Professor Mach: Course Post Mortem

Success! Or at least, NOT A COMPLETE FAILURE! High five! Fist bump! Jumping into the air and chest bumping like two dudes on a basketball team! Except instead of a dude, make it Christina Hendricks. Giggity giggity... I digress... I've completed my first run through delivering a four week Using Adobe Lightroom course, and while there were certainly hiccups along the way, I feel like it was moderately successful. If my course delivery was made into a movie (the dude that played Harold in the Harold & Kumar movies could star as me), I think I would at least garner a 64% fresh score on the Rotten Tomatoes tomatometer.

Next up: four week course on Using Your DSLR. Sign up now!

Just another weekend in the life of...

It's been an interesting few days over in the life of the Machs. Our neighbour's 5 year old kid went MIA for a few hours one night - police cruisers called in, everyone in the hood out searching for him. Fortunately, he just reappeared on his own. Unfortunately for him, he's never going to be allowed out of his parent's sight again... EVER. His mom will forever be a third wheel when he finally gets a girlfriend. And then there was the friend's neighbour's house sitter lighting a fire at midnight with gasoline (her face, and the poor dog got the worst of it). Half of my shoe soles melted from stomping out the multiple fires in the yard after we hopped the fence to help out. And while all that was going on, drunken buddy (not from the neighbourhood) was passed out on the front step of the house next door. Tried to convince him to leave, but he was having none of it. "Frruggh orrff", he says. So we called the Po-po on his sorry ass. Moral of that story - swearing at cops at 2am is ALWAYS A BAD PLAN, genius.

In loosely keeping with this theme of life is interesting, here are a quartet of tree shots in completely different contexts, taken within days of each other during our last big trip to Asia.









And with that, I really need to get on finishing up the Cocchio/Alcantara wedding photos.

Ciao!

Yawning Hippo

Yep, the title of this one is pretty self explanatory.



I was pretty sleepy last night, but felt the need to sketch a hippo before going to bed around 3am. So a yawning one seemed rather fitting.

Rough sketch

Didn't feel like running tonight. Had to force myself to do something productive, so picked up the sketchbook for the first time in months, and did this quick 25 minute rough sketch from a photo I found on Tumblr. Pentel Pocket Brush pen, pastels and conte on some recycled paper.

Photobooth Funzies at Happy Harbor

I had the pleasure of photographing Marc and Ana's wedding at Happy Harbor Comics yesterday evening with Stephanie Chan. This was my first event where I've run a photo booth, and I have to ask, why the hell doesn't EVERY wedding have one of these?! They're so much fun! I will demand that a photo booth be included with any future weddings I shoot. No exceptions.

There are hundreds of other shots I could post, but this IS a family friendly blog, so I won't...











This one is particularly awesome because the lady is pregnant, but the dude still insisted he ride her like a horse.









It's hard to tell, but Roger's tie is made from the labels of Jones Soda bottles.





















Congrats again to you two, Marc and Ana. You make a cute couple, and may the road ahead of you be littered with a trifecta of cookies, cameras, and craziness!

Professor Mach

'He who can, does. He who can't, teaches', (George Bernard Shaw, c. 1903). I now fall into the latter category, as I recently started my stint as an instructor with the Canadian Photography Learning Centre. True story, I even have my very own profile on their instructors' page. Exciting.



So if you're looking for a chance to heckle me in a public setting (and I know there's a lot of you out there!), then please enroll in some courses with the CPLC and I'll welcome your jeers and ridicule.

Proposed New Olympic Sport?

In the competitive spirit of the Olympics, I thought I'd take a stab at showcasing my own athletic talent in the 'how many Cheetos can you shove in your gullet at once' event. I set a new personal best of 9 (ie: this was my first attempt). Where's my participation ribbon?!


Clockwise from top left:
1) We give a whole new meaning to cheesy smiles
2) Some kind of foul-ish coffee flavoured tequila (I don't like coffee)
3) Yours truly setting a new personal best
4) A medium hoppy Belgian IPA that was quite yummy

And yes, in case you were wondering, the combo of random tequila based concoctions, beer, and cheetos made my head feel like a bag of ass the next morning when I awoke from my "passed out on the couch in a drunken stupor" state.