New Blog

I'm tired of the small photo viewing options and the crappy look of this site so I'm switching to tumblr. So if you don't fear change and you like what I do then check out my new blog at http://billhawleyphotography.tumblr.com/ . There's a video and a photo post so far so go enjoy!

First real edit ever. Half behind the scenes, half getting into video

The past few weeks I've been doing a lot of video instead of stills. I still shoot a lot of stills but I just feel like getting my skills up in video for a bit just so I can do both properly. I'll be doing my best to shoot more big mountain now that the snow pack is building and the landings are filling out. So now I guess enjoy some video and get shreddin'.

Night session in the grouse quick park. Early season jibbin from Bill Hawley on Vimeo.

Sunny Fun Park Laps and a Whole Lotta Love

As much as I love skiing pow and building jumps I have to admit that having days just lapping the park can be really fun. A few weeks ago I had a really fun day before work and got some shots to show how great it was. Here ya go.

Now that's love right there

Snow

There's something magical about snow.

I have been around snow for years and I was thinking just now that I have no explanation as to why snow makes people so stoked. Maybe it's the fact that it's rare and only shows up a few times per year but I don't think that's enough of an explanation. People get REALLY stoked and I don't think they wouldn't get that stoked on something just cause it's kinda rare. Maybe it's the way it feels and that you can make things out of it? Everyone enjoys creating things so that could be it? I don't know I'm just throwing things out there and typing while thinking to be honest. Either way my point is that snow is awesome and it agrees with the lens of a camera like nothing else.The shadows created by untouched snow or the contrast of the absence of light inside footprints or ski tracks; The way that fresh snow on the trees can make a mountain look 10 times bigger than usual. I love how after it snows the world looks different entirely and after you think that you've shot every angle of an area snow can turn it into a whole new thing. I went up grouse for the first time a few days ago and took some pictures. It felt like I was relapsing on a drug or something. I immediately was a bagillion times more stoked on shooting and the epicness that this season should bring. Oh and I got a Canon 7D and I'll be shooting video in case I haven't already told you. STOKED! So ya here's the pictures that got me so stoked on snow and mountains and winter and skiing. Expect better but I'm also kinda digging these ones.

And here's the first video with the 7D. It was just a fun little thing, not meant to be good or anything but the good videos will come soon.

First Day at Grouse/First 7D clip from Bill Hawley on Vimeo.

Oh and Check out snowshoevancouver if you want to see some cool photos or you want to go do a snowshoe tour in vancouver at any point. The guy who runs it (Brent Loewen) is a super nice guy and I'm sure he'll make every tour awesome!

Double Take

Do you ever look at something once and think it's crap then look back at it after a while and think it's awesome?

Well The past month I've done that several times with several photos. I wrote off a picture a long time ago as a shot that just didn't compete with the rest of the batch all because it wasn't what my idea of what a good photo was at the exact point in time. After a while of shooting photos and learning new things and getting a completely fresh perspective on what makes a good photo I noticed that that shot that I wrote off months before was actually, in my opinion, one of my top 5 shots.

My idea of what a good shot was didn't come from a theory lesson about the "laws" of photography but instead came from inspiration and my knowledge that breaking the rules can make a much better shot than when you follow them. So pretty much what I'm trying to say, to people who are getting into photography and reading my blog in hopes that maybe someday I might post something educational, is research. Not books about what makes a good photo but other people's work. Brilliant photographer's work. The internet is awesome so use it. Find a photographer who really inspires you and check his or her website or blog every so often to see the progression of their shots. Study their style and pick apart their photos. Try to figure out how it is that they made each of their photos.

And after all that research don't just copy each of their photos but try to apply those techniques to your own shots and improve on what they do. Also try to find multiple photographers so that you end up with a different style or else you will find that it's a challenge to not copy them. You want a unique style but also a style that appeals to the masses, unless you want no one other than yourself to like your photos, so in order to do that you need to learn the regular and then improve upon it. (That part might not have made sense). But either way what I'm trying to say is that I have changed my view on what I want to see in a photo by researching other photographers incessantly and in my opinion it improved my photographing abilities so take my advice or not, I hope it somehow helps.

Here are a few of the pictures that I changed my mind on at second glance:

This one my brother pointed out all the good things about and got me to like so I guess my point doesn't really apply to it. But I still looked back and decided it was awesome.

This is one that I thought was going to be awesome on my camera but then as soon as it got on the computer I decided it sucked. I still thing it sucks.

This is the one that I was originally talking about that I took inspiration for. Check out Chase Jarvis' work and you might see a bit of a resemblance? I'm not sure though.

The last one below I hated because I automatically put it into black and white. The cool thing to me on this one is that I edited it in black and white then just turned it to colour and left it.

So now that that's all said and done let me know what you think of these shots or even let me know if you've had a similar experience. If you have then let me know what it was and I'll probably post it on the blog with your permission.

New Shots and a Preview of a Rough Shot that will be Perfected

My friend Trevor Robson did an interview of me for his broadcasting media class so I took some shots of him while we were at it. Black and white shot is my friend Shamus and it was taken at the latest Coalition show. You should all check out the Coalition's music right there. They have a new album coming out shortly and i'll be posting an update about it later on. It's gonna be awesome! so the last photo is the preview of a shot i'll be re-doing later in the week. We had very minimal light and it the rider (Jeff Currie) understandably, didn't want to hit the big drop in the dark so we settled for this one. When I get the shot I'll do another post. Hopefully we can get some video footage of it as well. I'm going to do my UVIC weekend post separately in a few minutes. Goodbye for now!

Business card

I made a business card. Let me know what you think should be changed and I'll modify it until it's perfect. Thanks!

Video Beginning

As I said in my last post, "iphones are so freaking cool!". My friend Aeron brought one out to the dirt jumps when I was taking some photos for a couple friends and took some video of the riding and various things that went on during the shoot. It's a super short clip and there isn't much info about the shoot at all but it was a first try and it can be improved. If you want to see some in-depth video as to what I do on shoots then let me know and i'll make it happen. I also was up in whistler for the weekend and I didn't take any action shots but I have a few landscapes and such to throw up, so without further ado here's the goods!

blog from Bill Hawley on Vimeo.

The last shot was me getting the tree angle for the black and white shot above.

Little Camera photos

iphones are so freaking cool!!

Big Camera Photos

Today Aeron Mathew and I went for a ride up on Seymour mountain. We took a few pictures along the way. Also on the way home we took some pictures with Aeron's iphone which will be in the next post. Stay tuned for some more shots tomorrow and potentially some behind the scenes video and pictures. I'm thinking I should get an iphone, those things are so cool. Here's the shots from today!

Portrait Shots + an Update on Life

So I haven't posted in a while since i've been so busy doing nothing important with my life but having a ton of fun, so now it is time for a blog post. Tonight I saw an amazing show at Scratch Records and no, I did not take any pictures. The bands were Half Chinese, Student Teacher and Role Mach and I'm not gonna pick favorites or anything but Half Chinese and Role Mach were especially good and Role Mach was brilliant. The night was perfect and I saw tons of awesome people on the way home/at the show such as Jean (DJEAN) Lavigne, Trevor Robson, Christina Casperson, my very own brother Fred Hawley and many many more. Since I'm linking you to EVERYTHING important in this world during this post then I might as well link you to one last thing which I think is a very inspiring video.

It pretty much kicks every kid in the balls who ever said "You only take good pictures cause you have a nice camera. If I had a camera that good I could totally take better photos than you." Here's the video! That's all the bad-vibe-ranting I'm going to do throughout this post because this is supposed to be a Life-is-amazing-and-you-should-enjoy-every-second-possible-of-it-post. Since I promised you all some portraits, I now have some portraits to show to you all. They now feel very insignificant compared to the ones in the video; but anyway I might as well throw them out there for you all to see so hopefully you will like them and it will brighten your day. It was a lot to read and a lot to write but hopefully you enjoyed it. Goodnight.

Oh! and before you see the last picture, check out the fancy new logo that Aeron Mathews (the dude in the pictures) designed for me! Isn't it awesome! Thanks so much Aeron!

Now I guess I'll let you see the last picture.

Alaska

I got back from Alaska yesterday after 7 days of sitting on a boat doing nothing much more than eating and sleeping.

I used to play a computer game when I was a little kid called the Yukon Trail. I played it a lot so I remembered, pretty much photographically, every place and person in that game. When we got to Skagway I was imagining dirt roads and old saloons everywhere and to my surprise I wasn't too far off. Although the buildings aren't the same ones that stood in the 1890's the city has been re-built to try to replicate the saloons, brothels and stores from the time of the gold rush. Ketchikan was slightly more modern and a fishing town but just by looking at it you could tell that the town held a lot of history. Glacier Bay was incredible. The Ice all around the ship as we slowly circled the bay, passing huge glaciers and steep slopes was pretty surreal.

Although the experience of visiting Alaska was awesome, I did get extremely bored on the ship at times since there were not many activities and the average age of everyone on the ship was about 98 years old. If I were to visit Alaska again it would have to be during winter with skis and a helicopter. I took a lot of pictures so I won't be posting all of them but I'll put up the best ones. Here they are! Let me know what you think!