There's no better way to send off a long weekend than by visiting the Canadian International Auto Show, meeting up with friends, and of course - shooting photos of exotics in your own city.
Follow me through my journey on this amazing day in Toronto.
Last year when I visited the auto show, I felt a need to capture everything on my camera and try to make great shots out of them. What I ended up with was a lot of photos with tons of people in the frame, lots of reflections (didn't even have a CPL filter at this time!) and an awkward time of people waiting for me to finish taking my shot before walking in front.
So this year I decided I wouldn't take any. And I still managed to have a great time.
At about 4:30PM I met up with Nick Fu (Instagram here) and Chris Marchese. Within a few minutes we setup right beside the lake to a nice background with the sun just starting to go down.
At first I thought I would only be shooting with Chris' Challenger and Nick's GT3RS, but to my surprise, Nick also brought out his Audi R8 V10. Capturing the R8 was interesting because when you turn to one side it would be a deep blue, but then another side would be purple. I had not seen something like this before so I thought that was pretty cool.
I will admit that getting photos at this location was kind of difficult, and not exactly my favourite. While I did like the background of the lake and trees in the far distance, the sunlight was just not exactly how I wanted it to be, and made things a bit more challenging.
During this shoot, there also were a few other people who tagged along and shot photos and videos themselves. Interestingly enough, one was even using the same lens as me. After shooting a few photos and different angles, we decided to head to another popular spot which has a nice view of the Toronto skyline in the back.
We quickly hopped into our cars to try and beat the sunset which was falling fast.
I was riding shotgun in my brother's Lexus LS 400 which allowed me to snap some pics while the rest of the crew led the way. Myself and another passenger in my brother's car were hoping to get some rolling shots of our crew, but the coordination was a bit off.
We ended up losing the rest of the crew for a bit, but were eventually able to catch up while maintaining a safe speed along the highway towards downtown Toronto. At best, I was able to take some shots of the cars in front. Good thing I rode shotgun!
The first spot ended up being a bust, as there was a punk show going on inside the popular club called 'Rebel'. Even during the summer this place is hard to get photos in front of, as the club next door is usually busy both Saturday and Sunday.
In any case, we headed to another popular spot down at the Loblaws parking lot near Lakeshore Boulevard. I've shot this spot a few times in the past and it has always delivered some great views and composition for photos. The amazing part about it is that it is easily accessible and usually pretty empty. My hope is that it remains this way over the years and doesn't change because of some people doing stupid things to burn the spot (literally).
I have to say, I was really happy with the way these photos turned out considering the weather and time of day. My lens definitely made it easier to get sharp photos with little noise as I shot nearly all of my photos at F2.0. At 18mm, I was able to get up really close and frame everything just how I wanted it.
This shot above has to be one of my favourite shots from the entire day. What was crazy to me was that this was shot at F5.0 and I was able to get the buildings and cars in focus, and with very little noise added to the photo. If I could change anything I wish I could have no snow in the photo, but hey its Toronto, this is how it is in the middle of February.
After this spot the sun was very quickly falling and left very little amount of sunlight to use. We decided to call it a night and head back to Etobicoke. Overall this was a very fun, and successful night of shooting photos and I was even able to create another solid filter to use for my presets! As I continue to create more that can be used on multiple types of photos I will be sure to share with all of you!
Thanks for tagging along. See you in the next blog!
