Today many websites are joining in protest of the US Governments SOPA/PIPA bill by blacking out their content and providing links to information about the proposed bills. Among the protestors is Wikipedia which has blacked out its English language pages for the first time ever.  Flickr has also given its members a chance to join in the protest by blacking out their photos for 24hrs as you can see above.

It’s hard for me as a photographer, on one hand I’m in favour of better protection for my own IP, but the heavy handed methods and sneaky introduction of this bill worries me.  For now the bill would only affect users in the US directly, but by censoring and limiting every internet contributor in the US, we’ll all be affected.  It’s also not unforeseeable that, if passed, the US could pressure the Canadian, and in fact any other government to also enact similar laws.

I believe there should be better protection of IP on the internet, especially protection available to those who don’t have the money to bring legal action on their own, but not at the expense of unilateral government controlled censorship.  There’s plenty of ways to bring IP to the internet while minimizing your risk of piracy, Apple has proved it’s possible with iTunes.  Why should I go to the trouble of pirating music when it’s available to me at a click of a button, for a buck a track, anywhere there’s internet.  Companies like Apple and Netflicks have proven that, when offered a product at a reasonable price, people will pay rather than pirate.  The companies lobbying for this bill need to start working with the internet instead of trying to legislate it away.  Please take a second and read the Wiki article on how SOPA/PIPA will affect you, and join the protest in any way you can.

I’ve been shooting bands for almost a decade now, and while looking back over thousands of performance shots last week, I realized that all the bands I’ve photographed fall into two categories: “That show was amazing” and “Wow, I don’t even remember taking these pictures”. I know that’s a pretty obvious statement; of course I’m going to remember some bands and forget others. What wasn’t obvious at first, however, was that the more I thought about the bands I had forgotten shooting, the more I realized musical ability had very little to do with whether I remembered the show or not. I had shot some amazingly talented musicians but had completely forgotten their live show, while I could remember in detail some four song sets of the smallest and off-key garage bands. When it comes down to it, the common denominator is that some bands forget that when you put out a CD you’re a musician, but as soon as you go on stage, you’re a performer. If you want to be remembered, you have to put on a show, be larger than life. Occasionally when a band asks me to come shoot their show, they’ll ask if there’s anything special I’d like them to do; well, here it is: my guide to getting the best photos you can out of your performance.

All the other guidelines I came up with really are just subpoints of this first, all important rule. As a band you’re going to be remembered for two things: what you look like and what you sound like. Most of your fans may never see you play live; almost all of their exposure to what you look like is going to be through photos and music videos. If you really want to be remembered your goal should be that every time someone sees a picture of your band they hear one of your songs in their heads, and every time they hear one of your songs, they get a mental picture of you playing it. To do this, you can’t just sound memorable; you have to look memorable as well. I’m not saying you have to be good looking, just interesting. There are tons of butt ugly but memorable faces in music.

If you took the stage clothes of Elvis, The Beatles, David Bowie and Liberace and put them on a mannequins, most people could play “name that band” successfully. This doesn’t happen by accident. These performers didn’t wake up in the morning, throw on jeans and a tank top, go to work at Starbucks then head over to their gig later on that night and perform. Their image was something they worked on and cultivated. Some bands might think that working on their look is something to worry about once they get famous, but cementing an image in the minds of your fans early is part of how you get there. Get together as a band and decide what you want to look like when you perform. It doesn’t have to be an outlandish costume, it can just be a theme or color scheme, but make sure everyone’s on the same page. If you’re going to be taken seriously as a band, try not to go on stage wearing the same clothes you bum around all day in. Even if you decide to go the jeans and plaid shirt grunge direction for your look, dress it up a bit. Wear your best plaid shirt, wear a funny or interesting t-shirt underneath, throw some pins on your guitar strap or throw some patches on the knees of your jeans. Wear clothes with textures or patterns, accessorize, wear a ring or two or a necklace and stay consistent gig to gig.

Giant Hand is a great example of this; his “uniform” consists of jeans, a plaid shirt, horned rim glasses and a pair of Converse, normal street clothes but done well. His clothes are clean, fit him well and he keeps it consistent from gig to gig; he’s made street clothes into a memorable look. You’re branding yourself; Pepsi doesn’t change its logo or the color of its cans every week because they want you to be able to recognize a can of Pepsi from across the room. I can’t stress how important it is to look interesting or memorable. If you go on stage with plain jeans and a white t-shirt, the pictures of you I take are going to be boring, and people have the attention spans of gerbils with ADD; the better you look, the better my pictures will look and people will spend more time looking at them. And like I said, make sure all your band members get this, just because you’re not the lead singer, doesn’t mean you get to slack off. The whole band is in the spotlight (well, except for the drummers, sorry guys, you usually get shoved to the back in the dark; getting a good picture of a drummer is a whole different challenge). If the lead singer is the only one dressed up, guess what? he’s the only one I’m taking pictures of. A good rule of thumb to follow is this: “If your audience is more dressed up than you, you’re doing it wrong”. This applies to all genres; if you’re at the bar for a drink before going on, you want to be inspiring the thought “He/She must be in the band” in everyone around you. If you’re still not quite sure what I mean, get on YouTube and look at the live performances of Kiss, David Bowie, Marilyn Manson or Lady Gaga; these are performers who have really turned it up to 11 when it comes to being remembered for what they look like. You may have never heard one of their songs, but you could still pick them out of a crowd.

The second big part of being remembered is putting on A Show. You’re not in the studio any more; you’re on stage performing for a live audience. I shot a band a year or so ago that got up on stage and played their latest album, start to finish, flawlessly. They stood in front of their microphones for an hour and change and pumped out sonic gold… I’d tell you who they were… but I can’t remember. The only memory of that night I have is the thought: “Wow, this sounds amazing, but I just bought the album… Why’d I just pay $20 more for the same experience I could have got at home, minus the smell of spilled beer?” If you stand stock still in front of your microphone the whole show, you’ve limited the number of interesting pictures I can take of you to a maximum of one shot per band member and a group shot, and given that you’re standing still, they’re probably not going to be the most interesting pictures. Move around, jump around, get down on your knees, get up on an amp, jump on your bass players back… anything, don’t just stand there. Granted, some bands will suit doing this more than others, but that’s just one way you can make yourself more interesting on stage. Putting on a good performance can be even more important that playing good music. When I was asked to shoot Skull Fist, a Canadian metal band, I was hesitant because after listening to a couple tracks I could tell it wasn’t my type of music, but I’m so glad I went. They put on such an energetic show it made me love the music. I’ll probably never listen to them on my iPod, but for an hour I was a hair metal fan. And get the audience involved in the show; if you just stand there, chances are so will they.

Talk to them in between songs, tell a joke or an anecdote, or have a song that the audience can sing along with. During Wax Mannequin’s last show in Ottawa, he had the whole audience singing along to “The Log Driver’s Waltz” and did his encore of “The Price” while walking from table top to table top. The crowd loved it and it made for great photos. Use your face to your advantage, be expressive and exaggerate the emotions of the song. If you hide your face behind a mic the whole time, again, I’ve got pretty much one shot to take and I’m done. Try playing in front of a mirror and ask yourself, “Do I look as into the song as I want my audience to be?” Energy is contagious. If you look like you’re into performing, the audience will get into the performance. Look at your audience, don’t spend the whole time looking at your mic, your guitar, the ceiling or with your eyes closed. A look instantly forms a one to one connection, whether it’s with someone in the crowd, or my camera. Speaking of cameras, if you want really good stage portraits, try to integrate subtle posing into your act. Know where the photographers are in the audience and throw them a look, a smile, a wink or a pose… and try to hold it long enough for them to grab the shot. About 2-3 seconds is usually long enough for me to realize you’re posing, focus, frame and shoot. With practice it can be done seamlessly without anyone knowing you’re intentionally posing for the camera. Or if you don’t think you can make it look natural, have some fun with it.

When I was shooting Electric Six, the lead singer took a minute in between songs to announce: “Okay, this is for all the cameras in the audience,” and proceeded through a series of exaggerated rock ‘n’ roll poses. It got a ton of laughs from the audience and I got some great shots. If you want some reference material to study, take a look at the live performances of artists like Iggy Pop, undeniable king of stage dancing, or Nick Cave, who’s got eyes that look right through you. Both of those guys can perform in nothing but a pair of jeans (and often did) and still give photographers tons to work with.

So remember, if you want good pictures from your show take some time and think about what you’re going to look like from the audiences perspective. Look the part, act the part, be a performer not just a musician when you’re on stage. I’m only as good as my subject and if you give me something to work with, I’ll do my best to create pictures people will want to look at.

Take a look at the band shots I’ve posted in the Live Music section of my Flickr, these are performers that gave me pictures good enough to put in my portfolio.

Last month was a great month for concert photography; three of my favourite Canadian acts came to town, all three of which I missed last time they played. First up was the Kelp 17, the Kelp Records anniversary weekend.

Every year Kelp Records throws a weekend music festival featuring Kelp bands past and present. Tons of great bands played, but of particular interest for me was The Acorn and Andrew Vincent. The last time I was able to catch The Acorn was two years ago at Kelp 15 when the festival was hosted at The Mayfair Theatre. Acorn fans got a real treat that night as Rolf and the band played their first full length album, The Pink Ghosts, from start to finish.

Day two of Kelp 17 featured Andrew Vincent reunited with his old backing band The Pirates (Scott Terry and Bryan Curry). Another flashback set, they played their classic hit album I Love the Modern Way. Here’s the rest of my Kelp 17 shots up on Flickr.

The next weekend Wax Mannequin came back to town to play Irene’s in the Glebe. I missed him playing the same venue a few months earlier and was pretty bummed. I caught Wax Mannequin’s show at Zaphods last year and have been dying to catch him play again. Finding a lot of new music kind of bland and formulaic recently, I don’t often come across an act that sounds so totally different from anything else out there. I’ve seen and photographed many bands over the last few years and no one, absolutely no one has the same presence, enthusiasm and charisma on stage as Wax.

He’s a one man show, but sonically he fills the room like a juiced up, angry wolverine orchestra. A true Canadian act, he even belted out a cover of The Log Drivers Waltz, from the National Film Board animated short you might remember if you were born in the late 70’s or early 80’s. The clip below is from another show, but I just had to post it, this song really brings back memories.

As an extra bonus, he had copies of his newest 7″, Hear Some Evil, at the show, a collaboration with The Burning Hell. Wax has worked with The Burning Hell often in the past, always with great results. If you ever get a chance to see him play, go, don’t think, just go… I promise you won’t regret it. You can see the rest of my pics from Wax Mannequin at Irene’s on Flickr.

So it’s been a bit over a week since my cross the pond trip to the UK and I’ve finally gotten through the first batch of photos from the trip. People have been asking photos since I got back, but I swear, it’s not laziness, there’s a method to the madness. I usually like to put aside big batches of images like this for about a week after taking them, time permitting. I find that when I try to pair down to just the best images very soon after taking them it can be hard to be objective. By letting them sit for a while and forgetting about them I tend to be much more objective when it comes to picking out the keepers. I’ll probably end up doing the trip in three batches: UK Round One, Iceland and UK Round Two. Breaking it up into smaller batches also makes going through a couple thousand images much less daunting.

Besides being an amazingly fun vacation, this trip to England really opened my eyes photographically. I didn’t want to bring my full DSLR kit with me, I knew I’d be doing a lot of walking and my Canon rig would destroy my back by the end of the trip. I also didn’t want to rely completely on my film Leica kit. What if they wouldn’t hand check my film at the airport and it got X-Ray haze? What if it gets confiscated for some reason? What if I run out of film? What if I don’t bring the right film? I’m probably going to want to take a million shots, do I want to soup 20-30 rolls of film when I get home? I really wanted a digital alternative to compliment my Leica RF kit for the trip. I ended up picking up one of the Sony NEX 3 micro 4/3rds bodies a couple weeks before the trip with a Leica mount adapter so I could use my rangefinder lenses on it. My plan was: Leica M2 loaded with ISO 100 for during the day, Voigtlander R3A loaded with 400 for at night and I could use the NEX for snapshots and what ever focal length I wasn’t using on the film body. By day three I was using the NEX exclusively, it really turned out to be that amazing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to jump ship on film, I love the stuff… but for running around a big city for 8-10 hours a day even a two body RF kit gets heavy after a while. I also found whichever camera wasn’t around my neck and therefor hanging off one shoulder kept getting bumped and jostled around, especially in the subway. I really wasn’t prepared for how busy London is.

As it turned out, the NEX paired with either my Voigtlander 15mm or 25mm (giving me 24mm and 40mm field of views respectively on the NEX’s 1.6 crop factor sensor) was about all I needed for most of the trip. The NEX’s flip up screen also let me shoot from the hip very effectively. One of the biggest complaints I read about the NEX before buying it was how it was fiddly to focus manual focus lenses on the LCD screen. Well, when set to hyperfocal distance on the 15mm and 25mm, everything from about 3 feet to infinity is already in focus… problem solved! All I needed the LCD for was rough framing, no fiddly focus issues. I’ll be doing a more in depth review of the Sony NEX at some point in the future, but for now, all I can say is that it was probably my most useful photographic purchase in a long time.

I have a ton more to talk about regarding the England trip, but I’ll leave at this for now. Stay tuned for pics from the Iceland and Brighton side trips, a review of my new travel bag from Grafea and more. You can see the rest of the first batch of my UK vacation pics on my Flickr.

Amidst the craziness of Ottawa Fashion Week I snuck in a shoot with Tania for Grafea London. Grafea are the creators of some of the most gorgeous and affordable leather bags, briefs and purses I’ve ever seen. I wrote a review for their newest camera bag, the Grafea PHOTO a few months ago and recently they approached me to do a shoot for the bag.

I wanted to do an outdoor shoot, but Ottawa has not been very accommodating weather wise. It’s been either too cold, too sunny or too rainy every time I tried to put the shoot together, finally we decided to just go for it, regardless of the weather and see what happens. This particular day it was blindingly sunny and deceptively cold. We ended up having to do the shoot in whatever shade we could find. It turned into a complete run and gun, eight locations and four hundred plus shots in just under an hour.

Sometimes I actually prefer this method as it keeps you from over thinking things. You can have a great plan with the perfect location and somehow when it’s time to shoot there just isn’t that magic you pictured in your mind. By running from location to location and shooting a minimal number of shots per site you get a great variety to work with afterwards and avoid the

“200 shots of the exact same thing” syndrome that seems to have taken over the digital workflow. One of my least favorite things that digital has given me, hours sorting through what’s essentially the same photo to pick out the best shot. It also keeps the model fresh and spontaneous, over all I think it worked out well in this case.

You can see the rest of the Grafea Camera Bag Shoot on my Flickr. Stay tuned, as some of the shots are currently up on Grafea’s Blog and some will soon be included on their website as well. Many thanks to Tania, she was great to work with as always.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to shoot Apocalyptica right here in Ottawa not 50 ft from where I work, actually. At the time I thought it would be the greatest show I’d ever get to shoot. Not only is Apocalyptica visually an amazing band to photograph but they’re one of my favorites musically as well. Well last month I did one better.

Rasputina is a band that is completely undefinable, they don’t easily slot into any of the conventional musical genres when you look at their discography as a whole. They’ve toured with everything from Marylin Manson, to traditional folk musicians. They slip from haunting sea shanties to grungy industrial ballads and the incongruity makes them all the more enthralling.

They’ve been in my top five bands list since I first heard them on Toronto’s 102.1 The Edge, back in the early nineties when Alternative was actually an alternative to rock and pop and the station still played stuff you don’t hear on the top 20 stations. I never thought I’d ever get a chance to see them, let alone shoot one of their shows as they hadn’t been to Canada for over a decade. When I heard they’d be coming to Lee’s Palace in Toronto I grabbed a ticket immediately even though it’s a 6 hour bus ride away.

It took me a while to figure out exactly who I’d have to contact to get permission to shoot the show, but eventually I got a hold of the promoter for the venue got it all worked out. I had my ticket, I had my photo pass now I just had to figure out what the hell I was going to do at 2am after the show on a freezing February night, when the next bus out was at 7am. I ended up finding a hostel right across from the bus station, Backpackers On Dundas. If you ever need a place to crash in TO, I highly recommend them. For $24 a night I got a very clean bed in the heart of down town Toronto. The staff was great and so were the other guests. I was kind of hesitant as I’ve heard hostel horror stories from friends but I actually can’t wait to hit them up again on my next trip through town.

On a kind of side note on getting permission to shoot the show, I’ve noticed a new trend when it comes to concert photography. You can usually tell by the venue as to whether you’ll need prior permission to bring a camera. There’s obviously places like big stadiums or concert halls where it’s a no-brainer that you’ll need to be on someone’s list, and with small venues and local acts it’s rarely ever a problem, but there’s a middle ground where you’re not quite sure if the band or the venue is big enough that there might be an issue if you just show up with a pro camera.

I went the safe route with this show because I didn’t want to risk being turned away. I was told in no uncertain terms by both the venue and the promoter that nothing bigger than a cell phone or point and shoot would be allowed if I didn’t get approved. I got on the list and when I got to the club I was told the standard “first three songs, no flash” rules and got settled. As the place started to fill up I noticed quite a few people with DSLR’s though and after a few conversations it turned out I was the only one that actually had permission to shoot. DSLRs are becoming so common now that many bouncers don’t blink an eye at them anymore. On one hand, I like shooting with permission as I usually get access to the best shooting spots and I know I’m not going to be turned away at the door. However having to stick to the venues first three song rules and other restrictions can be annoying. It’s going to be very interesting to see how photography rules evolve as cameras become more proliferate and smaller and smaller. I just picked up the Sony Nex 3 as my traveling camera when I don’t want to lug the whole SLR rig around, it’s got the same size sensor as my DSLR and promises to have every bit as

good image quality. Ten years ago when DSLRs were upwards of $10,000 and marketed to serious professionals exclusively, I never thought I’d own one, now they’re everywhere. Now we’re seeing the next evolution, a camera with every bit as good a sensor as my Canon that fits in my pocket. It’s not going to replace my Canon kit for serious shoots, but it’s going to be a great alternative when I have to go without my pro gear, and it’s only a matter of time before the pocket camera rises right to the level of the monster DSLRs I’m used to.

However the photography rules turn out in the future, I’m sure I’ll find a way to adapt. I love shooting concerts and this one in particular gave me another check on my bucket list. Rasputina is a band I never thought I’d get to see live and being able to shoot them was icing on the cake. You can see the rest of my shots from the Rasputina concert at Lees Palace on my Flickr.

The winter’s been a pretty slow time for me. Too cold to walk around taking pictures, everything’s grey and uninspiring, so I’ve been using the time to catch up on my back log of undeveloped film. I’ll be through most of it fairly soon, so expect some samples. In the meantime, here’s Ryan. I met him at my regular Starbucks about a year ago and we’ve continued to meet up for coffee semi-regularly since. These shots were taken when a group of us were getting a late breakfast at Denny’s. It’s always nice to have friends with expressive faces that aren’t camera shy.

It’s been a while since my last post but winter is upon us and the slow period during the colder months should let me get back to my old posting schedule. I’ve been extremely busy this summer which has been a big bonus as far as revenue is concerned, but it’s really put a damper on my creative photographic outlets. The more commercial work I drummed up, the less and less time I spent just having fun with photography. After four straight nights of shooting every weekend as well as a day job spare time becomes a precious commodity.

I don’t want to sound negative though, this summer has been my most successful to date when it comes to trying to make photography a financially successful. I’ve been shooting 3-4 nights a week for ClubZone since May, and through them have gotten a weekly column in 24 Hours, which has been great for exposure. Shooting clubs has also gotten me connections to quite a few people in the Ottawa modelling community, which is starting to pay off with modelling shoots and headshot commissions. I even got a spread in this months Faces Magazine and will have pictures in an upcoming issue of Umm Magazine.

Halloween was a great time to be shooting clubs as well, with the Monster Fashion Show at Mansion being by far the most fun event I shot over the Halloween Weekend. More pics will be forthcoming as I go through the backlog these last couple months have created in my editing queue but for now here’s a sample of Halloween on my Flickr. Stay tuned as well as I slowly make my way through developing the dozen or so rolls from this summers street photography, sitting in the fridge.

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.

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.