Pizza Time

Today's pizza

I arrived home early and made a pizza. Today's toppings included: mushrooms, purple onions, pepperoni, cheese, Prego spaghetti sauce, and asparagus.


Pizza crust

While the technique for making a pizza round still needs work, the pizza was quite tasty.

Rice Crispex Squares

Ingredients

• 4 cups Rice Krispies cereal
• 2 cups Crispex cereal
• 250 gram bag of mini marsh mallows
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
• 1/4 cup of butter

Directions

1. melt butter in pot until liquid
2. add marsh mallows
3. add vanilla
4. stir marsh mallows until uniformly melted
5. add cereal, careful not to crush, by stirring into marsh mallow goo
6. turn off heat
7. pour mixture into glass tray
8. spread around so that it's even
9. let cool

Additional notes

You can pretty much use 6 cups of any type of cereal you want. Originally this recipe called for just Rice Krispies. Since I like Crispix I replaced two cups of the Rice Krispies with the Crispix.

Additonal additional notes
I was going for the sci-fi, X-files look with the above photo. The space age food container and lab like lighting. While the food may not look as appetizing with the dramatic sci-fi lighting, it is tasty. Especially just out of the pot. Trust me on this.

The Search for a Gretsch

Yonge and Dundas (near the HMV superstore, Future Shop, Best Buy, and the Game shack)

Spent the day looking for a wireless guitar for rock band. Specifically the Gretsch model made during The Beatles rock band game launch. It's supposed to look like George Harrison's guitar.

A while ago, William and I saw the guitar at Toys R Us. It looked a lot better made than the equivalent Guitar Hero version. It was also a bit more money ($90 vs $60). When I see something that there's only one of I should really buy it at the time. In the long run it would have saved me this day to walking around.


Getting lunch in the depressing, cheaply designed, sparse, dundas square mall

I travelled to a few places looking for the guitar. Yonge and Dundas, Yonge and Eglington, Dufferin mall. None of the video game stores had it in stock for the Wii. Actually, there were no Rock Band guitars for the Wii of any model. Guitar Hero or Band Hero yes, Rock Band no.

I never got the guitar today and ended up settling on the purchase of a used copy of the Rock Band AC/DC track pack. It was only $5.


Dufferin mall Toy R Us, no guitar here either.


huh.

On the way home from Dufferin mall I saw a blue bear mascot for Boston Pizza. Weird.

Late night snack

Homemade Cinnibon

Made some cinnibons from one of those Pillsbury pre-made can things. While I love the smell of these things I find the icing way too sugary. I'll have to attempt to try to make these things from scratch one day (when I have more time).

Greta Constantine, two for two

FW 2010 Greta Constantine line

The Greta Constantine catwalk tonight was a success. At least to this photographer. The designers, Kirk and Stephen, still coming up with some great designs to wear. This is the second catwalk I've photographed of theirs and the second one I've been impressed with.

For more on the Greta Constantine line click here.

I have to give these guys props for doing their catwalk independent of Toronto Fashion week. Getting a nice venue and having good lighting isn't something that comes cheap. But perhaps not having any association with Toronto Fashion week is a good thing.

Generally only a handful of designers get press during fashion week. It's generally the same designers year after year. The newer designers get nothing in terms of media coverage. For a designer that's a lot of money to shell out for 15 minutes of runway time. Toronto Fashion week was late this year as well. Way after buyers would have bought anything for the fall/winter season.

Canadian Horror

Alan Gordon and Allan Price of Cannibal Girls

There was a screening of Cannibal Girls (1973) at the Bloor Theatre tonight. The two "surprise" guests were the two Allans from the movie. They played the first two victims.

The movie was pitched to me as a movie with Eugene Levy and Andrea Martin, a campy Canadian comedy directed by Ivan Reitman. I found out in the theatre that it was a horror movie that resembled Auntie Lee's Meat Pies... or vice versa since the Canadian movie was made 19 years earlier.

While I'm not really into the horror genre I did find the film entertaining. Probably had more to do with the people that I saw the movie with than the movie by itself.

Made to Measure

The Disto D8

I've been wanting to get one of these for a while. The last job where I needed to measure stuff I had to talk 5 meters through knee deep snow, battle the winds trying to use my trusty tape measure. Improvising by packing one end of the tape measure under a block of ice didn't help. The wind was too strong. Eventually I got a distance and it probably wasn't that accurate. I also permanently bent the metal tape thanks to it folding in on itself.

To measure the height of the camera which was about 20 feet up on a crane was another story. I used the shadows around and using similar triangles approximated how high the camera was. The shot was done quickly and the shadow moved. Didn't give me enough time to have accurate markers let alone take an accurate reading.

Enter the Disto. While they're handy, they're also expensive. It's a tough to justify if you're not using it every day. To be honest I'd rather buy another lens. Borrowing the device off someone else is possible if they're not using it, that is provided someone else has one.


What you get with the Disto D8

I bit the bullet so to speak and picked up the current model, the Disto D8. It fires a laser that slices through the air and is accurate over a 30 meter range by plus or minus one millimeter. Supposedly it can measure up to 650m if on a tripod.

It's cool. You just point the laser (watch people's eyes though) at what you want to measure the distance to and viola your measurement is displayed on the screen (in metric or imperial). "What was that you say? It's too sunny out and you can't see the little red dot of the laser?" No problem, there's a built in camera that can show you on the screen what you're pointing at!

If that's not geeky enough, there's some simple trig functions in the unit that allow for other measurements pretty easily. Like the height of that window way up on the fifth floor. Just zap the top of the window and the bottom of the window. Using the built in 360 angle locater and the distance it'll calculate the height for you. You can then transfer the data using the built in blue tooth option.

Crazy nerdy fun... and it works off two non-proprietary AA batteries!!

Photo test day

Emmanuel, the "me, myself, and I" photo

I was fiddling around these last few days using my panoramic gear. Emmanuel volunteered to be my subject and we used his apartment to shoot in. As I'm not really into photoshop for fixing up photos, I do like using it every now and then to alter reality.

There are too many photographers that rely heavily on photoshop. It has become, in my opinion, a tool to save their asses on such a regular basis that they get lazy and forget to improve their camera skills.

That said, photoshopping is an art unto itself. Used by the right people can get pretty nice, if not incredible results. In the wrong hands... crap (ie. those ads where the model is missing an arm or has skin with no pores). For more photoshop disasters click here.

Rainy Day Photo Walk

"I'm walkin' here"

Went out with the Toronto photo walks group today. Started by meeting in front of the east side entrance of the Museum TTC subway station at 10am. From there we walked east then up to Bloor and Bay and across to church. It was raining all day so a lot of the meet up time occurred in a pub called the church mouse and the firkin.


Lindsey's boot color match the sign

Despite this we managed to get a lot of good photos with the sky being overcast and objects being wet. Colors in photos came out super saturated.


An ad.


I have no idea what this ad is for.


Photographing the King George statue in Queen's Park.


Lunch room at U of T


Wall paper for you computer?


It's the photo walk group in the mirror under an escalator at College Park


Construction at Gerrard and Yonge (north west corner)

Where's my monopod?

Modelling the Phillip Sparks collection

The start of the Fall/Winter 2010 fashion season (in Toronto at least) began with the Phillip Sparks catwalk located in a building near Bathurst on Queen street. I had gotten there early, as usual, and grabbed a nice spot to photograph at the end of the catwalk.

My editor had been going over procedures in case I got there late or couldn't get in. I was the first photographer on the scene and I arrived late, late for me. I had misplaced my monopod and spent a while looking for it. Not finding it I decided to leave before I really was late . I would have to photograph the show hand held.


Watch by Hamilton.

It wasn't until after the show that I retraced where I last used the monopod. "Good Gravy!", as my grandmother would say. "I left it at Massey Hall!". At least that's the last time I remember holding it to photograph Jamie Cullum.

I had been told to move out after the third song and in my haste had my lenses, camera bag, and monopod in a disarray. I stopped at the exit door, leaned my monopod next to the door frame, I swapped lenses from my camera into my camera bags to carry back home, then sorted out my long lens. The 70-200mm had a lens doubler that I was using to get the 400mm range. I had to dismantle it and pack that away as well. I then left Massey Hall.


A woman in the audience enjoying a cranberry martini

The question was "Did I take the monopod with me from the door frame or not?". I may have left the monopod on the subway. I was tired that night. I knew it wasn't at home in my apartment from the search earlier on in the day. I didn't have anything to loose so after the Sparks catwalk I made my way back to Massey Hall.

There was some other event going on at the time but no one lined up for tickets when I got there so I went right up to the ticket booth and asked "Did anyone find a monopod?". "What's that?". "It's a metal stick to put your camera on.", I replied.

The guy in the booth asked me to wait inside. I wasn't there very long when a security guard came out of a door carrying the "camera stick". It was like he was surrounded by golden light from heaven. Small angels "ahh ahh"ing. "There it is!", I exclaimed. The guard could see the amazed, happy look I had on my face, and handed it to me like I just won an award. "Thank you so much.". "You're welcome so much."

I left happy to not have to buy another replacement camera item.

Note: It should be known that between the location of the Phillip Sparks show and Massey Hall I had gone into the Eaton Centre and saw a monopod at Black's Photography. It's about half the size of my existing monopod and can be stored in a camera bag quite easily. I never got the price of it because if I knew the amount I might want to buy it. The only bad thing about it was that the quick release clamps were not adjustable. If they wore out you couldn't take them off or readjust the tightness on them.