Monitoring Your Safety
This Ground Probe unit is monitoring slope movements for potential threats to personal safety and operations at the Mulatos Mine in Mexico.
miningphotog
13
May
4
May
Shooting Shotcrete
Happy Monday everyone, I hope you all had a great weekend. Here is throwback shotcrete image from April 2018 with DMC Mining Services (check out their updated website www.dmcmining.com)
The shotcrete process is a hard one to photograph when the crew is working and I can only manage a few quick captures but I did get them to pose for a crew shot.
13
Apr
The Core Shack Photo
Well I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend, I can honestly say it was a quiet one for this mining photog. With the Covid isolation in effect and photography not an essential service, I cannot create any “new” images which gives me a lot of time to organize my website and catch up on some essential reading in the industry.
From www.puregoldmining.ca instagram is an image I created in the core room while on site in Red Lake. Pure Gold currently has 1.2 million meters of drilling in their database.
Stay safe everyone and I hope to see you all on site soon.
20
Feb
The Rokion R100
When collaborating with a new client we discuss the photography needs in regards to media, variety and application. If you contact me to discuss photography I will ask you what you images you have used in the past and we will discuss the different ideas to showcase your product in a way that is different than previous images.
My goal with all my images is to get people to view it, read it, click it and ask for more information about it. My goal is to create a variety of high impact usable images to be used on my clients website, marketing materials, trade show booths and their social media platforms as well as featured articles in trade magazines. Sometimes we have the time for elaborate setups and sometimes I am shooting on the fly but each time I present my clients with the best product I can create.
If you think your company is lacking on visuals I would love to talk to you. I will look at your content, your image library and I’ll be honest with you from the start if I think you already have great photography or if there is room for improvement.
Rokion R100 Series
More Info @ www.rokion.com
Location: Vale Creighton Mine, On
18
Feb
Stake Your Claim!
Stake Your Claim
I am in the attention retention business. I create images that invoke a response. Images that are strikingly different but of the same subject you see every day in your social media feeds. I create images that have the power to grab the viewers attention, to make them hesitate for a moment before swiping up or scrolling down. That brief moment of hesitation and curiosity could lead them to read your post and your message. With thousands of images being viewed every minute, the images that create a reaction are the ones that steal someones time out of their busy day.
Stake Your Claim
Every image I present to my client is my best. When I was younger I would call it “Shooting for competition”. I used to compete (and judge) in a lot of professional photography association competitions like WPPI and PPOC winning awards throughout the years. Each image entered had to have criteria that the judges were looking for. Was the subject matter eye catching? Did the image tell a story? Was the main subject the dominant factor in the image? (if you want to know just turn the image upside down and see where your eye goes to first). I strived to enter the best image I could each and every time. As professional photographers we took all these factors into account before we pressed the shutter button. Over the years it became second nature to look at things through the eyes of a print judge. This honed all of our photography skills and ensured that we strived for the best image we could create. To create an image that could stand alone and be judged.
Stake Your Claim
If you are going to showcase your product, company or people to the world wide web then you should be striving to use the best image possible. It’s easy to tell if you are. Just look at the images you use and ask yourself are these the best I can get? Do these images showcase my business in the best possible way? Some companies social media streams are filled with the exact same mundane visuals day after day. “Look what we created today” with a snapshot of the product. The next post “look what we created today”, another snapshot of the same product and so on and so on. Week after week it’s the same thing. I know this because I see it. I look for it. That is marketing failure 101 and it’s usually an affliction caused by someone not knowing the true power and importance of social media marketing. Ask yourself, do you want images that swipe or images that click?
Stake Your Claim
With the constant stream of posts at our fingertips and the ease of swiping up or scrolling down, the importance of grabbing someones attention is becoming more challenging. So how do you get their attention? By creating the best eye catching content your company can create. This is usually done with great photography and great photography is not everyday photography. Great photography is planned. Great photography is created to compliment graphics and layouts. Great photography is discussed before the shutter button is pressed. I like to discuss the end product with my clients. I like to know how the images are going to be used, how they will be implemented into design layouts and how they are going to be presented to the public. This ensures that the image used will compliment the message viewed.
Stake Your Claim
Where social media is the dominating platform for marketing which already has an over saturated abundance of content, your business must stand out from your competition. Your business name, your product, your brand must be seen on a regular basis and each time it must be different in order to be embedded in your potential clients brain. I wrote a daily studio photography blog years ago. Every day I would post an image with a story about the session and one time a new client said to me “I have been following your blog for over 2 years now but we didn’t need then. Now we need photography and your name was the first that popped into my head.” That’s branding, and it’s the same today as it was years ago, the only difference is the platform.
Stake Your Claim
If you want to be the best then work to be the best. Create the best product you can, employ the best people you can and use the best marketing you can. If you want something different, I will give you something different because different stands out.
I have staked my claim.
Created for:
The Drift Mining Magazine Cover 2020
www.northernontariobusiness.com
Thanks to Northern Ontario Business, Vale and Cindy Grenier
Photographed at Creighton Mine, Sudbury On
9
Jan
Capturing Your Attention
That’s my goal when I create my images. I want to capture your attention for a split second at most. I want you to look at the image and have your brain say to you “well this is nice, let’s look at it a bit longer and appreciate the quality of it.”
There are so many factors that go into the images that need to be addressed in order to pull it off, especially underground. Is the shutter speed slow enough to capture ambient light? If so, is it fast enough so that the people are not blurred if they move slightly? Is the light direction at the proper angle to properly light the subjects? Composition so that the subjects are defined within the image. These are just a few out of a dozen factors I need to address in order to create the image………..usually within minutes. The end goal is to create an image that still looks natural, even though the natural image could never be captured.
2
Jan
Welcome 2020
It’s back to the grind, nose to the ground, full steam ahead, give it all you got kind of day. It’s back to work creating and showcasing mining images from around the world. Where will I go in 2020? I can’t let the cat out of the bag yet but if all goes according to plan I should be out and about to a few different countries this year so stay tuned to my blog, social media or subscribe to my email list and receive my posts once a week.
25
Nov
“It’s not that I am smart, I just try things until I get it right.”
Just like the mining industrial industry I am constantly learning and testing new technology within my business. It could be monitoring a content post (just like this one) to see if it gets a higher reach to prospective clients or it could be a new app to increase post production efficiency. You should be constantly trying new things within your environment to see if it can be improved by any marginal percentage.
I have a saying “It’s not that I am smart, I just try things until I get it right.”
You learn from failures as well as success but only if you try new things.
19
Nov
Working In The Dark
Around the clock this Caterpillar 980K and it’s operator work to keep the payload going through the crusher. In the recent months I have been trying to create images of the night shift workers as they tend to get overlooked when creating images.
13
Oct
Nothing Like An Extra Pair Of Gloved Hands
A quick underground snap of my PA (Personal Assistant) Brent. I would be a lot more tired if this guy wasn’t with me. Always on par with what I needed, where I needed it and when I needed him. It was like old times and for the most part we didn’t even need to speak to each other as specific hand signals came back like a second language to us. Having the extra time before the shoot and during setup to talk to my subjects has brought my client experience to another level and when your subjects have a great experience you create a better product.
Thanks again Brent and www.pendaproductions.com for another success. #miningphotog #pendaproductions
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