I hear people saying this like; ‘I do it all the time, when i’m out in public, when i’m in the wilderness. I’m just addicted’ I’ve heard about people doing it in public washrooms, in airports, or even at school or work. Nowhere is free from people doing it, and the proof is everywhere.

Don’t get me wrong, we all love doing it, but is there maybe too much of a good thing?

What about all those people who say ‘quality over quantity’? Must just be a cover up for people who don’t do it all the time for whatever reason. Or are they onto something? It’s not difficult to do it all the time if you have no standards.

I think we can all agree we have seen a lot of ‘McPictures’; high volume, low quality imagery. Often excessively processed because the original ‘creative ingredients’ weren’t good in the first place.
‘Too much’ is every time the act hasn’t been contemplated. ‘Too quick’ is every time details are ignored; ‘Oh i can fix that in PS’

Many now say best camera is the one thats with you, but more importantly the best pictures are the ones taken with purpose, intent, and forethought.

I’ll take a stand for what I believe; quality of quantity, wait for the right one at the right moment before you commit. Take time every time you do it, if its rushed it’ll never be as good.

Tweet This Post

Abstinence, Better, Photographer, photography, ski, Whistler

If someone knows a good segway into a blog post where the most repeated word is ‘Tits’ let me know.

I’m giving away 6 of these shirts. To get free shirts do one or both of the following;

1: Post in the comment section below.
Post what? well, post whatever you want to/think would win you a shirt.
A couple suggestions: (which you don’t need to follow) Good stories of good times (skiing or not). Pictures of Tits Deep pow day. Videos of a feat of extraordinary achievement or skill (ex buddy at the bar in ski boots dancing with a gal). Or even why you want to get the shirt. Examples; wear it to your sister’s wedding, or to your meeting at divorce courts. If you are in divorce court and thinking of wearing this shirt, the shirt might explain why you’re there.

and/or

2: Spread the love on twitter;
A) Link to this blog entry giveaway; http://rkp.me/tits
B) Mention @ReubenKrabbe so i know you entered
C) The rest is up to you

Prior to Castle Mountain opening for the winter a family friend’s wife had been skiing with the ski patrol on the untracked mountain. When her husband asked how the snow was, she could only describe it with two words;
“Tits Deep”
When our family heard this story all three brothers loved it, and started talking about what we could do with such a beautiful phrase; bumper stickers… T-Shirts… To my mother’s dismay we talked about it for years on end, all the time she was hoping we would ‘mature’ or ‘grow up’ (whatever that means). We were even on a family vacation in a tropical paradise hundreds of miles from the nearest ski lift and all we could talk about was ‘Tits Deep’
Now several years later I had the shirts made for my brothers’ and father’s christmas presents, and you get to reap the benefits! Oh, if you’re worried about explaining it to people who don’t understand the shirt or our sense of humor, its not that bad. I have already had to explain it to my grandfather as he looked around dreadfully confused as we opened presents at Christmas

‘Tits Deep’ Is a bit of a sad irony for me this season, out with an unknown meniscal injury in my knee I haven’t been on my skis once this year. So the closest my nipples have been to the fluffy white dandruff of the gods has been tripping getting out of a hot tub landing my bare chest on ice.
However, living in a city with pretty good urban features has provided me with some winter play.

At least two (maybe more) winners will be chosen as part of a random draw from twitter entries. The rest will be chosen from the comments below. Judging will be based on whatever I think deserves a shirt; humor, awesome pictures, stories, promise of fame & fortune etc.

Tweet This Post

Luxury is a slight understatement. I was really stoked to shoot the interior of Holt Renfrew’s new flagship store in Calgary. This masterpiece designed by Janson Goldstein is said to have a $45 Million dollar price tag, definitely not an ‘every day’ interior shoot.

A shoot of this scale is a whole different ball game compared to the residential interiors that I blogged about last. In the last interior I could change the whole lighting in a room by adding a single skrim to bounce or block light. (A skrim is a large piece of white/black fabric suspended by a frame. Mine are 5×7 feet, made of PVC and nylon). Lighting is less controllable in a room ten times the size; you can only minor adjustments without considerable volumes of equipment. Composition also requires a whole new bag of tricks, even a fisheye with a 180 degree view angle won’t capture the amount the human eye is seeing when you step back from the eyepiece. Working with extremely wide angles will start to develop very unnatural looking perspective when looking up or down, photoshop will help correct for these oddities, but pixels can only be stretched so far.

When shooting with a model, or subject the location is a setting or story for the subject’s actions or existence to take place. However when shooting an interior the location is the story and the subject.

So what is a photographer to do? The location is lit, the building is built, the subject is already styled. Simply walk in with an expensive camera hanging around your neck? Go back to the basics; you’ve got a camera and you have control over it’s function and composition.

I drop all my equipment; skrims, tripod, even camera and walk. I close one eye; making myself avoid the way depth will change the way I perceive the room. My viewer is going to see this room on one plane, looking at it with two eyes will present it much differently. I walk back and forth pacing to see how I can rearrange solid objects without touching them, cleaning the visual chaos into simple shapes and presentable objects. Explore space using depth with perspective, repeating objects and familiar objects. Balance and offset objects of different sizes and significance to keep the eye moving and entertained.

As I stood in Holt Renfrew long before your eyes would see the images I was playing Jedi mind tricks with you. I, and any other person who has a camera holds the power to control or even distort your perceptions of anything at all.

I am in control of your mind.

Tweet This Post

Architectural and Design photography is a pleasant polar opposite to shooting action sports like skiing. On one of my most recent ski shoots the temperature must have been below -20 Celsius plus wind. When it’s that cold batteries stop functioning, and they need to be warmed up on location; unfortunately the warmest and best place to heat a battery on your body also happens to be the most uncomfortable. I don’t think I need to go further down that road for you to pick up what i’m saying. I was alternating between freezing the only parts of my body that aren’t already cold and hanging out the side of a parkade 20 feet above the frozen ground to get the angle I was looking for.

Compare a chaotic shoot like that to interior architectural work; indoors, warm, dry, very little risk to my own well being. It’s quite a luxury. That said getting the shot still isn’t a simple or easy matter, especially when you have a bit of photography OCD like myself; making the pictures as close to perfect as you can in camera. Shooting interior design requires many tries, tweaks and adjustments to capture great photographs which really flatters the location.

Tweet This Post