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)

... "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.

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.

Baseball (T.O)

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

Same Sun (Nice, France)

Some outs from Nice and elsewhere.