Joshua Halfkenny

Some shots from todays shoot of a Lamborghini Gallardo

Haven’t posted in a while, sorry everyone :(

I took this self portrait a few months ago.

I’m finding it fitting for a blog post, due to with how frustrated I’ve become with unreliable people. Tons of ideas, but no people to work with. Not that no one is offering up to be part of the photos, it’s the fact that when time comes to shoot, suddenly other plans have spring up, and then there goes the shoot and my day. I’ve found it mind boggling how many times this has happened so far. One person was so bold to even approach ME for some photos, then tell me they didn’t bother calling me because they went with another photographer. I wasn’t even charging for the persons portraits.

How do you cope with situations like this?

Only if we could just up and fly off to see new things.

These images are all pretty old to me and my flickr viewers, but they should be new to you! These are all people I’ve met in my time as a “photographer”

Yes, I recognize that the some of these people are either homeless or rough looking, and that’s seen as being trite by today’s standards. Though It doesn’t really matter to me because I like to talk and listen to these people, so that others may possibly see these photos as just a portrait of a person.

Kevin:

This is Kevin. I met him in 2008 when he was having trouble getting his shopping cart down some stairs. He asked a friend of mine and I to help him, so we walked on over. He thanked us and then introduced himself as Kevin of “Kevin’s happy window washing service”, and asked if we’d like to take a few pictures of him. I can’t quite recall how long he had been doing this at that point in time, but it was nice to see it wasn’t long enough to rob him of his upbeat and personable character.

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Ras Bagga:

It took me quite a while to muster up the courage to talk to this guy. He seemed to be just getting off from work, and usually people don’t really want to be disturbed by a guy with a camera after a hard days work, haha. Things seemed to be going in my favor because he got off at the same train station that I was. I finally told myself that I wont get the shot unless I just go ahead and do it, so I stopped him and asked him if I could take his portrait, and to my surprise he said yeah. I quickly pulled out my camera and snapped a few photos, and showed him. He said he liked them and then we parted ways. When I got home and uploaded to my Facebook I quickly learned that he was a local Reggae artist, and that his stage name was Ras Bagga.

If anyone would like to hear his music it can be found here www.myspace.com/rasbagga. Forgive me I’m not sure how to link url’s

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George:

This is George. He’s a long time friend of my mothers, and I’ve knew him since I was a kid, as he used to babysit me time to time. He used to do a ton of Martial Arts before his epilepsy took hold, and from what I hear from other people he was quite good. He has had his ups and downs dealing with it, but for the most part he’s pretty self controlled. This was taken while he was living with us in 2008.

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Rob:

Rob is a local street vendor here in Calgary for a CUPS run program called “Street Talk”. If I remember correctly Street Talk is a program that CUPS Community Health Center runs in order to help people gain the skill set to get off the street. People get these papers for a donation from these vendors who pay .60 cents a copy. So don’t think they just get these things for free. Each paper is marked with their name and vendor # should a problem ever arise.

Rob had his own column in the paper called “Robs Corner” where he would put his thoughts, and ask the kinds of questions that you would have to think about. This photo came about after he stopped a friend of mine to tell us about the paper. We thought it was pretty cool, and we bought an issue from him for about 3 dollars each. Before we left he asked if we would like to take a portrait of him.

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Finally we have

Avril:

This is my mother.

With out her I wouldn’t be where I am now. For those of you who may come to enjoy my blog, you can thank her.

Yes, this blog post and the last are pretty much one after the next…but I didn’t think they should have been in one post.

These came about after seeing an “Egg” challenge on a photo contest site.

We set out to get some sharpies, construction paper, eggs, and toy guys. I think we spent the better part of two hours coloring. Yeah, I know, a long time, but I fogot to grab fat sharpies in the same colours as the thin ones. Then we set off to the good ol downtown calgary. Originally the idea was to have the eggs on pavement, but we stumbled accross this little section with dirt. I liked it better so we set up shop and shot.

This was the set up

And these were the shots.

This one was taken with the diffuser removed. branches fell on the eggs…I think I liked this one the best.

And egg brain goo all over.

Security guards are mean and bitter.

I was walking around with a friend the other day because it was warm and sunny out…or so we thought. When we got downtown we found the air suddenly got cold, so we decided to cut through a few buildings using the +15. At the end of one of the walkways that connects the buildings I decided to snap a photo because I thought the light looked quite nice. I took my picture, and thought nothing of it at the time. Dave suggested that we go back outside, so we hit up the elevator to go down to the main floor.  As the door opened and we walked out, we were met by a security guard who began to question us as if we were going to blow up the building. Now, I understand these people are just trying to do their jobs, but to be rude about it is a completely different thing. The way this woman was questioning us made it seem as it was a sin to even own a camera.

I tried to explain that we weren’t taking pictures of any department stores, or people inside the place, and all I wanted was a picture of the inside of the one +15 walkway. She immediately went off about how she had video of us taking pictures in areas we weren’t supposed to and etc.. I lashed back by turning my camera around to show her the screen and cycled through the two photos I had taken for the day and asked her to tell me how the walkway looked like the things she said we shot pictures of. She had no response, so my buddy and I turned around and left the building.

This is the photo that caused so much trouble.

First off I’d like to apologize for not posting as much as I planned to. It has been quite a while since my last blog post.

Things in my personal life kind of sprung up, and I haven’t had the shooting time I thought I was gonna have. BUT! That’s cleared, and here I am now.

Just recently a friend of mine and I got together with two awesome ladies for a photo shoot. They’re a lot of fun, and they have great energy. We have shot with them before on a “Final Fantasy” themed shoot, where they dressed up as characters from the series. This time, they were dressed a little more regular.

We used a few locations, though I wasn’t really into the first two locations so my friend Dave shot one model at a time, while I had a couple nice conversations with the other. Soon we got to the makeshift studio that had been set up, for some indoor shots.

Here is part of the makeshift studio


Some of my friends weird Manfrotto tubes, holding a single vivitar flash. Flash was shot through the diffusing panel of my 46” reflector to soften the light. We had a roll of dark backdrop paper for the background. Cheap, but I think it was effective.

Here are a few sample shots…I will update this blog post with more pictures after.

This is Vanessa,

This is Tali

Oh and one more thing. My friend had a little mini car jack in his garage, so I had the idea of making an image to poke fun at his canon. The plan was to call it unreliable…Unfortunately they 40D is a great camera haha.

This is my first time as a user of a blogging site, though I have read many blogs on various sites.

I used to do a lot of street photography, and naturally I met a lot of interesting characters. I would normally use a photo sharing site to display the photos and share the tales, but it seems those users aren’t interested in the stories.

The opportunity to create this blog presented itself to me, and I was lucky enough to take advantage of it. So here I am. Using this as an outlet to log my travels around my city, and to tell about the people I meet, I’ve decided to dust off my camera and head out once again.

I will also be using this to post my portraiture sessions and my automotive photography.

I look forward to sharing with this community, as well as reading what the users of this site have going on in their worlds.