Who and Guess Who?

Randy Bachman of The Guess Who

I was assigned by The Canadian Press to cover the Season Opening Gala of the Stratford Festival on Monday and then the Opening of the Rock Opera, Tommy on Thursday evening.  

Both photo shoots involved a lot of red carpet, celebrity smiles and interviews.  These are quick and hectic happenings as the guests and stars make their way into the theatre in a short time frame. 

At the Tommy opening a funny twist on the celebrities occured when Randy Bachman of The Guess Who and Pete Townshend of the Who both attended the opening.  

 Townshend wrote Tommy and was thrilled with the Stratford production.  

Pete Townshend of The Who

The legendary rockers went un-noticed by a group high school aged patrons despite the close proximity.  

Who and Guess Who, really did apply to them!  Stratford openings are always fun shoots, and it looked like the rockers were enjoying themselves too.  

 

-Dave Chidley, Faculty





DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY OPEN HOUSE JUNE 20, 4:00-7:00

June 20th, 4:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Digital Photography Studio, LI319, Lambton INN,

Lambton College

The Digital Photography Open House will feature a tour of the studio followed by one-on-one conversations with faculty. Student art will also be on display.  Come see your future in Photography
Shuttles to the Lambton INN will be available from the main campus until 6:00 p.m.

For more information regarding the Digital Photography program at Lambton College, visit www.lambtoncollege.ca/PHTD

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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.