November Issue
I know its a bit late, but here’s the November Issue of Steel Bananas – Number 13. I’ve been pretty swamped with school. But now its all finished for the term, so I can breathe a sigh of relief. T’was a great Issue.
I think this is one of our best covers. It was such a fluke too:
I had to meet Curran and Ken from Gravity Wave at a little cafe downtown somewhere on a rainy Tuesday night a few weeks back. Every time Curran and I interview a band it rains. Diamond Rings, Hopeful Monster, Schomberg Fair, and now Gravity Wave. I think its our thing. Anyways, I think the cafe was on Delaware street, by the TTC yard on King. There was construction and the bus had to take a detour. Some random old drunk man started getting upset we were taking a detour, and how it was the immigrants fault that we were not following the typical route. How they come to Canada and take all the jobs. Some weird shit like that. Anyways, I got off a stop early because I got disoriented and had to walk to the cafe. On the way up to the cafe I noticed an empty laundr-o-mat. Perfect. I met Curran and Ken at the cafe and told them about the laundr-o-mat. So we walked to the landr-o-mat, except it wasn’t empty – there were the old Portugeuse owners there. I asked them politely if we could take a couple of photos for a magazine, and they were really cool about it. As I was setting up my lights, a man came in and put in a load of laundry, which worked out perfectly – his laundry is in the cover. I took some photos of Ken sitting on a chair in front of the washing machine – the cover photo - then Curran commented on how much he loved Ken’s shirt. So Ken took off his jacket and posed without his jacket – our lead in title shot. Then I thought it would be cool to shoot from the street into the laundr-o-mat through the big front windows. So we brought Ken to the front, and I kindly asked him to start unbuttoning his shirt like he was about to take it off to put it in the wash. I know it sounds weird, but he obliged, and it turned out pretty cool. All in all a good shoot. Curran: we’ll see if it rains in this month’s interview adventure. Read the article by Curran Folkers here.
I also shot The Wilderness of Manitoba for an article written by Mr. Patrick Grant of Body Electric. That was a fun shoot. We had to get to their band-practice house somewhere by a subway station that I cannot remember the name of at the moment. Again, it was a rainy night. When I got to the house, I noticed they had a really cool front porch. I’ve never shot a front porch, so we were set. But I didn’t have an umbrella to defuse my flash – so, no word of a lie, I used the carved halloween pumpkin that was on their porch. Weird – definitely. Successful – for sure. I set up a little stool on their front lawn to give me some height and shot over the porch railing. it was a little hard to focus because it was dark, but everything turned out all well. I didn’t end up using that shot for the lead in because it was a wide shot, and the SB website is very narrow. Portrait oriented shots work better because I can get a larged sized photo in there. So instead, I got in close and shot them all bunched together – I know you’re not supposed to put heads on heads, but I did it anyways. So there. Read Patrick Grant’s article here.
And last but not least, I also shot Melanie Janisse – Poet and owner of Zoots Cafe, the home of the Monthly Eggplant. Melanie let us shoot in Zoot’s when it was closed which was kind of cool. I tried getting her to sit in the front window shooting in from the street. That didn’t turn out too well, which was a little unfortunate. I managed to snap a couple of nice photos of Melanie while she was drinking tea at the cafe bar. I was with Karen and Curran the whole time – Karen was writing the article, and Curran works at Zoots. Curran suggested going back to Melanie’s studio/office which was fantastic. She has this awesome back office with high ceilings, white walls a great eclectic/retro cabinet wall unit thing and a desk with all of her current projects on it. I knew this was where I’d get my shot. While Karen and Curran kept Melanie busy with the po-mo lit talk of steel bananas – which went right over my head – I started snapping photos. I put my flash behind her pointing at me, and it created an awesome halo around her fur hat. Read the article by Karen Correia Da Silva here.
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