My New 'Hood

So team, this is it. The new Archipelago Photography homebase, in Toronto. I've moved away from home in London to the heart of the big city, to study Photography at Ryerson University. I've found myself a cool little place to act as my home base for the next year at least. It's been an interesting experience being on my own. I've seemed to have more free time than usual but that's probably just because classes haven't really swung into full gear yet. Yesterday I went out and took some pictures of my neighbourhood. The first one is my street but the second is not my address. The third is some weird modern art in front of a huge building the second a construction site of massive proportions. the last one is one (or two) of a series of art pieces in front of a building a few doors down from mine. There are two wolves, a couple foxes, a moose, a stag and a doe. I don't know what they're all about but I kinda like to think it's a kind of Romulus and Remus founding this next chapter of my life. I'm sure I'll have lots more product to share in the coming time. For now, cheers.
Archipelago Photography

Marbled

 Marbles are a fascinating subject. They work very well to both reflect the objects/colours around them and refract the light sources they are being lit with. One can light a whole cup of marbles with just a few light sources. They are a very even balance of smooth clear glass, and also tiny, unique imperfections and chips. At first glance they all look the exact same, but upon close inspection, the tiny bubbles in the glass, bends, misshapes, and nicks out of the surface make every marble unique. So they other day, upon realizing the ridiculous number of marbles my house in infested with, I thought they might make some good practice for some still life studio practice.
Ingredients:
-Canon Rebel T1i
-35-80mm Lens
-Manfrotto Tripod
-One clear wine glass
-One clear glass dish-type thing (Candy-dish maybe?)
-Probably 3/4 dozen marbles (half clear, half "Cat-eye", one blue)
-Two desk lamps
-Some backgrounds for colour and a counter top for the marble-y space like refractions.
Instructions:
Set up and shoot for as long as you want, try every option you can think of. If you can, shoot in RAW and play with the photos to your hearts content later.
Archipelago Photography- insulae de cogitum lumenque, maritus cum nomen

Portraiture

Is This Still Under Warranty?

 I have a confession; I have a bit of a destructive streak. This is my old iPod. I bought it a few years ago and about 4 days after the warranty ended it shut itself off entirely. No amount of fiddling or convincing could make it work again. So it's been sitting in it's case in my room for about a year. At my cottage in Grand Bend, we have a little air pistol that shoots small metal BB's. It is honestly one of the coolest little devices I've ever played with. My Grandfather was a great gunman, and my mom was actually Ontario's best Woman's pistol shot for a few years. So naturally I'm a damn good shot. We've been shooting cans and plastic bottles for a few months but my little sister and I had this idea; push my shutter speed to it's limits and see how cool shots we can get. So here was the plan: Set up outside with the iPod on the edge of our deck. Camera (tripod mounted of course) reasonably close shooting ISO 800-1600, aperture wide open and pushing the speed as fast as we could with the available light(topping out at about 1/1500). With 9 frames per second bursts we usually ended up counting down then opening the shutter and firing off about 4-5 exposures for every shot of the air pistol. 9 fps sounds fast but we usually ended up with about 1 shot before it hit, about 3 after and hopefully 1 good "contact" shot. The first contact shot hit really low and flipped it upside down (we actually got the BB in the shot if you look close), the second hit the screen and the glass exploded with a good 1.5 metre blast radius. It was by far the coolest one to experience. A couple of the later ones flipped and spun it pretty well. The final damage? A couple significant dents, three layers of screen shattered/broken, and one BB permanently embedded in the casing. About 60 photos and about six seconds of video (which slowed down to frame-by-frame show the action significantly blurrier than the photos). Overall? A pretty successful, enjoyable, and teaching photo shoot.
Archipelago Photography- islands of thought and image, connected with a name

Lodgings

Come September I'll be blogging as a University Student. I am enrolled for photography at Ryerson University in the Image Arts department. that is, provided I can find a place to live.
Because of a computer glitch I ended up without a place in Residence. And every lead I've tried to pull for an apartment or a room, or any sort of lodging has failed so far. So this is my plea to the internet; if anyone knows of someone looking for a roommate or a renter in downtown Toronto, please contact me.
Archipelago Photography

Summer Adventures

Librarian, and Tele.
Archipelago

Legacy

I've recently found a new interest. I've always had a pretty good knowledge of my family stories and ancestry, but it wasn't until a recent trip to the family cemetery (where we've got spots for my generation and the one after to be buried) to clean up my grandfathers grave marker, that I realized how very different it is to hear about one's history as to see it. These grave markers are those of a few of my ancestors, the first of Capt. Baker who was the lighthouse keeper of Clapperton Island who mysteriously drowned while on duty. The second is John Alexander McLachlan, my namesake. It's interesting to think that without these two men, I wouldn't be here, the second especially as without him I wouldn't have my very name. I find it is very interesting to see the visual memory of these people and to think ahead of what my physical memory will be.Will it read "Father" like my namesake, or something dramatic like "Drowned..."? Only time will tell.
Archipelago Photography, islands of thought and image, connected with a name