Live Band Shoot with Freedom Ride

This past Friday I got the opportunity to shoot a band called Freedom Ride at the Rickshaw Theatre. The venue was pretty cool as I remember it well when I was a little kid. It used to be a Chinese movie theatre called Shaw Theatre that specialized in kung fu movies. That of course is many many years ago and it went out of business and remained unoccupied till recently. I have to say that this was my first real exposure to shooting a live band up close. I knew of course that flash wasn't allowed so planned on shooting with high ISO and fast lenses and timed my shots to the stage lighting changes. I was able to shoot from the front and edge of the stage plus from the balcony as well. We did manage to squeeze two minutes in the backstage area for the obligatory "band" shot before being told by the security guards to clear out. Here are some shots from the show. I cleaned up some of the noise in Photoshop and touched up some exposure in Lightroom for these shots below.

A special thanks to the band
Devin McManus -Lead Guitar and Lead Vocals
Slayad Nassir -Rhythm Guitar
Nat Green -Drums and backing vocals
James Weekes -Bass Guitar

Check out their MySpace page at
http://www.myspace.com/freedomriderocks

Wrapping up January with Bands, Headshots and Models

Finishing off the month of January on a very busy and positive note. Friday night I shot a live band performing on stage which was a brand new experience and challenge for me. Today I did a headshot session and a model shoot back to back. I also wanted to do my first blog post through my iPhone to see what that would be like. Yes, I'm a geek! I'll have individual posts to cover the shoots coming soon.


- Posted from my Iphone

Model Shoot - Shazmin, Cleopatra Look

Last year was quite a whirlwind with the wedding and it has been awhile since I've been in the studio. Thought I'd start 2010 with a more focused approach on building up my portfolio and networking more with likeminded people. Last weekend I got together with model Shazmin who had put out a casting call looking for a photographer to help with a Cleopatra inspired theme that she was looking to do. We teamed up with make up artist Cherry and hairstylist Rhi for the shoot. The two of them were true perfectionists and I think it really shows in the final results. To enhance the golden skin look of the makeup I tried something a bit different. I used the gold side of my 60" reflector and bounced a flash off of it as the key light and kind of turned it into a big golden softbox. Additional hairlight at camera left was covered with a quarter cut of CTO gel. I did some very minor spot exposure corrections in Lightroom but for the most part not much post work was done for these shots.

Lenin in Richmond, BC

A very interesting sculpture has popped up recently in Richmond, BC and I stumbled upon it today by accident. It was attracting a lot of attention and lots of motorists stopped to take a look and many got out of their cars to take pictures as did I. The interesting thing about this sculpture is that it also has a figure of Chairman Mao atop of Lenin's head with a balance bar. So as can be imagined a lot of talk about what the artists are trying to say here with this piece is usually the topic of discussion amongst viewers. Upon further digging on the internet I found out this is part of the Vancouver Biennale and around the city there are various art instalments.

I found it just so surreal that I decided to post process some of my shots and give it a more other worldly look. I tried some HDR and then went really crazy and did some that give it almost a comic book feel. First day of the new year and already trying to be a bit more on the creative side, hahaha..