Brian Zinchuk Publishing

This was surely written in jest by a pro photographer somwhere, but it really does say a lot. While all new wedding photographers start out somewhere, including me, this is an extreme example of you will get what you pay for. http://kitchener.kijiji.ca/c-services-photography-video-Low-rates-high-quality-wedding-photo-90-OFF-W0QQAdIdZ308000811

These shots are of Wellman Lake Lodge, in Manitoba’s Duck Mountain Provincial Park. My mom, seen here, lives to fish, as does my sister, and my daughter. Something runs in the family, methinks. For this shot here, I asked mom to stand on the dock as we were unloading the boat and to cast her line. She pulled in a small jack on that very cast. There’s another beautiful sunset picture in the gallery as well if you click on the photo. Anyone who wants to take me fishing so I can take pictures of them, you just let me know. Preference will be given to four-star fly-in camps.

As promised, here are a few more shots from the Vortex Drilling shoot. The one above is very, very large panorama of the doghouse. Click on it to see it. It’s a rather unusual design, in that it has a slide-out just like a camper, increasing its interior space by about a quarter to a third. The driller and motorman can both work indoors. The motorman has a waist-pack remote control. The console to the right has the touch screens, including the video feed from remote cameras mounted around the rig.

This shot of the roughnecks making a connection was taken from overhead, using my ‘camera on a stick’ approach. I put the camera on a 5’6″ monopod, extend it over my head, and use a wired trigger to set it off. A wide angle and autofocus take care of the focus issues. It takes several shots to get a good one.

These guys work hard. I’ve never seen a fat roughneck.

Here’s a nice silhouette of one of the men on the pipe racks.

The barbed wire fence and black and white give an old-fashioned feel to a brand new rig.

Need a little drama? This photo is a little bit of playing around with Photoshop. The cloud was actually 90 miles away, two weeks later, so it’s a time-travelling, faster-than-speed of light cloud. But combined, it looks pretty dramatic.

Again, I’m the only pro photographer I know in this area who has actually been on rigs and oilfield equipment a fair bit, and has his PPE and safety tickets. If you need some commercial photography in the oilpatch, let me know.