My Froknowsphoto chat

A few weeks ago, when I was doing online research on Black Rapid straps, I stumbled on Jared Polin's site froknowsphoto. He had a fun twist on typical reviews, adding a bit of humour, which was interesting to say the least.

I joined his site, ended up following him on twitter and his flickr group. No, I'm not a stalker, I swear.

I posted a recent image I took to his group as I like to randomly do to flickr groups and he messaged me saying he wanted to use my image as his Picture of the Week and have a quick interview on Skype.

Cool! Having anyone take interest in your images is great, specially when that someone knows their stuff. Jared is a great photographer. I particularly like his concert and back stage shots.

So after a few days of back and forths, we finally managed to meet up on Skype. What happens when you get two guys who like to talk together talking about what they like? About 40 minutes (and it could of been more). Started with a 5 minute "hey, how are you", moved into him being disappointed I didn't have a french accent (and can't do one), then the 15 minute interview (with no prep, which is fun), then another 20 minutes chatting about photos, marketing, online, lenses and going into health care, politics, canadians, palestine and other stuff.

Here is a link to the interview and to the image

Fro's POTW - Montreal

And here is a link to Jared's personal site, if you want to check out his work

Back to my urban shooting roots

Well, not really back to my roots, but seeing as I haven't done much urban shooting in a while, it felt good to get out there... specially night shooting, which is something I love.

Andrea suggested we go check out the tall ships that sailed into the Old Port of Montreal on Saturday. One of the boats being the Bounry from the Pirates of the Caribbean movie. As our main bridge onto the island was closed, it took us a good 2 hours before getting there and finding parking (as compared to 20 minutes).

There were so many people. You needed to buy a $5 ticket to go onto the boats, which isn't expensive. However, they were sold out. People were lined up 4 deep along the railings just to see the boats, so it was somewhat of a struggle to get to a decent spot. Not much of a chance to get good shots. Oh well, there is always next year.

We were headed to a friend's house for a late evening drink and decided to stop by a spot I had been before to shoot a few night cityscapes. While I was at the same spot, the net result was slightly different. Less wind made for more reflections, but I find the images are a bit busier.

Enough of my rambling on. The first 4 are versions of cityscapes, processed differently. The last are some shots of the hoards of people at the boats, in Old Montreal and some shots while I waited for Andrea to finish up some shopping.

I hope you enjoy!
(you can click on the images to go to my flickr and see the images a bit bigger)

Fast as fast can be....

I was invited by my friend Reneau to shoot the boat races at the Beauharnois regatta a few weeks ago. We had a great weekend, nice sun shine, just a spot of rain on Sunday.

Reneau had the chance to try out his shiny new Nikon D700 and I went along with my Canon 7D. Both equipped with 70-200 lenses, our VIP and pit access passes in hand, it was a fun shooting day.

I'm not a fan of boats or boat races, but I must say that these things go freakin fast. To gain access to the pit, you had to sign a waiver. See, they would lift the boats in and out of the water by crane. When you are in the pit, you have boats going over your head, people going all over the place. It was organized chaos.

Here are a mix of images, from boats, people, cranes, pilots,... Click my flickr on the right hand side to check out more of the set.

Hook 'em up!






Swinging around, ready to go!












This guy's back end wasn't fixed on properly when he left the dock..

More Retro Spex

Looks like Montreal's coolest rock cover band has a new lineup. And with a new lineup comes....NEW PICTURES!

This new lineup is actually near and dear to my heart as my wife Andrea is their new female vocalist. So now I can do event shots, music shots and shots of my love all in one night. Not a bad gig, eh?

Here are a few from last night's show. If you have read my blog before, you know the drill. Below, some of my fave shots from the night. Click on an image to go to my flickr with more shots (30 ish).

Retro Spex - live at Double Deuce

The great about having friends who are musicians is that you get to go shoot live events often. And lucky for me, I love music and I love shooting live events :)

John invited me to his new band's show at the Double Deuce in La Prairie. The band is great, they play covers of the 60s - 90s rock. Fun tunes, make you want to get up and dance! They are very new, this is only their second show, so I'm looking forward to many more shoots with them in the near future.

More images up on my flickr, just click an image to go to my flickr

Random urban, cars and other things

A little mix bag of images for today. There is a post a bit lower down with a battle of the bands shooting in Sainte-Catherine. Well, before the bands played, I wandered around and took some shots. Here are a couple.

The next few are some panning shots along Pine avenue in Montreal, right near Mont-Royal

And lastly, Reneau and I went into the Percival Molson Stadium, where our Montreal Alouettes football team play, and walked around and took some shots.