Category: Blog

Street Festivals

by Tom

I can’t say I’m the biggest fan of street festivals; in fact I probably would not go out of my way to find a street festival but on a weekend with nothing to do, they can often fill the void.

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I gave Scot a few dollars for his wonderful  performance

A couple weeks ago my mother said “hey let’s go to the Polish festival”. Now it was not a totally random thing, we were planning to meet up with some family friends who are polish. We had them over for a BBQ and they wanted to repay us for the favour. Unfortunately, things did not pan out, our friend who is a real-estate broke ran into an emergency and needed to quickly close a deal, so my mother and I found ourselves wandering the streets of Roncesvalles on our own.

No big deal though, there was plenty to do and see. The first act we saw was by a street performer called Scot Free who not only was witty and entertaining but did some things I can only describe as daring. Between juggling knives, torches and chainsaws, he also insisted that watch him swallow fire. What made Scot the perfect subject for some photos was that he was very energized, he had tons of facial expressions, physical actions, bright high contrast clothing and was surrounded by awed onlookers.

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Scott Free – ISO 800, f/3.5 @ 1/800th of a second

Catching this action required some camera settings I don’t often use. I took a few photos at ISO 100 f/2.8 1/150th of a second, which was fine when Scot paused for a moment or I needed some motion blurring of his action. I also set the camera in multi-frame mode for speed shooting, this way I could bang off 6 – 9 shots in 1-2 seconds if I really wanted to capture those key millisecond moments.

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The glasses make this shot!

Once Scot really got into his act, I needed more shutter speed to freeze time. I’ve heard photographers say all they need is 1/200th of a second to capture the motion of any living creature. I call that a bunch of BS, if you really want to freeze time 1/500th of a second is only scratching the surface for slow things. You really need to be around 1/800th of a second or faster once you get people/animals/objects that are really moving and 1/1000th of a second and faster to start freezing inanimate objects like speeding cars, airplane props, explosions and very fast land creatures like birds diving and cheetahs running or horses galloping.

For Scot, 1/800th of a second at ISO 800 with an f/3.5 shutter for added sharpness was perfect. I was able to catch him in the act quite literally as he busked.

Moving on, street festivals bring out not only professional performers like Scot, but they also seem to attract the more interesting people you probably would not otherwise normally see. While enjoying a Polish band playing some traditional English disco tunes, I spotted a blue and orange, well dressed, retired hipster dancing up a storm. I had to grab a photo and truth be told, he seemed to care less; he was having a good time and dancing up a storm!

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Tom Jones – unofficially

A little further down the road, I heard the echoing voice of Tom Jones blaring. Sadly, it was not the real Tom Jones, but a cover act doing a good job of reproducing the melodic tunes he’s known for and just like before, it was quite a show with the crowd getting involved.

Lastly, beyond all the people at street festivals, performers, singers, and entertainers alike, these places seem to provide plenty of opportunities for macro food photography and even some generic street shots.

While walking we found this Mexican dessert stand (yes, at a Polish festival) and boy was the chocolate filled pastry delicious! The whole pile of it sitting on a basket at the vendors table also made for a cool macro shot. The owner was curious as to why I wanted a photo of a bunch of pastry in a basket, I guess he was just perplexed since most people seem to want to just eat it. Don’t get me wrong, I really wanted to it too but I just wanted a macro photo before I did so.

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Mexican dessert, yummy!

The Scarborough Bluffs at Sunrise

by Tom

Scarborough Bluffs Sunrise by Vaughan Weather

Looking through some of my older images yesterday I found two photos from the Scarborough Bluffs.

For those who might be wondering, the Bluffs are a natural geologic cliff feature on the east side of Toronto primarily composed of sand and in some places leading to a 90 meter drop straight into Lake Ontario. The bluffs were a product of the last ice age and the draining Don River. They look very similar to the limestone cliffs of England in some places because of their white appearance.

One of the best overlooking shots of the bluffs can be achieved from the foot of Cecil Crescent where it officially ends at Scarborough Bluffs Park. For other perspectives, specifically looking up from the foot of the bluffs, Brimley Road becomes Bluffers Park Rd at the edge of the lake; from there it’s a 10-15 minute walk west to the Cathedral Bluffs, the most stunning vertical piles of sand and cliffs.

I’ve seen many brave photographers climbing, cliff hanging and boating up to the edge of some of these pillars. I’ve also seen the “less brave” using drones, kites and other tools to achieve what I can only image are some spectacular images.

My images overlooking the Bluff’s are a product of circumstance and opportunity rather than planning and choice.

Scarborough Bluffs by Vaughan Weather

I was there to cover a news story about a man who had fallen down the bluffs to his death (yes that happens semi-frequently) and only the week earlier a group of teenagers who tried to descend the bluff became trapped and spent the night. People often make the mistake of trying to descend some of the cliff sides, only to realize going up is often harder than heading down and this is further complicated by dew and overnight moisture which makes the grasses very slippery.

While I was wondering around just outside a small portion of the park which was taped off for the crime scene, I saw the glow from the soon to be rising sun in the east. I quickly knew I had an opportune time to grab some images of the sun. A low hanging stratocumulus deck reaching out to the horizon provided a wonderful converging line to focus attention on the sun and offset the blue sky. I also used the dense plant life around, most of which was green to balance the perspective and offset the strong red/magenta and yellow/orange hues from the sun.

The end result was more tropical than I could have imagined and provided a full pallet of subtle colour ever increasing towards the sun.

As crazy as it sounds, I’ve actually taken a few images from this general area in the past, none of which I really cared for. They were either later in the day or evening images where shadows from the setting sun washed out the shoreline. So, the lesson learned here is to take full advantage of any photo opportunity and southeast facing cliffs look best at sunrise with lots of colour!

I would like to return in the future on another hazy morning and see what I can gather from the ground for an alternative angle.

Being Prepared Means Having Your Batteries Ready!

by Tom

AA Battery PackI’m pretty good at keeping my batteries charged and ready to go but every now and then I slack off or I forget I took a few hundred photos thinking I still have plenty of battery life left. For the most part I’ve escaped any real trouble but more recently, I learned a very valuable lesson!

While shooting the airshow at the CNE in Toronto my camera suddenly died! The battery packs, both of them in my Vello BG-C5 Battery Grip were dead. I was able to eject and reset the camera to get a few more images out before the camera would not even turn on anymore.

Remote TriggerIt was not what I had planned for at all! What angered me even more was the fact that sitting at home I had a special adapter for the Velo unit that allowed me to use AA batteries in place of the canon lithium battery packs. Had I brought the adapter which weighs only mere ounces and consumes very little space I could have quickly grabbed some alkaline batteries and been on my way shooting again getting at least another few hundred photos before those died.

Having learnt my lesson I purchased some good quality rechargeable batteries just for the Velo AA adapter and even purchased two spare canon lithium packs. Because I also carry other things that need batteries such as my GPS unit, I also now keep four spare AA batteries and a set of AAA batteries for my remote trigger and anything else that may need them.

Spare BatteriesLastly, I keep a 4 pack of alkaline batteries that are set to expire sometime in 2020 as a last resort emergency solution.

I also make sure my batteries are not some crappy no name brand, I’ve had those before and they sometimes can’t even hold a charge in anything for more than a couple minutes.

You’ll probably notice that all of my batteries in the images are rechargeable, and that’s because I hate wasting energy and money. With my rapid charger I can pretty much fill up 4 batteries of any type in about 15 – 20 minutes, so that means between my two Canon 600EX-RT Speedlite’s each taking 4 batteries, the Velo AA Grip taking six, the 4 spare AA’s and 2 spare AAA’s totaling up to 20 batteries, it only takes about 1hr and 40 minutes assuming they are all drained and need a full 20 minutes to charge. If they were all alkaline that means I would be spending close to $50 on batteries after tax since a four pack of Energizer’s or Duracell’s would cost around $8 to $12 dollars and I would need 5 packs!

Having the two extra lithium batteries for the Velo grip is also a bonus, I keep them charged giving me 4 sets of lithium batteries to work with and assuming I can shoot 400 photos per battery set I’m good for about 800 photos plus another 250 images with the AA adapter. You might call it overkill but I call having the ability to shoot 1050 images assurance that no matter what happens, I’m prepared and you should be too.