Behind the Cover: Chris Fitzsimmons
Camera: Canon 5d Mark IV
Lens: Canon 8-15mm F4 L Fisheye Lens
Camera Settings: Shutter Speed 1/1600, F/6.3, ISO 640.
I was super excited to get a text from Jesse in mid-February asking to come out and shoot with the Paid Programming guys for a few days while they were here filming in Ontario. It had been a few years since we last saw each other, so I was excited to catch up and hangout with an old friend, while also eager to shoot with the guys. The night before heading down to Toronto we were hit with the biggest snowfall of the winter and woke up to over 40cm of fresh snow. I had over an hour drive to Toronto from my apartment at the time in Orangeville. We had a long dirt driveway that we shared with our landlords. With the entire town snowed in, we were low on the priority list for our regular snow plow guy, and our landlords who usually handled it, were on vacation. The morning of the shoot, I woke up at 4:30am prepared to shovel my way out to get down to the city. It had been over 3 hours and my car was still stuck after shovelling hundreds of pounds of snow. I sent Jesse a photo of my car stuck in the snow letting him know I wasn’t going to make it. I headed inside feeling really bummed out when not long after I heard some commotion and looked out to see a good samaritan plowing our driveway with their pickup truck. He came and cleared our entire driveway and rescued my car. I hit up Jesse immediately letting him know I was on my way.
When I arrived, we met up at the parking garage to check out the light post because the spot we were supposed to meet at, Jesse, Quin and Marty got kicked out. The guys had set up the spot the night before because it was a very quick kick out right in the middle of downtown Toronto. We shovelled a landing and got the cameras out while Jesse made his way up the parking garage stairs. On the first try I shot the fisheye frame and immediately knew we had something great. Jesse tried a few more until he got the clip he was happy with, while I shot a few from a long lens angle. People above on their condo balconies were cheering and shouting as Jesse rode away. I’m really stoked Jesse reached out and I was able to make it out for this one. Definitely a highlight from my winter.
– Chris Fitzsimmons
