Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Peeling Back the Layers

This past Friday, Sam Javanrouh of the lovely photojournal, Daily Dose of Imagery and myself did battle on the grounds at Layer Tennis. Jim Coudal kindly invited us both to play in a pre-season exhibition match of an experimental nature. We’d do photography. Live. Outside. While mobile. From different ends of North America: Toronto and San Francisco. While back in Chicago, musician Mark Greenberg composed music in response to our shots — instead of a guest commentator. And also in Chicago, the Coudal crew would be writing some brief commentary, stitching the shots together along to the music in After Effects and uploading this whole whizbang, while anxiously awaiting Sam and I to take a photo, scramble for wi-fi or tethering and send it in.

A feat indeed. So what went on behind the scenes on Sam and my end?

In a Nutshell

Sam:
What a great match! It was challenging on different levels, and I had a lot of fun. We were required to shoot and send images in a window of around 30 minutes, which meant figuring out the technical challenges first. My backpack included my 5D Mark II body, and I chose two of my favourite lenses — the super wide zoom Sigma 12-24 and Canon EF 200 f2.8 L prime. I had my Dell 1330 Laptop, and for internet connection I would use JoikuSpot running on my Nokia E71 as a wireless access point. I also had my pocket camera, the Panasonic GF1 with the Pancake 20mm f1.7 lens. My wife Talayeh came along as well.

Naz:
In a word, phew. Exhausting, exhilarating and simply an amazing experience. Sam was a bit late on his volleys (see above re: 30 minute turnaround), but I tried to stick to the standard 15-minute turnaround which worked well for me. Given that Sam did a lot of taxiing (5 cab rides) and covered a much bigger area than I did, it’s understandable. My gear consisted of a Macbook Pro, an iPhone, a spare iPhone battery, and I decided against a DSLR this time around, opting for the Panasonic DMC-LX3. I chose to use a prosumer point-and-shoot for the quality of photos this little camera produces. There’s been much championing of the Panasonic GF1, which might be considered the bigger brother to the DMC-LX3 despite the GF1 being a year plus younger. But a 24-60mm lens, f2.0 and RAW capture as well as being a small and light camera was a win in my book. Especially given that I’d be on bike for my match.

The Match

Volley 1 — Sam:
The time frame of the match meant I had to serve at around 1:30pm ET, which means bad, boring light. So I planned my route to start at Business District on King and Bay to capture some tower reflections and shadows on business people in lunch time. I started snapping, and after 10 minutes I went inside to find somewhere to sit and go through the shots. I was getting nervous when I didn’t like the shots I originally planned and then found a few panning shots of messenger bikers and that was it.

Shot on 1:21pm at King and Bay, on 5D Mark II and Sigma 12-24 lens at widest end.

Among the other candidates for first shot were:

Volley 2 — Naz:
This was my second time playing Layer Tennis. The first was a match against the mighty Chris Glass. In that match I had the opener. This time, I had the first response, and I eagerly awaited the shot. As some may know, cycling is a large part of my life. Sam’s opening shot seemed to play into my interests. I got on the road and went up to Market Street via 9th intending to shoot some cyclists and start to create a narrative perhaps from this. Before reaching Market, while still on 9th, I came across this fellow. While still on the bike, I whipped my camera out to grab a shot while coming up behind him. I hoped this would begin a cycling-centric match…

Volley 3 — Sam:
Naz answered with a bike shot on the street. From there I went west to Bathurst and King, one of Toronto’s major and old intersections with lots of cables and streetcar rails. I was again planning to shoot pedestrians in the shot, but while crossing the street I noticed the great light and empty intersection and started shooting (though the Fedex truck driver was not happy that I was standing right in front of him). Uploaded that one from the Second Cup coffee shop around the corner using their free internet access, one of the last free wifi hotspots.

Shot at King and Bathurst on 5D Mark II and Sigma 12-24 at 12mm, at 2:34pm:

The other shot taken in that time slot:

Volley 4 — Naz:
I had planted myself downtown now, but intending to make a loop from downtown and south near the ballpark and the docks, eventually looping back around to home. I pedaled over to 4th, a street over from the ballpark. After seeing Sam’s 3rd volley and the shift from a bike theme to the street, it was a pretty quick decision to shoot something similar. I did want to stay with some sort of transportation theme. Looking at the streetcar tracks, I wanted to get a shot of one of the MUNI trains as they passed by over the bridge. My plan from shot-to-shot was to spend 5 minutes on photos and 10 editing, finding wi-fi and sending it to Chicago. I waited a bit but a train came along. I wanted to shift away from a wide angle open shot on this one and bring in some subjects into close proximity.

Taken on the 4th street bridge:

Volley 5 — Sam:
For the next spot, I went south on Bathurst to Island Airport and Ireland park. I was planning to take a cityscape shot with Ireland Park statues. I shot a bunch of those and while walking back to the Irlenad terminal to go through the shots I noticed the big line of taxis. I thought that would go nicely with Naz’s layer 4 which involved two means of transportation. I switched to my long lens and took this one.

3:32pm, Island Airport Ferry Terminal, Canon 5D Mark II with Canon EF 200f2.8 L:

Other shots taken a few minutes before:

Volley 6 — Naz:
Sam’s taxi shot continued the transportation theme. At this point, halfway through the match, I wanted to shake it up a bit. I tend to favour photos that attempt to place you somewhere with a feeling like you’re the only person there. Alone and isolated. I had started to ride south by the port and bay. I wanted to bring some text into the photos and this shot did that as well as spoke to the car nature of Sam’s last volley.

Taken at Port of San Francisco, Terry A Francois Boulevard:

And two other shots from around the same time close by:

Volley 7 — Sam:
Heading east, I wanted to take a calm photo by the water as an answer to the empty and calm concrete filled urban shot that Naz posted. I was really hoping for some ice on the water, but it was too warm for that (very unusual for this time of year in Toronto). I chose HTO park to include the yellow metal umbrellas, but in the end I liked the simple shot of a landing airplane over the water line. For this one I fell behind because I couldn’t find a good spot to download shots and post for 10 minutes.

4:21pm, HTO Park, Canon 5D Mark II and Sigma 12-24 at 12mm:

Other shots at HTO Park:

Volley 8 — Naz:
Funny how Sam went to the water and I was already by the water. So I headed south a bit more and came across the beauty that is the USNS Mercy. The day was an odd mix of cloud and sun, but it gave me a stark and sparse image to work with. Plus, the red crosses seemed like such a great focal point as well as centering and weighting the image. I was also hoping that maybe the red crosses would spark a response from Sam. In my mind, a bit macabre, but I thought the posts in the water reminded me of gravestones of some kind. Weird right?

Further down Terry A Francois:

And west of the bay, by UCSF:

Volley 9 — Sam:
Naz posted a great shot of a ship at the harbor, so I thought I’d go for a big contrast and shoot some big modern buildings in the city for my final layer. I decided to go to AGO, OCAD or ROM which are three of the more artistically interesting buildings in Toronto. But traffic was heavy and I was running out of time, so I got off at where I started, King and Bay and tried to to get a scene from rush hour people getting off work. And this is where things went wrong — my phone wasn’t giving me connection, my laptop USB ports were acting up, and I had to restart which meant another 5 minutes. So before I finished downloading all photos, I had to post. I needed a coffee too, and when I saw the downed coffee cup, I shot with my Panasonic GF1 I went with it.

5:11pm, King and Bay, Panasonic GF1 and Panasonic pancake 20mm f1.7:

Other shots for layer 9 that came too late:

Volley 10 — Naz:
The final volley, the closer — it was here. My mark and turn to have the final word. Since I had more time than usual as I hadn’t heard from Jim about Sam’s last volley, I pedaled around taking interesting shots and seeing if maybe some might tie in to whatever Sam had up his sleeve. I ended up by the Whole Foods in Potrero Hill, not far from home, getting a wi-fi connection and waiting. I saw Sam’s above and considered it for quite a while. Ultimately, I went by Axis Cafe, a few streets over and snapped a photo on the bike of a sign on the road that said “Relax.” Given Sam’s coffee photo and the peaceful nature of it and that we were at the end of the match, I went for simple and bold with a statement to sum out how we’d all feel pretty soon.

Alternates and potentials:

Game Over
All in all, I was impressed from a technology standpoint. The fact that we could even play Layer Tennis out in the wild was no small feat. To everyone involved, huge pats on the back are in order.

Many thanks to Sam, Jim, Mark, Bryan and Steve. See #lyt for the crowd reaction and watch the match itself unfold.