I was at the here in Whistler to do a story for the Whistler Question on master carver Xwa-Lack-Tun (Rick Harry) and his apprentice Taha Hush (Lenny Martin Andrews). They’re carving a totem pole for the grand hall at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Cente.
I found it a pretty interesting subject, so I put together a little slideshow for the Whistler Question’s web page.
Wilhelmina Models Vancouver Casting Call from Media Centre on Vimeo.
I was sitting in a Starbucks with Media Centre partner Alan Forsythe when he asked me out of the blue if I’d like to do a behind the scenes slideshow of the Wilhelmina Models New York Casting Event, which was being held at Vancouver’s famous Tiki Hotel, the Waldorf. Wilhelmina Models is one of the largest modelling agencies in the world, and they’ve recently expanded into Canada.
The aspiring models started their day having their make up and hair checked, then they would go have their measurements checked, and an up to date headshot photograph taken. Then they wait in the hallway to see the New York agents who were in for the day.
Alan’s friend, singer Dana-Marie Battaglia donated a song to the show.
Tech Stuff
This is the first time I’ve done a slide show using Vimeo to host the video. I think it’s a huge improvement over YouTube.
This was a really tough event to shoot. The hotel hallways were really dark, so I either had to push up the ISO to 3200, or use strobe for lighting. Since it was such a small space, I didn’t have enough room for a light stand, so I had to hold the flash in my left hand and shoot one handed. A Nikon D3 with a 17-35mm lens weighs more than five pounds, and after spending a couple of hours waving the camera and flash around in each hand, my arms felt like they were going to drop off my shoulders.
Camera: Nikon D3 & D700
Lens: Nikon AF-S 17-35mm f/2.8, Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8
Lighting: Nikon SB-900 and SB-800, with SU-800 controller.
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It’s been a long ‘shoulder season’ in whistler, the time between summer and winter where not much happens around here. I’ve been busy with some other projects, but now the mountiann is open, and I’m starting to get busy again, which is nice.
This is a portrait for my friend Jim Watts in my studio, who needed some business headshots for a column he’s writing this week in the Whistler Question.
A lot of the work I do requires a great deal of creativity, but every so often something comes up where you have to do something really simple, but you have to do it perfectly in a really short period of time.
With this shoot for the Mechanical Contractors of BC, I needed to shoot 12 business headshots, one for each member of the board of directors. Since they were all from different communities, it had to be done at the meeting in Whistler, on location at the Westin Hotel, and they only had 30 minutes in the schedule for all 12 portraits. To top it off, non of the subjects were exactly enthusiastic about having their pictures taken. This is where setting up ahead of time and making sure that everything is ready to go as soon as the subjects arrive for their pictures is really key for this kind of shoot.
Tech Stuff
Our set up at the Westin Hotel.
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8
Lighting: Alien Bee B-1600 strobes x 3
Barnaby the Hunchback, played by 25 year Fringe Festival veteran actor Jacque Lalonde.
My friend Alan Forsythe is producing a play for the annual Vancouver Fringe Festival that runs every September. He asked me to stop by and shoot a couple of pictures of the cast during a rehearsal.
Jacque Lalonde, Lisa Ovies, and Tristan Risk, chewing the scenery.
Tech Stuff
This was kind of a tough shoot, because the space the rehearsal was going on was a basically an old office building, and the outside locations were much better. Since the play has a horror film theme, I thought I’d try to get a 50′s b-Movie look to the photos by using a strobe with just a plain reflector on it, and by using a low camera angle.
With the hunchback photo, I brought in a second light from camera left that had a snoot made from a big piece of cine-foil to light the hump.
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: AF-S Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8
Lighting: Alien Bee B-1600 x 2
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Some local Whistler artists have taken over the site of the old Whistler Youth Hostel, and are turning it into a centre for local arts. As part of the start up, I offered to lead a couple of photo workshops, and this afternoon was my first class.
Kudos for Michelle the model for being so patient and open while I was teaching the class.
Some of the photos from our photo shoot. I’m not one for sitting around in class rooms, so we spent the first hour shooting, and then the second going through the photos and working a couple in Photoshop.
I’ll be teaching my second class in portraiture on July 30th, from 11:00 AM to 1:00PM. sign up is easy at the Point’s web site, or just drop in. It’s a deal at $25.00.
This is the Point building. it was built in the 1950′s in the old original part of Whistler, and was the local youth hostel until last year when it moved to the Cheakamus Crossing neighbourhood. I grew up in Whistler and remember the building from when I was a kid, so it’s nice to see it put to a good use. With the artist, musicians, and families, it was like going back 25 years in Whistler’s history.
Tech Stuff
We shot at 2:00 in the afternoon, a terrible time for photography. All the shots were done in full shade, and lit with flash. I used a Nikon SB-900 in a softbox, and an SB-800 as a hair light.
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Nikon AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8
Lighting: Nikon SB-900, SB-800
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Alexandra and Zachary with some of their school friends
I’ve been doing wedding and event photography for over 13 years full time, and I’ve never had the opportunity to photograph a Bar Mitzvah (or in this case a B’nai Mitzvah, a Bar Mitzvah for twins) until now. I have to say it was a complete blast.
The Olympics on, my wedding business has been pretty much shut down since January. This was a really nice event to do, and it also got me ready for weddings, which start up again in June.
Alexandra and Zachary’s dad Jack had a terrific party at the Whistler four Seasons Hotel.
Everyone danced well into the night.
These are from an Urban Pie story on Jodie Emery, the wife marijuana advocate Marc Emery who just started a five year Federal US prison term for selling mail order pot seeds.
We arrived at the BC Marijuana Party office, totally by accident, just before 4:20 that afternoon. 4:20 is the pot head tea time, and sure enough this guy pulled out a giant bong pipe, took a huge hit, and blew the smoke straight in my face. Apparently the pipe was packed with pure THC crystals (I guess they brought out the good stuff for the guests), and not being a smoker myself, I spent the rest of the afternoon wrecked out of my mind.
Tech Stuff:
Camera: Nikon D700
Lenses: Nikon AF-S 17-35mm f/2.8, Nikon AF-S 28-70 f/2.8, Nikon AF 85mm f/1.8
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Here’s is a shot of Vancouver Fringe Festival Executive Director David Jordan I did for the Urban Pie magazine in Vancouver. The Fringe is the annual alternate theatre festival in Vancouver, and is home to some off the wall stuff, so we really wanted to get something crazy looking. We started in the festival office (seen in the background of the photo), but it really wasn’t working so well. I thought the building looked cool, so we moved outside for a couple of shots. There were some parked cars that I couldn’t get out of the frame, so David offered to climb up on a big bollard,and with a couple of rubber chickens grabbed off someone’s desk, it all came together.
I was really busy with commercial work that week, so I called Pie publisher Alan Forsythe and told him “I can shoot anything you want, but I have to do it after 7:00″. He called me back an hour later said, “we’re all set to go at 4:30″. As a result, I had to go tearing down to Vancouver and barely made the shoot, with only about 15 minutes to spare. Not having time to set up my regular studio lights, I jammed an SB-900 flash into a softbox, and hoped for the best. I think it worked pretty well.
Tech Stuff
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Nikon AF-S 17-35mm f/2.8
Lighting: Nikon SB-900, mounted in a 22×16″ softbox, controlled by an SU-800 flash controller.
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A highlight of the summer is the annual Vancouver Zombie Walk, which has grown from evening event to an entire week of parties. As part of the Urban Pie coverage, we did a photo shoot with professional burlesque dancer Tristan Risk.
For the main shot, I wanted something that was going to look really dark and moody. Since it’s been bright, hot, and sunny in Vancouver for the last couple of months, this posed a real problem. I’ve seen some cool shots where the camera white balance was set to tungsten, which gives the image a dark blue cast, and the flash had been gelled with a double CTO (colour temperature orange) to bring the subject up to a normal colour tone. Unfortunately, the only CTO I had was a 1/4 CTO, and it was only big enough to go over the front of my Nikon speedlight, hardly big enough to go over the 22″ dish reflector I used for this photo. My plan was to stop at Beau Photo and pick up a few sheets of gel on my way to the shoot, but I got hung up in Lions Gate traffic, and didn’t make it before they closed. I had a few scraps of warm gel that I was able to stick on the light, so the effect was a lot less than I would have liked, but I think it worked out pretty well.
We shot in front of Tristan’s Vancouver apartment, and ended leaving a nasty looking pool of prop blood. I’m sure she’s going to get a letter from the strata.
This was shot int he hallway of the character building Tristan lives in. I thought it had a great old building look that went well with the zombie theme. I lit it with a Nikon SB-900 flash in a small 22×16″ softbox, and held by Urban Pie editor Alan Forsythe. It came out looking kind of flat and overly bright (lower photo), so I burned down the edges, and then ran a high pass filter over the file to pump up the contrast.
The building had a really post industrial looking meter room that we decided to use as a location. I noticed a huge switch in the back of the room, which I thought might work really well for the zombie theme.
Tech Stuff:
Camera: Nikon D700
Lens: Nikon AF-S 28-70mm f/2.8
Lighting: Alien Bee B1600 w/ 22″ beauty dish (top two), Nikon SB-900 with 22×16″ Photoflex Whitedome softbox, controlled with a Nikon SU-800 (lower three shots).
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