Avant Documentary Photography » Personal

Toronto Band Promotional Portrait Photos | August 7, 2010 | Maybe Refuge

admin — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 21:51:26 +0000

It’s interesting, my good friend Joey, known as Ni to some started this band Maybe Refuge and two of my other good friends Hiu and John also joined the band. As the band progressed in this music world, I’ve taken the honour to be shooting their first band promo shoot. This was taken in around Newmarket, in the east end. One of the hardest challenges of performing an on location photo shoot is the unstable sunlight. With the sun soaring at us and at times it staying behind clouds to give us some gorgeous light, every moment was a waiting game and the shoot took a lot longer than we expected. In the end, we have pulled through and got some amazing photos for the shoot. The actual photos will not be posted in this entry just so it’ll remain mysterious, but I assure you these photos will surface all over their myspace, facebook pages really soon.

Even though, I’m not posting those images, but here’s a few behind the scene photos. As you can tell, we had tons of fun.

John the guitarist from Maybe Refuge, having his glamour moments with my umbrella.

Light test, with Joey the vocalist and John the guitarist and producer of Maybe Refuge

Hiu, bassist of Maybe Refuge showing his sexy side.

We also documented our shoot with some stop motion videos. Enjoy the video, song by Maybe Refuge.

20100807 Maybe Refuge band promo shoot video. from Chris Pun on Vimeo.

Toronto War game themed Photos | June 5, 2010 | Benny and Cedric

admin — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:16:38 +0000

It’s not often that I have a chance to take different photos, and on June 5th, I had the chance to do that. After a morning engagement session, we started shooting the war game themed photos at night. Big thanks to Henry for assisting with the shoot and big thanks to Hi Tech to lend out their garage for this photo shoot. Benny has been obsessed with his new found love, war game and he went out and bought a lot of gear for the game. Instead of just using it for the game, we decided to do some army, war game themed based photo session for the equipment.

Here are some of my favourite photos from the day.

To see the entire set of photos, visit here

Toronto Indies Music – Maybe Refuge | Band Practice Time Lapse | April 30, 2010

admin — Thu, 20 May 2010 23:39:16 +0000

A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for some sort of suction cup I can use to mount on my car to take time lapse video. As it turns out, I found the Delkin Fat Gecko suction cup and started playing around with it. I mounted it on the side of the inside window and drove off to my friend’s band (Maybe Refuge) practice before their show.

The whole video was shot on a Canon 5D Mark I on manual, the whole series of photos took about 3 hours.
Here’s a quick time lapse video from that band practice.

Toronto Indies Music – Maybe Refuge | Band | May 1, 2010

admin — Wed, 05 May 2010 22:36:37 +0000

My friends at Maybe Refuge was asked to play two sets at Chimeira Lounge the past saturday. As usual it was very fun witnessing them play yet another great acoustic show. As they have not found their drummer for the band, Kevin Mok of Violets and Viruses was featured as this show’s guest drummer.

Here are a few photos from the show.

More photos can be seen in my facebook gallery.

Toronto Indies Music – Maybe Refuge | Band | April 17, 2010

admin — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 02:13:58 +0000

On a Toronto saturday with breaks of sunshine and rain, my friend’s Maybe Refuge played another show at Aspetta Caffe at the Kensington Market. This time, they played in the middle of the afternoon for a very good cause, to be a part of the fundraiser for World Wildlife Foundation.

Yesterday, Kevin Mok from Violets and Viruses filled in for as a guest drummer/percussionist for this occasion. If any drummers are interested, Maybe Refuge are currently looking for a dedicated drummer.

Enough words, on to a few photos.

They will be playing on May 1, 2010 at Chimaira Lounge! Check them out and for more information, take a look at their Facebook fan page.

Music Recording Session – Maybe Refuge | Indies Music | April 1, 2010

admin — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 15:52:02 +0000

I’ve been involved in the Toronto Indies Band scene as a documentary/music photographer for quite a while now, it’s very interesting to see how many bands come and go. One of the newest band in the scene is Maybe Refuge, although the the members all played and are still playing in different bands, I’m hoping this band will last. With the dedication they have put forth, I’m sure they will grow together and make some serious strides in their music career. Last thursday, April 1st, I was at their recording session and me, being a photographer, took some photos of this session.

Maybe Refuge

Bassist Hiu during recording

Guitarist/Producer John

Vocalist hiding from the lens - Ni

Here’s a short video clip of Maybe Refuge at their recording session.

Very excited to taking some promo photos for this band in the near future.

Textures for Photographers | Mar 26, 2010

admin — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 22:14:58 +0000

It has been a long winter season since my last wedding shoot. Instead of feeling uninspired and lazy, I’ve been keeping myself busy throughout the cold season with many different projects. Ever since the first day after the last wedding, I’ve already dedicated myself into taking family portraits, babies portraits, band promos and more events aside from the regular business routine I have to take care of. I have been shooting a lot of photos for myself, my own liking, but one of the things I’ve always wanted to do is give back to the photography community and I thought textures would be a pretty nice and usable thing for all photographers. Here are 10 different textures/patterns photos that I took last weekend while walking around in different parks. Hope you find them useful.

All the photos were intentionally shot 1 to 2 stops under exposed to give more of a edgy and dramatic feel to it.

texture of ground

texture of tree branches

texture of tree trunk

texture of grass

texture of rock

texture of branches

texture of ground

texture of tiles

texture of a bench

texture of cement ground

If you like it, you can download the textures here, they’re resized to 1200 pixels wide. I will delete the download link after 30 days.

Publication | Sharhythm | Mar 23, 2010

admin — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:37:54 +0000

Recently, my friends’ band Violets and Viruses performed an interview with Sharhythm magazine and my work was show in their half page article seen below.

Sharhythm Magazine - article of Violets and Viruses, photos by Avant Documentary Photography

The photo in the article was taken back in November of 2009. Anyway, check them out! MySpace

Acoustic Session – Maybe Refuge | Indies Music | March 19, 2010

admin — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:17:41 +0000

Last night was a special night, a few of my closest friends were playing an acoustic gig at Aspetta Caffe, around Kensington Market. Interestingly enough, the four piece are from 2 different indies bands, Violets and Viruses (John and Hiu; check out photos of the bands here) and Shades of November (Joey and Eugene). And of course, this is the first time they performed live as Maybe Refuge.

An interesting fact is I know all four of them have very different musical styles, ranging from pop, rock, to heavy metal. What they have in common is their love of music. At the end of the night, what made it such a successful acoustic set was their unity and how they performed as a new band. Here I present to you a few photos from the first ever show from Maybe Refuge.

Maybe Refuge

Maybe Refuge Vocalist - Joey, Eugene in the background

Maybe Refuge Vocalist - Joey, with Hiu in the foreground

Maybe Refuge Guitarist - John

Maybe Refuge BassistGuitarist - Hiu

Maybe Refuge Drummer - Eugene

More photos here in my Facebook page.

If you are ever interested in last night’s videos, search up on Facebook. I’ve seen a couple of friends/fans posted some clips already.

Venue: Aspetta caffe

Rock show – The Ultimate Rock Show | Indies Event | Feb 3, 2010

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 03:52:48 +0000

As many of my friends and past clients might know, one of my passion aside from my wedding and portrait work is concert photography, or simply music photography. Thinking back, the first time I seriously took photos for an event was for a concert by a band named ZiON NOiZ, I wound up taking photos for them for the next few years for various gigs on 35mm Kodak film with a Nikon FE. For quite some time I lost connection with photography and bands, but 3 years ago, I had an opportunity to kick start my interest in indies rock shows, with SFC, Spider’s Kiss from the Toronto Asian Indies scene. Through these bands and shows, I met a lot of great musicians and friends.

It has been a while since I took any music photos (aside from the promo shoot for Violets & Viruses back in November, read here), last night, The Ultimate Rock Show was held in Rock n Roll Heaven, the following four bands played and I had the opportunity to have some fun shooting some photos.
-Sunday Music Class
-Protocol – MySpace
-Violets & Viruses – MySpace
-The Drama – MySpace

Sunday Music Class

Protocol

Violets and Viruses

The Drama

Venue: Rock n Roll Heaven