2-for-1 Charlie Winston
July 28, 2010 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
Charlie Winston is on Radio 2 Drive tomorrow, July 29, at 3:30pm, and he’ll be chatting about his new work as well as host Rich Terfry’s obsession with Audrey Tatou; Audrey is in Charlie’s music video I Love Your Smile, and he gets to make out with her.
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Hopeful Monster in the Closet
July 20, 2010 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
Jason Ball of Hopeful Monster is often in the CBC Toronto building, and the last time he was in I got a few minutes with him for a fun little shoot. A simple, if not cliché, idea of putting Hopeful Monster in a closet. It was fun, and Jason was totally game for it - we even found a plastic ukelele (sans strings) for him to “play” in the closet. One light gelled blue in a reflective umbrella behind me, another light ungelled in a gridded snoot in front of me point at Jason’s face, and one more flash gelled window green inside the closet and bouncing off the wall to his left which made for a large softbox of sorts. Here’s a tighter crop, right on Jason.
Host of “The Projector”
July 16, 2010 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
Eli Glasner is hosting a short-term summer show on CBC Radio One called The Projector. We needed some host photos, and aside from the mandatory “shot on white for easy cutting and pasting” shot, I suggested we make use of the Graham Spry theater in the CBC Toronto Atrium. This specific shot was a two light setup. The first was in a white reflective umbrella right next to me but about 8 feet high and angled close to parallel to the ground, to help keep it from spreading all over the room. The other is the “projector” above and behind him, doing double duty as both a prop and a hair light.
Jason, host of “The Placeholder”
July 7, 2010 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
Jason Boychuk is one of our developer extraordinaires in Radio Digital. He’s been working on some new site templates, as big media companies will often be doing, and needed a placeholder image for host areas in the template. We found a white wall, I set up a an umbrella and fired off three shots. This was the first one and it’s what the team decided to use. Nothing fancy, but we had two minutes, including the time needed to find a location, so fancy wasn’t an option. We’re srsly thinking of recording a radio pilot called “The Placeholder” where Jason just talks to himself for a full half hour, no commercial breaks. ISO 200 at F/4 with a 1/200 shutter.
The Business of Kite Boarding
June 20, 2010 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
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Guin and I took her kite board out for a ride in downtown Toronto yesterday. She wanted some shots she could use for conferences, social media, and general fun stuff. She also didn’t want the shots to be too drab or dull and to reflect her personality. Sharp, smart, and able to navigate the busy streets of downtown Toronto on a kite board; she’s hard core.
Eleanor Wachtel channels Bowie
June 17, 2010 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
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Eleanor Wachtel, host of CBC Radio One’s Writers & Company, is a special guest on this weekend’s edition of Radio One’s GO. She’ll be talking about her secret love of glam rock, and an idea was pitched to redo David Bowie’s Alladdin Sane album cover with Eleanor in place of Ziggy. This was a relatively simple shoot involving a white background and a reflective umbrella with an SB600 in it directly behind me for on-axis full coverage of Eleanor’s face. The real work came in Photoshop, as Eleanor didn’t have any glam-make up on for the shoot. If you click the above picture to enlarge it, you’ll see some arrows in the bottom corners to cycle through other pictures, including the original Bowie cover I worked from, the original eleanor shot, and a screen capture of what my layers window looked like in Photoshop. A lot of non-destructive adjustment layers were used in combination with a few layer masks.
Summer reading
June 15, 2010 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
Another Book Club shoot with the site’s lovely host, Hannah, in downtown Toronto (note the CN Tower in the RBC Building’s glass being reflected, heh). This was shot in bright, diffused sunlight (I believe a cloud was over it at that moment, by the look of the shot) at iso 100, f/6.3 at 1/160 shutter. I used a single SB600 to narrow-light Hannah and her face from camera left, and used the sun as a mild cross/hair light. My flash was probably in the neighbourhood of 1/2 power in order to get to the exposure I got at ISO 100. Click here for a closeup 50% crop around Hannah if you want to see more detail and how the flash lit her up.
Ben and Sydney’s wedding
June 8, 2010 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
Click any of the shots to enlarge…
I recently assisted Hamish Grant with a wedding shoot for his friends Ben and Sydney in downtown Toronto. As the assist, my job for this wedding was to cover the groom before the ceremony and to cover other angles that Hamish wasn’t covering once Ben and Sydney had their first meeting, which took place prior to the ceremony. My primary lenses were an 18-50mm F/2.8 and a 70-210mm F/4, and some of the above shots were accented with one or two SB600 flash units.
Author and columnist John Doyle
June 3, 2010 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
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Simple stuff: SB600 in a shoot through (camera left for the left shot, camera right for the right shot) plus another one bouncing off the ceiling for some fill from the opposite side (on both). I asked him to levitate the ball in the first shot (a little-advertised talent of his). John Doyle is a columnist for the Globe and Mail in Toronto and is featured on the CBC Book Club for June’s sports-themed month. Here’s another shot I personally liked wherein he channels a Brazilian soccer coach and the game has gone into a shoot out.
The Sadies on R2 Drive
June 2, 2010 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
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The Sadies hit Radio 2 Drive tomorrow at 3:30pm with new songs from a new album. Hard rock with a lot of twang to it, great stuff. I cross lit them with SB600s on either side. These were at ISO 640 at around f/5.6, 1/200 shutter to cut out the ambient. I love studio 211, and I love hard lighting gruff looking guys with sweet guitars. Their pants might need some tailoring, though, as they were a bit wide in the waist and the legs…