Chuck Palahniuk Tell All Tour 2010 : Flickr and the power of Facebook.

Chuck Palahniuk Tell All Tour 2010 Calgary

So, I have been reading Chuck Palahniuk for many years now. I got started on his work after a view of Fight Club and wanted to see what else this fellow had written. A couple of years ago he came to a local Chapters / Indigo and read from one of his books, however, I learned of this 2 hours after the event.

Thanks to my lovely wife Josephene, I learned he was coming to town to read from his latest book "Tell All". I got excited and booked a ticket over the phone with Calgary's Wordfest.

I poked around his site and the Wordfest Calgary site and found that there was a Flickr group dedicated to event photos from his reading all across north America. Naturally, I joined this group.

May 12th, they day of the event, I couldn't decide if bringing a camera would be a good idea or not. I could see myself getting mugged and having to explain to my wife that someone has made off with a Sony Alpha: and it has your Mother's Day Photos on it! However.... 90% of the bad things a person can think up will never ever in a million years happen.... so I brought along the a200 and a 75-300mm to see what I could get.

Now, having never been to Calgary's Central Library or the John Dutton Theater, I had no idea of the layout but I know it would be dark in the audience and light on stage. With that in mind I figured if I exposed for the stage lighting I would manage to exact some nice exposures. But the audience would be black dog at night dark.

Sure enough the place was a buzz with people getting their seats, their books personalized by the man himself and people sitting, nosing through their signed copy of Tell All. I took a quick snap with the iPhone just to get something up on Flickr quick and let the world know... Stick Out Your Face Photography was on happily waiting to hear Chuck speak.

I found a spot mid way into the seats and on the extreme left. A perfect point to not bother people but have a clear view of the whole stage. I sat next to wonderful ladies who asked if I was from the Newspaper. I said "No, but I am a photographer and huge fan of Chuck Palahniuk!"

Now, I will not bore you with the details of the night. But it came down to me taking pictures in the dark and having a great time.




It was great. We played games. Chuck read a story that will turn up in the December issue of Playboy. Then an interview. Then Q&A. Then more games. Then bye bye!

Shows over folks.... everybody go home. So I did... with a little over 110 frames on the camera, a book and a 4 foot tall inflatable award. (You had to be there)

The next day I was wondering what to do with all this stuff. So I fired up the laptop and dropped 6 pictures onto the Tell All Flickr group and see what happened. And not much did happen, so I let my Facebook friends know I had pictures from the night on flickr. I also put it up in his facebook fan page. Then I tweeted Chuck himself tell him I had pictures up on flickr. Then... I left it for about an hour. I guess during that time Mr. Palahniuk tweeted about the pictures. Well all hell broke loose and the traffic to my pictures went through the roof. By 11pm May 13th over 1100 view of the 9 photos. That's a big deal to me! So thanks Chuck for the boast.

Now.... for some reason I check out his website chuckpalahniuk.net and there to my astonishment was one of my pictures fro the night before!

I was very excited. Thank you for the exposure. Now if I can just get him to send me a t-shirt.