Olympic Peninsula Weekend Road Trip

January 17, 2012 | Filed Under Blog, Road Trip | Leave a Comment 

Hit the road for a weekend with a trip around the Olympic Peninsula. I’d been down the east side before travelling to and from Portland but hadn’t done the whole loop around the peninsula. Great trip although the weather was constantly changing, providing a number of challenges for driving and making it difficult to get all the photos I wanted. That said it was a lot of fun and I saw lots of places that I want to go back to.

New blog for Pacific Northwest Photography Project

December 21, 2011 | Filed Under Blog | Leave a Comment 

I’ve started a Tumblr blog for my Pacific Northwest project Saltwater & Rain. A visual and literary archive(ing) of the Pacific Northwest. Check it out here. Become a follower if you like what you see. In case the link isn’t working go here – http://saltwaterandrain.tumblr.com/

Photography Courses at the University of Victoria

December 5, 2011 | Filed Under Workshop | Leave a Comment 

I’ll be teaching two courses for UVic Continuing Studies in the new year.

Introduction to Community Newspaper Photojournalism
This course is for photographers considering a career in photojournalism, bloggers who want to improve the visual content of their sites and for the photographer who wants to explore new avenues of creativity. Participants will study the five main types of photo assignment for the community photojournalist: news, sports, feature, environmental portrait and the photo essay. You will examine the images of working photographers, learn workflow and editing techniques and be given assignments to complete between classes.

and

Documentary Photography: Creating the Personal Project
In this course you will learn how to use the techniques of documentary work to create a personal photo project. Participants will examine the work of other documentary photographers and see how and why certain ways of seeing and photographing can be applied to their work. You will learn how to organize your own projects, budget time, find out how to edit a project and discover different ways to bring that project to a larger audience.

full details here: http://www.uvcs.uvic.ca/

Don Denton and T. J. Watt Exhibition Opening at Dales Gallery

November 14, 2011 | Filed Under Exhibition | 1 Comment 

Here’s a few images from the opening last week of  the joint photo exhibition for T. J. Watt and myself called Seeing The Forest For The Trees at Dales Gallery in Victoria’s Chinatown. The show, See The Forest For The Trees, runs until November 25.

Punk Rock Rising Vancouver 77/78 Show Opening

April 10, 2011 | Filed Under Gallery & Workshop, Vancouver Punk | Leave a Comment 

Had the opening for my show of images of Vancouver punk rockers at Talk I Cheap Gallery in Victoria last night. A good turnout including the members of the Dishrags which was excellent.

Hanging the show

Jason Flower and Tiemen Kuipers sort through Vancouver punk singles.

The Dishrags, Scout, Jade and Dale,  with a photo of their younger selves

Friends chat during the opening

It’s Not a Mistake If You Meant To Make It

October 26, 2010 | Filed Under Blog, Photography | Leave a Comment 

Atlanta based photographer Zack Arias had a recent blog post called Imperfect Work: Blowing it on Purpose with samples of work that was technically off but worked for the assignment he was working on. He showed images that were blurred, out of focus, had unusual focus or awkward posing.

They were all ‘wrong’ but they worked for shoot in question.

The one thing the photos are not, is mistakes.

The photographer made deliberate choices to create the an effect even if traditionally that effect has been considered an error.

It’s an important distinction to make especially for beginning photographers. You have to learn the rules before you can break them properly.

When marking students papers I’d often come across a photo that was tilted, out of focus or blurred. The out of focus or blur was usually just sloppy photography. The tilted frames though were often deliberate. The tilt usually added nothing to the image, was usually inappropriate for the assignment.  When asked why they had shot the assignment that way the most common answer was that they thought it made the photograph more interesting but they weren’t able to answer why that was so or how the tilt enhanced the image. The reality was they had seen where a photo had been tilted for an effect and it struck them as an easy solution to photographic challenge. Instead of finding a better location, pose  or lens they simply tilted the camera and there it was, an interesting photo.

It wasn’t though. It was still a failure, but now it was a tilted failure.

It’s easy to look through magazines, blogs and websites and to see lots of examples of blurred, out of focus, grainy, distorted imagery that is stunning but there is an equal amount that is just lazy or unskilled photography.

Photographers need to know not only how to create effects or looks, they need to know when they are critical for the image or assignment in question and then apply them.

Make sure when you make an error, it’s not a mistake.

I Only Miss The Photographs I Didn’t Take

October 24, 2010 | Filed Under Blog, Featured, Photography | Leave a Comment 

I think a lot about the images I didn’t take.

I’m not talking  about the images that you were unable to capture because you messed up, your exposure was off, you had the wrong lens on the camera, that sort of thing.

I’m talking about the perfect image you see in front of you as you’re rushing to the airport or another assignment that you’re late for. That perfect sun lit sky that has disappeared by the time you find a parking spot.

The other morning I was driving to work and as I stopped for a red light, took a good look at the vehicle in front of me. It was a beat up old Chevrolet pick up truck with a cowboy hat wearing driver. The driver was perfectly silhouetted through the back window by the rapidly lighting morning sky (dark blue with hints of orange). My headlights illuminated the lettering on the back tailgate without taking away from the glowing red tail lights. I saw it all, a perfect, for lack of a better description National Geographic photo, all saturated colour. It was there for a few seconds and then the light changed and we all moved on

At the next light the truck was still in front of me but the cowboy silhouette was now marred by trees in the background. I was stopped at a slightly different angle so my lights didn’t pick out the Chevrolet letters on the tail gate the same way.

That perfect picture was gone, captured only in memory, and replaced in reality by ordinary morning rush hour traffic.

I Keep Forgetting The Blog Is Just The Delivery Platform

October 20, 2010 | Filed Under Blog, Personal | 1 Comment 

Why am I blogging?

Well,  the common wisdom when I had my website built was that you had to have a blog with your site. Everybody was doing it.  If you wanted to draw attention to yourself and your work then you had to blog. Just having galleries of your photos wasn’t good enough. A blog however, if you posted at least twice a week, would have editors flocking to your site.

The reality is , of course, different.  Posting a few photographs on your blog is no guarantee of anything especially if you start losing interest and only post now and then. Which is what had been happening here.

It was important to realize that the blog wasn’t was was important, the blog is only a platform for delivery, the content is what is important ( repeat to self Content is King,  Content Is King).

I wasn’t sure what to do about my blog so I did a little research, mainly going back to blogs I like and taking a closer look at what it was that I enjoyed. I also checked out bloggers who blog about blogs and blogging, some of the more interesting ones anyhow and a couple of trends did emerge.

One was the advice that it wasn’t enough to just post a new photo, or piece of art or an update on what you ate for breakfast, that’s not enough to hold your readers interest, at least not very often or for very long. The other was that you should post on topics that you are interested in because you can usually find a group of readers who are interested in the same topics you are. If you write about those topics, in a manner that’s entertaining, controversial, timely and/or at the very least well written, you’ll pull in the people who have that common interest.

It all sounds obvious and it is, the challenge is in the doing, on a regular schedule and for a long period of time.  The time part is especially important because that’s how you start to keep the readers that enjoy the same subjects you do and enjoy whatever it is you’re posting about them.

So, what am I going to do?

I’m going to keep blogging but on a far more regular basis (he says with fingers firmly crossed). I’m going to post on topics I find interesting. There’ll be lots of stuff on photography and photographers.  I enjoy when I teach photo classes so I’ll try and make sure some of the posts are educational, maybe lessons learned from my assignments. I’ll write about other subjects I find of interest,  things like the media (all of them), blogging and bloggers, public relations and marketing, travel, hockey, music, coffee, scotch and beer. Not necessarily in that order.

I’ll post photos too. Sometimes connected to the article, sometimes just because I like the image. I’ll keep posting the odd punk photo too because I know there is a group of people interested in those and because I am too.

Let me know how I’m doing.

Tim Ray and AV

October 17, 2010 | Filed Under Photography, Vancouver Punk | Leave a Comment 

I’m continuing a long slow sort through my boxes of negatives. A good lesson as to why you should keep your work not only organized and catalogued as you create it but make sure you have adequate written information with the photographs. There are so many envelopes of negatives documenting events that I only have a vague remembrance of.

I came across a folder of images of Tim Ray and his band AV who were part of the early Vancouver punk explosion. I’ve been having difficulties with my neg scanner (the old software doesn’t seem to like the new computer) so I can’t scan my negatives right now. I did find this print though and scanned it on the flatbed.

The photograph shows (L-R) Tim Ray, Bill Napier-Hemy, Unknown to me, Colin Griffiths in a dressing room at one of the clubs. Napier-Hemy and Griffiths played in the Pointed Sticks as well.

Tim was an interesting guy with quite a theatrical performance at times. I was just looking at  negatives that show him starting out a show while his upper torso was encased in a large bag that he then punched his way out off. Unfortunately you’ll have to wait for the fixing of the scanner before I can show those.

Moment Of Truth, The Rangefinder Chronicles Exhibition Opening

September 19, 2010 | Filed Under Exhibition, Featured | Leave a Comment 

A busy night at Victoria’s Luz Gallery with the opening of the Moment of Truth, The Rangefinder Chronicles exhibition and a demo by Leica of the new S2 camera.

Dr. Ted Grant with two of his photos, Pierre Trudeau and Jackie Kennedy.

Quinton Gordon welcomes everyone

Some of the crowd

Photographer Troy Moth sets up for the Leica S2 demo.

My photo in the show, at left, with Leica cameras.

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