Featuring Sing Wong, Alison Wong, Crisco Dean and Mr. Vaso - in ultimate triathlon action.
To see the full album, click on the photo above or HERE.
Cover photo taken with two SB-600s shot bare, one lighting My dad’s face, the other lighting the sign at the back.
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Benjamin Wong
http://iintrigue.com
Montreal Based Photographer
To see all photos, click on the photo above or HERE!
If there’s one thing I have to say about the Montreal Pharmacists… it’s that they definitely know how to throw a party. Located close to Mount Orford, the Spa Estrimont where the party was hosted was a great choice. My assistant Brian Dungo and I were invited to cover this fantastic evening that included an exterior cocktail, 5 course meal and open bar!
Brian and I both had a fantastic time hanging out with the pharmaceuticalites… so much that we stayed more than an hour over-time! Didn’t even feel the time past to be honest!
IMPORTANT: To any who wish to download the photos, there’s a download button next to each photo in the lower right hand corner. If you re-post these anywhere, please keep the watermarks.
PS. Add me on facebook if you’d ever be interested in modelling for me!
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Benjamin Wong
http://iintrigue.com
Montreal Based Photographer
To see the full album please click on the photo above or HERE.
The rock group Plants and Animals grew out of an auspicious encounter between three young musicians in the halls of Concordia University: Warren O. Spicer (guitar, vocals), Matthew “The Woodman” Woodley (percussion, vocals) and Nicolas Basque (guitar, bass, keyboards, vocals). Nova Scotia natives Spicer and Woodley were old friends who had played together regularly in various high-school bands. When they met Basque in Concordia’s music department, the Montréal trio came into being. Together, they formed and nurtured Plants and Animals. In February 2008, their first CD Parc Avenue came out on the Secret City Records label, and it’s still making waves. In the past year, Plants and Animals has toured Canada, the United States and Europe. The band is now about to head back into the studio to record a follow-up to Parc Avenue. [read more...]
Probably one of the best concerts that I had a chance to cover over at the Nocturnes in the Museum of Contempory Art of Montreal, Plants and Animals put on a fantastic show that had the whole crowd clapping and calling for more.
Using a mix of on camera flash and pure ambient as well as a the brand new Tokina 11-16 f2.8 that I had purchased, I once again went for extreme unconventional shots that hopefully gives you a feel for what the event was like! Note: Shots such as the cover chosen are multiple exposure shots, not photoshop created =)
Hope you enjoy the shots.
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Benjamin Wong
http://iintrigue.com
Montreal Based Photographer
Last Wednesday, I was asked by the RAESSUM to photograph the 10th Annual Symposium. This Sympsium hosted by a group of students from the University of Montreal, focused on talking about Aids and other STDs. For more information on it, please click here. A large number of guest speakers were invited: Dr. Robert Rousseau, Dr. Anne Charbonneau, Me Christine Vezina, Dr. Martin Guimond, Dr. Yves Robert, Dr. Victor Mari Ortego, Dr. Rejean Thomas.
For this event, 300 students from various universities showed up to participate and traveled between various rooms that hosted different speakers. The event concluded with a “banquet” of pasta and wine during which prizes were given out through fortune cookies.
All in all, a great event!
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Benjamin Wong
http://iintrigue.com
Montreal Based Photographer
Please click on the photo above or HERE to view the entire album
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Last Tuesday, I covered another event for the Young Chamber of Commerce of Montreal.This time, the meeting invited two speakers: Anne-Marie Hubert and Pascal Paradis to talk about time management and priority management in your life. To get the official details of the event (french), please click here.
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For those of you who don’t know, I’ve recently decided to cover all Young Chamber of Commerce events for a total cost of zero dollars - not because I’m working for free, but because I’m being paid in knowledge and opportunities instead of little green bills.
The best part?
The government doesn’t tax the amount of knowledge gained each year.
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Benjamin Wong
http://iintrigue.com
Montreal Based Photographer
Click on the photo above or HERE to view the entire album
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Wednesday I had the chance of going to the Parliament of Quebec to cover the opening ceremony of the 100th anniversary of the Federation of Quebec’s Chambers of Commerce (FCCQ). The evening was organized by a communications team called Atypic who hired myself and a videographer named Bruno (who’s website I seem to have lost) to cover the event.
Lots of big names showed up such as Jean Charest, Premier of Quebec , Francoise Bertrand, President and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce , Pauline Marois, Leader of the Quebec Party, Régis Labeaume, Mayor of Quebec, and many more.
Everything went extremely smoothly and guests were kept so happily stocked with food and drink that no one seemed to want to leave until they were slowly moved out by Parliament security.
Personally, I had a great time covering the event and barely saw the 6 hours pass me by. Hope you enjoy the shots.
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Benjamin Wong
http://iintrigue.com
Montreal Based Photographer
Thursday evening, I had the opportunity to cover another RAESSUM event . The event was focused on talking about how different domains had to work with each other in order to help patients get treated. In this case, an oncologist, pharmacist, nurse, dentist, nutritionist, orthophonist (Sp?) , social worker and psychologist.
As icing on the cake, a cancer patient Denis Caspar (name?) came up and gave us a little presentation on his experience as a cancer patient and how things were from his point of view.
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I was fascinated (although this may not be the right wording…) by Denis’s tale of his experience as a cancer patient and extremely surprised by the way he held himself. Although he was in constant danger of death, it did not show. He was very good-natured and would constantly let go a stream of jokes… not to make a parody of his situation but to help us relate to it.
After his speech, I had the opportunity to speak to him privately and he shared with me his pleasure at taking photos and his love for operas. It was a very touching experience! You can visit his blog by clicking here or entering this address: http://guerirautrement.blogspot.com/ Apparently he keeps a blog, and I will definitely update this post once I get more information.
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Benjamin Wong
http://iintrigue.com
Montreal Based Photographer
~ to see all photos from the “Besnard Lakes” performance, click the photo above or HERE
Note: the shot just above and other composite shots are not done in photoshop. These are pure multiple exposures, straight from the camera.
Just like every other first Friday of the month for the past 6 months, I’ve been showing up to the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montreal to photograph various upcoming artists.
Unlike every other first Friday of the month for the past 6 months, I noticed as I was going through my photos that there seems to be that little bit “more” in my shots than before.
It’s not a technical thing really, since the shots are not any technically better than before. They’re not sharper or cleaner than before, actually, I think they’re probably a little more blurry! So what has changed?
It’s only while speaking with Anna that she pointed out that my photography has started to really integrate my personality and character. The shots are very emotive, dynamic and in anna’s exact words “like BAM in your face”. Maybe that’s what I’m seeing in those shots and what I’m liking. What do you think?
Anyways, before our deluded photographer rambles on for the rest of eternity, let me introduce the artists:
With harmonies reminiscent of the Beach Boys, a Roy Orbison-style orchestra and reverbs, Pink Floyd pacing and Freddy Mercury falsetto, The Besnard Lakes invite us on a fascinating foray into sound and music.
The band’s members have shown that they are masters of a finely honed experimental pop that conjures up the eerie atmosphere typical of the songs written by David Lynch for his frequent collaborator Julee Cruise. [... click to read more]
Source: http://www.macm.org
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Benjamin Wong
http://iintrigue.com
Montreal Based Photographer
to see the full album click here or the photo above
Saturday, Anna and myself were invited to photograph a live performance by Boni Suba at L’Alizé Montréal for the Emergenza Festival. Predictably, you can enjoy the photographs from the event by clicking here, or the photo above.
Boni Suba (click to checkout their myspace!) did a fantastic job that evening with ~43 (?) votes and made it easily to round two of the competition! If you like their music, contact them about tickets for the next phase of the Emergenza competition which will be in Club Soda sometime in May!
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For those of you who have taken the time to look through the album, I’m sure that you’ll notice the variations in photography styles. I’d like to note that Anna was using my old Pentax K100D and 18-55mm kit lens, a system she’s not at all familiar with and managed to come up with some pretty damn good photos (better than mine!) Experimenting with random camera movements along with the on camera flash got her some pretty fantastic results that I’m totally jealous of! Please let me know what you think!
Look for this watermark or the IMGP titles to identify the Annashots!
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Personally, I’m not exactly satisfied with my shots of the evening and feel that I could have done a better job, not because I didn’t try my best but just because I still believe I’m lacking the know-how to achieve the result I want for every shot. Despite hanging an Sb-600 unit from the cieling again using my Gorillapod, and a second bouncing off my white scarf I laid accross a speaker, I feel that I didn’t have enough coverage of the general area to create a consistent “freezing” of the scene. Then again, maybe its because I left my three flash units (one mounted on camera) on TTL rather than going Manual. Definitely something I have to look out for.
Either way, I had a great time (although I think I had no more eardrums by the end of the event), and would definitely recommend you all to go check out the Boni Suba website.
Update: Alright, I know that this is probably not going to make sense to 99% of you, but for those who want, feel free to message me and I’ll try to explain. Too, there is a pretty big possibility that what I’m going to say is completely false, so if you know better, please correct me.
Basically, I’ve been going through my photos trying to figure out why some shots WORKED and why some just DON’T. I think that the best shots are those that involve a clear subject with somewhat of a movement glow to them that comes from the ambient light of the stage/room. In this shoot, I think 95% of my shots were all too “blurred” for my taste without that hard crisp burned image of the singers and I finally figured out why! The shots were taken at ISO 2200, and a variably low aperture (around f4.0 mostly), with a shutter speed that was never much longer than 1/10th of a second. The result is that since I was shooting in TTL, the flash’s would read that i was maybe a stop under ambient and trigger to make the exposure “perfect” and since my settings are so close to ambient, they weren’t triggering strong enough! Consequently, the exposure is “messy” and the details aren’t crystal sharp and only averagely sharp!
The solution? Lower the ISO, boost the flashs up at least to +1.0 EV if shooting in TTL and stretch the shutter speed! (Note: this still requires some testing…!)
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Benjamin Wong
http://iintrigue.com
Montreal Based Photographer
~ Click on the photo above to access the full album
Before I start, I just wanted to shout out a big thanks to Razvan Oprisor for coming as my voluntary assist on this shoot. If you’re interested in coming to assist at a future shoot, give me a shout!
The event “Concours TADAM” which took place in the Bistro Laurier, was one out of a series of small battle of the bands competition for local talent to compete for the opportunity to perform live at the Bel-Oeil Summer Festival.
The competition was a fantastic musical experience and although I’d love to give a description of each of the groups that performed but unfortunately, I don’t know the group names. Hopefully I’ll be able to update this in the near future.
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The stage that I had to light was a square about 20×20,and reasonably well lit although the light tones kept changing thanks to these futuristic club lights travelling all around the place at random … which means that both Raz and I would occasionally end up with weirdly shaded singers in varying blue, purple and/or green tones! (Black and white suddenly becomes your best friend!)
To make sure I would be able to get some clear well-defined outlines (like the shot above) without having that front dear-in-headlights look, I decided to take a gamble with some CLS - wireless flash from Nikon! (First time fooling around with CLS in a concert setting!) Doing a quick survey of the stage, I quickly noticed that I was going to have some trouble.
- Dark walls, dark cieling meant no large white surfaces to bounce light off of
- No space to discretely set up an umbrella for some softer fill
- No space in general to set up a lightstand for the flashes!
The improvised solution was:
- put a light stand on top of a speaker with the SB-600 pointed to a white air conditionner to create the soft side fill and gradiant cieling
- wrap a second SB-600 upside down using a gorillapod hanging from the wires of the cieling speakers as a hair light for the artists.
- use a camera mounted SB-800 to trigger the two units and provide some frontal fill light.
Hopefully the little diagram below can help to explain:
This shot here will shows the results in real life -
Final comments on the event:
Cheers, and please leave a comment!
