lyletravisphotography.ca

So I haven’t posted in a month. That is too long to leave you guys hanging. I haven’t been shooting much as I’ve been trying to adapt to this new life in Kingston – which has not been easy thus far. Anyway, I’ve been wanting to start up a little photo project to keep me shooting more and keep productive. Originally it was going to be titled 50/50/50 – 50 portraits in 50 days with a 50mm lens. I’ve changed my mind on the 50 days thing. I’m going to try and complete it in 50 days still, but may not be getting a portrait every single day. I may take two or three in one day, and so on. I will not use two shots of the same person from the same photoshoot – that would be lazy. I will be trying to get a multitude of people instead of using the same people over and over again. I may have a handful of self portraits, as this is something I want to work on doing. Anyway, I took a self portrait yesterday for this reason, along with the fact that I need a self portrait for a name badge at my place of work, Black’s Photography in Kingston. Here is the first shot:

If you haven’t seen the new mainpage (which isn’t finished yet) check it out here: http://www.lyletravisphotography.ca
also, the old site is still up, just not updated yet. It can be seen here: http://lyletravisphotography.ca/flash_site.html
I don’t have the portfolio galleries done yet, but they’ll be up in the next couple of days. Tell me what you think!!

I’m in the process of developing a new portfolio so I can make a new mainpage. At the same time I am mass editing a ton of pictures for people that I have done photoshoots for. After rounding up a ton of pics (there are still some to locate) and editing and ordering and blah blah blah I am exhausted from sitting at a computer screen, so I am taking a break. I thought, however, that I would post a couple shots that I’ve edited for the people I did photoshoots for in the meantime. Here ya go!
Also, Deborah and Alicia, message me with an email address and I can try and send you a few more of these electronically within the next couple days. Feel free to take these ones off my blog.

So begins part two. On Thursday morning I went into the office thinking I would have a bunch of work on my hands. Turns out, I wasn’t really needed until the Rodeo started up again, which was at 1PM. First I went off with a reporter at 10:30 to shoot pictures of a minister at a local church that was celebrating its founders 100th anniversary of being in Grande Prairie. I had recently obtained a job from a local business called Victoria’s Attic. Victoria’s Attic is a lingerie store that a cousin of mine, Lylie Park, works at. They needed group (employee) shot, as well as individual employee photos. This job was to be done the next day, but I knew that they also needed shots advertising a new bra and bikini wear they had in stock, so in my free time I went over to the shop and offered to do the shots for them free of charge. Those shots are now on the Victoria’s Attic website somewhere, as well as the online newsletter sent out, and on their facebook page. I then headed to the Skatepark where I met a kid bmx by himself (which made me wonder where the empty skateparks were when I wanted to learn how to skate) and took a few quick shots of him before heading to the rodeo again.

The Rodeo this time around was much easier to shoot (even though the Nikon I received had dying batteries and there were a ton of different events to shoot, and this was all because A) they presented all names on the scoreboard before, during and after the said person participated in their turn in the event; and B) the media had a media box, nicely located so that when there was events that I probably should not be in with the participants, I still had a very good location to shoot from. That day I shot opening ceremonies, Women’s Barrel Racing, Steer Wrestling, Tie Down Roping, Team Roping, Saddled Bronco Riding, Bareback Bronco Riding, Bull Riding, and Trick Riding. All of which was fairly entertaining. Mostly the trick riding and the Bull riding, because you have to be somewhat unstable, or just much more courageous than I think I could be to do so. Take note that I fully intend on going skydiving within the next year when I have the money saved – and I wouldn’t do what they do for a living. I shot all of those events, (ended up shooting over 1000 pictures to sort through), then went to the office beat up and tired to edit and file – which took a ridiculously long time due to the amount of pictures I had to sort through. Luckily a coworker, Terry, was a reporter at the event and happened to be the Sports Section Editor. He knew what shots he needed. Here are a few shots, action and feature, that I managed to snap during that day at the Rodeo:
My favourite of the bunch is the coffee cup one. The Trick Riding Girls deserve a huge amount of props from anyone who attended the rodeo, in the pictures of them the horses are running full out. On top of that, during a practice very recently one of their teammates was killed performing stunts like these.
The next day I showed up late to the DHT so I could shoot the Victoria’s Attic Employees that morning. The ladies at Victoria’s Attic are great to be around. They are all very funny, outgoing, and can take a joke. All of the above makes photoshoots much easier. On top of that, they are good listeners when it comes to arranging people. All in all it was a very pleasant photo shoot. Many thanks to Lylie and Allison for the opportunity! Here are a couple shots from that shoot:

After that the only thing I really ended up shooting on Friday was the re-opening of the Forbes Museum in Grande Prairie. Again, it doesn’t appear as though I even have these shots on my computer. If I locate them I will toss them up because I liked them. My fellow reporters took me out for Lunch at Tony Roma’s and it quits for my week and my internship. I already miss it – even I wasn’t getting paid.
As promised, my desk, which was taken by the full time summer student by the time I got there on Friday. I gave her a hard time about it, luckily she has a sense of humor.

So my internship is over and I failed as a blogger during the time I spent at the Herald Tribune. As I look through the pictures that I shot over the course of the internship, I consistently realize I am missing a good number of them because of times that the pics just never reached my computer, or any of my equipment. I looked at my blog to see what the last thing I posted about was, and realized how pathetic I have been. Not one real update from work last week. Not even the photo updates I promised. Well, I can sum up my week pretty quickly: “Busy”. Well, busy except for Friday, which was much more relaxed. My awesome coworkers took me out for lunch as well on Friday. I’m going miss them; they were all pretty good to me.
Tuesday I went to a luncheon at Centre 2000 in Grande Prairie to celebrate and kick off the 33rd Annual Grande Prairie Stompede. It was kind of cool to see how important the Stompede was in the Pro Rodeo Circuit. I never realized people came from so far away to attend. Miss Rodeo Canada was there, and apparently was at one time Miss Rodeo Grande Prairie Stompede. To say she wasn’t a good looking girl would be the most bold faced lie anyone has ever spoken since “Mission Accomplished”.
Afterwards I filed the shots, re-shot some portraits I tried to get while at the luncheon after they didn’t turn out (I am not the greatest with a Nikon Camera, let’s be honest). I then hurried off to the Stompede Kickoff Parade and shot that, which some of the shots made front page the next day (multiple shots that day made front page). These, of course, are pictures I don’t seem to have. If you check the Herald Tribune website, they have a photo gallery up of the front-page-photos from every day’s papers, but of course right now that service is down on their website, so I can’t even link you. Here are a couple shots from that day:
The next day the ‘Slack’ events started at the Stompede. The Slack division of the Stompede is where riders who did not register in time, or for whatever reason could not attend the final events get together and perform the usual events in a separate division. That was poorly worded, but I hope you get the idea. It’s like a separate, lower bracket from the official event. Shooting this turned out to be a bit of an ordeal because catching the riders and linking them to the names was far more difficult than it should have been due to the fact that they did not display the names of the riders, and they did not let them take part in their specific event in the order that they said they would (and had recorded). Thankfully the actual Stompede displayed the riders and the times the next day. I met a photographer there who has been shooting rodeos for a number of years editorially and commercially, and got a few tips from him, as well as had a few good talks with the man. I can’t thank him enough for helping figure out where I need to be to get the pictures as I had never attended this rodeo event before. One of the shots from this event, one of a girl from Womens Barrell Racing, made front page, but I liked the Steer Wrestling event better. Let me explain this to you: Cowboys, or pro rodeo attendees, ride a horse after a Steer bovine, which means a Bull that they casterated – so you know they hate humans already, and when they get near them the jump off of the horse at ridiculous speeds and tackle the steer, and then wrestle it to the ground. This is a sport. It is fantastic to watch it, but in the sense of watching Nascar – for the crashes. Here are the shots from that:
I also shot a high school track meet that day, which was hellish as well – trying to figure out which kids had their papers signed so I could take pictures in the first place, then double and triple checking that. Finally I found a couple kids that had the papers signed and shot them and didn’t worry too much about variety because I kept getting conflicting answers about things and figured I better keep it safe.

I will post pics from the week. When I get a bit more time, I’ll tell you how my week went. As of now tho, I’m going to be way too busy for either until Saturday/ Sunday. Sorry for being such a poor blogger.
Signed;
The failed attempt at a blogger – Lyle

So in my last post about my day-to-day life, I ended with me leaving to go shoot cabinet ministers. I did exactly that. I showed up the event in a t-shirt and jeans – which had just recently been sewed up, and those jeans held up by my (or PJ’s) start studded belt, with a Batman belt buckle. I thought I looked good. I waited around forever for the Q&A to start, and of course because it was an event involving government employees it started late. Not only did it start late, it ended at the exact time it was intended to, so the ministers conveniently did not have to answer as many questions. Anywho, I went right in there, noticed everybody else in the room was in a suit or dressed up in some sort of way, I looked at myself, laughed, and continued with my job. Afterwards there was a scrum that I shot, and then I left so I could file and go home. One of my shots made front page.
The next day I went in nice and early, because there was going to be another story done on these ministers and they wanted me to go a long with a reporter to cover it. I get to the office to find out that they don’t actually need a story done because all the event was going to be was the ministers going a local elementary to have a walk around of the school. They sent me out to cover it anyway. .
I then headed out to the “Burghers of Calais” event to shoot that for the paper, where again I was found completely underdressed, but got to enjoy a $500 burger for free. Click the link above to check out that post. I then went feature hunting, filed and went home. This is where hell broke loose.
I slept in Wednesday morning due to my alarm clock having a day where it will flash at me telling me it’s time to wake up, but for some reason forget to make sound. It periodically does this and I am yet to figure out why. I got dressed in a hurry, because I had an early morning shoot and quickly drove to the office, hoping to be able to go home early to shower. I also had to skip out on a Timmy’s run due to Grande Prairie’s addiction. I will take a picture of the lineups Tim Horton’s get here. It’s absolutely ridiculous. I get into the office in fairly rough shape and Fred Rinne, the managing editor calls me into his office to tell me two things: A) the city editor, and my supervisor, helping hand and advisor thus far had to leave to go to Vancouver for about a week and a half (the remainder of my internship) due to a death in the family. And B) that the pictures I filed the day before had no cutline information on them (even though I had spent a ridiculous amount of time doing this the night before). The Paper was about to be sent off to the printers, so he got one cutline from me and asked me to figure out what went wrong. I didn’t have time for this, as I needed to get coffee into me and get in a car with fellow reporter Remo and go to a citizenship ceremony. I got coffee from the Mac’s next door, and then took off to GPRC to attend this ceremony. As I got there I realized I was going to have to chug some of my coffee, because the event was held in a theater and no beverages were allowed. I drank as much as I could, and sadly put my coffee down and went into the ceremony. I thought that the ceremony was going to be short, with few people, and an easy photo-op. I was wrong; there were 123 new citizens here. And they called there name as they were to come on stage. The lineup made it impossible to figure out who was who, let alone the fact that the Judge calling the names had a very thick accent and I couldn’t understand her to begin with. I snapped what I could, found who I could afterwards for names, and then went on my way. This shot:
made front page. They inlayed another shot from the event in the picture, this one:
I showed Remo the best shot from the event that in my opinion was the best. I told him that it wouldn’t be used, even though it should – and that this bothered me a bit. I was right. This is the shot I was talking about:
The event ran past 11:30, which is when I was scheduled to be at two different events at two very different parts of the city. This frustrated the hell out of me, but I managed to get to both, a protest against privatization of the healthcare industry, and a HIV awareness BBQ. There wasn’t much to shoot at the awareness BBQ as I showed up too late, but I still got a shot that ran.
I got back and filed the shots, and was then sent out by Fred to get sports art. I shot a tennis match at a local park, and a game of horse in the same area. I get back to find out that yet again the filing problem was happening, and so I filed the shots I took and tried to figure out why the captions were being dropped. After about two hours of sitting at the filing computer and trying different things I finally figured out how to fix a glitch that in the history of the paper they couldn’t figure out. I filed all my shots from the last couple days all over again and fixed the problem. I’m a hero. I know. I spent 11 hours at the paper that day.
Thursday rolled around I went in and had one event to shoot, and they wanted me to get features after that. I went to the event and waited for a half hour to realize that the event wasn’t going to happen and the organizers didn’t have the decency to call the paper and tell us that they cancelled due to weather. (Oh, it was raining by the way, and the event was for fitness day or something). So I searched for features instead. There wasn’t much because the rain was off and on, enough to keep people off the streets, but not enough to make some cool weather shots. I finally found a couple reflections and whatnot, shot them, filed them, and went home to enjoy my long weekend. (I took Friday off to shoot the grad pics, posted here) The only shots to be published from Thursday’s disappointing photo-shoots were these:

I apoligize for the slacking on the posts. I will attempt to do better this week. Kelly Brooks, a photographer you should check out if you don’t know her: http://kellybrooks.tumblr.com/ keeps calling me out on how much I slacked this week. Well, here is a shout out to you to make up for it. If I can figure out how to, I am adding a list of links to other photographers I know whom I think you should check out, like Kelly above, Caleb Kerr, and others.
Anyway, have a good day, and if you actually read all this: I’m impressed.

I received an email after shooting an event, called the Burghers of Calais. A person from the organizers of this fundraiser wanted to see some of the shots and possibly get copies, and I promised I would put some up on my blog. I went to retrieve these shots and realized I only had a few on my computer, again, I shot with two cameras at this event and some of the shots didn’t make it to my computer. None the less I retrieved some, and will include them in the post, but first I want to explain this fundraiser. Essentially people bought tickets to attend a lunch. The lunch included burgers from the Keg, Salad, and a variety of beverages, along with pie for desert. Seems pretty typical, no? Well there is a catch. A big catch I might add. The tickets had to be bought in advance, and the tickets were somewhat costly. A member giving a speech at the event said “This will be the most expensive burger you eat all year,” and I hope to god that he was right. Those burgers that everyone was eating, and I might add I got for free, cost everyone there $500. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS FOR A SIMPLE MEAL. That is dedication to your community if you attend. The lunch raised $17000. The organization has raised 3.7 million already for the community since its birth in ‘96. That is really cool. Anyway, without further ado, the three pictures I could salvage.

I have three posts going up by the end of tomorrow. This is the first. I intended on getting all of this done sooner, but sometimes life doesn’t give you the laid back, sit and type out a blog kind of day you figured. Especially when your chasing down false fire alarms, attending community events, a cousin’s daughter’s tenth birthday dinner, filing photos, and editing graduation pictures. I was supposed to shoot something tomorrow, but I have not heard back from this potential client, and therefore assume its called off, so tomorrow will be an editing-all-day-and-posting-on-my-blog-holy-hell-that’s-alot-of-dashes-Lyle.
I will try to keep the post about my week at the paper brief, but considering I missed 4 days worth of work, it may be long. Get used to it, when I start typing these out I start thoroughly enjoying myself. Anywho, on Friday….yesterday… I went to Spirit River to shoot a few students pre-grad photos. 3 families worth of ‘em. I used my mother and whomever else was willing to spare their arm (thank you Michelle) as a reflector-turned-into-softbox holder, and CBL (Carbon Based Lightstand…copyright Adam Gagnon) and shot away at two locations. It snowed during all of this, by the way. SNOWED. It turned into a blizzard on the way back. Mother Nature needs to give her head a shake. Anyway, here are a few of the finished edits I’ve done of those shoots: