Four by Five

They say that analogue photography is dead. And some places, it is. There are lots of schools out there that don't even teach it anymore. Thankfully, Ryerson is not one of those. These three photos were made with 4inch by 5inch analogue film. "Is that as much of a pain-in-the-ass as it sounds?" you might be thinking and the answer is "yes!".
The camera is huge and unwieldy, the tripod (which is 100% necessary) is obscenely large, the film is easy to screw up and bloody expensive (don't even ask!), and yet, there's something about it.
True, it's never quick or easy, but it's almost always worth it. I have never found myself taking a terrible photo with it, because it requires a lot of thought. By placing these limitations on us, we are learning how to really see and shoot with immense intention. It also teaches us to respect our roots. They were in fact times before the ease of a DSLR or a camera phone.
I have hated it at times, but I think when all is said and done, I will thank that horrible machination that gave me such beautiful negatives.
Archipelago

Visual Studies

Many of the photos I'm posting nowadays were created for school assignments, so at least here's some consistency. These three images were created for my Visual Studies class, aka critiquing and composition class. the images are in chronological order, and are my second, third and fifth assignments. The second project was about using found images (textures) in Photoshop to create a three-dimensional looking image. The third was about creating a compositionally dynamic still life image. The fifth project was about photographing an interior environment; a cross between a still life- and a landscape.
Archipelago

Snow Day

I've always found photographing snow a difficult procedure. The exposure is often tricky because the visual nature of snow is much brighter than your camera's meter would like it to be. The other reason is because of depth. If you watch a photographer search for an image, you may see them close one eye while they look, and for a long time I wondered why. And then it hit me; we see in three dimensions, but photography lives in only two. The human eye can see more depth than we can fit in an image because we essentially see with two cameras (our eyes). So having only one eye open can show what it is like to see things in two dimensions. And a lot of subjects look much different, including snow. What to us looks quite detailed and interesting can come off as flat in an image without the proper lighting or because the texture of the subject is only interesting with an extra visual dimension.
     These three images were from a few weeks ago when Toronto had quite a bit of snow quite quickly. The streets, sky and sidewalks all started disappearing under the white mass while the people fought to remain warm and/or dry. The city ground to a slow crawl while the snow came down. I also, had no school, so I spent a couple hours out shooting the snow.
Archipelago

My Very Own

There is something special in the idea of a personal project. When school assignments get so heavy that the only time you pick up your camera is for someone else, it gets to be a chore. And an art like photography should never be a chore. Never only a chore, at least. So when I can, and when I feel inspired, I pick up my camera and do something just for me. these two are photos I created recently (the latter just last night) and are more related than it would look like at first.
The photos are titles Architecture and The Other (An Ode To R.L.Stevenson)
Architecture is a photoshop amalgam of two images. The first of a weird big steel structure and the second of two (yes, two) buildings at night and the skyline between them. The second photo is cut and mirrored so it looks like three pieces of skyline when there is really only one. I just keep looking at this photo and I can't decide if I like it.
The Other (An Ode to R.L.Stevenson) is something I am rather proud of. It's been sitting in my mind for a long while and it just took some time and effort to actualize it. The technique is pretty simple. It's a long exposure so I can more my head into the scream and hold it (half a second) but with a flash in the beginning so I can freeze my original expression. The title is two-fold: my original title and a shout out to the author of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, my inspiration for the photograph.
Archipelago

New York

Among the craziness of school and getting back into a new system of life, I've also been doing some travelling. I went to Paris (Ontario) and London (still Ontario) and New York. I'm also going to Ottawa tomorrow, crazy life. But this post is obviously about New York. I went with Ryerson's Image Arts department on their annual trip. Most of the trip was just sight-seeing and bro-ing it out with a few cool guys. I made a bout 950 images over the weekend and some of them turned out better than I had expected. These images are of Greenwich Village and the skyline from the top of the Rockefeller Centre. I'll even attach a link to the Facebook album, if you are inclined to see the rest.
Archipelago

2013

Hey guys. So, I'm still busy with shooting and school. But I'd like to get back to some posting so here are some new images since 2013 began. First is at YYZ at about 4am with my mom, sister and friend walking back to the car. If this turned out well, I'm fine to admit it wasn't consciously on purpose, I was pretty much asleep at the time.
The second image is in a bus stop in London. The circle is seeing through the glass, and everything else is reflected behind. It's kind of artsy and I like it.
The final image I made while waiting (nearly an hour!) for my friends to join me skating at Nathan Phillips Square (Toronto City Hall). I had a lot of fun with the cool lighting and the intense difference in tonality of the bright ice and the dark skyline. Took some fancy exposure work, but I'm rather happy with it.
Aside from basic RAW processing all images are un-edited, which is always a plus for me.
Archipelago

Mimicry

This post is following one of my more prevalent themes of blogging in sharing my school projects. This assignment is a mimic project for my production class wherein we were given two classic still life photographs; one colour and one monochrome, and we were to recreate them from scratch. We worked in groups to assemble the objects but had to shoot and edit individually, and just to make sure we were putting in our fair work in studio, we were marked equally on our final edited print and on our original RAW file.
The photos assigned to me were Still Life with Watermelon, New York, 1947 by Irving Penn (Colour) and The Triumph of the Egg by Paul Outerbridge (Monochrome). The last part of the project was to create our own image with at least one element from each of our mimics. I called my image + and - of Deconstruction.
Archipelago Photography