You are currently browsing the People category.
Well, it’s been quite a while since my last post, mostly due to the drastic increase in the number of club shoots I’ve been doing for ClubZone this summer. This last weekend was a mixed bag photography wise. After four straight days of late night shoots I was supposed to cap it off with shooting The Black Eyed Peas at their Tila Tequila’s after party. Needless to say I was pretty excited about the shoot, but more on that later… it didn’t turn out exactly as expected.
Friday night, on the other hand, turned out much different than I expected as well, but in a good way. Malibu has been sponsoring ClubZone all this month and we were tasked with getting some shots of people holding Malibu bottles as part of the promotion. Friday night turned out to be Bikini Party night at Lobby Nightclub and I got a chance to get some great shots with some of the models working the night, both with and without Malibu accessories.
Shooting in a club is much more difficult than it seems. I use a Rayflash ring flash for most of my club shooting, and that works great close up as most of the light from the flash hits the subjects face and illuminates the eye sockets and under the chin avoiding the zombie/raccoon eyes look. It throws light all over the place,however, which can make wider shots harder to pull off when you’re trying not to blow out the background ambient light and keep the feeling of the clubs atmosphere. This is definitely a problem when you’re trying to get full body, or wider, shots. Shooting with just ambient has it’s own set of problems too. For one, most clubs are lit with just enough ambient so that you can find your way around, so you’re stuck shooting at ISO 1600 or higher even with a wide open fast prime.
Even f2.8 is a bit too slow for these light levels and those f4-5.6 zooms are right out. The stages or platforms where they put on fashion shows or have models dancing are usually lit a bit brighter, but still not as bright as say the spotlights on stage at a concert. On top of that clubs tend to use strongly gelled lights… a lot of blues, reds, greens, cyans and magentas which can wreak havoc with white balance and exposure. Making sure none of your individual color channels blow out is the main concern; blues, reds and greens tend to do all right but for some reason cyans and magentas tend to blow out really easily leaving horribly blotchy areas of chroma noise.
Focusing can also be a pain. The one big disadvantage of the ring light is that it blocks the IR assist lamp on the flash which aids focusing in low light. It can take 3-5 second sometimes to find a contrasty area I can lock focus on and some places in the club are just too dark to try. Usually one would focus on the eyes, if you get them in focus it really doesn’t matter if anything else is, it’s just the way our brains have been trained to look at photos. But in a club the lights are usually coming roughly straight down and people tend to tilt their heads forward when posing, so hair and brow ridges tend to throw the eyes into shadow and make them bad focusing points. Unfortunately, often the best place to lock focus is on a girls bust line; most girls are wearing dresses much darker than their skin tone so the line between skin and dress is a strong contrast line, well suited to the AF sensors. The trick is to lock focus on the bust then lean forward a few inches to compensate for the distance between where you focused and the distance to the eyes so they become the point of focus. This doesn’t always work out as people move around and you end up with tack sharp breasts and blurry faces… people tend to get the wrong idea about that 
Also, shooting wide open leaves me with a pretty narrow depth of field, which is ok most of the time because people instinctively tend to form crowded police line up poses along the plane of focus when there’s more than 3 people in the shot. There are times thought that someone has to jump in the front of the group and you end up with one blurry guy blocking the shot.
The two models that night really made my job easy though. Both of them new how to pose without taking much direction, which is pretty much impossible with the volume most club sound systems run at. The most important thing though is both of them knew how to hold the pose long enough for me to focus and compose. The biggest problem by far I’ve had with these types of shoots is that inexperienced models will often switch poses in rapid fire mode leaving no time to evaluate the scene or even lock focus. It doesn’t take long, a one-two count is usually sufficient, but the key is making it look natural for the spectators just there to enjoy the show. I’ve shot models that almost seem to be doing the robot, jerking quickly from pose to pose with a mannequin-esque freeze frame in between. That night turned out to be one of the best undirected model shoots I’ve done in a while. You can see the rest of my shoot with Nikki and Ashleigh on Flickr.
As for the Black Eyed Peas shoot… well, I had a nagging suspicion the night would go down like it did, but I held out hope. I got to Tila’s early and met up with the three other photogs that would be shooting the night. We where on the media list, we got showed around to where we’d be able to shoot and initially we where told we’d have all night to shoot them. This all went down hill as
soon as the Black Eyed Peas manager showed up and started changing things. We went from shooting in a spacious little VIP bar, to shooting on a cramped riser with one booth. We went from being able to shoot all night, to only the first 20 minutes after they got there, to only two of us for 10 minutes to finally only one of us (not me) for a little more than a minute while Will-I-Am shielded his face or turned away from the camera. After over two hours of waiting one of us got three kinda crappy shots. I don’t blame the venue, they’ve been really good to me and seemed just as confused as I was. A big tip to anyone aiming to do this type of shoot, make sure you get hammered out ahead of time exactly what the conditions of the shoot are going to be, and make sure this comes from the celebrity themselves or their representation. Venue’s can set up whatever guild lines they want for the night but it’s the act that usually gets the final say and they can change what they want pretty much any time they want. Going into a celebrity shoot without pre-arranged plans, and I’m talking days or weeks, not hours ahead of time is going to be a crap shoot and it just wasn’t my night at the table.
Posted 1 month ago.
You meet all kinds of people when you spend your free time wandering around the city with a camera. My last post dealt with some of the unfriendlies I’ve come across in my wanderings, so I thought I’d share the story of Dana Meise to balance things out.
I met Dana while I was walking up Elgin one night, he stopped me to ask directions to the Byward Market. I was heading there myself so we walked and talked our way up there. Turns out Dana is hiking his way across Canada and had just arrived in Ottawa. He started out in 2008 in Cape Spear, Newfoundland, at the eastern end of the Trans Canada Trail and has been hiking his way west in stages ever since.
He’s not officially sponsored by anyone but has found support from all over Canada, from donations of gear and supplies to places to crash for the night. Currently he’s taking donations for the Brain Injured Group; if you’d like to support his cause you can check out his website The Great Hike or support The Great Hike on facebook.
Posted 2 months, 3 weeks ago.
This will be a bit of a departure from my usual style of post, but I feel the need to rant a bit. I have many photographer friends in other countries that complain about the harassment and abuse they receive for merely carrying a camera in public, mostly in the US and UK. There’s a British blog, Not A Crime, that documents this rather well and it’s spawned many others from other countries. Post 9/11 there seems to be an ever increasing animosity towards photographers, especially in the more draconian police states that believe fear is the best way to control the populace all the while preaching about truth, justice and freedom.
Here in Canada I’ve been happily free from this kind of abuse, most of the time. Today I was walking around and was confronted by two different people in the span on 10 minutes. I wasn’t even taking a picture at the time, just walking down the street with a camera around my neck. The first person, a older woman, got right up in my face asking if I’d taken her picture… what was I doing with the pictures I took… and so on. On a side note, I never take a close up portrait of someone without asking, but this is purely a courtesy, not because it’s against the law. The second was a man about my age who started getting really loud and angry yelling “did you take pictures of my kids! I’m gunna call the cops you freak”… his kids were nowhere to be seen, and I hadn’t taken a picture in a while, so I don’t know where he was coming from. Needless to say this put me in a bit of a bad mood, so I decided to write about it to get it out of my system.
I’m not sure where this connection between photographers and criminal behavior came from. Most people have the same two problems with it. Photographers are either terrorists or pedophiles… which makes absolutely zero sense. Lets look at terrorism first… if I were a terrorist, wouldn’t I use a cell phone, or some discrete little digital to take pictures…. not a huge SLR you can see from a block away. And why go take pictures of a target yourself, between google image search, flickr and google earth you can probably get pictures of anywhere on earth better than you could take yourself. Do a google image search of the MI6 building and see for yourself.
The pedophilia complaint is the one that really gets me. I did a bit of research and in the US, of all the reported cases, the odds of a child be abducted or sexually assaulted by a complete stranger is 1 in 347,000. The vast majority of abductions and sexual assaults on minors are committed by a close friend of relative of the child. Ironically these are the same people parents have absolutely no worries about taking pictures of their kids. Further, I wasn’t able to find a single case of a pedophile stalking or abducting a child because of a photo they took or found on the internet, it’s completely a fabrication of thriller movie plots and shows like CSI. And again, if I really wanted to take pictures of your kids, wouldn’t I use a little cell phone that no one seems to blink an eye at, not a large professional camera in plain view.
Street photography is about recording everyday life as an art form and as an archive of the time we live in. Without street photography, a hundred years from now all we’ll have to judge what life was like in our times is posed portraits, celebrity paparazzi pics and a billion drunken facebook party pictures. The work of people like Capa and Bresson is famous world wide and among some of the most influential photography of all time. We’re getting dangerously close to all but outlawing this type of art and it’s a scary thing.
And what really baffles me is that people are either ignorant or knowingly ignore the laws regarding photography in public. In Canada, any subject in public, building or person, is fair game to take a picture of. You can take a picture of ANYONE in public as long as there’s no reasonable expectation of privacy. So for instance you can’t take someones picture through a fence, or into a building because there’s a reasonable expectation of privacy, but on the street… anything goes. The only time you need permission or a release form is if you intend to use the photo for commercial use… but that’s it. Now, as I stated, I rarely if ever take a close up picture of someones face without asking, either before or after I take the picture… and I’ve had many people ask me to send them a copy which I’m more than happy to do. You may not like the fact that that’s how the laws of this country work, but that’s not an excuse for making up your own laws. I don’t like that there’s often dog poop on the sidewalk, but I’m not going to harass every dog walker because of one dog owner failed to scoop. There are definitely times when photography is inappropriate or illegal, but please don’t treat every photographer as a criminal by default.
Anyways… sorry about the rant, but I needed to put this into writing to get it out of my system. I’ll leave you with a quote from a great man from a country that purports to be the center of freedom and justice in the world… though current events might make it seem otherwise:
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
- Benjamin Franklin
Posted 3 months ago.
Ottawa has had a long tradition of great street performers, but in recent years the number of acts hitting the streets has been declining and we have Big Brother Business to blame.
Busking used to be a great way for struggling musicians and performers to make a buck and maybe get yourself noticed, but now businesses want to take a cut. City of Ottawa requires buskers to cough up $200 a year for a buskers license in order to work the Byward Market… but it doesn’t stop there, each financial district has it’s own Business Association that can levy it’s own fee for buskers… you want to work the streets in front of Parliament, that’s another license… you want to work Elgin… popped again… Bank St pull out your wallet boys and girls.
When I came to Ottawa for University in ’99 the Market was full of amazing buskers from all over the world. Acts from Europe and Australia especially loved coming to the Capital, ten years later I walk around the market and in a good week I see one fresh face I haven’t seen before. Mostly it’s the same half dozen acts that to be honest, have gotten lazy. Those that can afford the license now seem to think they own the place and don’t really have to try anymore. Don’t get me wrong, there are still quite a few quality performers out there, the ones that really put on a show… engage the audience and really seem like they’re serious about it, Stunt Double Circus comes to mind. But you can tell there’s a lot of buskers that are pretty much just phoning it in now… it’s not enough to show up in dirty jeans and a t-shirt and bang out the same three songs all day if you want people to cough up their pocket change in a time where pocket change is getting harder to hang on to. And out of town acts are virtually non-existent so far this year, some struggle to just break even between room, board and travel expenses to tour different countries, being popped for a license on top of all that just doesn’t make Ottawa a financially attractive place to set up shop.
Busking has been integral to making the Market what it is today, and now business and industry is turning it’s backs on part of the reason the Market is so successful. Many great Canadian acts got their start busking, we wouldn’t have the Barenaked Ladies without it, but now it seems quality buskers might be a dying breed in this corner of the country. Be warned Ottawa, if this continues street theater will be gone from this town and it may never come back.
You can see more shots of Ottawa Street Music on my Flickr. If you see someone there, they’re worth checking out… throw them an extra buck or two. You may have seen my Stunt Double Circus pics already, but they’re definitely worth checking out in person if you get the chance.
Posted 3 months, 2 weeks ago.
It’s been a while since my last post; it’s been a fairly busy winter and a couple projects are nearly wrapped up that I’ll be featuring in the next few weeks. First on the list is a project I shot almost two months ago that’s been in the works ever since.
The day after New Years I shot The Love Machine at Club SAW. Some of the photos appear in the latest issue of The Dinner Jacket Magazine along with an article about the band; you can take a look at it here (p32-35).
Along with the standard band shots, I wanted something punchy for a full page photo to start the article. It’s difficult to get the whole band in on stage in such a way that everyone’s recognizable, especially in portrait orientation, so I decided to go with a photo montage of the band members. I wanted to do something special with this one and I’ve had a collection of old watches available to me for some time that I’ve been meaning to use for something, and this seemed to fit perfectly.
Shooting the watches was somewhat of a challenge as I had to shoot them pretty close with a macro lens and still be able to light them adequately to avoid nasty reflections. Most of my time was spent cutting and splicing different watch bits up in Photoshop and figuring out how to create the letters I was missing to spell out “Love Machine” from the letters stamped in the metal bits. In the end the composite was comprised of about two dozen layers and weighed in at a whopping gig and a half.
You can see some more shots from The Love Machine at Club SAW on my Flickr. Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more band shoots and pics from Winterlude.
Posted 6 months, 1 week ago.
Started a new steady photo gig this Halloween weekend. I’m now going to be shooting for ClubZone on a regular basis at various clubs and bars around Ottawa. They send me to the clubs to shoot the night and I post the shots the next day. The venue gets advertisement and exposure and the patrons get free photos of themselves and their friends.
I was a bit apprehensive as to how people would react to some guy walking around a club asking to take their picture, but Halloween proved to be the perfect time to start. Everyone was more than willing to show off their costumes. I shot both the Friday and Saturday night parties at the Mansion and people seemed really positive about it.
I was a little concerned about the technical side of shooting the night. I had a few ideas how I was going to light the shots in such a dark environment. Most clubs have really high or really dark ceiling, so bouncing a flash off it was pretty much out. I didn’t want to use straight flash and blind people either, plus it wouldn’t look much better than the point and shoot pics people can take themselves. Turns out my new ring flash was a god send. It’s not that light efficient, but in an almost completely dark club it had more than enough power. In the end I was able to find a really nice compromise between ambient and flash that gave nice even illumination without killing the atmosphere. Best money/value buy I’ve made this year.
Posted 10 months ago.
I was going to write about the juried exhibit I got accepted to, but that will have to wait, I couldn’t pass on doing a quick write up on seeing Nick Cave at the Ottawa Writers Festival.
When I first heard he was going to be in town, I assumed it was going to be with The Bad Seeds, but it turned out he’s on a book signing tour for his new novel The Death of Bunny Munro. Nick Cave is still Nick Cave so of course we went, and I’m glad we did.
Nick’s hilarious, and the excerpts he read from his book has convinced me to go pick it up. His talk wandered from his history with The Bad Seeds to his new band Grinderman, his previous book, And the Ass Saw the Angel, and even his failed attempt at pitching a script for Gladiator II (long story short, Russell Crowe beats up purgatory, then the Christians, then goes on to fight every war in history… alone).
I was in a pretty good position this time, last time at this venue I was mostly behind a three foot thick cement column. The light was pretty low and really pushed what Image Stabilization and the excellent hi iso capabilities of my 50D, it’s still comes as a shock that I can go all the way up to iso 3200 and still get usable files.
Definitely check out The Death of Bunny Munro if you get the chance, or pick up the audio book read, scored and with sound effects all by Mr. Cave himself. You can see a few more shots of Nick Cave on my Flickr.
Posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago.
Last week I was on assignment for the Kitchissippi Times out to shoot Loudlove, who are in the middle of recording a new album here in Ottawa at the Liverpool Court Studios. I managed to slip in for a quick shoot while the band was taking a break from recording. I went in to this job blind and on short notice… which is never ideal… but luckily the guys were very accommodating. I was expecting to grab some shots of the band while they where laying down a track, but by the time I got there they where already done playing and about to work on the mixing.
I ended up lining them up behind the mixing board, which had a nice wall behind it and some cool stuff piled on the sides to create a nice frame for the image. It’s always nice to shoot a band that isn’t camera shy. They basically just goofed off for ten minutes while I snapped away, which from the short time I spent with them seemed to be their base state of being.
I’ve been asked by a few other photographers why I usually carry about three times more gear than I will ever need for a shoot… this is why. I often have no idea what I’ll need till I get there and I’ll take a sore back if it means I have what I need to get the shot. Also, people seem to take you more seriously the more gear you lug around even if you never touch most of it during a shoot… it’s one of those psychological things I don’t quite understand but am happy to take advantage of.
I ended up getting what I needed and the article will be out in the Kitchissippi Times today. If you can’t wait for the album they’re laying down now you can see Loudlove at the Ottawa Reggae Festival this Sunday at 8:00pm. You can check out my Flickr for some more shots from the shoot with Loudlove.
Posted 1 year ago.
I love working in the Byward Market. Everyday I walk around at lunch and there’s never a shortage of things to shoot. Summer is busker season and the market attracts professional street performers from all over the world. The man in the photo was from Australia, he comes to Canada most summers and busks his way across the country.
The nice thing about the Byward Market is that it’s full of tourists with cameras so no one thinks twice about someone taking their picture. Unfortunately there seems to be a stigma attached to street photography in some peoples eyes. They’ll go to galleries and admire the work of Bresson or Capa, but give a dirty look when someone takes their picture on the street. Street photographers record the mood and culture of the times in a raw and unscripted fashion… giving a true face to period of history. Reading the history books is great but it can be hard to sort out fact from propaganda and pop culture.
Luckily, living in Canada I haven’t encountered the type of harassment photographers in the UK and the US have to deal with; being accosted by security guards or police for taking pictures in subways or bus stations. It’s gotten so bad in the UK that photographers have banded together to try and bring attention to the almost police state mentality that’s sprung up concerning photography. Visit Not A Crime to see what I’m talking about. It’s getting pretty scary to be a photographer in some countries and unfortunately its historic record that will suffer the most in the end.
You can see more of my street photography on Flickr.
Posted 1 year, 1 month ago.
I’m a huge fan of environmental portraits. You wouldn’t shoot a duck on a stool in front of a textured backdrop if you were trying to portray “duckness”… maybe if you were taking a picture for a biology textbook, but to evoke an emotional response you’d make sure the duck was in a stream or pond… maybe with some reeds or lily pads, a few trees and maybe a rock or two… all the things that tell people what that duck’s world is like.
Same goes with people. The best portraits I’ve taken are at times when the last thing I was looking for was a portrait. As soon as someone knows “now is portrait time” they clam up, paste on their plastic smile and look as little like themselves as possible. Most people at least… I’m convinced the entire basis of being “photogenic” is just the instinct to relax and be natural in front of a camera instead of going into smiling-deer-in-headlights mode.
Good portraits tell the viewer things about the subject beyond what they look like and one of the best ways to do this is to capture the subject around things that speak to their personality. Mike here on the left is fun and easy going and this portrait was taken in the crowd of an indie show at a local cafe.
Posted 1 year, 2 months ago.
