good editing program.

Mar 19 2011

Limitless was Limited

Well other than the fact that this movie tells us taking enchantment drugs will get us further in the world, the movie Limitless is an interesting movie let our mind go. So lets break it down.

Limitless Bradley Cooper

The Idea

Our main character has a crappy life, that is until someone presents a shiny little pill that makes it all better. So our character takes pill, gets more and on goes life. Everything is looking up until someone tries chasing him and on goes the movie. I wont give away the end but I think you get it.

The Perspective

My problem with this movie is, it seems like someone had a really good idea for a movie and had most of it down on paper, but not all of it. So to fill those empty spaces they filled it with stupid dialog.

In the movie this character Bradley Cooper plays always talks about only using the “drug” until he can sustain himself, but of course that is exactly what he doesn’t do. This drives me nuts, I know it wouldn’t make a good movie if he did, but come on. You darn well know the “drug” wont last forever so how can you plan the rest of your life thinking it will.

The Conclusion

I like the idea of the movie, because I like to let me imagination go and pretend that things like this are possible. So I don’t take movies very seriously, but this movie feels like it is seriously missing something, especially at the end. I don’t think this is a movie to go see in the theatre, nor buy when it comes out. Maybe rent it. I feel like this movie is like that old Ben Affleck movie Paycheck.

If you do go and see it, leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Mar 17 2011

I admit I’m a little jealous Yellowknife

Today I found out today that Alex and Luke are back in Yellowknife for a couple weeks. Alex and Luke are two friends who have traveled round North America on a road trip powered by Social Media. Needless to say it is a dream of mine. So for two reason I’m a little jealous.

The first being obviously that they are living a dream of mine. I would probably drop everything right now to be able to drive around the country and blog about my journey. I would kill for the opportunity to do what they are doing, but there are to many factors I can’t figure out. The biggest one being money. How do you pay/afford a journey like this.

The second being Alex and Luke are now in Yellowknife for the next two weeks. They will be going around to different places, doing different things, things that I would have loved to do when I was writing YkOnline on a regular basis. I’d still like to do these things in the future, especially since I love Yellowknife so much. It is extremely hard being away from Yellowknife and see Alex and Luke there makes it worst.

I do realize that I must work towards something like this, make it a goal and put them in motion. Time will tell, but for now I’ll be jealous.

Mar 16 2011

Crazy Night in Chicago

Friday night in Chicago went from new and interesting to crazy and exciting. Drupalcon was finished and we were just enjoying ourselves at this point.

We left the Hotel looking for a couple of taxis to take us to our restaurant and ended up taking a limo around Chicago for a good 20 minutes. We ended our ride at Lou Malnati’s where we had to wait 30 minutes for a table. We walked up the street to some fancy looking bar, where Dayan accidentally ordered a $20 bottle of beer she had to finish before going to Lou’s. Once we got to the restaurant we had amazing pizza and Andrew had his incident which ended up getting us a free meal.

After supper we took yet another taxi ride to the John Hancock Tower. At the tower, on the 96th floor is a rather Ritzy feeling bar. It was packed. Windows and people everywhere. Oddly enough because we were a group of seven we got seated rather quickly. We weren’t up the tower very long before taking the roller coaster of an elevator back down to ground level.

It was an odd evening. One I don’t think I will forget anytime soon.

[flickr-gallery mode=”tag” tags=”crazynight” tag_mode=”all”]

For some reason not all of the photos are showing, so head to Flickr to see them all.

Mar 15 2011

REVIEW: Free Supper at Lou Malnati’s Pizza

Okay I’m back on Fort St John now, so I suppose I really should catch up on all the blog posts I wanted to do on my trip to Chicago. I figure a good way to continue posts about Chicago I should tell you about Lou Malnati’s.

Lou Malnati’s is a famous Chicago Deep Dish Pizzeria. The pizza is like no other. A thick 2″ tall crust, cheese underneath pizza sauce and all the ingredients. It is almost impossible to eat by hand it is so hardy.

The atmosphere of the place is great, so was the service. You could see the history on the walls and in the staff.

What makes our story of Lou Malnati’s so special was the fact we ended up with a free meal, which we can thank Andrew for once again. While our waitress was serving us our drinks her tray lost balance and tipped towards a wall behind Andrew. So Andrew reacting to the falling glasses reached out to prevent them from falling further, unfortunately one of the glasses had broken before hand and sliced one of Andrews fingers. There was blood, but it didn’t seems all that bad. Martin and Andrew disappeared to bandage him up. You could instantly tell the restuarant was very sorry about it and did everything they could to accomidate us.

We ended up with a completely free meal with dessert. Thanks Andrew.

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See all the photo from Lou Malnati’s on Flickr.