Jays Game from Field Level!

A couple days ago I had the great opportunity to shoot a Blue Jays game from the photo booth at the Skydome in Toronto. It was one of the most exciting experiences I've ever had in my short career as a photographer and hopefully not the last one.

This was possible thanks to Fred Thornhill, one of the best sports photographers out there and my photojournalism teacher who I appreciate for the opportunity and evertying he has taught me.

I got to use part of his equipment, which it might not be a big deal for some but for me was one the best cameras I've ever shot with, a Canon EOS 1 D with a 300mm lens and a 400mm lens. As well as shooting next to Frank Gunn from AP, one of the top sports photographers in Canada and I was lucky to get a couple tips from him and share laughs with other photographers like Mark Blinch from Reuters, Mike from Sun Media and Chuck who works for the Jays marketing Department (Sorry Dont remember the last 2 lastnames).

Here are some of the frames I got.

Assisting

First of all I have to thank Marc Crabtree and Gillian Jackson for giving me the opportunity to assist on this gig.

April 4th 2009, a date I'll remember forget for the rest of my career as a photographer. For the first time I got to assist a photographer and it was a pretty interesting experience. Things went according to plan I believe. The gig was at a house in Aurora, we were suppose to take 10 exposures of the kitchen and living room for a show on the W Network called 'Take this House and Sell It'. Even though I've never done interior photography before, I think it could be something I could do on the side. Its not as fun as shooting sports photography but I'm using a camera and that's all I care about.

I woke up at 8, got ready and Gillian picked me up at 9 to drive up to Aurora. We got there and I started to set up the lights while Gill put everything together in the kitchen. She has a brown Speedotron kit, some what old but it worked totally fine. Its interesting to learn how to bounce the light against the ceiling or a cardboard to distribute even light in the room.

We spent half a day moving lights around trying to figure out the correct exposure for the rooms. She exposed for the window, the tungsten lights on the ceiling and any other part of the room that had a strong shadow to later put all the images together on a composite on photoshop.

At 2:30 we finished, packed everything head back home. Awesome day, experience and photographer to work with. Thank you Gillian.

you can check Gillian's work at www.GillianJackson.ca