December 21, 2010

Lunar Eclipse (Bobcaygeon, ON)


Composite image taken at 1:30, 1:39, 1:54, 2:08, 2:22, 2:30, 2:37; 2:58, 4:00 AM Eastern Standard Time.

The first 6 have a constant exposure for the moon lit by the sun.

The last 3 are exposed 10 stops brighter to expose for the red hue as the moon is lit only by the Earth's atmosphere.

10 full stops mean that the top photos are 1024 times brighter than the lower three.

December 19, 2010

Early Morning Swim (T.O)


December 04, 2010

Hoops (T.O)


December 02, 2010

Kayak (Kawartha Lakes, ON)

November 19, 2010

Rest in Peace (Markham, ON)


Aziz was the pilot of this plane; the picture was taken a few months ago. The 26-year-old flight instructor died last night in a crash that also killed two Seneca College students. Pictured below; Aziz (center) monitoring students in a flight simulator. Having spent some time with instructors and students of Seneca's flight program both on ground and in the air, I can say they were professional and very meticulous. This tragic event should not eclipse the thousands of flights over many years where nothing went wrong.

Globe and Mail report

Toronto Star report

Lets hope the program - the only public college offering it in Canada - will recover. I would not hesitate a second if asked to fly with them again.

May Aziz, Cynthia and Lloyd - unfortunate casualties of one of man's greatest invention - rest in peace.

November 10, 2010

November 05, 2010

Violent Football (T.O)

November 03, 2010

Knight Portrait (T.O)

October 27, 2010

They Might Be Giants (San Francisco, CA)


Just watching the World Series and remembering shooting a couple of ball game in San Francisco last season (these two pictures taken in 2009)

They have the best ballpark and I had a great time. Go Giants!

October 20, 2010

Fake Football (Toronto, ON)



Many factors come into play when it comes to positioning yourself at a soccer game (or any sporting event for that matter)

For pro sports, more often than not, you don't really have much choice over where you can be. This was a rare Toronto FC game that was not sold out so we went and shot from the stands - away from the overbearing security guards.

Shooting from a higher angle allowed to have cleaner backgrounds (see above). The spot we favoured allowed us to cover a big part of the field, but unfortunately, while being able to see both nets, the angle was pretty bad (see below).

This is still a good gamble, because God knows there isn't a lot of action around the goals in soccer, but this is what the only goal of the game looked like from where I was:
Now I didn't re-invent the wheel here, but fortunately, I had a camera in the net to show a different angle (without advertising MasterCard).

Real Football (Montréal, QC)

Some CFL action from the weekend. Always great to shoot at a different venue; light is different, making new friends / meeting old friends...


October 03, 2010

Highway 401 (T.O)



September 13, 2010

Toronto International Film Festival Portraits (T.O)

American actor Robert De Niro - (good chat about bedbugs)

During the film festival, one of the best assignment, and probably most stressful, is the one-on-one portraits. To give some idea of what it's like, we are given 1 or 2 minutes (often much less for the bigger names) and the setting is usually an empty hotel room (so much for being creative). Sometimes it varies. Some of the stars are really friendly; a few others not so much, but there are always good anecdotes.

French actress Mélanie Laurent - (the one who killed Hitler in Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds)

Canadian actor Michael Cera - (a few weeks before film fest)

Canadian-American actor Jason Priestly - (pretty boy in Beverly Hills 90210)

American actor Edward Norton - (from many good movies)

Soviet-American actress Milla Jovovich - (with a delightful and exquisite English)

American actor/director Emilio Estévez - (aka Billy the Kid)

American actor/director David Schwimmer - (aka Ross Geller)


American actor Martin Sheen - (just as nice of a guy as his son Emilio)

September 07, 2010

... "cricket sound" ... (T.O)

I was assigned to shoot a photo-story on cricket last month. I wish I could explain how cricket works, but there's not enough room on this blog - or on the entire Internet for that matter.

I can tell you though, that spending a day around the extremely large oval field and asking questions to the players on the sideline has made me a semi-expert on the subject.

It's a slow paced sport, which allowed me to ask many questions - some quite stupid - to the very patient players. (Of course they are, they play a game that lasts forever...)






One of the game I attended ended up in a tie; a very rare occurrence in a sport where scores are in the hundreds. The photo below shows the batsmen scoring the tying run; beating the wicket by a fraction of a second on the last delivery of the game. The wicket (ball hitting the wooden bars and dislodging the bail - wooden thingy on the right of the frame) would have dismissed (retired) the batsmen. Retiring all the batsmen is one way to end the inning (half of the game, each teams bats once). The other way is for all the bowlers (pitchers) to deliver (throw) all of the set number of deliveries.

If that helps at all. (refer to Wikipedia for any additional information)

Otherwise, just take my word for it: this was a very close play deciding of the outcome of the game which makes this picture both significant and storytelling.

September 05, 2010

Ouch! (T.O)

Canada's Simeon Jackson experiences Peru's "friendliness" first-hand as they host a FIFA friendly soccer game.

Below: a behind-the-scene photo of yours truly, taken by friend and former co-worker René Johnston from the Star.

September 04, 2010

Baseball (T.O)

When the dome opens (above) and a slow shutter-speed picture of Toronto's own homerun king José Bautista (below)