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.
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.
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