Istock Event Day Three

The shoot was held in and around the Istock employee apartments. There was a shoot on the patio on the roof of the building which has a little pool. There was a shoot on the ground floor in the kitchen/living room area. We had a shoot in the street again and a soccer shoot in a plaza not far from the apartment.

This was my best day of shooting of the entire event. I especially enjoyed doing the soccer shots. We had a big studio light attached to a battery, and I was able to use the extremely high sync speed of my camera to great effect. It is a type of outdoor lighting that I have been wanting to do for a year or so.

The great thing about the Nikon D70s is the high flash sync speed. With an on board speed light such as the SB-800 like I have, the sync speed is 1/500, while most other cameras top out at 1/250. This means to achieve the same results, your flash only needs to be 1/2 as powerful. Or that you can achieve great results in even more demanding conditions. Another interesting fact is that there is a hack for this camera. If the camera doesn´t know that it is firing a flash, you can sync it at much higher speeds. The duration of the actual flash starts to be what limits what you can do rather than how long the entire sensor is exposed.

Anyway, the final day was pretty fun.

At 8:00pm we went to the closing party, I had a really good time at the party. A lot better time than I thought I would have. I´m not big into the bar scene, particularly when I don´t really know anyone there. The good thing about our party though was that istock had rented the entire bar for themselves, so I knew most of the people there and recognized all of them. Well, I didn´t know all of the models, but they were really out numbered.

We had a slide show with photos from all the photographers. I have to say that it is a very intimidating thing. The 90 best photos from a pool of well over 45,000. Every photo was a 9 or a 10. Some photos got cheers and others didn´t. I was sorry for the ones that didn´t because it wasn´t as if they were bad or uninteresting it´s just that they were competing against the 10s the photos that were perfect and have that extra punch.

One of my photos didn´t get a cheer, one that I particularly like, but it´s good stock, not really art. My second photo got a cheer and that was really gratifying. To be in a room full of the best photographers that you´ve ever met and to get a cheer of approval. My third photo got the best response of all. A photo of an old lady sitting on a park bench. The crowd gasped. I loved it.

The party was fun and we danced a while and talked a while. I ended up going back to the apartment really early. Ursula, a lady from my group and hotel wanted to leave at about 1:00 am she said she was too old to stay up so late, anyway I was ready by that time and so were the others. In Argentina, the real party is barely starting at 1:00 am. I don´t know how long the rest of them were there, but I get the feeling that the party sort of ended at around 4 or 5. The istock crew had to return all the rental stuff by about 8 and so that had to get home in time to do that.

The next morning Ursula and I went out to exchange a shirt she had bought for her husband. I was in the most amazing boutique I have ever seen. I´m told that it was one of Argentina´s top designers and some of the most expensive clothes in the country. The funny thing is that when you look at the currancy conversion, the prices were about the same as you would find at any regular mall in Canada.

I´ve come to the conclusion that I don´t really want to buy clothes in Canada anymore. I´m no fashionista, but people in Canada don´t really seem to have much style. It isn´t like I have some sort of fashion sense, but you can´t go your entire life wearing sweat pants. You should look good at least some of the time.

On our way back, we saw some of the other guys on a patio cafe relaxing so we joined them for a couple of hours. Lise Gange wandered by and joined us as well. She didn´t come for the event, but just to travel to the same place as the istock crew. She is an istock celeb, she has the most sales of anyone at istock by 300,000 or so. They were all planning a final meal for that night and I was able to snag an invite which I really appreciated.

We went to a really huge restaurant and sat on the patio. Is there anything Canadians love more than having dinner on the patio? I don´t think there is. It was really hot, but this restaurant didn´t allow smoking indoors. Legally speaking, they don´t allow smoking in any restaurants, but it varies from place to place here in the city and out in the more rural areas, forget about it. You can pretty much smoke where ever you want. I had this opinion about Argentina before, they have rules and norms, but they aren´t really enforced much at all. Like the drinking age. It´s a good idea, but then you can´t send your kid to get beer for you, so the rules get bent. Anyway, back to smoking on the patio. Cigs here cost 5 pesos, which is about $1.60 or so. So everyone was smoking up a storm.

The food was amazing. The steak was so good again. I´m thinking of getting a cab up there tonight just for dinner. It really is that good. One of the higher ups at Istock got the bill which was really nice of him. We sat and ate and talked for 3 hours or more. I just love the lifestyle. Even if I never go full time with istock, I can easily imagine myself taking long vacations during the slow periods at the studio, and coming here to relax and enjoy the lifestyle.

-Gary