Friday evening SMS exchange…
me: Hawksley sound check - sounds great
ruzz: Fucker
ruzz: Say hi for me
me: If I get a chance

Saturday afternoon, stage 3…
me: Hawksley says “Hi Ruzz”

The quality of the photo is crappy, but the tent was dark with the blazing afternoon sun coming in from the side, and the flash all but blew out the highlights. At least I managed to salvage most of it.

It’s a good thing I took today off - I was exhausted after Folk Fest, and slept in ’til 10:30 today. I was also without a computer and/or Internet access all weekend, so I’ll have to get my ass in gear and catch up with my posting over the next while.

I did tell Edie Brickell I’ve had a crush on her for 25 years, and she was nice enough to sign my pass “With love to Doug, Edie Brickell. Thanx.” All the artists I met were incredibly nice, and the photos I took (not as many as I would’ve liked) will also be posted ASAP.

I came home just after midnight tonight to find a magazine had arrived in the mail, addressed to me, as though from a subscription. A sizable one, half an inch thick or so, but entitled “Buffalo Spree”. WTF? Judging by the cover, visible through the clear plastic wrapper, it was a local arts and culture mag from Buffalo, NY.

Then I remembered, and I pulled the wrapper off to open to the table of contents. Page 46. Flip flip flip, and there it was: the article on the Tragically Hip, “Squeezing onto the Hip bandwagon”, with photos by Doug Springer.

Cool (to me, at least).

Wanna buy a robot?

I’m getting around to editing the umpteen dozens of photos I’ve taken over the last couple weeks, so I’ll be posting a bunch on my Flickr account in the next few days.

Well, not really, but when the thermometer already shows 25C, and it’s supposed to hit 30 today, part of me wants to hide from the heat and sun in the comfort of a nice, cool basement. Another part of me, however, really wants to head down to the Latino Fiestaval in Olympic Plaza to shoot photos. They showed some of yesterday’s goings-on, and it looks like a good - albeit hot - time.

You’ll all be relieved to know I did some housekeeping on my drives yesterday and managed to free up about 30 GB of space. I had half a dozen DVD images sitting there, so I burned and deleted them, and got rid of the Windows.old folder that I had completely forgotten about (my copy of Vista Ultimate is an upgrade, which necessitates “two” installations).

Yes, I said I was going to buy a new hard drive on payday, but my meager funds were taken up because I had to pay for my new glasses in full. Because I’ve been making do with my old cheapo reading glasses since losing my good ones, and they aren’t ideal, I made an executive decision and paid for my new specs instead of shelling out for one or two drives.

Of course, my executive decision was mocked by NCIX this week with their Grand Opening Sale for a new location - they have Seagate 500 GB external drives on sale for $130. I would’ve bought a couple of those. My eyes will thank me when my glasses arrive in “up to ten business days”, though (yes, I thought that was a long time, too). By then, I’ll have no doubt used up the newly-freed space and will have no choice but to buy at least one drive.

Being a trigger-happy photographer, I’ve really come to appreciate hard drive size and DVD burning of late . I’m going to have to set up a more thorough and reliable backup system now that I’m really going nuts with the volume of images I’m shooting and storing. On the Jasper trip last weekend, for example, I took almost 1000 photos between two cameras, and even though 10-20% get deleted right off the hop for various reasons, they still have to be imported from the cameras first. Most of them were in RAW format, so that’s about 7 GB of images. It adds up quickly.

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, and this coming week promises to be equally busy. I’m only working tomorrow and Tuesday, taking four days off to volunteer for the Folk Fest. My schedule turned out nicely, allowing me to catch several of the many acts I want to see, but since I’m doing stage security, I’ll probably get to see or hear the rest, too.

In other words, I’m way behind in my updating, what with the list of events in my calendar, but the three or four of you who are actually interested will have to wait a little longer for the post(s). Sorry.

I got suckered into watching Dave on AMC, then halfway through, I discovered High Fidelity is on, so I changed the channel. As usual, I’ve been suckered in to a movie on TV that I actually own on DVD.

And I should be posting more than this. Unfortunately, my “I’m every John Cusack character” thing might get in the way. That, and my Lisa Bonet fixation.

The final jewel in my triple crown week of concerts, Rush was fanfuckingtastic. Naturally, as with the Hip on Sunday, they didn’t play songs I wanted to hear (most notably Closer to the Heart), but they rocked the house every way possible.

The lights were spectacular, which made me all the more pissed that security busted everyone taking photos. I got a few, and spent most of the concert wishing I could bust out a shot of this lighting combination, or that pose, or both of them doing that, or…

It truly was maddening. We were 6th row on the floor, and Geddy’s mic was 30 ft. directly in front of me. I was also right on the aisle, so unobstructed sightlines were everywhere, but three songs in, a security guy walked up as I was taking a shot, and put his hand right in front of my camera. “No pictures.” They patrolled regularly.

Two hours, with a half-hour intermission “due to our advanced years”. Worth every cent.

I’m sorry for abandoning you once again, but when you finally get to hear the story, you’ll understand, and hopefully forgive me. For now, suffice it to say this has been one of the banner weeks of any summer in recent memory. Since last Wednesday, I’ve visited with a muse - make that two - spent a weekend partying at the fountain of youth, and, as of this time tomorrow night, will have seen ALL THREE of my favourite Canadian bands IN ONE WEEK!

Rock on,
Doug

I knew drive space was tight, but I’m going to have to buy a new hard drive on payday. I’m in the ‘red zone’ (Vista turns the space status bars red when you have less than 10% space left) on three of my four partitions, and just over 10% on the last. When you shoot almost exclusively in RAW - at a file size of 7.2 MB each - your free space gets eaten up in a hurry.

Thankfully, 500 GB drives can be had for around $110 (or less) most of the time.