Dan's RushCon 2001 and Toronto Photographs

At long last, a month after the Event, my pictures went online....

(Worse yet, my RushCon 3 are not yet online some 18 months after the event....)

So you want to know what you're looking at? Ok, here goes:

Image01: The Parliament building, on a misty Friday morning...
Image02: ... and a little later, with the Canadian flag.
Image03: Friday evening, the Mixer. In this picture, Romilly, RushGoddess and Ricky.
Image04: Jillian and...? (If you see yourself in any of these pictures, tell me who you are and I'll put your name here.)
Image05: This is the result of the following conversation:
     open secret: "Are you taking lots of photos?"
     me: "Yeah."
     os: "You haven't taken any of me yet."
     me: "Not yet..."
Image06: I'm not that evil; I took a "proper" photo too.
Image07: Lots of people at the Mixer... Again, if you see yourself in this picture, tell me who you are and I'll tell everyone else.
Image08: Jillian, for once without that little video camera.
Image09: Saturday morning, first event of RushCon is the acoustic sing-along. I can sing about as well as your average brick, so I just took photos. (Once again, if you see yourself in this picture... you know what to do...)
Image10: Rush JeoParody, MC'd by Jillian, ably assisted by SpicketEric.
Image11: "Randy" auditioning for the Rush Tribute Band...
Image12: ...and doing his "interpretation" of Jacob's Ladder (I think - someone correct me if I'm wrong!)
Image13: Sunday was Guest Speakers' Day. This is Danna Halper.
Image14: And this is Broonsie.
Image15: Dockie, with his purchase - the signed portraits of the band. But who's the guy in red in the background?
Image16: Sunday afternoon, after Rushcon. This just had to be done....
Image17: Then we (bruks, Dockie, Romilly, Open Secret and I) went to Lakeside Park.
Image18: This picture illustrates why I usually take photo's only of landscapes.... Romilly, Dockie and Open Secret are a bit(!) blurred, while the boat in the background is pin-sharp.
Image19: A bunch of total strangers playing volleyball on the beach. Who says you shouldn't shoot into the Sun?
Image20: Now, I often tell people that my image does not come out on film. They don't believe me. Well, here's the proof! By a special effort, I made myself visible... but focussed? You must be joking!
Image21: OS found the merry-go-round, and she and Romilly couldn't resist the temptation. This one's supposed to be blurred. No, really. Romilly is hiding behind the post, just left of centre.
Image22: This one too. The guy in white is just in the way. OS and Romilly are on the left.
Image23: Sunset over Lake Ontario.
Image24: On a rainy Monday we visited Danforth & Pape....
Image25: ...and in the afternoon went to see the baseball game. Which was followed by fireworks.
Image26: Open Secret, with Dockie and Bruks in the background. Would you believe that this photograph was a 1-second exposure? No? Look at the lights in the top-right corner. That's motion-blur. I never expected this photo to show anything recogniseable.
Image27: The CN Tower, seen from below. (My other picture of it was mysteriously ruined by an obstruction that wasn't visible through the viewfinder.)
Image28: I didn't take any photographs on the Tuesday - too busy buying CDs. This was Wednesday, waiting to board this 747 which would take me home.

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Footnote:

The above images are a selection of the 80-odd photographs I took between 17th and 24th May, 2001. In general, I was disappointed with the photographs - as I mentioned, I usually photograph landscapes and things that don't move. Using the flashgun is a novelty for me too. Add to that my third-rate scanner, and you will undestand why some of these pictures aren't all they could - and should - be.
All of the scans were subjected to huge amounts of gamma correction, with a touch more in the Green channel than in Red or Blue. Then I applied a "sharpen" filter to each image. The results are not too far removed from the prints I started from. In one case, the second picture of Open secret at the Mixer, less gamma correction was needed because the photograph was initially under-exposed (flash-gun not properly charged), and the scan needed some work to correct for the resulting low contrast.
Exposure times: Outdoor pictures usually required 1/1000 to 1/250 sec., but the sunset sequence needed ever-longer exposures as the light faded. Indoor photographs at RushCon, without flash, wanted about 1/60 to 1/30 sec. Consequently, for most of the pictures, including all of the Mixer photos, I did use the flash.
For the merry-go-round pictures, a huge 1/8 second was necessary. I had to pan the camera to follow OS and Romilly.
After the ball game, I took a few photographs of the fireworks. This was closer to home-ground for me; I've done photography in the dark, and photography of fireworks before. An exposure of at least one second, to capture several fireworks, is the general advice. In this case, some idiot left the floodlights on, so I didn't get ideal conditions. After the end of the display, I had already wound on the film, so I stuck the flash (which I already had charged and ready to go) onto the camera, and took a picture of open secret. But I forgot to re-set the exposure time....
The picture of the CN Tower is under-exposed because... er... Actually I'm not entirely sure. The print isn't too bad, and I treated the scanned image the same way as the others. Ho-hum.
That just about covers it.