In the rain with Hopeful Monster.

Today was a busy day for me. I had two interviews for Steel Bananas for a follow up of NXNE – Hopeful Monster at noon at Sunnyside park, and then Diamond Rings at some park on Dufferin at 4, then I had to make down to BMO field for the Zidane & Friends charity game.

It was really hot when I made it into the city this morning, like rediculously hot. It started raining around 11, and it was raining really hard. By the time we made it to Sunnyside, both Curran (associate editor of Steel Bananas) were soaked to the bone. Jason Ball of Hopeful Monster arrived soon after us. It was then that I realized I forgot my wireless flash triggers at home, and therefore could not use my softbox. What a bummer. I realized I might be able to jerry-rigg it using the Nikon CLS, but that didn’t work too well. The way the CLS works is that the on camera flash will trigger any nikon flashguns. That was fine, but then I had to deal with light coming from the on camera flash and balancing that out. Add that to mis-fires and non-fires, and the CLS just wasn’t worth it. I shot with natural light.

Our first location was just outside the sunnyside cafe, on the board walk, then for our second location, we made it over to the dinosaurs-playground just east of the cafe. I decided to shoot RAW today for some reason. I ususally just shoot JPEG. I know. Most photographers give me shit for not shooting RAW, but I’ve never really gotten good results shooting RAW. My photos are never sharp. Plus I usually have really fast turnaround times, and it’s often more efficient for me to shoot jpeg. Also, when I’m shooting a hockey game or something, I shoot so much that it doesn’t make any sense shooting RAW. Most of my work is for online use or to be printed at 11×17 on newsprint. I don’t need the quality and hassle of RAW unless I’m doing a big print job.

Anyways, so after Hopeful Monster, we made our way down to this very bohemian park north of college on dufferin to talk to Diamond Rings. There was a farmer’s market there as we interviewed. It was a really good interview, and I got some great photos. I’ve got to sit on them until July 15, but I’ll give you a hint – there are flying keyboards involved.

After the interview, I made the journey back to St.George where I ate at Sammy’s, then bussed it to BMO field. What a joke the game was. It was like the Zidane show. No one cared about the other players. Canada was up 3-2, then in stoppage time, Canada seemed to apparently forget how to move, and gave up a goal for the tie. Canada’s goalie, Reed (I think thats his name) stoned Zidane three solid times. After the game, Zidane did a lap around BMO field, and the photographers, myself included, tried to chase after him, with our big telephotos around our neck. I got a few good shots, but shooting at BMO was definitely a great experience. During Zidane’s lap of BMO field, a few people jumped the fence and got tackled by security, and were subsequently arrested.

Photos from the Zidane game will probably come late tonight, or tomorrow morning, I havn’t decided how tired I am yet. Evidently I decided I had enough energy to edit soccer photos tonight. You can see the Zidane & Friends photos here and here.

In the meantime, here’s a behind the scenes shot of my failed Nikon CLS, missing wireless flash trigger, photoshoot with Hopeful Monster. Steel Bananas Associate Editors Curran SF is my softbox holder. I don’t remember what the lighting set up was, CLS seemed to make things very weird. CLS probably set my SB-600 to full power. I shot at ISO 100 on my D90 at f/4 @ 1/100.