My May 24 with Norman White

For the past decade or so, I have been an avid camper. Ever since that first trip out to Georgian Bay with my high school’s art’s department, I’ve been hooked. Nature is awesome when people haven’t moved in a wrecked it.

I try to avoid the big holiday weekends, choosing instead to head out either the week before or the week after the holiday weekend. This way, the traffic is a whole lot better, parking is plentiful, gear rental is assured, and popular camp sites are deserted. The spots I typically head to are quite remote, but I still run into the occasional camper if I am out during a holiday weekend. And it just doesn’t feel like camping when other people are near by. I need that ‘middle of nowhere’ feeling.

On this trip, I broke my usual rule when my friend Mindy invited me to something very special: camping at Norman White’s place.

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Painting with Light

As someone who is primarily a painter, some aspects of photography can be quite frustrating. In March of 2010, I had an idea for a photo shoot: take a bunch of multi-coloured LEDs, throw them around a snow covered forest, and take a bunch of pictures. The coloured light should bounce off the snow and create some interesting effects. This sounded like a cool idea.

The only problem was that I had this idea in March, after the winter snow had melted. I had to wait for winter to come again before I could try out this idea. When I’m painting, the time of year doesn’t matter so much. Winter scenes in summer, summer scenes in winter; if I can imagine it, I can paint it. This isn’t the case with photography. Photography is all about patience. I had to wait for nature to play along before I could try out this idea.

Two nights ago, I finally had my chance to head out on this photo shoot.

Brad had recently picked up a new camera, so I thought this could be a good opportunity for a ‘Brad vs. Kyle’ thing, introducing some friendly competition into the shoot.
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