The Skirt Chasers at Rancho Relaxo
March 26, 2009 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
Hilary Chan, a friend of my wife, is in an awesome nut-crunching blues-really-hard rock band called The Skirt Chasers. They had a show at Rancho Relaxo last night, and having not shot a concert in some time (last one was Modernboys Moderngirls, with faulty flash triggers, aRgH!) I offered to get some stills for them. Hadn’t heard the music before, and it was supreme.
An SB 600 and an SB 28 were both rattling off at 1/4, gelled 1/1 tungsten. One was behind Hilary, and one was to the camera left in front of Jason, hanging inside a wall lamp. You gotta make use of the facilities however you can, especially in small and tight venues! Shots of Jason were usually at iso 400, F/5-5.6 and shots of Hilary were at iso 640 at the same aperture-ish. Shutter was about 160, so’s not to let much other light in outside of the flashes. More shots in this linked Flickr set. All shots are straight outta the camera jpegs.
The Ting Tings on Q
March 23, 2009 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
They’re on Q today (if ya missed it it’s on again at 10pm). Didn’t get to meet’em or anything, as with most Q shoots this one was a quick in and out. I find I’m leaning more and more on the Lensbaby since I got it. The soft shots it produces (thanks to the included plastic optic) are somewhat wonder-inducing for me. I’m pretty sure I’m gonna pick up the single-glass optic as well (they’re interchangeable), but in the meantime the plastic optic is workin’ a-OK.
The shot is incredibly blurry, and while I do have technically better ones (including the one currently on the Q site, down by tomorrow), this one was still my fave.
Sean Galbraith enables OVERDRIVE
March 22, 2009 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
Taken during my rock band birthday party. This was shot after many a drink was had by all. Sean (also a photographer who has exceeded his monthly web traffic quota at the moment) was cross lit by two flashes, ungelled/modified. You can see one of them pretty obviously in the shot, the other was in the upper corner or the room on camera left. Pretty much my standard setup, though at other times I’ll gel the flashes (works better when there’s fewer people in the room, but in this case we had a little fire hazard going).
Joel Plaskett
March 20, 2009 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
Joel stopped by the Drive studio not long ago. Last time I saw him was when he was playing with Thrush Hermit over a decade ago. He had longer hair back then.
While I did shoot him with my “normal” lenses, I also pulled out my new Lensbaby Muse that I got for my birthday a day or so before. First time using it in studio and these shots are straight out of the camera (doing more Raw+Fine JPG shooting lately). Lensbaby had an F/4.0 aperture, using a plastic optic. Had two lights on him, one gelled tungsten and the other left bare (I think), while the camera white balance was set to ‘daylight’. First shot is hitting him mainly with the tungsten gelled flash.
Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister
March 19, 2009 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
I was on set to shoot Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister for the CBC (Magna had its own set of photographers). All the shots on set were without any of my own lights, except for some posed shots at the end where I held out an SB600 with my left hand. After-party shots were with an SB600 with a bulb diffuser on. I categorically refuse to use TTL as I never find the exposure to be accurate. Click the thumbnails to see’em bigger. Good times!
Colin Linden
March 16, 2009 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
I’d shot him before but he was back in the studio to talk to Tom Allen of Radio 2 Morning and to give us a slide guitar video tip (shown later in April).
Simple setup: Two lights ungelled (it’s a bit hard to get the balance right because the lights reflect of the reddish/purplish walls in this studio and I get a weird cast. Didn’t feel like dealing with it today as I had 3 shoots) about 150 degrees apart from each other. He’s a classy guy; note that he plays with his slide pinky out.
Colin Linden
Q blog backgrounds
March 14, 2009 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
Was asked by one of the Q show producers to shoot some quickie stuff in the studio for a new background for their blog. They wanted something that made the studio feel less empty than the one they had already (which I’d actually taken, but only to replace a really pixelated and enlarged one they had prior). I was down with that. No fancy lights. The first one was a camera toss, and by chance the lights happened to form a “Q” in the swirl. The others were taken with a 50mm f/1.8 lens at something like f/3.2 or so. Somewhere in the shallow end… These four are a few of my faves from the 5 minute shoot.
Peter Oundjian & Eric Friesen
March 13, 2009 | Filed Under photo | 1 Comment
Taken for an upcoming radio special. Peter Oundjian is the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s music director and I think all-around music deity or sorts.
For the seated shots I used to flashes, bare, and had them both coming from hard diagonals. The idea was to cross light them both, sort of, each of them having hard hair lights and hard face coverage. I like the idea of showing the hard lines of faces in people.
For the shot where they’re standing together, I had one light in a shoot-thru umbrella (a little mis-aligned. You can tell ’cause Eric’s casting a shadow on Peter) and an sb-600 with bulb-diffuser hitting the rest of the room.
Emm Gryner on Radio 2 Drive
March 12, 2009 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment
She’s got a new album out called Goddess and she’ll be on Radio 2 Drive today at 3pm. Like many people I shoot (but not all) she was really nice and fun to shoot. She even brought her mum along and she was kinda a riot.
Two flashes: One in a shoot-thru white umbrella gelled tungsten that’s hitting her face on an angle. Other flash left ungelled and on the floor underneath/behind the piano hitting the wall, causing it to turn blue. Only barely apparent in the second shot as the blue is bouncing off her face slightly.
Hannah Sung, live chat
March 10, 2009 | Filed Under photo | 1 Comment
On March 10th, Hannah Sung had a live chat with CBC Book Club afficionados. I took this shot about 15 minutes before it actually started, but while everything was getting set up.
Because it was a live chat, I wanted to go for something a little future-ish lookin’ and techno-happy. Scene was lit with two flashes: A 1/1 tungsten gelled Sb-28 in a silver reflective umbrella at camera right on Hannah, and an ungelled sb-600 in the glass meeting room behind her aimed at her head. Because of the glass, it reflected into the room causing the blue glow behind her (the smoked out lettering in the glass certainly didn’t hurt). When a camera is set to tungsten white balance, an unaltered flash/sunlight will register as rurrrly blue.
