NPAC Day 5

Today was available light day. This idea was inspired by one of my favourite photographers- Don Weber (http://www.donaldweber.com) Basically I decided at the start of the day that I am not going to use my flash, no matter what the situation is (I would probably break this rule if I absolutely needed too, but I that would be an extreme situation.)

I don’t use flash a lot, except in some portraits. The cameras today can easily shoot at 3200 so it give a lot of flexibility in playing with different situations. But when I walk into an assignment without my flash my safety net is gone and it really challenges me to think about what I am photographing and how I am going to photograph it. It does not give me the opportunity to fall back on setting up two lights and making a standard portrait, or blasting the flash off the roof to make a photo, if I cannot find a cool photo.

My first assignment was a business portrait at a law firm on Bay St. I have been to this office a few times before for other assignments and I knew that they have nice art on the walls with pot lights highlighting the pieces.

I found a nice painting with a nice light, took some test shots of my hand and knew I could make a simple portrait there. I shot some stuff and that was it.

Brock Gibson, who takes over as chairman of Blake Cassels & Graydon L.L.P., poses for a photo in their downtown Toronto office, Thursday, December 11, 2008.

The law firm had their own kitchen in the office and they invited me to have lunch with them and the reporter- I quickly said yes. The food was great, a fruit salad, stuffed chicken and pecan pie- the benefits of this job are great sometimes.

I then had an assignment to shoot a portrait of Japan’s Flower Travellin’ Band. They are a wild psychedelic band from the 70’s that are doing a few shows as a reunion type of thing. I met them at the practice space and we made a few photos. They were really cool and if they spoke more English I am sure I would have been able to get some really crazy stories out of them.

L-R, Nobuhiko Shinohara, Hideki Ishima, George Wada and Jun Kobayashi of Japan

The photos were nothing to crazy, pretty straight forward, I just found some light and worked with it.

Front L-R, Hideki Ishima, George Wada, Nobuhiko Shinohara, (back) Jun Kobayashi, of Japan

And that was my day. Nice and easy and I made a few photos that I was happy with.

This is the end of my blog adventures. I had a pretty good week at work and I hope anyone that followed my posts got some type of entertainment or positive ideas from my words. I love seeing how other photographers work and I learn a lot that way, I am excited to read the upcoming photographers entries and look into their work.

Thanks to John Lehmann, Derek Woollam and Jacques Boissinot for making this idea a reality. I also want to thank everyone that is working on bettering NPAC and contributing to the site and organization to make it better.

This is a volunteer and user based community. The only way to make it better is to contribute in some way, even if it is as simple as posting ideas and thoughts on the boards. If we all sit around quietly and wait for someone else to do it- we won’t have anything.

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