All posts filed under Documentary Photography

Bucking The Trend, Printing Photographs Small

A couple of weeks off which has been good for some travel, Kamloops, Maple Ridge, Vancouver and Portland, and now I’ve been doing some printing. I know everyone seems to be going for big photographs but I’m enjoying making small prints.  

Photo Group Talks

BC Ferries, Swartz Bay, BC 2012 I’ve spoken to a number of photo groups lately, showing some of my images and talking about the projects. The audiences have been great, very appreciative and always lots of questions and discussion afterwards. It’s a two way street though. I get lots of feedback on my images which is so helpful and it’s often a surprise which photographs …

Olympic Peninsula Weekend Road Trip

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 …

Saturday Night – Chinatown

Downtown at dusk hoping for the late evening sunlight slanting through but clouds drifting in ended that. Settled for the bright colours of the umbrellas and the neon signs coming on in Victoria’s Chinatown district.

Punk Rock Rising Vancouver 77/78 Show Opening

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

The Ramones and The Avengers in Vancouver

I have a new show of my early Vancouver punk photos opening at the Talk Is Cheap Gallery on Pandora Street in Victoria this coming Saturday. I’ve been sorting through my negs yet again and had a couple news ones scanned. It’s interesting what I keep finding. I came across this group shot of the Ramones posing for me before their gig at the Commodore. …

Omen of Bones, British Columbia

I’ve been working on a project the past few years, shooting every fall when the salmon return to spawn. These aren’t the images you always see of scarlet bodied fish fighting their way upstream but instead are images of the dead and decaying bodies of the spawned out fish. I’ve been calling this project Omen of Bones and when people ask me what it’s about …

JEM Gallery Exhibition

I had a great opening at the JEM Gallery Friday night.  We were scheduled to be open from 6PM until 9PM but it was after 11PM before people stopped dropping by. Saturday was excellent as well and we didn’t close up shop until 5:30. Many thanks to gallery owner Carola Goetze for all her heard work.

Seattle Art Museum and Diane Arbus

It’s always great to see an actual print, even if it is behind glass, that you’ve only seen as a reproduction before. This Garry Winogrand image of Diane Arbus is currently hanging at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM).  Also on exhibition were a couple of Arbus prints, a collection of Imogen Cunningham prints and an exhibition of Andy Warhol photographs. Thanks to the SAM employee …

Drinking With Photographers

One of the downsides of living in a smaller place is that you have a tendency to feel isolated from the rest of the world. This week Don Weber was in town for a couple of workshops and it was a nice reminder of the wider world out there. Thursday night I met up with him and a couple of other local photographers at a …

Donald Weber – Workshop – Chernobyl, Russia and the VII Photo Agency

Last weekend I attended a two day workshop presented by Luz Gallery with Toronto photographer Don Weber, a member of the VII agency. We had a diverse group of twelve workshoppers (if that’s a word). There was the legally blind Anglican minister, the woman who’d had Ansel Adams drop by her house when she was a child and critique her photos,  a philosophy professor who …

Vancouver Pre – Olympics, Vancouver British Columbia 2010

Main press centre in Vancouver. I picked up the last of my Olympic credentials on Saturday and so am officially official. Lots of Olympic workers and media, with special clothes and accreditation tags around their necks,  and police in the downtown core but hard to see ‘Olympic fever’ among regular folks. Most of the Olympic signage you’re seeing is commercial but there are a few …

Vancouver Visit

A brief visit to Vancouver a week ago to pick up my Olympic credentials. Snapped a couple of images while cruising the downtown streets, just fun stuff for a change. Liked the flag reflection in the one and just playing around with the image of the downtown library building.

Jordan River Winter Surfing

Just another Vancouver Island winter day with the surf kicking up along the coast. Lots of surfers and kayakers out on the water. Weather ranged from pouring rain to a light mist although the sun came out on the drive home (typical). Word was spreading about the waves as more and more surfers were turning up throughout the morning. Surfers head out Beautiful BC wheel …

DOA Group Shot

Tom Harrison, then music editor of the Georgia Straight, and I drove out to the house Joe Keithley was renting in Burnaby off of Kingsway for a big interview for the entertainment weekly. Chuck was living with Joe at the time. This may have been the first big media shot DOA received. UPDATE: Ooops. Just found more negs , the ones that were from that …

And….more Vancouver punk photographs

Acclaimed documentary fimmaker Susanne Tabata is working on a film about the Vancouver punk rock world and I’m going through all my old negatives in order to send her some images for possible inclusion in the film. Here’s a few more possibilities from the early days. Hopefully Scott Beadle will chime in with some names and dates. Lots of faces here, drummer is ?, Randy …

Day Trip To Gabriola

Took a quick trip over to Gabriola Island to take in Saturday at the Poetry Gabriola Festival, you can see photos from that event at my other site Literary Photographer. Gabriola is a pretty island, still quite rural and for photography’s sake I was wishing it was clear out and I had been able to take advantage of sunrise/set. The eroded rocks on the shoreline …

Victoria In The Fog

Two weeks ago I was meeting up with Micah Escamilla, a former student now a California based photographer, who was in town for a few days and an an hour to kill before we met up for coffee so took advantage of the time and foggy morning to shoot a few images.

Chris Bickford book – After The Storm

I first came across Chris Bickford’s work on the NY Times LENS blog a couple of months ago and really enjoyed his dark contrasty surfing images from North Carolina, not the first place that springs to mind when you think of surfing ( and I live on Vancouver Island where the main surfing happens during the cold, wet winter months, again not the first place …