Tomorrow the Apple iPad will finally launch internationally,including in my home country of Canada. I have written previously about what an iPad can do for photographers and now everyone outside of the US can find out for themselves. To mark the occasion I have decided to offer up a FREE wallpaper for your brand new iPad. Wallpapers for the iPad need to be 1024px X 1024px. This is somewhat unusual, and only a portion of this picture will be able to be seen at one time, depending on whether you have the iPad in vertical or horizontal mode.
The wallpaper I’m offering here is a photo of the Peak 2 Peak gondola at the ski resort of Whistler Blackcombb in my home town of Whistler, BC in Canada. I’m offering it here for personal use only as a wallpaper for your iPad.
If you are interested in creating your own iPad wallpapers I have also created a photoshop template that will help you visualize exactly which parts of your photo will be visible when the iPad is in a particular orientation. You can DOWNLOAD THE IPAD WALLPAPER TEMPLATE by clicking the link. It is a .psd file which you can open and overlay as a separate layer on top of you image in photoshop. Make sure you lower the opacity a little bit on the template layer to reveal your photo underneath. Then you can move your image around until you have it in just the right spot so it will look good in both orientations ! The areas covered by the red squares will never be seen, in either orientation. The center square will always be seen, and the yellow strips will be seen depending on whether you have it horizontal or vertical.
I decided that it was time to update some portfolio sections on my website. At the end of each winter I have a stack of images that I would just love to show everybody. Unfortunately they have to remain under wraps until they have been used by either the commercial or editorial clients in the following winter’s ski magazine! It means that some photos can lay dormant on my hard drive for over 12 months before they are seen by people other than art directors, marketing managers and photo editors. At this time though, nearly everything that I shot last winter that is going to be published in one way or another has been so I can finally update my site with some fresh images. These are a few of my favorite ones from last year. Some were shot on editorial assignments, some on commercial shoots and some when I’m just out shooting. On my main website you can view the images in THIS GALLERY where they are displayed slightly bigger. For ease you can also browse them below.
For daily updates on what I’m up to, please join me on my Facebook page.
Well those of us living up in BC have been waiting patiently for this all winter. The snow has now been falling for a few days and today was probably the deepest day I have ever seen when i headed up with the Poorboyz crew with Charley Ager and Brandon Kelly as they shoot for their new movie Every Day Is a Saturday. It made it almost impossible to make any headway with out sleds and even the tree skiing we shot was tough as the depth of the snow made it hard for the guys to keep momentum going! It’s due to snow for the rest of the week too, looks like we will have a spring ski season after all…..
Charley Ager enters the whiteroom:
Charley and Brandon Kelly doubling up to the lines on the sleds:
I’m going to mix things up here a bit, I was sorting out some old photos yesterday and came across this one that I really liked. Lake Wakatipu is just South if Queenstown in New Zealand.
Shot with a Canon 1DMKIIN, 70-200 2.8 at 130mm, f20.0, 1/50th, mirror lockup, remote release on a tripod.
This is my favorite shot from an urban trip with Theory-3 media. For a while I struggled to find a good angle to make an interesting shot. There was nothing on either side of the rail to use for composition and I was disappointed with the shots. Then I decided to get right up against a wall in front if the rail….. looking better. After a couple of shots like that it still needed something extra. I grabbed a red gel and fitted it to my Canon 580EX flash and put it on top of my camera pointing left at the wall. I plugged my pocketwizard trigger into the PC socket on the side of the camera and BAM there it was. This other shot shows what the rail and the surroundings looked like.
Strobist info:
Shot with a Canon 1DMKIIN 1/250th f5.0 70mm on a 70-200 2.8L IS. Lighting was from 3 sources. On camera flash with red gel pointing at the wall. Elinchrom Ranger at full power about 10ft to camera right and 2 vivitar 285s on full power at the top of the rail just off to the left hidden by the wall.
It’s not always about the action shots, this shot is one of my favorites from a day in Vancouver with Anthony Boronowski last year (click to see it larger). It had been a long time since Anthony had done a lot of urban and yet here he was trying to get his 270 on. There’s so many little thing in this shot that i love. His expression says a lot but also the severe snow storm that was blowing at the time gives a nicely different look to the image. The university buildings emerging from the gloom in the background look ominous and you can even see Jeff Thomas from Theory-3 media standing on the roof of the building with his camera ready. This one shot sums up a whole day; cold, wet, windy and damn hard work. Making movies isn’t easy.
Strobist info::
The shot was taken with a Canon 1dMKIIN at 1/250, f6.1 and 17mm with a 17-40 f4.0L. Lighting comes from 4 different sources. At the bottom of the stairs just out of the left side of the frame is an Elinchrom Ranger on full power on top of an 8ft light stand with a sports reflector on it. At the top of the stairs just ouf of the frame past the right hand railing is 2 X Vivitar 285s both on half power and running off one pocketwizard. At my feet is another 285 on half power and on camera is also a Canon 580EX angled about 45 degrees to the left. The transmitter pocketwizard is attached via a PC cord in this case as the hotshoe is taken up by the canon flash.
