Alain Saffel: photography

Photography is one of my favourite hobbies, when I actually have the time to do it. During my internship this summer I was able to do a lot of photographic work. I have always been a pretty good photographer but I really improved my skills this summer. I had never really done any sports photography and found that I enjoyed it a lot. One of the big challenges in sports photography is timing. I found that within the first half-dozen shots I could find the right timing.

Taking pictures of kids is always tough (they never sit still!) but I've had lots of practice with my own. I liked taking pictures of kids, especially if I was doing a streeter of some sort. Kids always seem to want to have their picture taken whereas adults often do not. I always found it easier to do a streeter where I hid the camera. If I had it out, my success rate at getting people to talk to me was usually a lot lower.

As part of the Journalism program at U.C.C. we are required to take a photography course. The main focus of the course was black and white photography using film. I really enjoyed the course. I love black and white photos. Working in the darkroom was great too. I can now appreciate the amount of work that was involved in developing and printing the old fashioned way. In the future I plan on setting up a darkroom in my home to experiment more with black and white photography.
 
News photos
 
I got called out early one Friday morning to cover this accident that had shut down the highway. I have never seen an accident like this before and have never been as close to an accident as I was to this one. I ended up selling one of the photos to the Vancouver Sun, and it was published on the front of the Westcoast section (B1) on a Saturday.
 
On Monday morning after I covered the big truck accident, I got called out to cover a landslide that blocked the Chilcotin River. It had cleared itself the night before, but I walked down into the slide area and took a lot of pictures. The trip out took 45 minutes and I spent a couple of hours taking photos and doing interviews in the area. I had to rush back to the office to do more interviews and finish the story for deadline. I think it was one of my best written and most interesting stories that I did all summer. My last week at the Tribune was busy and eventful.
 
   

The Gibraltar Mine is a large open pit mine about 65 kilometres northeast of Williams Lake. It's a major employer in the area and has been shut down for about five years. It has reopened amid controversy. The mine entered into a joint venture with Ledcor and has attempted to get rid of the existing union, the CAW. I covered the story extensively during the summer. I went out to the mine and interviewed the mine manager and took a tour of the mine site. It was very interesting and I got a lot of good photos.

The last photo on the right shows a paving crew in Williams Lake. The story was rather mundane so I tried to get a good photo to make it a little more interesting.
Sports photos
It had been a while since I'd been to the Williams Lake Stampede, but I got to see it from quite a different angle this time. The bulls are quite unpredictable as to where they'll go and finding a good angle can be tough. Next time I'll be ahead of the game when I'm taking pictures.
 
 

One of my favourite sports photos of the summer is the armwrestling one above left. I managed to find a spot above the action and captured some really interesting photos. I think that this one is quite dynamic. The fun part of taking the baseball photos is trying to get the ball in the shot. My task was made easier with the digital camera that I was using. I could review each photo to see how I had done. It didn't take me long to get the timing down.

I also enjoyed getting out to the motocross track. I was lucky that it was such a nice day out and with the sun at my back, the dust formed a nice background for the photos.
Hobby photos
I have always enjoyed taking pictures of flowers. If I can get in close and do a closeup/macro photo, even better. The last photo on the right is one that I modified in Photoshop. The effect makes it look like a woodcut.
 

Wandering around taking pictures is a lot of fun. It's not always fun for the people who are walking around with you. I will take lots of pictures of almost anything. Digital is nice that way because you can take a lot and are only limited by the size of your memory card. I never get rid of any photos either. I keep them all. You never know what you're going to have there.

I have always liked crows. I think that they're hilarious birds.. I once stood on a street corner in Vancouver just watching a crow walk across the street...on a powerline. He decided just to walk and not fly. I may have been the only person who noticed.

Sunsets are another favourite of mine for photos. Williams Lake always seems to have the right conditions for spectacular sunsets. I could do a whole website just with sunset photos.

The photo on the far right is an interesting one. I was driving around one day and saw this dustdevil. You can see the funnel quite clearly in this photo. I chased it down the alley but wasn't able to get any more good photos before it dissipated.