Photographer
Walking to breakfast early on weekend morning we passed the site of what had been, until just days before, an apartment complex in Vancouver’s West End. The elevator shaft, with the somewhat incongruous potted palm tree, at the bottom were the only two things left standing that day. A week later the shaft was gone as well.
Late night Vancouver street photography while walking along Granville Street. Photographing an ad for a camera phone and camera phone photography.
Architecture, of course, like everything works in cycles of fashion. The A-frame entrance to suburban housing, at least in British Columbia, was common enough in the 60’s and 70’s. It’s perhaps rarer to see this vernacular architecture at use in commercial buildings from that era, certainly with the use of the double A-frame on the structure, which you can’t see in this image(the A is …
This little shop in downtown Victoria seems like a throwback to a different era with it’s amazingly eclectic collection of goods, from toys to Indigenous art. There’s certainly a recent history of toys visible in the objects for sale. Normally I would have tried to reduce the reflections in the window glass but I think the buildings reflected are useful visual information about the street.
Much of my photography centres around landscapes, natural and manmade and how that shapes us and our culture and/or how we and our cultures shapes our constructed and social landscapes. I like how the local makes us all unique to our own parts of the world. I haven’t concentrated so much on people who shape our culture especially artists, be they writers, musicians, painters etc. …
A number of rodeo heritage related wooden statues decorate the streets of Williams Lake. This particular statue, which occupies a plot of grass at the main intersection had been vandalized, leaving the cowboy with no lower arms to grasp the horse’s reins.
Williams Lake, a small city in British Columbia’s Cariboo-Chilcotin was in the news last week after the city council voted to “inject’ repeat offenders with a GPS tracker (story here). The wacky story could have come right from the pages of Mark Leiren-Young‘s memoir of his days as a rookie reporter for the Williams Lake Tribune called Never Shoot A Stampede Queen. The shooting, by …
As an exercise I sometimes try and photograph with an eye to preserving a view that will not exist in the future. The above is one such view. Shot from Cambie Street and looking across Georgia Street to the north. The parking lot seen at the lower right of the image is the future site of the Vancouver Art Gallery. That new building will most …
Dowler Grocery is yet another of those unique neighbourhood corner stores that has closed. I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence that a 7-11 opened up across the street. I’m not sure when Dowler Grocery actually closed, I don’t actually remember it being open. The unusual thing is that even though this photo was taken in 2012 the storefront still looks the same. It hasn’t …
Every fall since I returned to British Columbia twelve years ago I’ve photographed the spectacle and aftermath of the salmon returning to spawn in Vancouver Island rivers. When I started photographing the autumn event I was using black and white film. I shoot mainly digital now, although still shooting some B/W film when out on the rivers, but feel this particular project looks better in …
Two photographs taken a week apart. In the first a heritage house, sporting some unique architectural detail, sits on supports and a trailer, in the second, the vacant lot after the house was removed and view of the previously hidden seascape. The third, yet to be taken, will show the new structure built on the lot. Change is inevitable and at least in this …
A while back I posted on a 1970’s publication featuring the work of a group of Vancouver photographers called the BC Almanac. That post is here. The publication was unique as it consisted of a series of mini-books/magazines, each one dedicated to one photographer’s work with the whole collection housed in a folder/cover. The one copy I was able to source and look over was …
An oversize, somewhat decrepit, pink pig piggy bank sits on the grounds of the Saanich fairgrounds. An image any visitor to the fairgrounds will remember. The grounds are host to the annual Saanich Fall Fair.
Currently the home of the the Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre, the Roxy was formerly the Roxy Cinegogue movie theatre. It looks more like an industrial or farm building than an arts centre.
The large mural on the side of the Powder Keg gun and ammo store and the Lotus Inn restaurant on Tranquille Road are long time business landmarks in North Kamloops.
I get asked the question, what do you?, regarding my photography a lot. It’s easy to answer when I talk about the photography that pays my rent. I am an editorial photographer who supplies images to accompany articles, illustrate stories and/or provide news, sports, entertainment coverage for newspapers and magazines. People get that. It is much harder to explain the project work. I often use …
Jason Flower is a music archivist who issues collections of forgotten, lost and hard to find music as well as being a collector and seller of new and old music LPs, 45s, tapes and CD’s. His Victoria store and archival reissue record label bear the same name, Supreme Echo. He’s passionate about his music and that has led to collections of early punk music from …
I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and I was freezing in the fog that had rolled in off the Pacific and over Willows Beach. Bus loads of tourists were sitting on blankets on the sand, unable to see beyond the first waves and pretending to enjoy their picnic lunch while shivering. At the end of the beach a man was wading through the shallow …
A BC Transit bus lies at the bottom of a heap of scrap metal waiting to be torn apart and added to the pile in Victoria, British Columbia. The business sits on Victoria’s waterfront just on the edge of the city core. The city has voiced support for keeping industry on the waterfront but one wonders how long a recycling plant will stay (be allowed …
I met photographer Dion Manastyrski a few years ago when I gave a talk to a local photo group. He contacted me after and asked if I minded meeting up to have a look at images from a project he was working on. The photos he showed me were from the Canadian prairies, mainly Saskatchewan, and examined the disappearance of rural and small town life …
The old Oak Bay High School buildings will come down now that the new school building is constructed and will be finished for the 2015-16 school year. The new building will be new, certainly brighter and bigger and up-to-date certainly nicer for students and staff alike. What will be lost will be the collective memories of the old buildings added to each year by by …
Duncan, on Vancouver island, is known for the totem poles displayed around the town. Duncan is actually nicknamed The City of Totems. The very walkable downtown is a nice mix of older small town architecture and this unusual circular office building next to the courthouse. I like this view of the one pole and the office tower.
Artist Rachel Berman died in Victoria on May 28. I can’t claim to have known her very well but I had really liked her work and two years ago she agreed to let me photograph her. After that, we’d often run into each other on the street and have a chat. She would encourage me to photograph other artists, making suggestions about possibilities, and chiding …
An image from one of my ongoing projects, Salt Water & Rain, which looks at west coast life, in particular the small town urban landscape. This photograph was taken on the main street in Cumberland on Vancouver Island. The photograph is also part of the British Columbia photographic archive.
Wing Sang Building, Vancouver BC 2012 Don Denton photograph The Wing Sang building is the oldest in Vancouver’s Chinatown. The Pender Street heritage building was restored and now houses the Rennie Collection, the private art collection of Vancouver real estate mogul Bob Rennie.
I finally found a copy of the 1970 publication BC Almanac, a library copy. Quite unique for the time, it consists of 15 booklets printed on newsprint and inserted into a cardboard folder. On the negative side, this copy only has nine of the booklets. On the positive side the booklets by Roy Kiyooka and N. E. Thing Co. (Iain and Ingrid Baxter) are in …
I was at Coopers Cove last week. The derelict boat in long gone although, for now at least, the former naval ship seen in the background is still anchored in the cove. It’s a reminder how photographs, while they must stand on their own as visual images, also serve as historical records, a document of time passing. This was one of the first group of …
From a series of inter-linked photo based projects examining the natural, social and manmade landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. This image from Salt Water & Rain which looks at island and coastal British Columbia.
The inflatable giant dinosaur shows up now and then on the roof of Galaxy Motors. It’s certainly an eye catcher
Took in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s July FUSE event on July 19, this one produced in conjunction with the Arrival Agency. Lots going all evening on the various floors.