Wax Mannequin Comes to the Capital

I’d been waiting a while to see this show. One of the best Canadian artists I’ve come across this decade, Wax Mannequin came to town to debut his new album Saxon. The openers where amazing as well. To be honest when I go to a show specifically for the headliner, I usually can’t wait for the opening acts to wrap things up as soon as possible but, Rae Spoon from out west and Mark Bragg were definitely worth hearing in their own right.  A face from the past popped up as well, Rajiv of Oh No Forest Fires came along to play bass for Mark Bragg.

All three bands looked great on stage, and god bless Zaphods for using well aimed spotlights. I tried some split toning as well as the usual black and whites this time. I won’t get technical, but careful split toning really helped control the shadow noise.

You can see more Wax Mannequin and friends on my Flickr.

Shooting Halloween at Mansion for ClubZone

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.

Thanksgiving Birds Who Can Eat You

I was back home in the Niagara Region for Thanksgiving this year and the last thing I thought I’d come across is a Bald Eagle. I was up at the Balls Falls Thanksgiving Festival and a local bird sanctuary had a dozen or so birds of prey showing off the work the shelter is doing.

Some people claim it’s cruel to take pictures of animals in captivity, but I’ve seen the situation from both sides and don’t find it objectionable at all. All these birds would have been dead without the aid of the bird sanctuary, many of them were brought in injured or from abandoned nests. The ones that can be reintroduced into the wild are, and the remaining ones are now too tame to be set free. If they can help raise money to keep shelters like this one running, I see nothing wrong there. The handler even told me some of the birds crave the attention and get jealous when other birds are placed closer to people in the viewing area.

I’ve also seen what happens when photographers try too hard to get “natural” shots. Habitat gets disturbed… animals get stressed out from people too close to their homes and people get attacked by said stressed animals. Many bird species will even completely abandon nests that have been contaminated by outsiders. Don’t get me wrong, there are many amazing and conscientious nature photogs out there, but many more that aren’t. And you have to really get right in an animals face to get shots like the ones I got.

To give you an idea, the shot above was taken with a fairly long lens from about five feet away. Even the best telephoto lens the commonly used by birding photogs would only double… maybe triple that distance. So if this eagle was in it’s nest, 100ft up a cliff, I would have had to do some serious encroaching to get this ‘au naturel’. It might surprise you how many of those iconic nature shots are actually taken at zoos, shelters and special “photo farms” that specializing in letting photographers take natural looking shots in completely controlled indoor and outdoor “studios” with tame animals. You can see more of my birds of prey shots on Flickr.

i(heart)music Presents: Little Girls @ Cafe Dekcuf

Another good i(heart)music at Cafe Dekcuf last week featuring The Centretown Cripplers, Giant Hand and Little Girls. I like Dekcuf more and more with every show. Their getting better at lighting and there’s a few great spots to shoot from.

The Cripplers were amazing, good energy and great sound. Giant Hand didn’t disappoint as usual, the only disappointment of the night was Little Girls. Not sure whether it was the sound guy or the band, but the instrument levels were through the roof… to the point where all I heard was noise, the vocals blasted to oblivion. I’m glad I wasn’t there to see them specifically, the band apparently was up all night, dead tired and decided to cut their set short; they only played maybe four songs then called it a night. I know the turn out wasn’t the greatest but I thought it was kind of unprofessional to disappoint those that did show up.

I’m definitely going to check out The Centretown Cripplers again, next time I get a chance. I’ll give Little Girls the benefit of the doubt and check out their CD… maybe it’s better than the live show. You can check out more shots from the night on Flickr.

Two Pieces Accepted in AOE – Selections 2009

As I mentioned previously, I had entered four pieces into the Arts Ottawa East – Selections 2009 juried exhibit at the Trinity Gallery in the brand new Shenkman Arts Centre. Well, the jury is in and I had two pieces accepted to the show: An Urban Aesthetic and Post No Bills.

The exhibit opens on October 1st, but I’ll be attending the opening reception on the 7th from 7-9pm. There’s around forty different artists taking part so there should be something for everyone.

I had a hard time choosing only four images to enter, especially since it was a completely open exhibit, with no pre-selected theme or guidelines for submission. I wasn’t sure whether I should select four that spanned the complete range of my collection or concentrate on one style or subject matter. Originally I had quite a few of my colour shots in the short list I was considering for selection, but I took the advice of another photographer and chose a set of four black and whites to submit in order to keep the set looking focused as a group. Seems to have worked out in the end; Post No Bills was even selected to be on the promo card for the show, shown here to the left.

Stay tuned after the event for photos from the opening as I’ll be shooting the opening reception for Arts Ottawa East as well as attending as a featured artist.

Nick Cave at The Ottawa Writers Festival

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.

More from the Street

I’ve been digging through the archives lately and have found a ton of shots I had completely forgotten about. This shot in particular I remember being really fond of but somehow it got buried. This was from the first roll of a camera I’ve long since traded away, a Voigtlander Bessa rangefinder.

I always regretted getting rid of the camera, but it was part of a gear swap I couldn’t turn down. I’ve recently managed to acquire another one and it’s in the mail as we speak, almost two years exactly since I parted with my last one. As much as I love my Canon gear, it can be hard to get discrete shots on the street with a giant DSLR around your neck. It’ll be nice to have something nice and small I can carry around easily again.

In other news, a few of my pictures got accepted to a juried exhibit coming up in October, stay tuned for more information. It should be a great show with about forty other artists in all different mediums.

i(heart)music festival @ Cafe Dekcuf

Matthew Pollesel founded i(heart)music in 2005 and has been doing an amazing job bringing lesser known Canadian acts to the masses since then. This weekend was the massive i(heart)music festival at Cafe Dekcuf. Spanning three nights and bringing together twelve great Canadian acts the festival was a blast. I missed a couple of the bands but the acts I did catch were amazing. You can find a full list of who was on stage at i(heart)music.net.

I won’t bother with a review of the show or my favorites as all the bands were top notch. They all put on a great show with a unique stage presence. I’ve wrote before about looking and playing the part being majorly important for emerging bands, this goes double when you’re playing in a twelve band, three day festival. Usually I have to make notes on each band so I can sort out my shots later, but everyone I shot stuck out in my mind visually and this wasn’t a problem.

I see so many bands that sound great, but look like mannequins on stage. If you’re playing a festival like this, you’ve probably got a decent fan base, but most people at the show were there to see one, maybe two bands, each night and hadn’t heard of the rest. This is a prime time to spread the word and you MUST leave people with an impression that’s going to stick, or they’re probably not going to remember you the next day. This is one of the biggest problems I’ve found shooting big festivals. If bands don’t have a unique look or stage presence… I end up with 500 shots of what may as well all have been of just one band. Luckily this wasn’t the case, every band I shot gave me a great set of pics to post.

Like bees to honey, shows like this always attract photographers and there was a really good turn out all three nights. I’ve got a slightly different style than most photogs I meet at shows around Ottawa but it seems to work for me.

First off… I rarely use flash. For one it bugs some performers, especially in a really dark club. Most bands are used to people in the crowd popping away with point and shoots, but the flashes on something that small aren’t really that annoying. Put two or three photographers blasting away at point blank range with pro flashes at center stage though and it’s enough to throw anyone off their game.

Secondly and more importantly for me… I hate the look a flash gives at concert. There’s a reason most bars turn the lights down really low… they look like crap in the light. If you take a look at most stages with the house lights on they’re hardly more than a raised wooden box with wires running along the walls, up the walls and on the ceilings. Half the time the walls and ceiling aren’t even finished, they’re just drywall or plywood painted black. Some bars don’t even have a permanent stage, it’s just a corner of the bar re-purposed for that night. Take this craptastic wooden platform, turn the lights off and throw on some spots… and suddenly magic! Same with the band… with the house lights on they’re a bunch of guys in plaid shirts and jeans, put a spot on them and suddenly they’re rock stars. Given this… why would I want to blast the band with half a million lumens of daylight balanced flash power and kill the mood completely. If I wanted my pics to look like that I may as well have brought my point and shoot like everyone else and left all my expensive gear at home because the pictures will look about the same.

Lastly, I tend to stay in one spot for most of the show. I come early, figure out where the best place to shoot from is going to be and camp out. I have all my exposure levels figured out before hand for all the main stage areas and I know what each of my lenses are going to see from my spot. I might move around a bit during the show, but not much. For one, this lets me be more consistent with my exposures as I’m not having to adjust for every new position. Also, it means I’m not bumping into people annoying them… and more importantly, my gear isn’t being bumped into by a hoard of energized… and inebriated… concert goers holding drinks, dancing around and definitely not thinking about the guy weaving between them with a big camera and unwieldy camera bag. I may miss some shots by not crowd surfing, but the last thing I need is to have a rye and coke dumped on two grand worth of camera equipment.

It’s always nice to find a new band to listen to, this weekend will probably keep my playlist fresh for months.  There wasn’t a band a wouldn’t recommend so if you get a chance to see any of them live… do it.  You can see more shots from the i(heart)music festival on my Flickr.

Loudlove in the Studio

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.

No Particular Place To Go…

I find I take some of my best shots when I have nothing particular in mind to shoot. When I spent the whole day wandering downtown a couple weeks ago, my goal was actually just to blow through the roll of film quickly just to test it out. I got a 100′ bulk roll of badly expired film off a photographer on one of my forums for a song, so I rolled up a few rolls and set off not really expecting anything interesting.

The film turned out much better than I expected and so did the subject matter. This shot in particular really caught my eye. I’ve become a bit obsessed with the telephone poles full of ancient staples around the city ever since my post a while ago about a shot I took of one with my Yashica-Mat. I plan on entering this shot in an upcoming art show, we’ll see if the jury likes it as much as I do.

I think I need to start scheduling time to just wander around, my keeper rate seems to be much higher than when I’m out actively in search of a particular shot.  My favorite wandering lens has always been my macro lens.  Whenever I get bored of what’s available to shoot, or I feel like I’m in a photographic slump, there’s nothing better to force myself into a completely different perspective.