Photo's by Greg Kureluk

Almost two months after getting home from our wedding, I’m now just getting to the 2000+ photos I took in Paris.  As I’ve been sorting I recalled something that our wedding photographer said, “Black and white is the only way to shoot Paris”.  I couldn’t agree more. (Execpt for the last picture, this was taken at about 6:30am from our hotel room in the St. Germain district just as the sun was rising - Colour was the only option). 

Earlier this year in February just before our wedding in Paris, I joined Carole for a few days in London while she was taking a course at the VS Academy.  The weather was a bit on the lackluckster side with mostly grey skies and a chilly wind.  During the day I found myself spending much of my time enjoying a couple of books and the endless coffee shops in London.  I had hoped to really hit the city hard and take a bazzillion photos but I just wasn’t feeling it.  Nevertheless, I was able to capture a few shots that turned out.

I consider myself lucky that every so often my job allows me to get on plane and escape the hum-drum of everyday life.  This past week our company launched a brand new testing platform (academic.yardsticksoftware.com) designed for teachers at a trade show in NYC.  I travelled with my co-worker Kyle Fox who is a good pal and one of the two founders of MyFotoJournal.com.  Although the trade show kept us busy for most of the trip we did have one day where we got to explore the city for a solid 14 hours.  Some of the highlights of our day were Battery Park, Ms. Liberty, Wall Street, NYSE, Soho, Chelsea Market, Central Park, Grand Central Station, Little Italy, Madison Avenue, Times Square, meeting Danny Devito and of course the famous Apple Store.

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 Greg Kureluk & 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

Josee Manning - Salon Director

 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.