Am I a photographer yet?

I've finished off another photo class, this time I took one on architectural photography. (The last course I took was Photography 101). This class was pretty interesting and I took it for the reason that it's something I wouldn't likely be learning on my own or by my assisting Ewout for Open Photography.

Oh, did I not mention that I'm an assistant? It's been awesome!! Weddings, schools, portraits, the odd product shot... I get to learn a lot through Ewout, but nothing really architectural-y. Which brings us back to this class.

I don't know if I'm going to take another class just yet, but it's been pretty interesting so far. The first class was pretty general (not a whole lot I didn't particularly know already, to be honest), but the teacher was great at clarifying things I hadn't quite got a complete grasp on.

This Friday I'll be shooting another wedding with Ewout, and I'm pretty pumped. I hope to share a few photos soon from some of the other shoots I've been on, but until then, I'll have to bore you with some pictures of some of my past assignments.

This is at Hamilton City Hall, for my first assignment in architectural. I used to think it was quite an ugly building, and I haven't completely changed my mind. But it does have some neat features! Like reflecty glass!

For the second assignment, we went to Christ's Church Cathedral on James St N (If you've gone to any of the Art Crawls, you've possibly gone into this church). I had to pick just two photos, and this was one!

This was the other photo I picked. I thought it was kinda fun! One set of organ pipes on one side with the stained glass and another of the same reflected in the curved mirror. Plus one tiny speaker that I assume no one can hear while the organist is pumping out the tunes...

Speaking of organ pipes... This is actually from a Roots conference of the past. I had managed to sneak up top behind the organ and got a cool shot of the Root-ers!

Ch-ch-changes

Given the two year gap in updates, this has given me an opportunity to look over the past couple years on the changes that have happened. What changes, you ask? Well,it just so happens I've got a whole blog just about that! Read on!

Marital status: Changed! I left Nigeria 'single', got engaged then married! I plan on having a post about the proposal later.

Address: After getting married, we thought we should get our own place. We're currently living down the 'mountain' in Hamilton in an apartment and loving it!

Job: I'm working at a trenching company. A few weeks ago I also became a part-time photography assistant, which has been awesome. (More on this in later posts).

Education: I took a intro to photography course at Mohawk and will be taking an architectural photography course in a couple weeks. I'll post some photos from both classes later.

Travel: Julia and I went to St Louis for Urbana in December 2009, Montreal, Quebec City and Mt Tremblant for our Honeymoon in June 2010, Alberta last Winter and California this past June. I'll have a whole post about California sometime, it deserves it's own.

The view of Yosemite Valley in California. Go here.

Camera: Apart from the night courses and being an occasional assistant, I got a new camera this year. My first digital SLR! It's a Canon T3i and bought a 28-55 and a 55-250 lens to go with it. It's awesome.

Hamilton love: I spent my youth in Burlington looking down my nose at Hamilton (especially down the 'mountain'). But fell in love with the area around Locke St and the love has been spreading block by block.

Digital foolishness: I kept all my photos on a single hard drive. No other backup. I'm sure you can see where this is going. It knocked over and I lost every single photo I'd ever taken since I owned a digital camera with no hope in recovering them. Don't do what I did, keep more than one copy! That and print more often. Now there are thousands of photos I will never see again, including most from my first trip to Nigeria and my time in Europe. Fortunately, the photos from our Honeymoon were transferred onto Julia's laptop, so those were saved, hooray!

Revival

The last time I wrote a blog post was almost two years ago and I was about to leave Nigeria. (In case you only new me through this blog, I'll end the two-year long suspense: I made it home!) A couple things have changed since December 2009. I got married, for one.

I won't bore you with all the small changes now (saving that for later), but I'm hoping to revive this blog to post not just changes in my life, but more photos, updates, revelations, musings or just whatever strikes my fancy! And since I'm no longer living in Nigeria, I'm sure I'll have a harder time keeping an audience! (Who wants to read a blog about some 20-something living in Hamilton anyway??)

Getting this blog going again is really more for me than anyone else. It's been so long since it's been updated that I'd be surprised if anyone notices in the first place. Except for anyone who happened to subscribe during my interesting Africa days - they probably forgot about subscribing and will be surprised too. I'm hoping to use this blog to stretch my creative muscles as well as push myself to keep writing, reading, searching and photographing. Since I've always enjoyed writing, this'll give me a push to keep on it.

We'll see how long I can keep it up!

I plan on sharing a photo with every post too. Biting off more than I can chew?