Doors Open YYC is an annual event where the people of Calgary get the chance to see behind the scenes of many of the city's organizations and businesses. Over 2 days I visited STARS, CJSW, the City of Calgary fleet services building amongst many others. Here are some of the highlights.
I was once again able to be one of the people tasked with documenting Beakerhead, Calgary's own festival of Science, Art and Engineering. While my focus every year has been on the video side, I'm always able to grab the occasional picture. This year one of the pics I took was of the Wu-Tang Clan's, the GZA during his performance, which he ended up using as his Facebook page banner pic. Hugely honoured. Here are a few more pics.
I had the joyful privilege of marching in Calgary's pride parade this year. It was my first time even attending the event, with a laundry list of excuses as to why (most of them involve work or sleeping in.). There were over 60,000 spectators and I couldn't be more proud of how far this city has come in the 17 years since I moved here. It's an amazing event and I was happy to be able to photograph it.
It had been 4 long years since I had visited the West coast. Having the week before switched over from Canon DSLR's to a Sony mirrorless system (a6000), I was eager to take it for a walk. On top of focus peaking and a beautiful sensor I was most excited to be able to beam the photos to my phone and use Lightroom Mobile to do the processing and be able to post on the go. My friends and I spent an afternoon and evening doing an improvised pub crawl. Vancouver is enjoying a craft beer revolution so I got to take a whirlwind tour of the dozens of micro breweries in Vancouver.
These are my good friends Asha and Cale. They're getting married in January and this is the first engagement shoot I've done. Jackie Ho of Life Unscripted Photography and I had talked about going out to scout a couple locations West of Calgary. We shot at two spots, this old, burnt out gas station off Highway 1 on the way to Banff. The second was overlooking Tunnel Mountain.
I had a great, last-minute opportunity to shoot the latest creation from make-up artist, Lianne Moseley. She specializes in body paint creations of comic book heroes. You've seen her work in Where Magazine and on her rapidly growing Instagram account. She was in need of a shooter and I was lucky enough to get a referral (thanks Neil).
I've always wanted to do a shoot at SAIT. Their architecturally unique parking garage felt Batcave-like as well as the old school facade of Heritage Hall, plus one of my favorite views of downtown. Her exceptionally patient model, Ken, was up for action and had no problem nailing some iconic poses. Ken went through 10 hours of make up leading up to the shoot.
It's just occurred to me, assembling the content for this website...I've been accomplishing things? You set out to do something because you love it and before long you're mildly successful at it. Strange, but I'll take it. So many people have been so instrumental in getting me here, I should probably thank them:
Pete, Carlo and the amazing crew at the Calgary Flames. Neil Zeller, Brett Hopper, Trevor Alberts, Ryan HK, Jackie Ho-Lycklama, Adam Hunter, Kelly Phelan and Alberta Theatre Projects, Michelle Htun-Kay and Beakerhead and the list goes on and on. It's so great to live and work in a community of collaborators and awesomeness.
My only goal at this point is to keep improving, keep shooting, just keep going. It's too much fun to not to.
Nick
