Diyah Pera Photography

I had to dig deep into the archives to find this image of Wesley Snipes aka Blade the vampire hunter emerging heroically from a fire unscathed after setting ablaze to one of the undead in the film "Blade Trinity".  I had a lot of fun shooting the stills on this film back in 2004 as the sky's the limit for visuals when dealing with the supernatural. There were a lot of stunts, pyrotechnics and blood of course.  The dark and dreary winter weather of Vancouver was a perfect backdrop for this script. I barely remember shooting with film stock as it was such a long time ago but I do  remember the stress of waiting to get the film back when shooting  irregular fire light.  There is a lot of guess-work in determining your exposure when shooting fire,  especially at night because it does not balance with the ambient light.  The strength of the fire light hitting your subject could vary by a few stops depending on how the special effects department wants the fire to behave.  It

In September, the area around Bella Coola BC, has an onslaught of Grizzly Bears catching the parade of salmon swimming upstream to breed before dying.  The Grizzlies are trying to put on as much weight as possible to survive the oncoming winter.  The salmon and the bears are so plenty you may see a few bears at once eating only the extra rich salmon eggs and throwing the rest of the fish away.  We made a special trip into the BC wilderness to capture this phenomenon.  The bears are so intent on the task at hand that the humans wielding cameras at them are not even a small curiosity to them.  I love this shot of the Grizzly eating his salmon because of the minimalist quality of the dark shape against the green water.  I used a  few photoshop techniques to bring out the details in the water ripples and the course fur. 

In September

I have been enjoying my heavy duty work outs taught by the fit  man you see featured here in this photo. He approached me about getting some promotional photos for his business and I was happy to oblige.  I wanted to come up with a signature look for his company.  Something that echoed the intensity of his classes and the blood sweat and tears required to survive a session.  I chose a very hard edge  light coming from behind and a somewhat directional light from the front to show off the contours of his muscles.  I used HDR in photoshop to bring out strong detail in the image to heighten the potency in this image.  I let the shadows in the BG fall as they may to add more grittiness.