Beach Bikini Mail Order Bride Birthdays

Gull at the Beaches

Friday 13:00. Photography at the Beaches.
It was an incredible day for taking pictures. Altogether I took 971 photos after deleting the really bad ones (ie. where the flash didn't fire because I didn't notice the batteries were weak). I started the day off by going down to the beach. On the way I picked up some bread and peanuts to feed the birds, squirrels or whatever was around to be photographed. There was clumpy snow falling from the sky. I figured this would make the little critters hide somewhere to take shelter. I got to the beach and sure enough it was deserted of pretty much all animal life.

There were the odd dogs with their owners but no birds and the only squirrel I saw ran into a hole in a tree before I could get my camera out of my bag. I decided to walk up the boardwalk. Past the life guard station there's a clump of rocks that usually has a bunch of gulls. For some reason in my brain I've been told somewhere that there is no such thing as a sea gull. They are just called gulls. I think it was an irate bird person that told me that a long time ago.

I was happy to find a bunch of "gulls" sitting on the rocks peppered with some malard ducks for good measure. It was easy to get the gulls to fly over. Once a piece of bread fed one of them, that gull became a bird siren signaling the rest to fly over. I took a bunch of pictures of them flying towards the camera. I can see why camera guys need assistants. It's hard to throw bread clumps then focus and shoot the camera on time. Not that I'm a great pitcher to begin with but throwing with my left hand while holding the camera with the right didn't help matters much. I was thinking how easy it would be if I had a sling shot tied to my left wrist that could be activated much like a spider-man web shooter. Only it would shoot bread clumps. When we were kids, my cousin actually owned a wrist shooter that shot suction cup darts.

I spent about a hour trying different bread throwing, camera shooting techniques. I eventually ran out of bread had to go up to the Mac's store on queen street and return to figure this problem out. About 3/4 into the next loaf I figured a trick that kind of works. You can throw bread at an oncoming bird while it's in the air. The bird will catch it in the air. Other birds will take flight and hover near that bird so they can replace it when the bird flies away. So to take the shot that you see on the screen, I prefocused the camera, placed in in manual (the D70 Nikon camera will not let you take a picture if it's on automatic and it can't lock a focus), then launched a clump of bread with the left hand while shooting with the right. It took a good number of shots to get something I wanted. I would have been happier if the focus on the eyes were a little sharper. If only the gull had been a few centimeters further back.



Tammy Plante, 22, winner of the Budweiser Bikini Show and Ms. Audio Thunder show

20:00. The performance car show budweiser bikini challange.
"Being a photographer is a great way to meet and take pictures of chicks". I've heard this line paraphrased by a whole slew of people. Girls and guys. So far, on the surface anyway, it seems I've only met other fellow photographers interested in talking shop. It's like the stories you hear about those party lines where they advertise meeting a bunch of girls but when you call it's about nine guys listening in to see if there's a female voice. At least with photography there's no $15 a minute charge and you can always resort to shooting gulls on the beach.

So to fill my quota of photography of women I decided to go to this car show. Despite the fact that it's a bunch of bikini women it's a great opportunity to figure out how the flash works and become familiar with it. Okay at this point I can see all you female readers rolling your eyes to the back of your head. How many other venues have a walkway and have people pose in poor but varying lighting conditions?

To those of you that have never been to a bikini contest before the usual drill is to bring out your group of hopefuls dressed in some sort of club wear, introduce them, send them off stage and reintroduce them in their bikini garb. I'm sure there's a science to this. Maybe to build the anticipation of seeing half naked women. I'll have to do more research on this and get back to you.

The contest did not have official judges. The girl won the pageant by audience applause. In the end Tammy, age 22, won the title of Miss Budweiser Bikini Show



M.O.B. plays at Sneaky Dees. Medeine Tribinevicius - guitar, Ruta Tribinevicius - drums, Meghan Dove - lead vocals, Rowan Brewer - bass

22:00. The Punk show at Sneaky Dees
At the bikini show I bumped into a friend for elementary school. This was fortuitous as I had to get back downtown in order to shoot the all girl punk bank M.O.B.. The bikini show although scheduled to start at eight started a bit later. This pushed the ending to about 9:15, leaving me only 45 minutes to get back downtown from the airport.

On the way to Sneaky Dees Henry told me how he had won an toy ambluance at one of my birthday parties when I was a kid (somewhere between grades one and three). I don't even remember the birthday party let alone the ambulance. I do remember eating a submarine sandwich that had a circumference almost as big as my face but that's because my father took a picture of me eating it. I wonder, if my parents had digital technology, would I have more memories of my childhood?

The stage at Sneaky Dees is very small and the audience can get real close. On one hand it's great because as a photographer you can get right up close to the action. On the other hand you can also get pushed into the stage. I've noticed at punk shows it's customary to shove people around near the front of the stage. It's normal, kind of like dancing, only with pushing involved. Since smashing my lens isn't on my top priority things to do I stayed near the edges of the stage shooting from the sidelines so to speak.

One thing I noticed, because the stage was so small and there's a lot of gear up there from the four bands playing that night, was that there was a lot of background clutter. It was tough getting shots of the performers without something sticking out from the back of their heads. I ended up trying to shoot close up shots with my 70-300mm lens to help get around this. I spent half the concert fiddling with settings on my flash. The difference in lighting from Meghan (lead singer) to Ruta (drummer) was about 2 f-stops.



Rob, Jane, Tracy, and Daryl at the Blue Moon

00:00. Rob Pincomb and Darryl Gold's Birthday Party

A quick ride on the streetcar transported me from Sneaky Dees to the Blue Moon Bar on queen and broadview. Darryl's birthday was on the 9th, Rob's was the 11th and just for trivia purposes the zamboni (the ice melter at skating rinks) is on the 10th. This is significant because all three of us worked on the NHL hockey rulebook for CD rom back in the early 90s when we found this out.

By the time I left the party I had 27 shots left after shooting almost two gigs worth of stuff. This doesn't include the beach as I managed to download that stuff before going to the car show. Eeek. I'll have to get more memory if another day like this occurs. Otherwise the D70 held up pretty well. I didn't have to change the camera batteries at all and I only had to change the flash batteries once.