All I want for Christmas is a Lego ME!

Steve Russell - Staff Photographer - @RussellPhotos

Sometimes people compliment me on my creativity, I'm flattered but the truth is I'm at the mercy of the creativity of the people that I photograph.

That was true last summer when we were visiting the cottage of a friend and their super creative seven-year old.

I was chilling when Fynn cut in on my summer reading by presenting me with a Lego me. 

The glasses, hair, smile, square-ish body with a round head! It was an incredible likeness of me!

I tried to get back to my book, but Fynn's imagination tore me from the pages of the book and into a world I was more familiar with. My career in Lego.

Lego me and real me look a lot alike, real me is less yellow.

Every photographer has an Old Faithful

Steve Russell - Staff Photographer - @RussellPhotos

Every photographer seems to have an event they love to cover and they would love to cover it every year.

With some it is TIFF, others the Indy, others Rogers Cup Tennis, others fashion week, and etcetera.

With me, it is also a guilty pleasure, it is the annual pizza eating contest up in Barrie.

It has been going on for three years and features one of the best eaters in the world, Takeru Kobayashi.

It is amazing to watch a 140 pound man pack away 10 pizzas in 12 minutes, incredible!

Staff at Pie Wood Fired Pizza Joint prepare 75 Margherita pizzas for the competion. On the menu the pizza is called the Kobi 43 in honor of the 43 slices he ate in competition the previous year.

Best of June 2012

 

RICHARD LAUTENS - 95 year-old Ida Herbert (she turns 96 in August) teaches her first ever yoga class in Toronto.  She held a class for the 30 or so students at Breeze studio in the Junction.

Printing 15 pictures a second...

Steve Russell - Staff Photographer

I'd be lying if I told you I don't get a thrill out of seeing one of my pictures across a page in the paper when I open it up at breakfast.

The level of that thrill is tempered by a number of factors. Was it the best picture from that assignment? How did it reproduce? How could I have made it better?

However, I've discovered that the thrill of seeing my picture in print pales in comparison to seeing a picture of mine being printed.

I had to shoot something up at the presses in Vaughan as luck would have it the main art on the Entertainment front was mine. A picture of Rob Gregorini and a porketta (in Sudbury they spell it with a 'k' rather than the 'ch')

I was walking by the press with the plate with my picture on it. Very cool to see. Even cooler when the presses were fired up and began getting up speed.

At speed the presses, which are three stories tall, are printing close to 60,000 newspapers an hour. That breaks down to about 15 pages or papers per second. Wow, my camera shoots 10 frames per second.

The plate, several are made for each of the three presses and each of the colour separations.

Bernard Weil's 2011 Favourites

Bernard Weil, Chief Photographer/Multimedia

@bernardweil

 

Viewed from beneath the wing over the West Arrm of Lake Nipissing, Harley Lang, 77, a 30 year retired veteran of the Royal Canadian Air Force, flies his 1961 deHavilland DHC-2 Beaver, one of 1692 that were built.

Steve Russell's 2011 favourites

 Steve Russell -Staff Photographer                                                                                                            @RussellPhotos 

A laneway off of Yonge is transformed into a movie quality rain scape in Curtis Grahauer's "I just Know Something Good is going to happen, 2011" during the 2011 edition of Nuit Blanche where the city core is transformed by the work of hundreds of artists in the sixth installment of the sunset-to-sunrise celebration of contemporary art in Toronto.  October 1, 2011.

Best of November

 

COLIN McCONNELL - Florian Schuck is comforted at a memorial at the corner of  Sterling and Dundas for his wife Jenna Morrison, who was killed when a truck ran over her.

A new SPiN on low light photography

Steve Russell - Staff Photographer

If you were to tell me that I was going to shoot a sport being played in low light, I would guess that I was being sent to cover a high school basketball at Jarvis Collegiate, a hockey game at any number of city arenas or the annual Rock Paper Scissors competition.

Sunday night it was Ping Pong or Table Tennis if you prefer.

Table Tennis is usually played in better lit gyms and rooms (unless it is the gym at Jarvis Collegiate) but at SPiN Galactic the lighting is more in line with pool hall meets club.

SPiN Galactic features 12 tables in a club light setting, there is some very cool lighting but very challanging to photograph. Each table is lit with a square of light directly above the table simular to a pool table, there are several other sources of light that make it difficult to find a white balance that works. To make things a little more difficult as the player backs away from the table during a volley they move out of the light falling onto the table.

At SPiN Toronto at 461 King Street West, ping pong players can play at the 12 tables and 12,000 square foot clubhouse. SPiN was founded in New York and has Susan Sarandon as an investor.

September's favourites

 

DAVID COOPER - Olivia Chow, sits beside the Koi pond in the backyard of the home she shared with her husband Jack Layton.

Best of August

Rick Madonik, Staff Photographer

A look back at the month of August. Generally, a slower month as summer winds down, but this year weather related events and Jack Layton's death - and State Funeral - dominated the news. Here's a look back and both published, and unpublished, photos from The Toronto Star photo department.

JACK LAYTON - 1950-2011

08/25/11 - Olivia Chow, with her hands on her husband's casket, after it is placed in the rotunda of Toronto City Hall. (RICK MADONIK)