Portrait from the Plateau — Julien Smith

I took this shot of my friend and fel­low podcaster/social media expert Julien Smith a few weeks ago in Parc Lafontaine in Mon­treal. Julien needed some promo shots and so we talked about what he wanted and took a vari­ety of shots in the ‘good light’. As I do with all my shoots, after giv­ing the client what they request, I always try a few shots of what I think ‘works’ for their look and per­son­al­ity even though it might not be their first instinct. Although there were many excel­lent shots from this shoot, this shot is my fave of the lot. I like this shot because Julien’s pose is very casual and the pose in the set­ting which I scouted before­hand :) has a teacher/guru like feel, which for me is in keep­ing with how I see Julien.

Portrait of Julien Smith

Por­trait of Julien Smith

On a tech­ni­cal note, Julien has wicked good eyes that reflect a lot of light so my fill flash was set to minus 3 stops lower than the ambi­ent light. The ISO was 400 shot at F2.8 at 1/250.

Podcamp Toronto — Kudos to Karma



In an effort to become a bet­ter pod­caster and to make friends with the pod­cast­ing com­mu­nity, I attended Pod­Camp Toronto 2007 this week­end at the Rogers Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Cen­tre at Ryer­son Uni­ver­sity.

What a blast. What an amaz­ing‚com­mu­nity!

The shar­ing that went on was so unbe­liev­able that at any point dur­ing the weekend‚somebody could have eas­ily busted out a gui­tar and started singing Kum­baya! One of the biggest things we learned is that giv­ing, giv­ing giv­ing is the key to build­ing the strongest pod­cast­ing com­mu­nity pos­si­ble. When every­body gives — every­body receives.‚And give peo­ple did. Here are just some of the peo­ple that helped me this week­end. I apol­o­gize in advance if I left any­body out.‚ Mitch Joel — always an amaz­ing moti­va­tor, Julien Smith‚- great social net­work­ing speaker, Chris Penn — who I now refer to as ‘The Sage’, Mark Ble­vis, Bob Goyetche, Bryan Per­son, Jay Moohah, Hugh McGuire, Casey McK­in­non and Rudy Jahchan, Chris Bro­gan, Mike Moon, Vergel Evans, Brent Mor­ris, Michael Baily,‚Mark Juliano, Steve Say­lor, Peter O’Connell, Donna Papa­costa, Leesa Barnes, Jeff Per­sch‚and oth­ers that I will add in because I may have inad­ver­tently for­got­ten them.

Although I am rel­a­tively new to pod­cast­ing, I’d like to carry on‚the spirit‚of giv­ing. So this is an open invi­ta­tion to share the knowl­edge that I have. I know a bit about pod­cast­ing and I know a lot about pho­tog­ra­phy and a lot about pets. If any­one has any ques­tions about these sub­jects, it would be my plea­sure to help you if I can. Feel free to email me at‚photography.ca (a t) gmail (dot) com for any pho­tog­ra­phy ques­tions or pod­cast­ing ques­tions. Feel free to email me at pets.ca (a t) gmail (dot) com for any pet related ques­tions. If I can help — I will, and I’ll try to answer quickly as well. If I can’t help you, I can prob­a­bly refer you to some­one who can.