Photo's by Greg Kureluk

I have more camera gear than I know what to do with and yet sometimes, the cheap camera in the iPhone is the most fun.

On June 1st my fiance Carole Lemire, with the help of partners Sandy Nault & Josee Manning opened an amazing hair salon in South Edmonton called Soho Master Hair Stylists.  Here are a few photo’s taken for the salon website. (sohohair.ca)

Carole Lemire - Stylist

Sandy Nault - Stylist

Josee Manning - Salon Director

The Soho Team

 I bet you didn’t know Carole could do this…

I’m sure someone could come up with a couple of really funny speech bubbles for this photo.

Slide Show

I’ve had my FJ blog for close to two months now and with the recent official FJ launch, I figured it was time to give props.  So tonight I’ve decided to award MyFotoJournal.com a gold medal for being a truly first-class blog platform that was purpose built for photographers.

Why is MyFotoJournal.com a gold medal winner?

1. Quick and simple setup – I’m not a tech wizard and I had my blog setup in quite literally 15 minutes flat.
2. Templates - FJ has an awesome selection of blog templates.  Most awesome of all is the template control panel.  So easy to change the look and feel. 
3. Custom domain – Configuring a custom domain was a cinch.
4. Large image display/Load time – The first time I saw my photo’s on my FJ blog I was blown away at their size.  In the past, I’ve really only seen my images on sites like Picasa, Flicker, etc. It makes such a difference to see them online in high res.  As well, I think the FJ servers must run on unicorn sweat because FJ blogs are lightning fast.  No waiting for photo’s to load.
5. UI – I dare you to find another blog software that has a sexier user interface.
6. Uploading images is a snap – FJ is built for photographers by photographers which means that the photo’s are the priority.  Add photo’s first and text content second.  It’s the small things that make a difference.
7. Community – I’m a hobby photographer and I don’t have customers or even a audience that regularly visits my blog.  If I was a using a typical blog app, I simply wouldn’t have traffic to my blog nor would I ever receive comments.  With FJ everyone gets a bit of time in the spotlight on the homepage and comments are a regular occurrence.
   
8. Support – FJ is dead easy to use, but if you do have questions the support response time is wicked fast.
9. Price – FJ is a bargain.  I challenge anyone to try and built a feature rich blog from scratch for less than $80/year.  $80 is a steal of a deal.
10. SEO - Not sure how FJ does it, but Google and every other search engine I can think of has a habit of indexing my FJ blog within seconds of posting.  Also, Google Analytics is a snap to install.
    
11. Co-founders – Awesome guys with big plans.  FJ is going places.

It seems like clockwork, every 6 months or so an amazing opportunity pops up that has something to do with the company I work for, Yardstick Software.  Today was absolutely one of those days.  At lunch time word spread around our office that the Russian built Antonov 225 was going to be landing at YEG around 4:00pm.  Although I’m not an avid “plane guy”, the thought of seeing the largest plane in the world first hand did sound fun.  After much deliberation, a few of us in the office decided to head out to Leduc with hopes of getting a glimpse of this mammoth beast pass overhead.  To make a long story short, in our preparation for hunting down the best viewing location, I sent an email to a friend with connections.  As it turns out, not only did we see the plane close up, but we also got inside the belly of the plane to meet the pilot and tour the cockpit.  Today was no doubt an awesome once in a lifetime event!

To view a great video taken by Duncan Wojtaszek of the Antonov coming into YEG click here.

Baby Quade - I see a future NHL’er in those eyes.  How about you?

Today was a big day at my brother and sister-in-laws house.  At 3:07pm, the stork dropped off a brand new Chinese Crested puppy. Congrats Jeff and Liz!

Over the past the year, I’ve spent more money on camera gear than I care to really think about.  As well, I’m also hooked on buying the $15 imported photography magazines at Chapters.  These magazines often have awesome tutorials on tweaking images using popular photo editing software.  The pictures below are my attempts at trying to squeeze some value out of these over priced magazines with the help of a few great Photoshop tutorials.

On Saturday night my good pal Don turned 50 and his wife had a small get together at the Petroleum Club downtown.  It was a great opportunity to practice taking photo’s in a relatively dark room full of people.  If there is one subject I find the most difficult to shoot, it’s people.  In any event, out of a 100+ shots I was able to nail a few that I was proud of.  Don is a huge Elvis fan hence the one of a kind Elvis birthday cake.

On what was supposed to be a relaxing day prior to the start of a three day trade show and the arrival of four team members from our office, I was able to snap these pictures literally hours before one of DC’s biggest blizzards in recorded history.  As the story goes, the rest of our office was not able to make it into DC that day due to airport closures and our trade show was cancelled at about 4pm that afternoon.  Lucky for me, I was able to visit some of the monuments before the blizzard arrived.  Due to the all-white monuments and the mountains of snow from a blizzard a couple of days prior, I struggled to take decent exposures that were not completely blown-out. (hence the black and white’s below.)

Some highlights of a recent trip filled with snow and cancelled flights to NYC.  Not only did I get to try out my new Canon 7D but I also got enaged!  All in all it was a very memorable trip.