carlo obillos photography

Shawn has had a long-time love of Jones Soda. It's easy to understand: the always-changing, consumer submitted labels, the off-beat flavours, the revealingly clear bottles...

So when it was time to find cool giveaways for their wedding, the choice for he and Ana was easy- especially when Jones will put your picture and message on their pop for a personalized sugar rush. They already had a shot that they liked (polaroid!) but they needed it digified, so i shot it clipped to a string in my office. The bulldog beside it is also a favourite of theirs-a large version is hanging in their dining room.

Custom Jones Soda labels

I've been working on a project for Grey County Tourism for a couple of weeks now-they are putting together a waterfalls tour brochure and needed some shots. So I ventured out to Inglis Falls, Jones Falls, Walters Falls, Eugenia Falls, and Indian Falls with some willing folk. Time was tight, so I didn't get to shoot with everyone who expressed interest, but I'm hoping to get together with those people a little later. The folder of finals ended up containing almost 200 shots, but here are a few of my favourites.

Waterfalls of Grey County

Carolyn and Andrew had their wedding date set well in advance, had everything ready to go when a little Tragically Hip concert was scheduled for the same day, right across the street! It might have been a problem for some people, but these guys kept on trucking and had a great day. I couldn't even hear the music!

Everyone got ready at the Waterview resort in Wiarton. We headed into Owen Sound for the ceremony (a last minute venue switch had me waiting at the wrong church for a couple of minutes), then back to Spirit Rock conservation area for more shots. The night ended with speeches, a great meal, and fireworks outside!

Carolyn and Andrew's wedding

Shannon and Colin dodged a weather bullet yesterday! Despite pessimistic forecasts and ominous clouds, not a drop of rain fell. I got wet anyway, as I spent a decent amount of time shooting from the middle of a river!

River antics aside, here are a few of my very, very, early favourites. Hope you like them!

Shannon and Colin's Wedding-Sneak Peaks

Clare is a multitalented lady with a ton of energy and good looks to boot. Dream model! She teaches yoga and also works as a choreographer, and needed photographs that showed her in both of her roles (not necessarily at the same time).

The yoga shots were a breeze to shoot- so many poses are so distinctive in their form. Making dramatic images was no problem at all.







Making images for choreography were harder to make at first. We tried searching for poses that suggest movement through the shape of the body, and in this, we did find some success. The real shooting began when we started moving. Clare started jumping, and the fun level in the room began bouncing with her. Because we were using flashes along with fast shutter speeds and small apertures, I was able to keep everything looking really sharp and contrasty.








Later, I slowed down the shutter speeds (around 1 second), and let Clare move while the shutter stayed open. The flashes froze some of the action, but the rest was mooshed into a creamy, smooth blur that really emphasizes the motion we were trying to communicate.




Throughout the shoot, I used mostly wide lenses- a 17-35 f2.8 and a 10-22 f3.5-?. The room was big (but not huge) and I needed wide lenses to get full length shots. The side benefit is the perspective stretching capabilities- if you get it right, the viewer can get sucked right into the image.

Yoga, Headshots, and Choreography Photos with Clare

Larissa and Jeff had a pretty tight schedule on the weekend we took these shots, and the only time we could go shooting was at 3 o'clock or so- not ideal in terms of quality of light. A little lighting help is all we needed.






Here is the light setup from behind. One stand holds 2 vivitar 285 flashes, both at full power. The other holds just one, also at full power. A lot of flash was necessary to balance the very bright sunlight, and because I was using a polarizing filter, which darkens the scene quite a bit as well.

Family Shoot: Larissa ,Jeff, and Sophia

It isn't the easiest thing to get a nice shot of fireworks, but there are a couple of tricks I used tonight, for Canada day:

Try to get some other things in the frame. Giving the viewer some context lends the image a lot more impact. Since fireworks happen at night, you'll almost certainly need a tripod and a slow shutter speed.

I set my camera on manual, with a long shutter speed (20 seconds, maybe), and an aperture that a)gave decent depth of field and b)yielded an appropriate (darkish) overall exposure.

In these shots, I held a black card (alright, it was my son's blankie) in front of the lens, and only took it away when the blast had spread itself out nicely. If you let the whole blast show, you'll end up with an indistinct, blurry mess instead of a defined, colourful trails.


Try to get the early pops. Each explosion leaves some smoke behind, and this shows up in images taken later on. Wind can help alleviate this problem.

Photographing fireworks