Retired occupational therapist Wendy Davis poses for a photo in her home in Edmonton on October 17, 2010. Davis’s book Dal & Rice was published last year about the five years she spent in India as a Child. Photos by Ryan Jackson for Rehab Impact Magazine
I had a wonderful time making these portraits. Instead of saying “cheese” for the camera she said “thank you”. So as I took her picture she kept saying “thank you…thank you….thank you…thank you….” It was so cute!
The tree photo was made with the Canon 24mm Tilt-Shift lens, the others were made with the 85mm f1.8 and the 50mm f1.4. I only used a 40×60″ gold reflector and the sun for lighting. She told me stories about her travels and we ate bread with cheese and curried spread.
Click the (+) sign and use your mouse to zoom-in and move. The north view of Commonwealth Stadium during the 98th Grey Cup in Edmonton, Alta. on November 28, 2010. GigaPan by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Click the (+) sign and use your mouse to zoom-in and move. The west side of Commonwealth Stadium during the 98th Grey Cup in Edmonton, Alta. on November 28, 2010. GigaPan by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Click the (+) sign and use your mouse to zoom-in and move. The east side of Commonwealth Stadium during the 98th Grey Cup in Edmonton, Alta. on November 28, 2010. GigaPan by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Each of these panoramas are over 2 gigapixels (over 2,000 megapixels). To create them I used a GigaPan Epic Pro with a Canon 7D and a 300mm f2.8 IS.
A GigaPan is basically an automatic pan and tilt head that moves and triggers your camera automatically to shoot a panorama. Instead of taking one picture of a landscape with a wide-angle lens you can use a GigaPan to take hundreds of zoomed-in photos and then stitch them together to create a gigantic image.
I set the GigaPan to take 300 individual still images and then the included software automatically stitched all the pictures together to create one giant panorama with incredible resolution. Why take one photo when you can take 300?
A big thanks to Don’s Photo for lending me the GigaPan for the Grey Cup. I’ll definitely be trying to convince the Journal to buy one for the photo department. It only costs $899 CAN and can make some pretty crazy cool panoramas.
It only takes about 15-minutes to shoot a GigaPan like this which is the easy part. Stitching the images together takes over an hour depending on the size of the image and about six hours to upload to gigapan.org depending on the size. Since I needed to have the GigaPans on the Journal website by the next morning I had three laptops in the media centre all crunching images at the same time to speed things up.
Here’s me with my three laptops and GigaPan. Photo by Chris Bolin.
So what’s my GigaPan Epic pro review? I was very impressed with how well-built the device was. It had no problems holding my 300 2.8 IS and 7D. The battery held up well in the cold weather. The menus are pretty easy to use. Setting up the device to shoot the panorama is pretty quick. The software for stitching and uploading the GigaPans couldn’t be easier to use. Of course you could take hundreds of pictures manually and use different software to stitch but the GigaPan shoots way faster and way more accurate that a human can. Gigapan.org also hosts the panoramas for you. You just embed the player in your own website. Pretty neat. For $899 it is well worth it. There are also less-expensive models designed for lighter point-and-shoot cameras. I’m normally not a fan of shooting landscapes but this would make me get out there more.
Here is one non-Grey Cup GigaPan I did as a test the day before. Pretty crazy resolution.
Over 63,000 fans enjoy the 98th CFL Grey Cup with the Saskatchewan Roughriders facing the Montreal Alouettes in Edmonton on November 28, 2010. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
To make this picture and time lapse video I had two cameras mounted up in the catwalk of the light standard on the east side of Commonwealth Stadium.
The time lapse camera was simply a Hero Cam mounted at the center of the catwalk. I set the Hero Cam to take a picture every 10 seconds for the entire game. I then plunked all the stills into Final Cut Pro. The whole video was over two minutes. I cut it down to just over one. For audio I just recorded a few minutes of game action and plunked it under the photos.
To make the wide-angle still image I mounted a Canon 5D Mark-II with a Canon 17-35mm f2.8 using a Magic Arm. I set it to Av mode F8 and turned on +1 / -1 bracketing. I then set an intervalometer to trigger the camera every 30-seconds. So every 30-seconds I had three pictures at -1, 0, +1 exposure.
Why shoot 6 frames a minute you ask? Well I wanted to get a perfect exposure with the sky just right, the downtown skyline silhouetted and all the fans in their seats. I couldn’t be up in the catwalk the whole time to wait for the light to be just right so setting the camera to shoot a few thousand frames is the next best thing. I shot over 48 GB of RAW pictures with that camera during the game for one picture. Well worth it!
In the days leading up to the 98th Grey Cup in Edmonton I had the fun assignments of photographing drunk fans partying and cheerleaders strutting their stuff. Here are my favorite shots and video.
The BC Felions cheer team performs during the 2010 Grey Cup Cheerleader Extravaganza at MacEwan University in Edmonton on November 27, 2010. All eight CFL cheer teams showed their talent in the 14th annual event. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Saskatchewan Roughriders fan Darryl Formo from Regina, Sask. at the Spirit of Edmonton Party at the Westin Hotel in Edmonton on November 25, 2010 to celebrate the Grey Cup. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
The Saskatchewan Riders and Edmonton Eskimos cheer teams perform arial stunts together during the 2010 Grey Cup Cheerleader Extravaganza at MacEwan University in Edmonton on November 27, 2010. All eight CFL cheer teams showed their talent in the 14th annual event. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
BC Lions fans Carl Danroth, left, and Mojo Kemp from Vancouver at the Spirit of Edmonton Party at the Westin Hotel in Edmonton on November 25, 2010 to celebrate the Grey Cup. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Fire investigator Captain Frank Krzanstek poses for a photo at Fire Station 2 in Edmonton on May 5, 2010. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Fire investigator Captain Dean Adam poses for a photo at Fire Station 2 in Edmonton on May 5, 2010. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Fire investigator Murray Steedsman poses for a photo at Fire Station 2 in Edmonton on May 5, 2010. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
I shot these portraits back in May but the awesome story by Ben Gelinas didn’t run until November so now I can finally post them!
I shot the first picture with an O-Flash ringflash adapter on a Canon 580EX and a Lastolite EzyBox softbox. You can see the flash (and Ben) in this outtake.
The second photo was a bit more involved with two strip boxes behind Dean, a Lastolite Ezybox above him and a ring flash in front of him.
The last photo was simply done with two strip boxes to the left and right.
I had the assignment to photograph nearly two hundred high school students who will be Cappies reviewers this year. Basically high school students reviewing high school plays in the Journal.
I wanted to make this task more exciting so I tried to light it as good as possible and get a three dimentional look so I used six lights. Diagrams below. As you can see, we really need to re-paint the grey wall in the Journal studio!
I made this mosiac using the free program MacOSaix.
Here is my lighting setup. The two keys to a three dimensional look are to have lights behind the subject to give separation from the background and to have a spot light with a grid on it spray the background. The background lights keep the image from looking too flat. Front lights – White Lighting 1600 @ 1/8 power in a softbox, White Lighting 1600 @ 1/16 power into a 22″ beauty dish, Alien Bees ABR800 at 1/8 power into a 48″ umbrella. Back lights – Two Canon 550EX’s @ 1/2 power into 8×36″ strip boxes and a 550EX @ 1/128 power into a Honl grid on the background. Even with all the lights turned down low I could get f13 @ ISO200. More then enough.
83-year-old Ray Como stands by the combine that he was trapped upside down in for over 20 hours before his son-in-law discovered him wedged between the engine and cab on his farm near Calahoo, Alta. on October 20, 2010. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
Farmer Raymond Como who was trapped in a combine for 20-hours in Sept. is now out of hospital. He shows us the combine he was trapped in on Oct. 20, 2010. Video by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal
Posted by ryanjackson on Oct 24, 2010 in photos, portrait
Mobilicity General Manager Matthew Gould, left, and CEO Dave Dobbin pose for a photo in Delta Edmonton South Hotel in Edmonton on October 20, 2010. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal).
The second photo was a bit more involved with two strip boxes behind Dean, a Lastolite Ezybox above him and a ring flash in front of him.
