Tag: Music Posts

Shortly after arriving in Vancouver, I saw someone Tweet that the Barenaked Ladies were busking on Robson Street, so I strolled on down. Sure enough, right on the corner of Robson and Burrard was a massive group of people and music playing. I only got to listen to a few minutes worth of music, but the crowd was definitely into it. Here’s a shot of the bass player, Jim Creeggan, that I snapped shortly after the show was over:

Any suggestions? Lately I’ve been listening to The Shins, Arcade Fire and Death Cab For Cutie. Drop me some music suggestions! Thanks.

I’ve been playing guitar since I was about 18 years old. My first guitar was actually (believe it or not) a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar. It was basically my high school present from my mom in exchange for graduating and getting myself to UBC. Unfortunately, I really couldn’t afford an amplifier at the time, so I basically just practiced on it ampless for the first few years. Eventually I managed to save some cash and bought a Fender Princeton 112 amplifier, which I still have (although it’s been at my friend’s house for a few years now — something I’ve been trying hard to remedy for about two years now). My second guitar was actually just a cheap acoustic I picked up here in Chilliwack in my early 20s, mainly so I’d have something to play while camping. It was really hard to play, and it always sounded a bit […]

To be honest, I haven’t really spent much money on my home theatre setup in about seven years or so. But for a while there, I was into fairly decent home audio equipment. That’s not to say I don’t do the odd update from time to time, because I do: last year I purchased a HD-DVD player, and more recently an Apple TV, the former of which was a rather poor investment (although it performs quite well as a basic upsampling DVD player). My current home setup consists of the following. In terms of speakers, I’ve never been big on home theatre, and have always tried to have my system focus more on stereo audio instead. Shortly after starting my first job out in Ottawa, I received a pretty hefty bonus in exchange for giving up about six months of my life crawling around clean rooms and setting up fiber […]

I was going through some of my old videos tonight, and realized I have a pile that I haven’t uploaded yet. Here’s one of Feist singing 1234 at the BC Festival 150 in Victoria. [easyvideo video=”http://blip.tv/play/AcnFUAA”]

It should come as no surprise that photoshop is a much better tool that iPhoto. iPhoto is a free package that ships with Tiger and Leopard, and allows you to do quick adjustments to your photos. While obviously not marketed towards a high-end market, it’s easy to use and is a fairly decent tool to have a in your photography arsenal. Unfortunately, sometime around Leopard, my iPhoto experience seemed to get a lot worse. I never really figured out exactly what happened, but there was a clean point in time where I felt iPhoto started really underperforming. The other day at the BC Festival 150 I made the decision to start shooting RAW. I’ve always sort of guessed that RAW yields a higher image quality, partially because there’s no JPEG compression involved, but also because RAW images hold 12 or 14 bits of data per pixel as opposed to JPEG’s […]

Blog traffic is pretty low, even by weekend standards. So I can only assume that everyone’s out enjoying the long weekend. I’ll keep this post short for now. We all had a rather crappy sleep last night, so we’re a bit tired. We went down to the main stage early in the morning and managed to catch a few artists doing sound check. Here’s a quick shot of Sarah McLachlan. Here’s a quick video I took of sound check. It’s not finished converting yet, but head over and take a look.

Arieanna and I spent this afternoon walking around the festivities. Today is basically the warm up for tomorrow, so it was rather relaxed. We spent time bouncing between beer gardens and the second stage, the latter of which had various talent performing throughout the day. Ianiv took the ferry this afternoon, and will be getting here shortly. Arieanna and I sweet-talked our way onto the fireworks barge later, so we’ll have press access for that as well. I haven’t really taken photos since the Junos, so today was a good warm up day for me. Here are a few shots I took: Also, here’s a video I took when the helicopter was taking off: [easyvideo video=”http://blip.tv/play/tyXGiE8A”]

Update – Hotwire came through for me again. We’re going to be staying at the Magnolia Luxury Boutique Hotel right in Inner Harbour. So exciting. The other day Arieanna contacted me via Twitter and asked if I wanted a photo pass for the festivities this weekend in Victoria. Since I haven’t been to Victoria in a few years, I thought it might be a good opportunity to sample some island beer and take some photos. Sometimes photo passes just let you get your camera in the door, and aren’t really anything special. However, Arieanna just got confirmation that our passes include access to the front-stage pit, as well as backstage and potentially interview access. I’m more of a photo kind of guy, but I’m sure Arieanna is anxious to get a few interviews for b5media. Shooting the Juno awards was obviously a pretty big highlight in my photography career, but […]

At this time tomorrow, I’ll be bouncing around Calgary trying to get my media pass before the press conference at noon. Which means I get to spend most of tonight getting my camera gear ready and packing some clothes. Photo from Russell Peter’s Website My flight is at 7am in the morning, and I hope to have a few minutes in the airport relaxing with a coffee and an eggs benedict. I’m pretty excited about going to the Junos, and really have no idea what to expect. Russell Peters will be at the press conference tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll get to chat with him a bit — I’m a big fan of some of his comedy skits. Also, make sure you bookmark my Juno Awards Page which I’ll update while I’m out there. Also, check out Urban Vancouver, where I’ll also be doing the odd posting as well.