It’s always nice to have help when shooting an event. Especially one that’s spread out over forty-miles of river front, and especially when you have a badly sprained ankle and no vehicle.

So it was great to meet up with my friend, Nicole Cayen, and Hawkesbury’s Cogeco Cable Crew, while shooting the 2014 Hawkesbury River Festival, and they were kind enough to give me some of their favourite shots so I could put them up here… which was nice of them, because most of their shots were way cooler than mine.

While I waited at the Golden Anchor Marina, standing on a very shaky dock watching the boats leave, Nicole and one of the Cogeco people went to the Chenail Island, where people with water-jet boots were flying higher than the trees, and another Cogeco person went east up to Chute A Blondeau, where they took photos of a helicopter hovering mere feet above the river while powerboats buzzed underneath.

Our problem, and it’s one all news photographers face with small events where there’s no central communications person, or strategy, is no one we talked to could tell us what time any of the events started, or even give us a definitive answer what was happening at any of the event locations.

There was supposed to be, for example, a parade of fifteen or more power boats. But only six showed up, and some of them took the wrong route. The main river events started 2.5-hours late, the motorcycle stunt show was cancelled on Friday night at the last moment, then they only put on two shows on Saturday instead of three, and one on Sunday instead of two… although, I have to say, Jason Thorne was awesome for me. He knew I needed shots, so he went ahead and did some jumps even though the wind was too high to do any real tricks.

But, at the end of the day, we got our shots. We even got free coffee mugs from the radio people… thanks to the very nice events people at The Jewel 107.7.

…see if you can find the photo of me doing my job.