Lambton Photo Competition

As promised, this week we will post the results of the Lambton College Digital Photography Competition. All first year students in the program were eligible to enter, and all did, presenting their best photos in the four categories of Nature, Portrait, Commercial and Unclassified. The scores from each category were totalled to produce an overall award.

The competition was judged by a panel of professional photographers from Toronto.

The overall award winner was Spencer Drake, who won the Geri Freeborn Memorial Award, this was a plaque and a $200 scholarship towards tuition to year 2. He narrowly edged out Kaitlyn Eastman, who won a $100 Gift Certificate from Henry's Photo in London, and a Henry's tripod. Fera Kennedy took the third place prize of a $100 Gift basket from Paddy Flaherty's, site of the awards presentation.

In the Nature Category, Jeff McCoy won for his photo of a hawk. The prize was a $15 gift certificate from Vistek, and a $25 gift certificate from Toronto Image Works.

In the Portrait Category Kaitlyn Eastman won a $15 gift certificate from Vistek, and a $25 gift certificate from Toronto Image Works.

In the Commercial Category Spencer Drake won  a $15 gift certificate from Vistek, and a $25 gift certificate from Toronto Image Works.

In the Unclassified Category Angela Smolders won a $15 gift certificate from Vistek, and a $25 gift certificate from Toronto Image Works.

We look forward to next April, when the awards will add another category with both first and second year competitions.

Lambton Students Win at Local Competition

Things at Lambton have slowed down a bit over the past few weeks, now that the students have (mostly) successfully completed their first year of studies. The faculty are hard at work producing materials for the second year of the program, as well as getting ready for the new group of first year students coming in this September. 

We have a few items to announce this week. For the first time Lambton students joined those from Fanshawe’s much larger program at the Mary Webb’s Fourth Annual Year-end Exhibition at the Mary Webb Centre in Highgate (near London). We were surprised to discover that two of our first year students won prized. Ann Marie D’Hondt  won the first place Mary Webb Prize, and $75 for her photo (above), while Sarah Di Donato won an honourable mention for the photo below.

Next week we will post the results of Lambton’s own internal competition.

VIP Day

On March 13, 2013 Lambton College hosted their very first VIP day where perspective students got a first hand look into our creative programs. In addition to tours of the college and its facilities, this exclusive event offered a look not only into our digital photography program, but also into the fashion business/fashion sales and merchandising, hairstyling and esthetics, and culinary programs. The day consisted of perspective photography students snapping shots of models made-over by hairstyling and esthetics students, styled by our fashion students, and had lunch courtesy of the culinary students. 

Photo by student Jeff McCoy

Special thanks go out to everyone who made the day such a success, Richard Beland, Don McCahill, Lori Kaempf, Alastair MacKay, Anja Cristensen, and all our amazing students who represented our College well. All in all it was a very successful event for Lambton College and we look forward to seeing each enthusiastic student in September!

Margaret Trudeau Visits Lambton College

 The Workplace Wellness Committee in partnership with the Sarnia Lambton Workforce Development Board welcomed Margaret Trudeau for a Keynote Presentation on March 27^th at the Lambton Inn.

Margaret is well known as Canada’s youngest first lady when she married Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau in 1971 at age twenty-two. While appearing to lead a charmed and glamorous life, Margaret was struggling with bi-polar disorder.

She is now dedicated to helping others overcome the stigma of mental illness, and in her new highly anticipated book, Changing My Mind, she shares her insight about the mental illness that that affected her life so profoundly.

Margaret attended breakfast in the ballroom and spoke about mental health issues and how they impact the workplace, then stopped by our photo studio for a photo-op shot by Richard Beland.

Photo by student Angela Smoulders

Carolyn Grayson Visit

Guest Speaker: Carolyn Grayson

On March 25, 2013, guest speaker Carolyn Grayson paid a visit to our Digital Photography class.  Carolyn is a professor here at Lambton College, teaching Anatomy and Physiology. She considers herself an avid amateur photographer, but in reality she is anything but amateur. Carolyn excels in nature photography and covered topics such as macro photography and flash duration, things she employs to capture stunning photos of Hummingbirds in flight.

Below are all photos of Carolyn's including a beautiful landscape in Ecuador (middle), and a  violet-tailed sylph (bottom).

Photographer’s Forum Magazine Contest Finalist

      Lambton College’s Digital Photography Program is proud to announce that a photo entered by former student Geri Freeborn was selected as a finalist in Photographer’s Forum magazine’s 33^rd Annual College and High School Photography Contest. Geri’s photo was selected out of 16,700 entries from students all across Canada, the U.S., and all around the world. It will also be included in a hardcover book called “Best of College & High School Photography 2013” along with the work of all the winners and finalists. We are very proud that a passionate student like Geri was given this honour, and that her hard work was recognized.

Guest Speaker: Jason Ransom

      Lambton’s Digital Photography Program was pleased to welcome the Prime Minister’s Personal Photographer, Jason Ransom, on February 26, 2013.

     Ransom is a Photojournalist based out of Ottawa, Ontario, and has worked as Stephen Harper’s Personal Photographer since 2006. After graduating from the Fanshawe College Photography Program, Jason began his professional career working for newspapers such as the Woodstock Sentinel-Review, and The Ottawa Sun. He has won several industry awards including being named the Ontario Newspaper Awards’ Photojournalist of the Year in 2000, 2002 and 2003.

      Jason talked to the class about his experiences working as a Professional Photographer, and showed a presentation of all his best work including photos from his days working for newspapers, his various travels with the Prime Minister, and the Olympic games in London this past summer. Jason also took the time to sit down with each of our students and critique portfolios of their best work.

DPH-1013 - The History of Photography and Art

This is the first is a series of postings describing courses in the Digital Photography Program first term. We are coming to the end of that term, and since it is the first year for the program, we can now let parents and family of current students and prospective students for next year find out better what the students in the program do.

We will start with DPH 1013 – History of Photography and Art (because it is the course taught by me, the blog author). Most Photography programs in the province have a history of photography course. It is important for aspiring photographers to know a bit about how the craft started, and who the early photography giants were. At Lambton, this is the first third of a course in the first term.

But photographers also rely on more than 1000 years of art history, since painting and other types of art were the means of recording the world before photography was perfected. Thus our course delves into Art History, concentrating on painting from the early middle ages to today.

But unlike a university Art History course, DPH-1013 does not expect students to memorize names of artists and dates they worked like a university course might. Instead the art is related directly to photography. Students look at a (picture of a) painting, and try to relate it to photography. Most of the assessments in the course are not tests – they are photographic projects, leading up to a final project where students submit a photo inspired by a famous work of art.

There is no final exam in this course. The goal is not to make students memorize facts, but to expose them to many of the more famous artists of the past millennium, so they can recognize famous paintings and styles of art. Our hope is that they might emulate the posing of Da Vinci or the lighting of Rembrandt or the sheer inventiveness of Dali when they start working in the field as full time professional photographers.

Our Studio

The Digital Photography Program professors are justly proud of the new studio space that Lambton College built for us when the program opened this fall. The space, which doubles as a learning studio, has chairs and tables on wheels that can be wheeled away when the space is being used for labs. A total of 6 individual studio spaces are available, partitioned by long black curtains (installed this week) can be configured from the lab space. Three of these have wall hooks to hold seamless paper backdrops, or fabric muslins.

It is the sixth space that is the most impressive. Called the Cove by current students in the program, it includes a double cyclorama on the junctions between the walls of the corner, and the walls and the floor. This is a curved piece of fiberglass that eliminates the visual line of the joint, making a seamless background for photo shoots.

And Richard Beland, coordinator of the program, has allowed first year students to make use of the space. (In many other programs, only second year students are allowed to use all the facilities). As a result, several groups of students have taken advantage of the Cove to do photo shoots, and as assignments from the various photography related classes in the program increase this will grow.

In the photo above, Jeff McCoy is the photographer, Shelbie Hensel is the model, and Megan Dunn is the assistant. The photo was taken by a fourth student, Geri Freeborn. The three students photographed spent three or four hours in the studio. There is nothing that warms the heart of a professor more than seeing students this dedicated to their chosen field.



The Digital Photography program at Lambton thanks the Facilities Department including Paul Mantle and Brent Thomas for their work in making our space happen.

Photo of the Month - September

We have been running photo of the month for some time now, and we have included some shots from the web, and some from our professors. From now on, assignments from our students that get the spotlight.
Keep in mind that these are first year students, in the first month of their course. Professor Dave Chidley selected the nominees, and came up with a tie. Two photos from his assignment to create self portraits in black and white were selected.
Congratulations to Megan Dunn, and Jeff McCoy for their works, shown below.

Megan Dunn

 Jeff McCoy
Other students can look forward to seeing their work in a future month's blog.

Fall Exposures - Save $20

Pretty much everyone reading this is going to be a Photography nut. And that means you will be in the target demographic for the Exposures Photography Show in Toronto. It is held twice a year, and I attended the last two spring shows. Now the fall dates of October 12-14 have been announced.

The show involves all the suppliers for Henry's Camera shops, with booths from Nikon, Canon, and all the others (camera, lenses, flash, equipment, etc). A cool feature of the spring shows, which I assume will also happen in October, is a sort of Garage sale, where Henry's sells off all the demos and floor models at great prices. You can't wait that long to get a camera (and there probably won't be any newer Nikons) but is is great for getting a flash, tripod, lighting kit, or any of the other toys you will be needing.

More important, there is a continuous stream of training sessions, geared towards both pro photographers and serious amateurs. You can pick up some great tips attending these.

And now for the best part. The admission is $20 at the door, but this link will take you to a place where you can get in free (see the link at the bottom of the page).