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This year’s Ferrari Festival is running from 15-17 June. Located in and around Preston Street, Ottawa, it is the penultimate weekend after a week-long party of all things Italian. So come and join the 200000 people who stream past the 35+ Ferraris lined up on Preston Street on the Friday and Saturday evenings. For more ‘action’ attend the Ferrari and italian Car parade Saturday at 1:30 pm or the Speed Zone demonstration on Carling at 2:30 pm. And if you are very keen and want to help a local charity, the Ferraris gather on Sunday morning at the Carling ScotiaBank branch and give rides. All proceeds go directly to the festival charity: Villa Marconi.

I’ll be participating in the event in several different ways this year: as a participant, and as a photographer. I have offered my services to the event in an effort to raise additional funds for the charity. That means I’ll have set up a ‘studio shoot’ location with lighting, backdrops and other fun stuff and will be photographing the cars of the participants. They will then get a framed print presented to them at the gala banquet on Saturday night.

In addition, I’ve also had several photos selected for the festival poster. Pretty excited about that. The poster design is by Gordon Keith of GJK Designs.

Very early on in my photographic journey (only 2 years ago?), when I was beginning to look at photographing flowers as a subject, Andrew Balfour shared some time with me and one of the books he found inspirational: fLoRa by B Martin Pedersen. During the slower months in January and February, I needed a mental break from job hunting, and sat down to work out some of the basics for the photography in Flora. My baseline would be dried flowers on a white background as it required less in the way of specialized backgrounds which I am hesitant to start acquiring.

The results turned out well. I used a variety of lights including natural window light, but you can achieve the same results with only a few tools: a tripod is a must; strong clear light from a window; a white bristol board for the background, and a white bristol board to act as a reflector to reduce the shadows from the sunlight. Give it a go. You’ll be pleased with the results, and won’t have to spend much in specialized equipment.

One of my favourite restaurants is right around the corner from where I live: the Swan At Carp is a fantastic family-run restaurant with a great menu. I recently partnered with Joe Thompson (chef and co-owner) and Jorg Braun (visual marketer and stylist) to create a better suite of photos for the Swan’s web site. The current set of photos do not capture the essence of the food, nor the atmosphere at the Swan. And worst of all (in my mind), is that the photos do not inspire you to want to gorge yourself on the fantastic flavours. And that is what food photography is all about: vision is just as important to the dinning experience as taste and scent.

In addition to trying to get your tummies rumbling, I also wanted to capture or hint at the atmosphere at the Swan. That is why I chose to include some of the environment as opposed to focusing in solely on the food to the exclusion of any other factors such as wine, glasses, tables, backdrop etc.

I hope these photos and the others that I will be posting on the site, encourage you to try the Swan. I know we’ll be there very soon again. Well, okay, I can’t lie, we were there just last night.

As most of you know by this point, I went to Palm Beach in the USA to photograph cars. And not just any cars, really really nice cars, in really nice settings. Plus the warmth was nice too.

But after 3 days of shooting cars, I needed a break. Earlier I shared some photos from the West Palm Beach Zoo. The photos here, are from the beach right on Palm Beach. Maybe there is a connection between the beach and the name of the place. Hmm. Something to ponder during these long and cold winter nights.

Palm Beach has been a posh district since the 1920s when Henry Flagler completed the Florida East Coast railway from Jacksonville to Key West. Only 4 small city blocks wide, you are never more than 200m from either the Atlantic ocean, or the spillway. Over the decades, the beach has been pounded and worn away by the ocean waves. And the people have retreated before them: you can see rotting foundations and wave breaks failing to hold back the sea.

Now rusting, corroded and shattered, they reach out into the Atlantic with barely a shadow of their former success: a testament to the transient effect man has on the planet. People walk and sail past them without a glance except to grumble as they climb or go around them. Only the undertow keeps them company.

The Classic Car Sunday concourse d’elegance was held on the final day of the Cavallino Classic. Hosted by Donald Trump, the cars were placed on the lawn immediately below the house. Aston Martin was the marque of note for this year’s event, but several other manufacturers were present: Lexus brought their LFA supercar, Alfa Romeo brought their Comp 8C supercar, Rolls Royce was represented with cars from a cross-section of their history, Ferrari had a presence and possibly the largest car there: a 1930 Cadillac V16 Roadster.

Having spent 3 days photographing ferraris, I focused on the other makes. The Mar-a-Lago club laid on champagne, orange juice and most important for me, very cold water. And surprise! The bottles had Donald’s face on them. Apparently he has his own branded bottled water. Given the heat (and the fact that I was in jacket and tie), I could be forgiven for forgetting to bring a bottle back for my mom, or even not thinking of getting a photo. I’ll blame it on camera burn-out.

Okay, so maybe I also took more pictures of ferraris. What can I say, I love the shapes, history and passion that they evoke.

Mar-a-Lago is a historic estate in the US. Originally built by  Marjorie Merriweather Post and her husband, Edward F. Hutton. Willed to the government in 1973, it was declared a heritage site just before Donald Trump bought it. In 1985 he sunk $10 M in renovating it to its original guilt glory. And for those celebrity watchers, Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley spent their honeymoon there. I don’t know which room since, as a non-guest, I was politely turned away from re-entering the main building. Ah well, I did snap a few photos while walking through to the back lawn.

Produced in the early 1950s, the Ferrari 212 looks best when placed in an appropriate context. The 212 in this photo is parked in front of a 1920s era hotel in Palm Beach, Florida.

The Ferrari 250 GTOs are arguably the most storied ferraris. Despite there being over 30 of the cars still in existence, each is worth well over $16 M. This dichotomy of value and desire versus its status as much less rare than many other ferraris, is probably due to the fact that each one has a story. Each one is famous for winning races, connections to celebrity owners or some other important provenance.

I only use Epson pigments on the finest papers including the most popular Epson Ultra Premium Luster, to artisan papers such as Canson Baryta, Inkpress Semi-Gloss canvas and sheets of soft silver or gold aluminum.

With several on-offs and other supercars gracing the lawn at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, the Aston Martin One-77 stood out. Looking mean, nasty and incredibly wide, it was on show as the culmination of Aston’s long history of beautiful and capable grand touring cars. Aston martin was the honoured marque at this year’s Mar-a-Lago charity breakfast and Classic Sports Sunday, this past 23 January 2012.

While I didn’t get introduced to ‘the Donald’, I hobnobbed in sports-coat and tie and the 80 degree and lunched with the 699 other guests. Talk about feeling out of place.