Had a fairly relaxed weekend – repositioning snow, skiing, and fondue. We tried Le Nordik Spa in Chelsea, too!

Workwise I did some thinking among other things. Two sections of April’s Creative Fundamentals have filled and there seems to be some more demand. I am looking at shifting May’s Urban Landscapes to August and filling the spot with a third section of CF. Any comments?

The week is busy and fun:

• some contest judging
• teaching
• photos
• skiing

Blog postings may be light this week – I will post as I can.I saw the Easter Bunny in my back yard on Sunday. I never (almost) see rabbits here!

H

I often work in a vacuum making many business decisions alone. I am President, photographer and chief business strategist of Harry, Inc. It’s good for me to get out and meet others. When I saw a Media Relations Workshop facilitated by Karen Flanagan McCarthy, veteran journalist, I jumped.

The workshop was offered by Ottawa Festivals and run by Karen’s company McCarthy Media Group. It was excellent.

Right after the workshop I hustled to a coffee shop where I had arranged to meet an Algonquin College photography student looking for a work placement. We are going to work together for 2 weeks in April. Having more help will be good for me and it’ll be fun to offer some insights to the working world of photography!

Long weekend – some skiing, some work, cheese fondue in one of the Gatineau Park cabins.

Yum.

Ok. We have a lot of snow:

I have never seen this much snow in Chelsea! I have never had trouble getting through the door, above! I am not complaining – we’ll be skiing until June! The snow has created some extra work – and not the paying kind! I shoveled my garage roof last week and I can now walk directly from the roof down to the driveway – no ladder needed!

With all this snow is there a boom of photo opportunities? Yes and no. Editorially there are news stories mostly covered by the local papers.From a stock photography perspective there are opportunities but tough ones. The abundance of snow offers ample winter pictures but there are far too many snow pictures out there already!

I just searched for “snow scene” at AGE Fotostock and found almost 7000 pictures available! To make the snow pictures salable through a worthwhile agent there needs to be something snowy and unavailable anywhere else. Supply and demand! What makes a good (ie profitable) stock snow picture? Perhaps buried cars, buried houses? Look for ways to put a positive spin into the picture – positive sells better than negative.

Positive, unique pictures that are well shot – not my snapshot of the porch above – have a chance at earning some dough. There is lots of competition – there are some exceptional snow photos out there and a lot of mediocre ones, too. Check my Creative Business Seminar for more business ideas.H

I had a look at Lichtfaktor.eu again – there are some fantastic basketball shots using techniques we will learn this weekend at the Night Light photo workshop. The photographer at Lichtfactor has some advanced night light techniques!

Some last photos from our pro hockey photo workshop at the Ottawa 67s game. ‘S’ is shooting beside the 67s bench:

‘P’ is ctaching the action close to the goal:

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My pro hockey workshop students are meeting tomorrow for their critique session. Feed back of their session at the Ottawa 67s game has been good so far. In the next few days I will highlight some photos and links to some student photos.

First up a snapshot with my new point & shoot – at these workshops my job is to support the students, not take photos – my P&S comes in handy for the quick snaps:

Even on auto mode with a good understanding of fundamentals I can create quick silhouettes of a student shooting from the box or media centre in the rafters. I shot this at 28mm – wider than most P&S cameras will allow – see previous blog entries to investigate my criteria for this camera purchase.

In other news – a busy week with other work and my house is leaking a bit with the huge amounts of snow starting to melt – I have a big job tomorrow to fix it!

H

This weekend I taught the practical part of the Pro Hockey Workshop. The Ottawa 67s hosted our group and, unfortantely, lost to the Kingston Frontencs.

On Saturday the photo students met at Ottawa’s Headshots Rentals for a tutorial from Louis on fine equipment and were offered some loaners (fast lenses, etc.) as part of the course – thanks Headshots!

On Sunday we met at Lansdowne Park. Students were issued Media Passes and given a “backstage” tour of the facilities. Thanks 67s! After some theory, ideas and practical tips students were tested by the lightning on the ice. Three periods shooting from the media centre in the rafters and at ice level left students with plenty of editing homework for the critique session later this week.

More hockey updates and photos as they come. Coming up this week:

• a day off
• prep-ing a stock submission
• a Working Creatives meeting
• some long term idea planning
• evaluating a potential new photo job
• admin

What was whacky? Ottawa got hit with a massive snow storm Saturday night. Our long, country drive is normally cleared by a contractor but he did not make it before I had to leave for the workshop. Consequently we cleared the drive twice (1am and 8:30am). There was no way I could have driven through it. I had no choice but to dig – the show must go on for the students! I even picked up a stranded student on the way to the stadium.

I have never seen this much snow around here! We’ll be skiing till June – that’s a good thing for Harry!

Hockey photos later this week,

H