aaron schwab

so far, this week has been filled with editing photos for print orders, editing personal photos that have been burning a hole in my “to do” pile, and losing several eBay auctions on various Olympus Pen EE cameras before finally winning one the other day. i hope it gets here by next Sunday so i have it for our trip to Montréal!

i ended up heading out into the world earlier this afternoon to pick up a magazine that i’ve heard is worth a read and to drop by Justin’s place to borrow his cable release. Cagney and i are heading up to Dan’s cottage this weekend and, after a failed attempt to photograph a star trail last time, i’d like to try it properly this time (meaning with a cable release and tripod, not my unsteady thumb on the ground. oh well, lesson learned!) Justin is an avid and talented photographer himself, and he took a few minutes to show me some HDR techniques he’s learned, all while explaining and demonstrating the benefits of shooting in RAW format as opposed to JPEG. i’ve been shooting JPEG files since i picked up a digital SLR for the first time and i’ve never given RAW shooting a second thought, but i think i might see what can be done with it. from what i can tell, RAW files contain, well, raw camera data that hasn’t yet been compressed into a JPEG image file, allowing the photographer to manipulate details such as exposure, sharpening and colour temperature in Photoshop before applying the changes to a JPEG, which gets rendered from the RAW file. so, in essence, the user manually performs the data processing that a camera would normally perform in order to create a JPEG image. like i said, i’m intrigued!

tomorrow, Joe and i are spending an afternoon photographing Porcelain, as Joe’s done in the past, before i head to City Hall to do some live shots for Nollie Kickflipp — i took some promotional photos for them not long ago and i’m glad to do another set for them, albeit live this time.

in non-camera news (which seems to be scarce with me, nowadays), Cagney has been trying her hand at a few new dishes in the kitchen, which has done wonders for us so far, both in taste and nutritious value. see, after moving in with Cagney, i hadn’t grown unaccustomed to someone cooking for me yet, so i had a small stretch of time where i forgot to eat at certain points. so far, Cagney has whipped up some homemade hummus and a batch of falafel, and i’ve fallen in love with both. we also now have a George Foreman grill, which was donated generously to us by Bill and Kitty, which will go far in the “Aaron cooking for himself” regard.

as for now, i’m going to go back to staring at Photoshop as i remove blemishes from and smooth the pores of students who’ve been past Newschool’s lens.

a lot of blog-worthy things have gone on since my last substantial blog, eleven days ago. currently, i kind of feel mired in photo-related work, but the bulk of that should be done within a couple days at the most, so long as i keep my eyes on the prize — included in that is the most recent batch of proof CDs that i’m making for work, a couple sets of photos from commissioned jobs and a couple sets of personal photos. i suppose the personal photos have no personal deadline, but they’re eating a hole through my desktop, so i want to get them sorted, edited and sent to any applicable parties (not to mention posted for the world to see.)

Monday was a bit of a repose for Cagney and i, as we went up to Sauble Beach for the day. it was a choice between that or the beach at Grand Bend and, while i’m sure we’ll hit Grand Bend this summer, our desire to see the totally awesome beach sign at Sauble made this week’s decision easy. i was a little bummed to find the weather too chilly and windy to swim, but we still managed to wade and stretch out on the sand some, not to mention grab some excessively greasy barbecue food and shop a little, all while working through another couple dozen exposures on one of those little $5 disposable underwater cameras that i discovered at Giant Tiger.

as for upcoming events, our trip to Montréal with Chris and Mel is but 18 sleeps away (and i know this because Chris has been keeping track of sleeps until the trip), and i’m hoping to make at least a little extra change before then so i can feel alright about eating out or having a few drinks while we’re there. i’ve been a little more money-worried as of late than i usually am, but i’ve been working on dropping that mindset. i’ll have plenty of time to make and save a good amount of money after the trip; Montréal is going to be nothing short of epic, as per my anticipation, and no worrying is going to riun that for myself or any of us! and, as is probably becoming predictable, i’m totally getting a few more cheap underwater disposable cameras (and it goes without saying that i’m probably going to come home from our trip with a few more gigabytes of photos — my computer seriously needs a new hard drive.)

as for what’s happened in the past couple of weeks or so, two significant events come to mind: Tim’s first beer-B-Q of the year, held to commemorate his graduation from WLU (photos from that are here from an underwater disposable and pending from my D300) and Anuj and Shanna inviting us to dinner last week (Shanna made amazing chicken and jalapeño enchiladas and we watched Stranger Than Fiction, which had a sort of Donnie Darko/Vanilla Sky vibe about it, but is far better than both. and it convinced me that Maggie Gyllenhaal is actually pretty cute.)

between now and Montréal will probably have me editing photos constantly for work, as well as squeezing in shoots and editing those as often as possible. i’m just looking forward to getting this immediate heap of work done.

oh, and as a concluding thought, i’d like to point out how excited i am, not only for our Montréal trip, but for what lies thereafter — i have pretty significant plans to improve several aspects of my life in general, and i’m stoked to get them in motion. vague, i know, but hey — shh.

for those of you still following along with this blog, i realize i’ve completely broken my habit of writing every two or three days. it seems like the busier i am, the more i have to write about, but the less time i have to sit down at my blog for any extended period of time. rest assured i’ve been up to a lot, but that might just cool off soon, at which time i can hammer out a “best of” of my past few weeks.

one thing of note, however — i’m closer to having my website up and running than i did before, and the photo-related blog on that might completely obsolesce this one. who knows; i mean, besides photos, what can i really share with the world that my Twitter and Facebook don’t regularly reveal? time shall tell, i suppose.

(sounds like it could be an Ataris song title …)

it’s been another week, and another bunch of things have gone on in my wee world. a few days ago, Cagney, Anuj, Shanna and i headed to Columbia Lake for this year’s Canada Day fireworks display. it seemed shorter than last year’s show, but it was fun regardless, and Columbia Street was packed with people, disaster-flick-mass-exodus-of-refugees-style. i set up on a tripod to get some long exposures of the show, and i got moderate results, though a few came out nice.

other than that, my life has been very centered around photography as of late, which doesn’t really shock me — aside from a tonne of sorting i need to do for work, i’ve got a pile of other photos to edit for people, still. an ever-diminishing pile, but a pile nonetheless. fortunately, i should have enough time while doing laundry today to get most, if not all, of it done before tonight’s photoshoot.

all of these shoots are coming in handy at the moment, too, not only for portfolio building, but to contribute towards my Montréal fund. a huge step towards that trip was made yesterday when we booked our accomodations. i’m hugely relieved to have that out of the way — we were originally going to try for a quaint little bed and breakfast, but after checking out a list of suggested lodgings that Cagney’s Montréal-savvy friend Candice sent us, we decided to book a suite at an apartment-style hotel. it’s a little pricier than a B&B, but we get underground parking (as opposed to no organized parking) and a two-bedroom apartment with a full kitchenette, which will help us pinch pennies by allowing us to make most meals ourselves. let we forget the indoor swimming pool on the top floor of the hotel. i’m so excited for this trip — i’m looking at it as the first major step in indulging my wanderlust. the fact that we’re going to have a full day or two after checking out of the hotel to drive back home and stop wherever we please for another night only adds to my excitement. i think it goes without saying that i’ll take a photo or two while we’re there.