The David Watt Photography Blog

I recently was hired for the challenging and exciting task of flying to several major centres across Canada to photograph executive environmental portraits and employee headshots for a major Canadian engineering firm. For obvious budget considerations the logistics were challenging as on-site scheduling was very tight, I had to work without an assistant and of course, photography gear had to be kept to an absolute minimum. These are a small sampling of the environmental executive portraits I captured. Typically, I only had a only a day or two at each location to capture anywhere up to 18 or so environmental portraits using a single Profoto Octagonal softbox. I met the challenge and had a very satisfied client!

This was one of the more satisfying architectural shoots I had the pleasure of completing for my client, Morguard.

I was pleased to learn that one of my images from the DMD Ltd Toronto design firm photo shoot of the Swissport Aspire Lounge at the Calgary International airport was published in the January/February 2019 issue of Canadian Interiors.

This was a challenging area to shoot in, not only for the monochrome look to the room, but avoiding the powder coating spray.

While meeting with a new client the other day, she related that she almost steered away from my photography services upon first landing on my web site. She had perused my portfolios, checked out my client list and after her initial favorable reaction her inclination was to move on, ‘as probably too expensive for our present budget constraints.’

As a photographer who has been plying his trade full-time in Calgary for over 15 years, it has often crossed my mind that I may be in a unique position to provide relevant and perhaps not readily obvious information to those often finding themselves tasked with seeking a photographer for a photography shoot, be it for corporate head-shots, an industrial on-site shoot, architectural or any of the other plethora of photography needs.

I was recently wading through hundreds of my archived images when I came across an image of a Brocken Spectre surrounded by rings of glory, (my climbing partner with arms extended) taken from the summit ridge of Mt. Slesse many, many years ago. It reminded me of another amazing Brocken Spectre that I had observed a few years ago while my BA flight was descending into Berlin. Our 737 was casting its shadow against the mist which had formed into a magnificent Brocken Spectre surrounded by a circular rainbow. Who saw it?

This was a cool photography session at the Alberta Children’s Hospital, where I was introduced to #Medi, a robot using humanoid technology created by the #RxRobots group to help alleviate a sick child’s pain, assist in the child’s education in managing their health and act as a companion for the child. Very cool, indeed!

As New York ad agencies endeavor to portray a perception of excellence on their web sites, surely they would display outstanding images of their people alongside visually stimulating content relating to their work and company culture?

HDR tone mapping has become increasingly popular amongst photographers as a post-processing technique, where several exposures at different shutter speeds are combined to produce an HDR image, followed by a tone mapping operation.