Sword & Sworcery & more

May 31, 2010 | Filed Under photo | 2 Comments 

Click any picture to enlarge.

Superbrothers + Capybara + Jim Guthrie = Sword&Sworcery, a game that’s already won awards even though it doesn’t even have a release date yet. These were shot in and around the University of Toronto campus. Most were shot with one key light that was actually two SB600s taped together (so they could both go on one stand), and sometimes another flash as a highlighter or background light. Why’d I tape two flashes together? I was competing with a sunny day and I didn’t want to fire at 1/1 power (kills batteries, longer flash recycles, etc).

Aside from the creatives behind S&S, you’ll also see Mark Rabo (of Gamercamp and more), Mark Essen (aka MESSHOF, uber-indie game designer), and Brandon Boyer (of the internet) in the upper-right photo.

TODAY’S REAL LESSON: Always bring a backup memory card; near the end of the shoot the 8gb card I had in decided to give me a FUBAR error. I (relatively) calmly swapped it for a different 16gb and finished the shoot. The pictures on the card survived, though, it took a few tries to properly reformat it - it has now been relegated to the backup position.

Also, I am the owner of a seriously sweet (srsly) Sword&Sworcery poster print that I totally framed up all nice and such.

Hannah and Glenn

May 30, 2010 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment 

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Book Club host Hannah sits down with the one and only Glenn Gould outside the CBC Toronto offices. Nothing crazy here, just some on-camera fill light to go with the sun coming in over Hannah’s shoulder. I used an SB600 but you can use a pop-up flash in the same situation. Reason being as that even if it’s really sunny outside, you don’t want the subject facing it otherwise they’ll be squinting and you’ll get really harsh shadows. Instead, use the sun as an accent or hair light, and add on-axis fill to get rid of the dark shadow areas not lit directly by the sun. F/14 at 1/125 shutter at ISO 200. Here’s an alternate angle where she’s smilin’ and crossing legs with the legend.

Sanagan’s Meat Locker

May 28, 2010 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment 

I stopped by Sanagan’s to take some shots for an upcoming feature for Tongue & Cheek. Above is a 25-shot slideshow that T&C is hosting on Flickr. You can play it and make it go full screen if you want, particularly useful for all the bloody meat closeups near the end Click this link for more details about the meat locker in Kensington Market, Toronto.

John Doyle’s book launch

May 26, 2010 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment 

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For lighting setup information, please refer to this previous post, featuring Toronto Mayoral candidate Joe Pantalone. I’ve actually already taken Globe & Mail journalist and author John Doyle’s picture earlier this month for the CBC Book Club, where it will be featured for the month of June along with other books and authors. I’ll post shots from that series once they’re set to go online. In the meantime, the above two shots are my favourite of the night featuring the man of the hour.

The Idlers on R2 Drive

May 25, 2010 | Filed Under photo | 1 Comment 

Click to Enlarge the Shots

Ten-piece reggae bands are hard to shoot on short notice, and every in-studio shoot is short notice on account of the I-already-have-other-jobs-to-do account. Four hard SB600s, two cross lighting from the corners in front of the band, one behind with a wide spread hitting them in the back, and another bouncing off the sky-high ceilings for what has to be a supremely mild amount of fill light in the room. For the second shot, I was standing on one of the sound muffler things surrounding the drummer, and one of the flashes didn’t fire due to a dead battery that died in the 5 minutes I was shooting. Ten very nice people in this band! They’re on Radio 2 Drive tomorrow afternoon at 3:30pm.

Joe Pantalone at Book Launch

May 21, 2010 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment 

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Shots of Toronto Mayoral candidate Joe Pantalone at John Doyle’s book launch. Probably not an inch above 5′1, but he had a fantastic face to shoot (though, looked like he’d gotten a bit much sun recently!). No idea what his platform is, but allegedly he supports the Transit City plan 100%. These were taken inside a dark bar with next-to no lights inside and black ceilings. I put one flash on a stand on one side of a wall that separated an outdoor exit, and another flash on a really high ledge above the bar itself. These were triggered with Nikon CLS and I kept my pop-up on TTL at -1.0 or so, with the other two flashes somewhere around 1/5 power on manual. As you can see in the setup shot, there was a mirror that ran across the wall that played some minor havoc with light reflections (see the line of subtle shadow across Joe in the second shot), but also provided excellent light redirection. Worked fine for my purpose this evening. Will post pictures of John Doyle, the author whose launch party this was for, soon on this site.

Royal Wood on R2 Drive

May 19, 2010 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment 

Click either to enlarge them.

Royal Wood is a dapper and classy guy. Radio 2 blogger Li thinks he looks like Don Draper from Mad Men. I think he’s a bit more American Apple Pie, while Draper is more American Mafia Hit Man in terms of their looks. Not entirely sure what my setup for this was, but I’d wager it was a three SB600 setup, cross lighting plus another coming from in front of him and not necessarily on-camera axis depending on the shot angle. The flash you can see in the second shot was in a different position for the first, which is why his face isn’t only rim-lit by the light. He’ll be on Radio 2 Drive tomorrow to perform and talk about his new album, and possibly how he gets his hair to do what it does.

“Gimme Your Best Passport Face”

May 18, 2010 | Filed Under photo | Leave a Comment 

Click to Enlarge the 9 Shots

The G20 is happening directly across the street from the CBC next month and all news outlets have to outfit their personnel with security badges if they want to be allowed in. To do that, they need clear photos on a white background. There’s no reason you can’t make’em look half-decent, though! Here’s a setup shot, you’ll see an SB600 in a shoot-through umbrella and behind me are two more sb600s providing coverage for the screen behind me. The two in the back also provide some highlighting on the sides of people faces. I had to tell them to give me their “best passport face,” and they sure delivered! A bit of detail is lost in the shots I’m showing because they’re just screenshots of a group preview render (details on shirts get weird in preview thumbnails). Also, I updated the setup a touch after the first three shots above, for better background coverage. Can you spot the radio/TV personalities in this mix?