Foo Fighters ... LOUD!

I stood for 5 hours in one spot on Wednesday evening ... hoping for the opportunity for some good images at the Foo Fighters concert. And was I ever rewarded! They came out to the acoustic stage, where I had camped out for 4 hours waiting through two incredibly loud openers and of course through the first electric part of the Foo Fighters' show.

This was my view of the main stage ... not bad, since I was looking straight down the catwalk with no heads in the way. But they were set up at the red line and I was past the second blue line ... say 130 feet away or more.



Not a bad view, but the show was far away. Not so when the band came up on the acoustic stage. The mic stand at which Dave Grohl spent most of the evening was just a stretch away from me ... so he was 5 feet or less from me throughout much of the set. What is cool about that is how good the images are. I got the ISO and lighting right for many of the images, and here are a few of them. (I have not processed many yet, but you can see more at my gallery here.)




When they left the acoustic stage, they left all the instruments blocking my vision. I had a crack to look through that was the width of the catwalk, but looking down a tunnel got old really fast. So I went upstairs and snuck into a spot on level 1. I was quickly booted so I went 1 entrance closer to the stage and went in again. Here, a nice gentleman told me they weren't usually allowed to let people watch form there but that it was ok because this was probably the last song. He was right ... but the played 3 more in the encore, which I watched as well. I shot some images from there, and I had a little fun looking for my kids. They were completely recognizable, despite being photographed in a fairly dark concert from 100 feet or more. Very cool. here's the amusing image I created to show this:



I really enjoyed Skin and Bones and my favourite song was Stacked Dead Actors. They must have gone 10 or more minutes on that one. Wicked concert.

And the cleanup ...

After a treacherous trip to get Jon from a friend's house in the morning (they had been up the entire night after making a midnight walk in the storm to purchase the Wii's new Super Smash Brothers game), I had a 2.5 hour snow blowing session to get the driveway and sidewalk in usable condition again.

I started with snow many feet deep:





And ended up with a pretty clear driveway as the sun came out ...



We celebrated by going to lunch. Neither of the boys is too impressed with winter ... Jon wears only sweaters, refusing to bow to nature and wear a jacket or parka. Nick wears the parka I wore in the 70's ... he really like the nostalgic look :-)

Running out of words ...

... to describe this winter ... I went out to pick Nick up at a party at 1:30am Sunday, 9 March (today) and was treated to a scene that felt strangely like I was watching Dante's Peak as Pierce Brosnan guided his 4x4 through the leavings of a pyroclastic flow and cloud of dust after a volcanic eruption. It had that closed in, will the next street actually be passable, feeling. Kind of fun, if you don't mind the possibility of leaving your can abandoned in the middle of a road somewhere in the middle of the night ...

When we got home (which really wasn't that far), I ran in and grabbed the camera while Nick ooohed and aaahed over the largest amount of snow we've had in his lifetime. I went out into the street and shot some images at 6400iso to try to capture the amount of snow we had already (and it was still falling.)



When I got to the front door, totally frozen since I did not have gloves on, Nick was just coming outside all dressed in ski gear to play in the yard. Since he's 20, one would not be amiss if one thought that he must have had something to drink at that party :-)


So I shot some images of him playing there. He was totally blown away by how much snow we had ... and by the fact that he could stand on our snowbank at the end of our driveway with his feet beside the yield sign.

Stormy Saturday ...

20cm down by this morning ... 30 to 40cm expected this afternoon and evening ... woo hoo! Luckily, my son went out the other day to fill up the little gas tank I use to feed the surprisingly thirsty snow blower ...

Apparently, we are on target to hit the second highest snow accumulation on record ... neat.

This winter keeps rolling on ...

10-15 cm of mixed snow and ice pellets down overnight with 10-15 more coming today. Winter storm warning across all of southern Ontario and dangerous driving conditions. What a winter so far. It looks outside right now like it's pouring. Which it probably is ...

In like a lion?

So March has arrived, and we got a nice big pile of snoe at the very end of February ... I wonder if that qualifies as "in like a Lion" ... it was still snowing very lightly yesterday (the 1st) and there was probably quite a bit of snow dumped over night. Yes, I think we'll consider it to be lion-like.

Which means that it should go out like a lamb ... which would be quite the relief after using the snow blower as often as we've had to this year. I was out yesterday for an hour or more clearing it all out yet again. We now have packed snow on the roads, which looks pretty, but clearly indicates that we've had way too much of the white stuff.

Here are a few images I shot this morning to record the height of the snowbanks and the general prettiness of the neighbourhood with this much snow on it ...

The nice rounded banks haven't had time yet to collect the ugly grime that forms on them in spring.


A wide view of the street shows how narrow it has become ... we've lost something like 3 feet on each side to the encroaching snow ...


The snow bank next to our driveway is over the cars, which makes it interesting for those who walk their dogs around that corner. I imagine they are much safer on the other side, which is good because I dislike the look of yellow holes in the edge of my driveway ... which reminds my of the old tip to avoid eating yellow snow. Now why did that come to mind ...


The following image shows how well the D300 handles d-lighting to simulate higher dynamic range. I didn't do anything to open these shadows, yet they are perfectly visible next to the sun blasting on the snow. I must admit that this cam is way ahead of anything I've ever used in its ability to deliver nice tones on contrasty days. Way to go Nikon.