Ryan Couldrey Photography

Maple Leaf Garden’s media room

Ryan — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:48:11 +0000

I’m working Battle of the Blades for the mothercorp, and my gig required me to spend a lot of time waiting. During that time, I decided to venture down some stairs in the media room and see what was there - looks like it was forgotten, pants and all. Here’s a slideshow of six shots, and you can fullscreen it with a button in the lower right corner. Shot at 1600 and 3200 ISOs and cranked for max graininess.

Steve Dawson’s bassist’s bass

Ryan — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:54:11 +0000

Steve Dawson was in the studio for a performance recording the other day and I decided I didn’t want to light everything with harsh direct light for a change. I bounced two sb600s off a wall and a ceiling (click here for a setup shot) so they would act more like giant soft-boxes, and both were gelled for tungsten. Is it just me or is tungsten light never what the gels are? That’s what RAW is for, though… Shot at F/3.5, 1/60 shutter and at iso 1600 to let some of the ambient burn in a bit. If the light is good, iso 800-3200 on a D90 will look good, so don’t shy away from higher ISOs unless you’re shooting stock.

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A Capella at Nuit Blanche 2009

Ryan — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:00:45 +0000

I was hired to shoot an exhibit at Haut House at UofT for Nuit Blanche. While most of the works on display required me to take very “dry” shots (I’d use lights but not to really show things different from the way anyone could see the work), Juliana Pivato here was doing a roaming A Capella performance piece. Took about 2 minutes to set up and ended up producing my favourite shot of the whole gig using two lights. It’s a dark shot that has more detail in it than an uncalibrated monitor will show, but nonetheless I still like it a lot when viewing it again and posting it from this non-workstation computer.
I had an SB600 on a stand going through a shoot-thru umbrella just barely out of frame pointed at Juliana (shoot-thrus are great for getting in realllly close without a metal pole hitting the subjects eye, like a reflective umbrella might do).
I also had an SB28 at the top of the stairs and to the side lighting up the area a wee bit. It works because of the hanging light which appears to be casting the light source, even though it was way too dim to actually cast any light on the walls for the shot. Here’s a closer test shot before I told Juliana that I was set up and she could continue her performance.

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I think the main reason I like this shot so much is that I think I figured out the best possible way to capture an A Capella performance piece without the benefit of accompanying audio or video.

Canada Reads 2010 team

Ryan — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:01:58 +0000

Some of the key members of the CBC Canada Reads team, doing some shoots to prep for the next event (starts in December). Relatively simple shoot, a single white reflective umbrella with an SB600 inside it, hand held by a colleague. The background is a red pillar on the 10th floor of the Toronto CBC building, and its roundness is what’s giving that pleasant gradient. Easily repeatable for other team members. ISO 200, F/4.5, 1/125. Don’t recall the flash settings, probably somewhere around 1/2 power. Wish I’d used a reflector on the shadows, but I still like how these turned out. Click here for a lighting diagram.

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Portfolio update

Ryan — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:16:58 +0000

Just a quick note, the wedding and portrait sections have been updated with new work. The work is presented, as always, in a gallery style flash format - click a thumbnail and it’ll appear on the left. Visit the links on the navbar above or click the appropriate thumbnail below to go straight to a specific set.