Here's a few things that I've had in the vault for a couple weeks just waiting for the right time to drop.

It's Friday so hopefully you've got big plans for the weekend. Go to the beach if it's not too cold and crappy in your area, go to a concert, go camping, whatever............enjoy it.

I recently shot a TV on the Radio show for LiveNation. I have shot some live performances before but this is the first real official one. Press pass, the whole nine yards. When shooting live shows you are generally restricted to shooting the first three songs only. No flash. The stage lighting is usually bright enough and you can definitely get some dramatic images depending on the performer(s). It's not rocket science and you're not inventing the wheel but you have to be quick and have a gameplan. Those three songs go by quickly. I'm shooting Broken Social Scene this Saturday for LiveNation again so I'll post those shots a little later. Here's a few samples from the TVOTR show.

Get there early and scope the venue. Get a gameplan. Maybe an adult beverage.

 

The Commodore Ballroom is a tough space for angles. The don't have a "pit" (area in front of the stage reserved for photographers). Luckily my friends had a booth sidestage so I was able to steady my long lens for this shot.

This is a close as I could get sidestage right beside the giant speakers. Need to remember earplugs next time.

 

This is a shot from backstage. I got yelled at for taking this shot by the bands stage manager and quickly left the scene so as not to get my credentials taken away. Oddly enough this is the shot they used on the Live Nation site.

A full house. Shot from the balcony.

Next up is a couple animated gif's/timelapses from the KNOW?MAG shoot a couple weeks ago

I made these as an afterthought during the shoot. When the art director and stylist were putting the products in place and taking them down I thought it would be cool to shoot and create this timelapse. The idea sort of came about half way through so it's not complete from start to finish but still you can see how much tinkering and tweaking is done by the AD and stylist to get everything in the perfect position and arrangement. We did four set ups in total and it took the entire day.

A day at the beach................

 

What to bring for a music festival/outdoor concert.......

 

 

And now last but not least......................a cover shot of SNOWBOARD Magazine! This time it's Devun Walsh and once again it's the Whistler Backcountry. There will be a huge 15 page feature interview with Devun and Iikka Backstrom so keep your eyes out for that issue.

 

 

A few weeks ago I did a shoot with designer and creative director Daniel Curtis. He was putting together the art for a new album by Canadian band, Young Ones. His idea sounded great and I was into the concept and shoot idea which involved fireworks and the beach. There had been a few concepts we bounced back and forth prior to this including vintage motorcycles and naked girls but we settled on the fireworks concept. Dan procured some illegal fireworks from a shady dude in East Van and we shot under the cover of darkness in a secret location. We had a limited number of fireworks to use so when the first round of shots were not working as planned I started to sweat a little. Because we were using 'roman candles' it was particularly difficult to time the shutter with the burst of the fireworks which is really random and fast. In the end the 10 fps motordrive on my Canon 1d Mark IV saved the day. It was a good shoot and the final product looks great. Simple and clean but with a lot of visual impact. The band printed some copies on clear vinyl which I can't wait to get my hands on.

April is almost gone. It was a very busy one for me with a lot of really good days up in the Whistler backcountry under sunny skies. The silence of the landscape up there directly influencing the silence of this blog over the last several weeks.

Well this post has nothing to do with silence or snowboarding but it does have a sunny side to it. There's little project I have been wanting to post for a long time. Back in July 2010, during the dog days of summer, a local band named SUN WIZARD was recording an album at Mushroom Studios in Vancouver. I had the opportunity to get in the studio with them and shoot photos and video over the course of a few nights. It was an amazing experience to see how an album gets produced and to witness the creative process that takes place.

Last night in Vancouver Sun Wizard had the album release party for this album which is called "Positively 4th Street". Now that the album has been released I can present to you a slideshow of the photos I took during the recording sessions with the song "Buildings" from the new record. It's a great song which is adequately long to let me show a good stack of the photos I took. I encourage you to check out the band and the new album.

I'm just running out the door to begin a pretty big commercial shoot I just got booked on yesterday. Can't say much about it just yet but I'll be running all over Vancouver for the next week shooting various people and scenarios. Should be fun.

Here are some behind the scenes shots from my shoot the other night with a local band called Blank Cinema. These were shot by my assistant Kieran Brownie who is an up and coming snowboard photographer and who just turned 19! Damn that makes me feel old.

I'll post my shots from this session soon.........have a great weekend!



the scene down at third beach in vancouver.........I swear that lifeguard is asleep.