Charger Front Grill

As mentioned here a couple of days ago, the annual Saint-Lambert Old Cars Show took place about a week ago and I spent some time looking for cool little details on the car that I could photograph.  Being a kid of the 80's, I grew up watching the Dukes Of Hazzard.  As a result, one of the cars that I'm always on the look for is the fabled Dodge Charger.  Much to my happiness, there was one on display so I made sure to find a way to grab a photograph of the famous front grill of the car.  I shot this photograph at f/6.3, 1/100sec, ISO 100 at 54mm.  I played a little bit in with the Curves feature in Photoshop to bring out a little more of the chrome and then cropped the final image to 20"x7" for what I think is a cool little Charger photograph.  There's always something fun to be found in the details.

Car Art

I'm a big fan of old cars.  They just seem to have so much more character than the cars of today.  Almost every year the city of Saint-Lambert holds a classic car show and I usually try and make my way down for a look.  This year was no different.  I used to try and take photographs of the cars themselves, but found that they are often parked way to close together and are often surrounded by other car lovers eager to take a close look.  So, a few years back I decided to change my plans.  I look for little characteristics of the car, or little details that interest me.  Such as this grill from a 1969 Ford Galaxy.  I liked the lines, the black behind the chrome grill and the nice round headlights.  I thought it would look nice as in a panorama style photograph.  This photograph was taken at f/6.3, 1/500sec, ISO 100 at 30mm.  I've done these kind of photographs before, because I like they style.  I grabbed a few more shots this year so you'll probably be seeing a few of them here from time to time.

Future Villains at Metropolis

In an odd case of deja-vu, the band that opened up for Steel Panther at the Metropolis was Future Villains, the same band that opened for them last year.  Going in to this concert I had high hopes of walking out with some pretty good shots.  Along with my partner in crime, we showed up at the Metropolis early, and though there was still a line going around the building, we were still in the building shortly after the doors opened.  My hopes were to get as close to the stage as possible, as being close to the stage would mean less obstructions, I mean other fans, between the band and I.  Much to my surprise, not only were we able to get close to the stage, but we found ourselves standing right next to the little barrier that separated the fans from the stage.  Front row!  Who could ask for anything more.  Sure, there was still a little more than an hour and a half before the show started, but I was exactly where I wanted to be.  Well, a little more off to the right of the stage, but I wasn't going to complain about that since we were right there in the front.  Finally, the house lights went down and it was show time.  The band hit the stage, the first song was rocking and I started snapping a few photographs when I noticed one of the security guards making his way towards me.  "You're not allowed to take photographs during the show." Yep, those were the exact words.  I quickly mentioned that I had been given the okay from a friend of mine who works backstage at the Metropolis, which was in fact true, but it turns out that he wasn't working that night.  I was told again not to take any pictures and the guard went back to the stage.  A wave of disappointment crashed over me as we had spent the time getting to the venue early just to get these spots, and now I wasn't even going to be able to take any photographs.  Now, in all honesty, the guy was doing his job, and he was right when he said that photography was not allowed, but my disappointment quickly turned to anger when I looked to my right down the line of fans and not only saw others taking photographs during the show, but one fan was even recording video of the event with their iPad.  Not a word of warning or batted eyelash from my security guard friend, despite the fact that all of this was happening  about five feet from where I stood.  To add insult to my injury, my buddy then took out his cellphone and began to record video from the show himself, just to rub it in (with friends like that...).  My friend feels that I had made it a little obvious that I knew what I was doing while taking a bunch of photographs right away, as compared to the others who would snap away only a few times.  I suppose that I can understand that point of view, though it doesn't make up for the iPad fan.  Though this fan being blonde and having forgotten to button her shirt all the way to the top might have afforded her some leeway.  So, I tried to be a little bit more sneaky.  The next few songs, the camera never made it higher than my waist.  I wanted to give the guard the impression that I would be following his orders.  As the guard slowly made his way back to his seat by the stage, I slowly began to move further to my left, where there would now be a large speaker between myself and the guard.  Then, I tried to pick my spots.  Moments in songs where there wasn't much movement on the stage, and quickly brought up my camera to take a shot or two before quickly bringing it back down.  It was kind of annoying, and I was not able to play with the settings at all between shots, but I managed to walk away with a few photographs to show for my trouble.  I even think the quality of shots I got is much better than last time.  Feel free to go back in time and see for yourselves.  Here, the first photograph was taken at f/3.5, 1/80sec, ISO 3200 at 50mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/10, 1/100sec, ISO 3200 at 50mm.  I only got away with f/10 because there was a bright spotlight on the singer.  I had to take the photograph quickly as I was in stealth mode at the moment, but I really like the star effect that shooting at f/10 created with the spotlight.  The third photograph was taken at, f/3.5, 1/160sec, ISO 3200 at 50mm.  The fourth photograph was taken at f/3.5, 1/500sec, ISO 3200 at 50mm and the final photograph was taken at f/3.5, 1/250sec, ISO 3200 at 50mm.  Much like the year before, the band stuck around after the show to sign merchandise, so this year I picked up their CD and all five members of the band signed it for me.  There were a bunch of good guys.  Hope they make their way up here again one day.

Steel Panther At Metropolis

It's not often that a band will come to town three times in less than a year, but when you're hot, you're hot.  Steel Panther visited the Metropolis last night, their third visit and second as headliner in just under a year.  Those of you who have been around may remember that I was able to get my camera into the Metropolis for their first visit last year.  There was no chance to repeat the experience during the second show as they were playing at the Bell Center, opening for Judas Priest.  However, when the tour returned to the Metropolis for a second time, it meant that I would have another shot at doing some guerrilla concert photography.  My partner in crime and I arrived nice and early and managed to grab a spot right by the stage, but I had to surrender it after the opening act because of an overly protective security guard.  I'll share that story when I put up the pictures I took of the opening act.  Don't worry though, there's still plenty of story to go around for this update.  Giving up my spot by the stage meant that I needed to find a new place to stand during the show, and I noticed a little pocket of space about 20 people back to the left of the stage.  I figured I'd be far enough back to be out of the sight from the overly protective security guard, yet far enough from the center of the floor when things tend to be a bit more, shall we say, eventful.  Sadly, I failed to take into account the amount of people who wanted to take part in such events.  Those who know me are well aware that I'm not a small guy.  I was never in any danger, but I also had no real desire to become part of the action. However, as people began rushing by in groups of five or more, not to mention the odd pair of legs that would pass overhead, it meant that my plans for the evening had changed.  I had originally wanted to be able to play with different apertures during the show, in hopes of getting the most crisp images possible, but instead of paying attention to the viewfinder, I ended up paying way more attention to those around me.  I did manage to follow some advice I'd gotten and used a smaller aperture than the f/1.8 I had used last time, but I would have liked to try getting even smaller. Oh well, there's always next time.  The first photograph was taken at f/4.5, 1/500sec, ISO 3200 at 50mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/3.5, 1/500sec, ISO 3200 at 50mm.  The third photograph was taken at f/4.5, 1/500sec, ISO 3200 at 50mm and the fourth photograph was taken at f/4.5, 1/200sec, ISO 3200 at 50mm.  Here are a few more shots  that I managed to take during the show.

f/4.5, 1/500sec, ISO 3200 at 50mm

f/4.5, 1/500sec, ISO 3200 at 50mm

As you may have noticed, my location meant having lots of hands in the air in front of me.  This meant trying to shoot between many outstretched arms, and also having a few shots get ruined by the odd body part that would suddenly come between my lens and the stage.  I tried to play around with different photo sizes, such as the 12" x 4" crop that you see in the fifth shot.  I've also tried to play around with certain brush modes in Photoshop for some of the other shots, maybe they'll see the light of day here eventually.  At the end of the night, there were empty cups all over the floor, several pairs of broken sunglasses and a shoe.  I guess that means that everybody had a good time, including the band who were happy to announce that the show was sold out.  Maybe we'll see them here again soon.

Birds Of War

I always like to try new things with my camera, I'm just not fast in getting the results up here to the blog.  On this particular occasion, I was wanting to play around with shutter speeds.  You obviously need something that moves rather fast if you want to play with shutter speeds, and after seeing a bird feeder in view from the window I knew that I'd be able to have a little bit of fun.  I guess that it must have been close to lunch time for the birds as well as they were flying all around the feeder, trying to get a spot in order to grab some of the seeds that were out for the taking.  I was hoping to catch a few of those birds in flight, so I cranked up on the shutter, put the camera into continuous shooting mode, and then played around with different apertures.  The first photograph was taken at f/5.6, 1/500sec, ISO 400 at 300mm.  Here are a few more.

f/5.6, 1/500sec, ISO 400 at 300mm

f/5.6, 1/500sec, ISO 400 at 300mm

These three photographs all came from the same sequence.  I spent a few minutes watching the birds as they sat in the tree, just before making the leap to the feeder.  Once I felt that I had timed their motions, I would press the trigger button just before I thought the birds would make their move.  If I timed everything right, I'd end up with a little sequence like the one we see here.  To be honest though, I also ended up with shots of the birds just sitting in the tree and not moving at all. 

Correspondances - Part Two

My good friends at Choeur Vives Voix held their reunion meeting last night to bring an end to their 2015 production, Correspondances.  I was very happy to be invited to the party as it was great to see some familiar faces and to present many of them with CD's full of photographs that I took during their show.  As I usually do, here are a couple more photographs that I took during the show.  These are all from the second part of the show, if you'd like to go back and see some of the photographs I took during the first half of the show, you can see them by following this link.  The first photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/250sec, ISO 3200 at 30mm.  Here are a few more.

f/2.8, 1/250sec, ISO 3200, -.7 Exposure at 24mm

f/2.8, 1/40sec, ISO 3200, -.7 Exposure at 45mm

f/2.8, 1/250sec, ISO 3200, -.7 Exposure at 24mm

f/2.8, 1/250sec, ISO 3200, -.7 Exposure at 58mm

f/5.6, 1/50sec, ISO 3200, -.7 Exposure at 24mm

It was a terrific show and a wonderful little party.  Once again, my photographs were shown on the wall of the party, and I don't care who you are, it's still a great feeling to have several people come up to you and tell you that they really enjoyed your photographs and thought that you did a great job.  I hope that we'll get to work together once again next year.

That's No Moon

I suppose I should say that The Force was strong with me for this photograph.  It's May the 4th, and as all Star Wars fans know, that means it's Star Wars Day.  When spoken, 'May the fourth' comes very close to famous Star Wars quote, "May the Force be with you."  After the cool little photograph I created for this day last year, I was hoping to do something a little more simple this year.  And nothing can be more simple than sitting on the couch.  I was sitting rather comfortably watching some hockey when I looked out my patio door and notice a rather full moon was resting just about the tree line.  My mind immediately thought about the scene from Return of the Jedi when you can see the Death Star in the sky of the forest planet, while at the same time dragging up the Obi-Wan Kenobi quote, "That's no moon....it's a space station." which was from A New Hope.  I then walked outside, pointed my camera at the moon, tried to get a few tree branches into the frame and shot away.  This photograph was taken at f/13, 1/80sec, ISO 400 at 180mm.  This one probably won't find its way into any future art shows, but the Star Wars fan in me got a kick out of it.

Canadiens Cake

I guess I've kept you all waiting for dessert long enough.  I had originally intended to do this update on Wednesday morning, but quickly found myself running out of time.  So, a little teaser went up on the site as I hoped to whet your appetites for the chocolate treat you are about to receive.  Long time visitors of the site are aware of the talents of My Lovely Assistant in the kitchen.  This past weekend we had a little birthday dinner party for one of her sisters, and she decided to make dessert.  The night of the party was also the same night as Game Six of the playoff series between the Montreal Canadiens and the Ottawa Senators, so with everyone pulling for the Habs, My Lovely Assistant decided to go with a hockey themed cake.  This particular one is known as a Chocolate Cluny Cake.  She spent most of the day making it as the work in putting those logos together using Fondant icing involved paying attention to details and lots of patience.  I wanted to take some photographs of the cake because I think it looked great.  I tried to experiment a little bit as well using my flash and different apertures and shutter speeds.  Why not take the time to try some different things out.  Fortunately, my experimentation with the camera settings was a little less messy than her work with the icing.  Sadly, I have a rather dull kitchen and I figured that it wouldn't be very interesting to see a wall, couch or chair in the background of the photographs, so I tried to use some Canadiens related gear to use as different backgrounds.  The chair is still there in the third photograph, but is mostly hidden by the flag and made a little less noticeable due to being blurred by using a larger aperture.  I also took some close-up shots as well to try and show off some of the details in the cake decorations.  One thing is for sure, everyone loved the dessert, and the Canadiens managed to eliminate the Senators.  I guess you could say that we had out cake and ate it too. Hopefully these photos will bring some luck for the 2nd Round Series against the Tampa Bay Lightning.  The first photograph was taken at f/16, 1/200sec, ISO 400 at 60mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/16, 1/125sec, ISO 400 at 60mm and the third photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/250sec, ISO 400 at 60mm.  Here are a few more photographs that I took of the cake.

f/2.8, 1/250sec, ISO 400 at 46mm

f/7.1, 1/250sec, ISO 400 at 24mm

Another winning creation from the kitchen of My Lovely Assistant.  I hope that my photographs have done justice to her fine work.