A Visit To Belle Mom's Garden

I guess we're about at the time where I should declare that the Day Lily is the official flower of this blog.  I've lost count of the number of times that I've had one up here for you to see.  This one is a bit different from the others.  It doesn't come from my Mom's garden.  I thought it would be a bit prudent to include some flowers from the other side of the family.  This flower belongs to my Lovely Assistant's Mother, better known as Belle Mom.  We went over for supper the night of the fireworks by Croatia as she lives close to that location.  Before supper, I wandered around her yard and found a group of three Lilies that I thought would make a nice picture.  The only problem was that the sun was going down fast.  I actually had to shoot at ISO 1600, which was actually kind of silly on my part.  Not for using the high ISO, but rather because I had my tripod with me for shooting the fireworks later that evening.  I should have pulled it out for the flowers.  In any event, this flower was shot at f/4, 1/80sec, ISO 1600 at 38mm.  I like how the first flower is fully in focus while the two other behind it are less so, the third one even to the point where its almost just an orange blur.  I suppose that I should start looking at different kinds of flowers, but these just always grab my attention and, in my opinion, make really nice picture.

Another Location Another Story

If I didn't know any better, I'd think that someone doesn't want for me to continue shooting fireworks displays.  Either that, or the mysterious hand of fate has been testing my problem solving prowess by tossing all kinds of strange situations my way and seeing how well I can adapt to them.  For those of you who have been keeping track over the last few weeks, I've had to deal with bad weather, a hill that was about two feet to short, unwanted chain fences and suicide barriers, an incredibly bright parking lot light and all of the fun that I experienced last night.  The new location this time was Rue de la Barre in Longueuil, just a little bit behind the Metro.  As usual, I got to the location about an hour before the show was scheduled to begin.  This may seem extreme, but it gives me a better choice of places where I can put my camera.  Most people don't generally appreciate being shoved out of the way of having a tripod put up right infront of them.  While shooting fireworks, I've learned that one of the responsibilities that photographers need to bear is choice of location.  When I arrived, there were already a bunch of people huddled in little groups, but this didn't really bother me because they weren't where I wanted to be.  I moved about fifteen feet to the right of everybody and lined up in a spot that I knew would give me a clear unobstructed view of the fireworks.  Slowly, people would begin to shuffle closer to where I was, and a couple even told me that they chose to sit close to me as they figured I must know it was a good spot if I was setting up my camera there.  Yes, that was a gratuitous story to pat myself on the back with, this is my blog after all.  I took a few test shots to make sure I was properly positioned, and after the fourth shot I noticed the one thing that every photographer hates to see in their photos.  The dreaded dust spot.  This particularly frustrated me because I had taken great care to clean my camera and lens before leaving.  I was out in the field, and ofcourse, I had left my little dust blower at home.  I did have a cloth with me so I began to furiously rub at the lens and UV Filter hoping to get the offending piece of dust.  I even did the unthinkable and tried to clean the camera sensor by blowing on it.  Many nasty words were said under my breathe, but something must have worked because the dust spot disappeared.  I put my camera back on the tripod and began to take a few more test shots to make sure I had found the original framing that I wanted to use.  I looked at those shots and noticed this strange red light starting at the bottom of my frame and reaching upwards.  I though it might have just been a reflection from the police car that had stopped just infront of my while I was taking the shot, so I took a second, this time making sure that there was no police car.  I let go of the remote trigger and the red light was still there.  A few seconds of trying to figure out what the heck was going on allowed me to find the problem.  While I had been trying to remove the dust from my lens, the police had put some flares down on the road.  It was the light from the flare that was leaking into my shot, much the same way that the parking lot light from the condo had done last week.  By this time, there was no time left to change locations.  We were five minutes away from showtime and most of the green space to the left and right of me had already been taken.  After a few more seconds of cursing my rotten luck I remembered back to last week and how I had gotten around the parking lot problem by pulling back my focal length and shooting at a wider distance.  As with then, it meant more time cropping the pictures once I got home, but it was the only way to be able to get some shots without the red light from the flare bleeding into my pictures.  Luckily, I enjoy experimenting with different cropping sizes, so there was all kinds of fun to be had with this batch of photos.  The first photograph was taken at f/9, 7sec, ISO 100 at 32mm and cropped to 12"x8".  The second photo was f/9, 16sec, ISO 100 at 32mm at cropped at 12"x10".  Photo number three was taken at f/9, 6 sec, ISO 100 at 32mm at cropped to 8"x8".  The fourth photograph was taken at f/9, 5sec, ISO 100 at 32mm and cropped to 12"x12".  Photo number five was taken at f/9, 7sec, ISO 100 at 32mm and cropped to 12"x6" and the final photograph was taken at f/9, 7sec, ISO 100 at 32mm and cropped to 8"x10".  Six photos, six different sizes.  I don`t usually post so many pictures at one time as I like to keep a few in reserve for when my photo vault gets a little dry, but I wanted to show the different variety of sizes that I had to use in order to make up for that pesky little road flare.  Some of those would be a pain in the butt if I were to decide to try and get them framed, but that's part of the fun.  All that`s left now is to wonder what kind of other obstacles will be placed before me come the next show.  I`m curious, and oddly enough, I can`t wait to find out.

Not Taking A Chance This Time

Before I get any further, I'd like to take a moment to thank everyone for the nice comments about my last set of photographs taken during the American presentation of the L'International Des Feux Loto-Québec.  I was feeling kind of frustrated with the whole experience so far this year, but the many kind words left by others over at my Facebook Page made me see that I was maybe being a little bit rough on myself.  Once again, my Lovely Assistant was right.  I suppose that I should be used to that by now.  Getting back to the now, there's another show tonight and that means I had better get the photographs that I took on Wednesday night up here.  The Country providing he explosions his time was Croatia.  Despite the previously mentioned kind words, I had already planned on returning to a site that I had used last year to photograph this show.  I guess I wanted to make sure that I'd end up with the immediate rush of feeling good about my photographs rather than waiting to get that rush through the comments of others.  Not that I don't love your comments, keep them coming.  This location provided me with a shot that I felt was good enough to be shown during my photography exhibition last year, but ended up being way more popular than I had thought.  It went home with three people.  For those of you who may not remember, or are new to the blog, you can see that photograph here.   Following that link will allow you to see the photo in question, and also read a little bit about the background behind what led me to taking it.  You'll also find a link there to the website of Bernard Brault, a photographer for newspaper La Presse.  Or you could also follow the links I just provided.  In any case, Bernard Brault deserves a second link, as those of you who read the other story will know.  Theses photographs were taken from a pedestrian overpass that is located over Taschereau Blvd.  I like it for two reasons.  From that specific location you get a great view of the fireworks going off in the sky as well as an impressive light show caused by using a slow shutter speed of the cars that are passing on the road.  It's also a good vantage point to on how bad some of the local drivers are.  Though some of the more outrageous lane changes didn't make the final cut for this bunch of photos, I can tell you that I saw some moves that made me wonder if driver's licences were once again being offered for free in boxes of Cracker Jack.  My nerves were also a little on edge while taking these photos as I kept having this bad feeling that my camera was going to somehow slip off of the tripod and go crashing to the highway below where it would then be crushed by a passing 18-wheeler in a scene right out of a movie as I stood from up high and could only watch.  This did not happen, but it still caused my knees to shake a few times whenever I would accidentally brush against the tripod or if there would be a sudden gust of wind.  Nothing like some irrational fear to get your heart rate going.  Getting back to the photos you see here, they were all shot using a long shutter speed.  In order of appearance, here are the settings that I used.  The first photograph was shot at f/9, 6sec, ISO 100 at 140mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/9, 9sec, ISO 100 at 130mm.  Photograph number three was taken at f/9, 7sec, ISO 100 at 130mm and the final photograph was taken at f/9, 6sec, ISO100 at 130mm.  Shooting at f/9 gave me enough depth of field to make sure that not only the explosions would be in focus, but the road signs as well.  This is kind of important because I learned during my exhibition that to certain people, the names of the places written on the sign can be just as important as the colour or explosions that are show in the sky.  I also did a little bit of cropping at 8" x 12" to tighten up the images a little bit, just to make sure that things were a little more better placed in the photo.  It's something I like to do for photographs of fireworks.  I like to shoot a little bit wider than normal, that way I can crop the image myself later, and at the same time, but shooting wider than necessary, it make sure that I'll get most of the explosion in the frame.  There are still a few shows left before the competition comes to an end for this year so that means there still a little time left for some more experimentation.  I'll head out a few more times and try to find some new vantage points to get some shots, and should that not work, there are still a couple of old locations that I still have up my sleeve.

A Couple Of Love Bugs

Well, I guess it was bound to happen.  Most photographers know that the easiest way to make a little money with their camera is through pornography.  I figured if I'm going to go porn, I might was well go hardcore right from the start.  Someone warn my mother not to look at this update.  Not only will she not be impressed with the content, but she'll be upset knowing that between takes these bugs are eating her plants.  Being my first experience with dirty pictures, I tried to remain professional.  I tried to make sure the models were warm, didn't have more people on the set than was necessary and tried to keep my suggestions to a bare minimum.  I even tried to make the scene a little artistic by cropping the left hand side of the photo after the jagged edges of the leaf, allowing up to see the blurred background there, as well as in the other holes on the leaf.    I shot this photograph a f/11, 1/60sec, ISO 1600 at 60mm.  Yes, the ISO was an error and this photo was shot at the same time as my Day Lily photo from last week.  And so it begins.  I guess I'll try and book a few local models and see how this porn thing works before I book he next flight for L.A.

Third Time Is A Charm?

I'm having a hard time trying to decide if the 2013 Fireworks season has been a success or a failure for me thus far.  We're halfway through the competition and so far I've missed out on the first two shows due to bad weather and the three last shows have been kind of a frustration as the locations I have chosen to shoot at haven't been as glorious as I thought they would be.  I suppose that choosing a good location involves lots of trial and error, but so far it feels more like error and error.  My Lovely Assistant tells me that I'm being too hard on myself, that I still end up with several nice photographs when all is said and done.  She's probably right, but it's still a bit frustrating to me to find what I think will be a great spot to shoot the shows only to be met with an obstacle once the fireworks start going off.  One plus is that it's been forcing me to be a bit more creative in my cropping.  I generally always try to stay in the 12" x 8" range with my crops because it's an easy size to frame.  Last year I began to play around with the 12" x 6" range as I liked the panoramic look that it gave my photos.  With these photos, which were of the fireworks show put on my the United States for the L'International Des Feux Loto Québec, I ended up using ever more different crop sizes.  The main reason being because where I was located, an overpass on Rue Saint-Charles over Taschereau Blvd, ended up having a condo building with rather bright parking lot lights which ended up bleeding into my photos.  Most of my shots ended up having this annoying yellowish streak of light in the left-hand side.   I had figured that by using my 70-300mm lens I'd be able to bypass that problem as my lens would be focused on what I wanted to be shooting, mainly the Jacques Cartier Bridge, the Cross on Mt. Royal and the fireworks going off in the sky.  All of which were several kilometers away from that condo building and it's annoying bright lights.  However, it was not meant to be.  Thus, the first photograph that you see on this page was cut to a rather unique, by my standards anyway, 7" x 12".  The third photograph is cut to 9" x 12" while the other two I ended up being able to use the more traditional 8" x 12" that I was earlier talking about.  Even with my complaining, it doesn't mean that I don't like the photographs that I took.  You wouldn't be seeing them here on the page  if I didn't like them.  I really like the second photograph you see here.  The big blue bursts in the sky along with all of the other smaller blasts happening along the bottom of the shot.  I also like the silhouetted skeleton of the Monster roller-coaster in the bottom left-hand side. Though I hate the reasoning that brought me to using the odd cropping, I enjoy the simplicity of the first shot.  The single blast going off over the bridge with the cross on the mountain in the background is, oddly enough, the very look I was hoping to get.  I just needed to take a different road to get there.  The third photo I enjoy as the fireworks appear to me to be like large red flowers, complete with white stems left by the trails of the rockets as they went up to the sky.  I also like how clear the bridge is in this shot due to the light of the fireworks reflecting against it.  In the fourth photograph, I like how the strands of light look almost like silk, spread smoothly across the sky.  Almost like a spider web blown loose by the wind.  I also liked the pattern of white light left by the blasts.  The shots were all taken in Manual Mode using a remote trigger so as not to cause any camera shake.  In order of appearance, here are the settings that I used to for each shot.  f/9, 6sec, ISO 100 at 70mm.  f/9, 6 sec, ISO 100 at 70mm.  f/9, 5 sec, ISO100 at 70mm and finally f/9, 10sec, ISO 100 at 70mm.  If you are wondering, it's not an accident that all my the shots were taken at 70mm.  I shot them all at that focal length when it became quite clear that I couldn't avoid the dreaded lights from the condo building.  By shooting at 70mm, it gave me more room when it came to cropping the photographs, and also allowed me to get the higher blasts that were going off in the sky.  It's the same trick I used last year when I found myself in a similar situation.  As it would happen, I came home from that night of shooting certain that I had wasted my evening and would find nothing of use in my camera.  Instead, the photo that you'll see if you follow the link, ended up being one of the 25 that were part of my exhibition last fall.  One of these days I'll learn that my Lovely Assistant is always right.  I need to stop thinking the worst, and concentrate of finding the best.

Reach For The Sky

It's hard to believe that a month has already gone by since I made the claim back on June 21st that the blog was going to be going green as I began to post a whole lot of pictures taken in my Mom's backyard flowerbed.  I guess you could say that I got a little bit sidetracked in between the July 1st concerts (Guitarz feat. Matt Laurent and Girls Wanna Have Fun Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) and some fireworks displays (China and Spain).  This has resulted in a large backlog of photographs that I have yet to share with all of you.  In an effort to get back on track, here is one of my Mom's Day Lilies.  I've taken photographs of them before, but I've sent you on enough link trips today.  Though, feel free to search around here and find them yourself.  Back to this flower, it was positioned at kind of an angle that led me to think it would look good being shot vertically instead of horizontally, which is how I have traditionally shot this kind of flower.  I am pretty happy with the result.  I like how the stems appear to be reaching out to the sky and the use of the Macro lens really brings out the pollen.  This photo is also an example of being a failed lesson and a lesson learned.  Failed in the sense that I once again found myself shooting at ISO 1600 because I once again forgot to reset the camera after my last set of photos.  That's why some of the green in the background may appear to be a bit grainy.  A lesson learned in the sense that I shot at f/11 in order to make sure that more of the flower would be in focus, knowing that the Macro lens would take care of blurring out the background for me.  Luckily, the background noise isn't all that visible, some of you out there may not have even noticed if I hadn't pointed it out...I hope.  This photo was shot at f/11, 1/80sec, ISO 1600 at 60mm and it's rapidly shooting up the chart of favourite photos taken in my Mom's garden.

They Used My Spot

If this photo seems familiar to you, it means you've been following my page here for almost a year.  In that case, thanks.  If you haven't been to this page before or have not been following me since the beginning, then maybe this scene seems familiar to you because you saw it on the 6:00PM CTV News (go to 7:47 of the video).  This is in relation to the tragic events in Lac Megantic.  I suppose it might seem a bit rude to be drawing attention to myself, especially considering the subject matter, but that's not really my goal.  Rather, I find it cool that a location where I've been taking photographs for the last several years was also chosen by a major media company to position their reporter.  Am I reading to much into this chance happening?  Ofcourse I am, but it still gave me a warm fuzzy when I saw it on the television.  This photograph is different from the one I used last September.  It was taken in 2008 for one of my photography courses and was shot at f/3.2, 1/100sec, ISO 400 at 58mm.

Girls Wanna Have Fun...Part III

Yes my friends, we've finally reached the end of this line.  Everyone likes a good trilogy, and as I learned in my Creative Writing courses oh so many years ago, three is the magic number.  With that in mind, this is the third and final posting for my Girls Wanna Have Fun concert photographs.  For those of you who are new to the series, or are someone in the future who is new to the blog and thus seeing this post as the first as you scroll down the page, you can find Part One and Part Two by following the respective links.  I don't really have much more to say about this series, which is what I said to lead off Part Two before going on on a rather long little story.  Truthfully, I've said all that there is to say about these photos so I'll just take up a little more space to send out a virtual thank-you to the performers.  Andrée Watters, Élizabeth Blouin-Brathwaite and Eva Avila all put on a great show and I had a great time taking pictures of them.  I'll now share with you the settings that I used for the pictures from this update.  The first shot was taken at f/2.8, 1/125sec, ISO 1600 -2 Exposure at 68mm.  The second shot was taken at f/2.8, 1/125sec, ISO 1600, -2 Exposure at 68mm.  For the rest of the photographs from this set, I'll just add the specific settings underneath the photos that they belong to.  

f/2.8, 1/100sec, ISO 1600, -0.7 Exposure at 38mm

f/2.8, 1/100sec, ISO 1600, -0.7 Exposure at 66mm

f/2.8,1/160sec, ISO 1600, -2 Exposure at 46mm

You probably noticed that the last picture is in black and white.  I decided I wanted to try atleast one photo in black and white since this is how you probably would have seen the photo had it been published in a newspaper...back in 1988.  Hey, I used to read newspapers in 1988 so I have good memories.  And with that, we bring an end to this little trilogy.  I hope you've enjoyed the photographs, and I hope that I can find myself some more fun concerts like this to shoot.

Just Because It's A Good Idea Doesn't Mean That It Really Is One

I think that the title of this little blog post pretty much sums up my 2013 Fireworks shooting.  The first two times were rained out.  The third show I decided to try my luck from the top of a hill in Seaway Park only to discover that my hill was about two feet shorter than needed and the blasts were no where near the structure of the Jacques Cartier Bridge.  See, I`ve been wanting to take some pictures of the fireworks, but to keep the structure of the bridge in my shot.  I had some success with this last year.  You can see that picture by clicking the link here.  While you`re looking at that picture, also take the time see how little was actually written about that photograph.  I guess that I`ve become a bit long winded over the last year. I`ve been trying to capture a look something along the line of that picture and I thought I had found the perfect location.  Along with my Lovely Assistant, we took a brisk 15 minute walk to where cars enter the Jacques Cartier Bridge.  My goal was to position myself slightly near the beginning of the bridge, rather than going far onto the bridge itself.  The bridge is a good place to view the fireworks, but it`s a terrible place to try and photograph them.  One of the reasons is because the suicide prevention steel barriers block out what can be a great view.  I figured that by placing myself before the bridge actually begins, I`d free myself of the suicide barriers.  I was kind of right.  There were no suicide barriers, but there was also a large chain link fence in my way which actually went higher than the walls I was trying to avoid to begin with.  We went to the stairs to leave the bridge, but I then noticed that there was a little gap between where the stairs were, and the suicide barriers that cover the rest of the bridge.  I quickly jumped into the spot knowing it was the best vantage point I was going to find 10 minutes before showtime, and got ready.  There was a large concrete ledge that I had to deal with, but luckily my tripod allows me to turn my camera and shoot vertically.  I got as close to the ledge as possible, went vertical and began shooting.  As I feared, I didn't get the exact results that I was looking for, but thanks to a very present Moon, I got still got some interesting shots.  There was also some creative editing involved in getting to the final shots that you see here.  I had to rotate the images 3.5degrees as my vertical shooting position was not quite as straight as I had thought.  I also decided to edit out the cement ledge and as much of the buildings that obstructed some of the blasts, though I also find some of the shots where you can see into the building to be kind of fun to look at as well.  Here are the details for the shots that you see.  f/9, 11sec, ISO 100 at 48mm.  f/9, 8sec, ISO 100 at 48mm.  f/9, 4sec, ISO 100 at 48mm and finally f/9, 4sec, ISO 100 at 48mm.  I also tried using different crop sizes for these photographs.  Generally sticking with 12" horizontally but sizes varying from 5" to 12" and lots of other odd numbers in between for the vertical.  I guess it's back to the drawing board as I try and find a new more suitable location for the next show.  There's a couple more locations that I have on my radar.  Hopefully I'll get a bit more lucky with them.

Girls Wanna Have Fun...Part II

Everybody loves a sequel, right?  Here's Part Two of the photos I took at the Girls Wanna Have Fun show held on Canada Day in Greenfield Park.  I pretty much covered the entire story of the day in Part One, but there was another little note I wanted to add.   so I guess we'll let the pictures do the talking for this post.  I'll write the settings I used under each of the pictures.  Due to time issues when shooting events like this one, you don't usually have the time to be changing your lens and risk missing the action.  As I previously mentioned, in most situations, your average show photographer will only have about three or four songs to get the shots that he needs for the morning newspaper, a magazine or internet review.  That's what they often carry more than one camera with them.  Since I have yet to win the6/49, I'm still a one camera kind of guy, but I do have a couple of lenses.  I brought three with me for this show.  A Canon 24-70mm, 50mm and also a 70-300mm.  I had a specific reason for each.  I brought the 24-70mm because it is my favourite lens and has always done me well when shooting shows for the Choeur Vive Voix. I brought the 50mm because it can shoot at f/1.8.  The larger aperture means a little bit more shutter speed which we know is essential in low light situations like this concert.  I also brought the 70-300mm along incase I couldn't get close enough to the stage to use the other two lenses.  The positive of using the 70-300mm lens is that I could be a fair distance away and still get some tight shots.  However, the one negative, and it's a big one, is that the lens doesn't shoot past f/4.5 at 70mm and f/5.6 at 300mm.  In other words, what I gain in distance, I lose in shutter speed.  As a result, the first two lenses saw much more action than the zoom lens did.  It was kind of a challenge to switch between lenses in the middle of a show.  I didn't want to risk missing much of the concert, so when I chose to switch a lens, I did so between songs.  I was getting pretty fast at it too, though in the back of my mind I was always kind of worried about picking up dust spots on my shots.  You don't open your camera without having such worries. While the 70-300mm experiment wasn't a success, I was happy to see that I didn't have very many dust spots to deal with either.  Don't worry, my camera and all three lenses got a good air bath when we got home.  So, here are the rest of the photos. I haven't forgotten about the settings.  As usual, they're printed in the order that that photographs appear on the page.  f/1.8, 1/500sec, ISO 1600, -2 Exposure at 50mm.  f/5.6, 1/80sec, ISO 1600, -2 Exposure, 250mm.  f/5, 1/80sec, ISO 1600, -2 Exposure at 190mm.  f/5, 1/80sec, ISO 1600, -2 Exposure at 220mm.  f/2.8, 1/50sec, ISO 1600, -2 Exposure at 70mm and finally, f/4.5, 1/125sec, ISO 1600, -2 Exposure at 135mm.  It's a good thing that I 'covered the entire story' with the last post.  That's what happens when I begin to ramble.  I've still got one more update to go with photographs from this show so I hope that you're all still interested in seeing a few more and I'll try to find something else to say for that batch as well.

Girls Wanna Have Fun...Part I

Before we get any further, I think it's kind of important to express how much respect I have for people who do this as their job.  I've been sitting on these photographs and 'playing' with them for just over a week now.  The people who do this professionally have to do everything I've done in a week and do it in a matter of hours.  Sadly, the 'day job' ends up getting in my way so I hope that you all out there aren't to upset with me for sitting on these for a while.  I ended up taking over 1200 photographs of both this show Girls Wanna Have Fun, and the Guitarz show that came before it.  That was probably part of my time management problem.  Most show photographers are only on the scene for around 3-4 songs before they are quickly ushered away from the stage.  I sat, kneeled and walked around the first row of the crowd and other locations for the better part of two entire sets.  Girls Wanna Have Fun is a show made up of three fairly famous Canadian singers.  Andrée Watters, Élizabeth Blouin-Brathwaite and former Canadian Idol winner Eva Avila.  The three joined together under the name 'Girls Wanna Have Fun' and sing a collection of their own songs and also some famous pop/rock songs from years gone by.  I managed to capture these photographs during a free Canada Day show held in Greenfield Park.  It was kind of an adventure to get these shots.  While I was photographing the Guitarz show, I was approached by another photographer who belonged to a local photography club.  He seemed nice, wanted to know if I belonged to any club, what I was using to shoot, just making general photography small talk.  In between the Guitarz and Girls Wanna Have Fun show, me ended up meeting again, though he was a little bit less cordial this time.  I had managed to snake my way to the front of the crown, not something that is easy for someone of my stature to do, and asked a lady if she would mind if I knelt down on my knees next to her in order to get some pictures.  She didn't mind at all, and we began a nice little conversation about the weather and if we thought it was going to rain before the show ended when Mr. Photo Club came back and was a little upset about my poaching 'his' spot.  I'd seen his 'spot' and it was two chairs away from where I was.  Luckily, the nice lady quickly offered up the spot on the other side of her chair and the peace was kept.  Mr. Photo Club quickly added that I'd be sure to get some great shots from that spot as well...before he then walked away.  Enough about him, and back to the pictures.  I was kind of disappointed with the stage lighting.  While photographing the shows from the Choeur Vives Voix, (Part One and Part Two) I had felt that the stage was dark, but I would have loved to have as much light for this show as I did for those.  I again had to play with my Exposure Level Indicator in order to try and get my shutter speed to be fast enough to capture the action.  The trick didn't work all of the time.  There's only so much 'playing around' that you can do.  Some of the photos ended up being way to over-exposed, some of them ended up not having a fast enough shutter speed which resulted in some camera blur and some others I just didn't like so they ended up in the Recycling Bin.  Remember the over 1200 photographs I had previously mentioned?  After a couple of editing sweeps to weed out the undesirable photographs, I was down to 100 photographs combined of both shows for my personal collection, 22 of them will end up here on these pages. You've already seen the four photographs from the Guitarz show and if you haven't, why haven't you?  You can see them right here.  The Girls Wanna Have Fun photographs I'll be releasing in three parts.  Don't worry, there won't be a huge story to go with each part.  The other two will mostly just be the photos along with the settings that I used.  Speaking of which, we're at that part of the story.  The settings I used are the following, in order of appearance here on the blog.  f/2.8, 1/200sec, ISO 1600, -2 Exposure at 46mm.  f/2.8, 1/400sec, ISO 1600, -2 Exposure at 66mm.  f/2.8, 1/400sec, ISO 1600, -2 Exposure at 54mm.  f/2.8, 1/400sec, ISO 1600, -2 Exposure at 48mm.  f/2.8, 1/125sec, ISO 1600, -2 Exposure at 59mm and finally, f/2.8, 1/60sec, ISO 1600, -2 Exposure at 34mm.  The final photograph was also cropped to 12" x 6", and all of the other photographs were cropped to certain sizes, but still keeping with the 12" x 8" ratio that I generally try to use. My favourite photograph of those that I took can be seen here in this post.  It's the third one.  I like the combination of Élizabeth Blouin-Brathwaite singing while Andrée Watters is playing the guitar next to her.  I really enjoyed taking photographs of this show, and this is mostly due to the artists.  To be perfectly honest, I'm not really a 'Pop' music kind of guy, but I did know several of the songs that they played during their show, and the three of them just seemed so happy to be up there performing for everybody.  They always had smiles on their faces and even managed to look directly at the photographer was was snapping pictures of them for a little more than an hour.  I hope I wasn't much of a distraction or an annoyance, though judging by their performance, that didn't seem to be the case.  I hope you all enjoy these photographs and can kind of get a feel of the energy that was on display that night.  The other two parts of this photo set will be up over the course of the week.

 

Finding The Explosive Silver Lining

By the end of the evening I had switched positions, was covered in sweat, had been bitten several dozen times and was kind of filled with a deep sense of regret and disappointment.  Ofcourse, I'm talking about my experience taking photographs of China's entry in the L'International des Feux Loto-Quebéc.  With all of the bad weather of late, this was my first outing of the year to shoot the fireworks.  To be perfectly honest, the conditions still were far from perfect as it was a hot and humid night, but there was enough of a breeze going to make sure that the smoke from the pyrotechnics would be cleared.  I decided to try out a new location, the little hill in Seaway Park in Saint-Lambert where I had previously shot a couple of silhouetted photographs of the Jacques Cartier Bridge.  For those of you who either don't remember or weren't around, you can find the first photograph here and the other one here.  Along with my Lovely Assistant, we were the first ones on the hill and I quickly found the spot where I had taken the photographs of the bridge.  However, shortly after setting up, I got the sinking feeling that while the spot was good for the bridge, I'd be just a little bit off when it comes to fireworks.  Sure enough, the explosions began at 10:00PM and my hope of getting the fireworks and part of the bridge in the same shot came to a quick end.  Luckily, we were only a few downhill steps away from another location I had used to take some photographs in the past, so I folded up the tripod and down the hill I went, coming dangerously close to becoming a modern day Humpty Dumpty at the same time.  After the camera was repositioned, another problem quickly arrived.  All of the humidity in the air, along with the generally bad air conditions we've had in the area over the last few days, made it impossible for me to see the rockets as they were launched, meaning it was very difficult to properly time my shots.  I managed to get lucky a few times, but by the time that the show was half finished, I was a mighty frustrated photographer.  Maybe it was the location, but I also found there to be a very limited variety with the fireworks, and not very many that really lit up the sky. So, I decided to focus my attention elsewhere.  Namely, cars that were passing by on the highway.  My favourite shot of the night was one that I took as three police cars were going past my location and I was lucky enough to have some fireworks going off in the sky at the same time.  That photograph was shot at f/9, 8sec, ISO 100 at 65mm.  I then cropped it to 12" x 6".  Another shot that I decided to share with you is the one of a a blue explosion.  It reminded me of the Montreal Biosphere, another of my favourite subjects.  This one was shot at f/9, 7sec, ISO 100 at 65mm.  I cropped this one to 12" x 12" as I liked to image of the circle inside of a square frame.  The opening photograph of this post is more of a traditional type of shot I try to take when I'm taking photographs of the fireworks.  I managed to capture some nice colours in the sky and the light streaks of thepassing cars are an added bonus.  That one was shot at f/9, 7sec, ISO 100 at 65mm. I do have one final photograph to share, but this one is more of a social commentary.  I can appreciate people who like to watch fireworks displays.  I'm one of them.  But, you have to be some kind of an idiot to stop your car on a busy highway to watch them.  I decided to protect this guys identity by blurring out his license plate, but I'm still going to show you the picture.  People, don't do this.  Those lights you see streaking by in the sky belonged to an 18-wheeler.  And with that, the show was over and I ended up walking home with more mosquito bites than photographs, but I guess it wasn't a total loss of an evening since I still had enough to fill this page, and a fun little story to go along with it.

Guitarz - 2013 Greenfield Park Free Canada Day Concert

Probably the best place to celebrate Canada Day on the South Shore of Montreal is the borough of Greenfield Park, which is part of the city of Longueuil.  They have a parade, all kind of activities for people of all ages, free concerts and fireworks to bring an end to the day.  I'm always up for a free show, can't beat the price.  But also, these festival like settings allow me the chance to sneak in with my camera and take some shots.  In other words, I get to pretend to be a concert photographer for a couple of hours.  I made my way down to the site with my Lovely Assistant who braved the colder than usual weather to help me out.  I was fortunate in that there were less people on the site than I had thought there would be, though more people did end up arriving shortly after my arrival.  I easily found my way down to the guardrail that separated us regular folk from the stage and began snapping away.  The band that was on the stage when I arrived is called Guitarz, and is an outfit led by Matt Laurent, who some of you from the area may know as the leader of a band called Lucky Uke.  Filling out his band for the night were Christian Alary, Laurie Ouelle, Matt Laurent, Jason Lang and Greg Morency.  They played a good selection of modern and classic rock, both in English and en Français. They did a good job of warming up the crowd for the headlining act, a show called Girls Wanna Have Fun.  I stuck around for that show as well, and you'll be seeing some pictures from it right here on this blog very soon.  The main problem when trying to photograph these shows is that there isn't very much light and using flash is a big no-no.  So, the ISO gets upped all the way to 1600 for these shots.  I even tried a new trick for these shots.  I decreased the exposure on some of the shots in order to increase my shutter speed.  In order to do this, you can just use the Exposure Level Indicator on your camera and move the little cursor to either -1 or -2.  It's the first time that I used this little trick and I think I pulled it off pretty well.  In the usual order of appearance, here are the settting for each of the photographs that you see.  f/2.8, 1/125 sec, ISO 1600 -1 Exposure, at 57mm.  I also cropped this photograph to 12"x12".  f/2.8, 1/160sec, ISO 1600, -1 Exposure at 70mm.  f/2.8, 1/250sec, ISO 1600, -1 Exposure at 70mm and finally, f/2.8, 1/160sec, ISO 1600, -1.7 Exposure at 59mm.  Needless to say, I had a blast.  This was only the beginning of the fun on this night.  I'll be back in a few days with more pictures from the Girls Wanna Have Fun show.

O' Canada

Happy Canada Day to all of my fellow Canadians out there, or as we call it here in La Belle Province, Happy Moving Day!  I went out for on a little hunt for a Canadian Flag to photograph yesterday.  Yes, on June 30th.  Some things will never change and I will probably forever be Mr. Last Minute.  Calling it a 'hunt' is probably not the right word.  I went to a place where I have taken many other photographs in the past, Saint-Lambert's War Memorial at Parc Mercille.  When I got there, my hopes were immediately dashed as the flag was all tangled upon itself.  It almost looked like the flag was tucked into its own folds as it was wrapped around the pole.  Then the magic started to happen.  I've stated here in the past that I'm not really the most spiritual person there is, but I do believe that there are certain 'forces' out there that can give you a helping hand.  The wind began to blow a little stronger, and ever so slowly, the flag began to fight its way out of the knot it had tied itself into.  I stood and watched for a few minutes as the flag fought it's way free and began to wave in all of its glory.  I quickly focused in on the flag, set my camera to High Speed Continuous Shooting Mode, which in the case of my camera is 5 frames per second, and shot away.  I choose to shoot in High Speed because I didn't want to miss the flag being on full display as it blew in the wind.  I shot the photograph at f/8, 1/250sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  I framed the shot in a way so that the viewers eye would follow the pole all the way up to the flag.  I also thought it was important to have both walking paths at opposite ends of the photograph.  Hope you all have a great Canada Day, and a big thanks to the 'forces' behind the freeing up of that flag.