JustKarl

I recently spent a couple of weeks in Ireland. I'm always excited to get home and see the many different shades of green of the Irish landscape. On this day I was on the way back from a run in the Wicklow mountains when we saw this waterfall and I asked Meghan who was driving to pull over so I could take a couple of pictures. As you can see, the waterfall comes down the back of the cottage but if you look really closely you will see that the water then flows around the front of the house as a river and crosses the field just to the front and right of the photo. I'd love to spend a few nights in this cottage and just listen to the water thundering down from the mountain behind.

Tourism Ireland Lonely Planet

Some shots from a campaign that I shot with Mazda and the new MX - 30 EV. I’ve had these sitting on my computer for awhile and kept forgetting to post them. This was a fun shoot to be a part of out in Quebec with

GV70 shot in Joshua Tree this Spring. Been hugely impressed with the direction the Genesis brand has headed in in recent years and being seeing more and more of them on Canadian roads. Excited for their EV lineup.

So with all that said, if you’re Calgary (maybe Edmonton) based and you’ve got an older car that you would like photo’s of then hit me up and let’s see if we can set something up. I want to shoot more of the cars that owners are passionate about, the ones that mean something to you and have a story to go with them.

Growing up in Ireland and getting into cars when the country was going through an economic boom the country was flooded with Japanese domestic market cars or JDM for short. Unlike in North America, road tax and car insurance is based on engine size. So we got cars like the Toyota Starlet gt with a 1.3 litre turbo engine absolutely tiny when you compare it to some cars here in Canada with a 6.0l v8 engine! So for many of us a car like an mr2 or gt4 celica with a 2.0l turbo engine was as good as it would ever get. There was one mr2 in our friends circle, red, turbo, mid engined and at home on narrow windy Irish roads.

My job mostly has me taking photo’s of new cars and while I love it and love getting to enjoy the luxuries of the modern age I really love nothing more than getting to shoot some of the older cars that I grew up around. This Mr2 was imported to Canada from Japan and Benn is the 2nd owner. It’s garage stored and its practicality is measured by the fact that it can fit two sets of golf clubs in the boot/trunk. These photo’s are for a for sale ad but hopefully he likes them so much that he decides to keep it!

The last few from the shoot with the Wrangler Rubicon. Now I just need to be given the Rubicon 392 to shoot 😉

Some more shots of the wrangler Rubicon from a trip in to the Ghost region in Waiporous

Some shots from a shoot with a Wrangler Rubicon out in Waiporous, one of the most fun places to shoot a capable off road vehicle like this!

In 2015/2016 I was working in the oil sands in Northern Alberta and on the bus back to camp from work one evening I was looking on my phone and saw a picture of this volcano. Right away I started to do some research on where it was and if anybody could just hike it. The volcano is Volcan de Fuego and it is located just outside of Antigua Guatemala. Also around the same time I met my wife who also happens to be from Guatemala. It's taken me a long time but finally in January we made the trip down to Guatemala for a vacation and to see some of my wife's family.

As soon as we started planning this trip I knew it was my opportunity to hike the volcano. Tour companies have a base camp setup on the volcano opposite which is called Volcan Acatenango. You can hike up to base camp which is at 3700m above sea level and your camp looks right across at Fuego. For sunset we hiked across on to Fuego which is one of the most active volcanoes in the world erupting every 20 minutes or so. And for sunrise the next morning we hiked to the summit of Acatenango for an even better view across at Fuego. It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. Watching a volcano erupt and seeing lava spew out is something that I will never forget.

The rest of my Guatemala trip was an incredible and humbling experience. More of which I will share here as I get the images processed and get my brain wrapped around it all.