Ron Scheffler - Photographer - Hamilton Ontario Canada

Tiger-Cats wide receiver Maurice Mann pulls in his second touchdown of the game over Winnipeg Blue Bombers defensive back Donald Brown during the third quarter at Ivor Wynne Stadium in Hamilton.

Mann and Cats running back DeAndra’ Cobb tallied two touchdowns each.

Click on the photo or here to see more photos from the game…

The Hamilton Tiger-Cats lost their 2010 home opener in a close game against the Calgary Stampeders but there were some bright spots, such as the first quarter 98 yard punt return for a touchdown by Marcus Thigpen, hurdling over Stampeders punter Burke Dales in the photo above.

See more photos from the game…

The weekend of June 4-5 was a busy one for events around Hamilton. In addition to attending Buskerfest in Dundas, I also spent most of Saturday at the Battle of Stoney Creek re-enactment. For those unfamiliar with it, it was a pivotal battle in the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States. 2013 will mark the 200th anniversary and appears it may become quite an event. In anticipation of this I wanted to re-familiarize myself with it since my last visit early in the 1990s.

It’s certainly an interesting event for photographers with all the items of early 1800s military life on display and re-enactors generally very agreeable to photography.

Captain Stutt, Officer Commanding, The King’s Regiment in the Canadas and a 30-year re-enactor. All contents in this fine example of an officer’s tent are authentic to the period. Many thanks to Mr. Stutt for the tour and agreeing to sit for a few photos.

The event runs Saturday and Sunday. Saturday includes an afternoon and evening battle. Here re-enactors relax in period daily life between battles.

One of the common tasks after each battle is musket cleaning to remove unburned gunpowder and residue.

During that time, these standard soldiers’ tents would have slept five men - a very tight fit.

Soldiers gather for muster prior to the evening battle.

Here the British forces assembled for a massed push against the Americans and fired in volleys. The evening setting resulted in much more dramatic images than the afternoon battle. The muzzle flashes were much stronger and the smoke seemed to linger longer in the air.

The overrunning of the American cannon positions brought the battle to an end.

The re-enactors lived period life for the weekend, overnighting in their tents and at the mercy of the weather. This year a storm moved through Saturday night with heavy rains and strong winds, probably resulting in little sleep for the re-enactors.

More images are online at my Flickr set here

Information about the battle re-enactment as well as Battlefield Park in Stoney Creek is here.

As the lead image indicates, there’s more than busking going on at Dundas’s Buskerfest.

Buskerfest is a street festival on the first weekend in June where around a dozen or so buskers from around the world perform in Dundas. I can’t think of the last time I attended this event, kind of like the Victoria Day fireworks, also in Dundas… I went for the opening on Friday evening and got some decent, if predictable busking photos:

Above the Checker Board Guy juggles while balanced on a non-self-standing ladder. Below, Brant Matthews, The Fire Guy, performs his finale for awestruck kids and adults alike. One of the things that struck me while editing the photos was how the kids were pulled into the acts much more deeply than adults. I guess I don’t hang around with kids enough to appreciate this, but it was interesting to see, and here The Fire Guy definitely succeeded. Plus his adult focused jokes at the expense of kids was also a nice twist:

There was one particular performer named Lurk, a clown/joker character on stilts that was kind of creepy, at least to me, probably because I don’t like clowns and haven’t since childhood. I vaguely remember going to a circus as a kid and that might have turned me off. This guy lived up to his name perfectly, waiting for an ambush:

As I wandered around and watched the acts (they were all pretty good), I began paying more attention to the spectators than the performers. In a way, the spectators were just as interesting, if not more so.

And there were a lot of teens hanging out and not really paying much attention to the acts. Pretty soon I also wasn’t paying attention to the acts and was instead drawn into the interesting teen social dynamics on display.

The angle wasn’t perfect for the shot above, but I liked the moment, as well as the out of focus couple in the background. This guy was trying pretty hard for a kiss and the girl wasn’t very receptive, though I’m not sure if it’s because she didn’t really like him, or was just playing hard to get.

I found the following sequence interesting. Another guy came by and hugged her, then the guy also tried for an embrace, but she resisted. He took off in a huff, she called after him, he came back and tried again…

And there was plenty more to observe…

Here’s Lurk again. While it was still light out he wasn’t having much luck sneaking up on people from his hiding spot between two buildings, but here he lucked out with a trio of girls were weren’t paying attention. He got them good:

Playing telephone tag:

Then the rain started and most people headed home, except the teens…

Lover’s gaze while waiting out the rain that wouldn’t stop:

She caught his eye:

So here’s a question: If it’s raining hard and a bunch of teens are getting soaked while hanging around with heavy looking backpacks, what’s in those backpacks? Probably not raincoats or umbrellas. Here one guy was busted (for those not from Ontario (or Canada), drinking in public places is not allowed, except in licensed venues, and then one must be 19 or over), though he was let off with a stern warning…

Believe it or not, there are more photos from Buskingfest and can be viewed on my Flickr photostream.

I think the last time I went to the Victoria Day fireworks display at the Dundas Driving Park was around 20 years ago… Fireworks at this time of year in Ontario can be hit or miss due to the often cold and/or wet weather, but this year was an exception with a relatively warm summer-like day (and very smoggy as well).

I guess I lost interest over the years - been there, done that. For whatever reason, I decided to make the effort this year, but I wanted to find a different vantage point than from within the park directly under the show.

My initial plan was to photograph it from Dundas Peak, but at the outlook point I consulted with a few ‘locals’ (guys who were 20-something in age, knocking back drinks before wandering over to the show). They confirmed my suspicion that the angle of the escarpment and trees would probably block some of the display, so went with my Plan B location at the top of the hill in Greensville.

I arrived at 8:30 pm and thought I was going to have the place to myself, but slowly a small crowd slowly gathered. The City of Hamilton’s event calendar indicated the show would be at dusk between 9-10 pm. 9 pm came and went and the sky was still fairly bright, and there were a lot of cars driving down the hill into Dundas, which meant those people were more familiar with how the fireworks show was timed than I was. The show started at about 9:35 and because it was my first time at this location, I was unsure how large or impressive the display would be. I’ll admit, I was somewhat underwhelmed. Unlike some of the big shows in Toronto or Montreal where one has a great impression even from far away, the Dundas show was more down to earth, literally. While the fireworks were quite a distance from this vantage point (~200mm & 1.4x teleconverter for a relatively tight shot of just the fireworks), it worked well enough because I was able to add a human element to the foreground from the 20-odd crowd watching with me, giving the photos some depth and additional interest. I was initially concerned that the streetlights would add overpower the foreground and cause too much flare shining into the lens, but it worked well. Without the streetlights the people in the foreground would have been nearly invisible and I probably would have had to pop a flash a couple times to add separation from the background.

A few technical points:

Not having photographed fireworks recently for the specific point of photographing them, I was unsure what the correct exposure would be. I started at ISO 200 10 seconds at f/8 because that was about what the correct exposure for the street lit foreground would be. Luckily it was also a pretty good match for the fireworks. The only change I made was a longer 15 second capture at f/14. In hindsight, I should have tried some at 30 seconds. Because this show wasn’t large and overly dramatic, the photos you see here, most at 15 seconds, still don’t show a large number of bursts. The advantage of 10-15 seconds was not having to wait as long to move the camera for another vantage point (to change the foreground composition). I used a cable release and locked it and set the camera to continuous shooting. Therefore, I was able to leave the camera alone and move around to scope out other positions while the camera made continuous exposures without me. Even then, with changes in position, composition and lenses, the roughly 20-25 minute long show went by before I was able to get to all of the vantage points I hoped to try. Lens was a 70-200, sometimes with the 1.4x teleconverter. The first image below was with a 50mm, trying to show more of the foreground environment with the road up the hill, traffic, etc., but of course with the fireworks much smaller in the distance.

Here are a few more:

I was at Copps Coliseum for an event last week and couldn’t help but noticed how the sunlight created a cool set of shadow patterns on a flight of stairs. It was just one of those things stumbled upon without expectation…