Photographer
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.
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 …
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 …
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.
A lighthouse, small naval ship and a fully loaded container carrying freighter heading towards the open Pacific Ocean. Just another Vancouver Island seascape.
One of the more popular posts I’d done was about retired Kamloops photo teacher and photographer Wilf Schmidt who was operating a tiny photography gallery in the Interior city. I hadn’t been through Kamloops since last summer and that time was a quick stop so didn’t get to drop by the gallery. We were finally heading up that way again this past weekend and on …
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
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. …
So here’s photographic proof we do get winter out here open the western edge of the world. Sure, it did only last three days but it was a hard three days.
Every year I like to start at least one new project. I like to have a number of projects going at the once as I find that due to my full time shooting job my time for personal shooting is limited in both hours and time of day. Having a number of projects means I can usually shoot something in the windows that I have. …
To be honest, I am quite obsessed with the forests of BC and could be happy taking photos here forever
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 …
I’m a sucker for self-portraits. I like taking them and I like looking at them so I had to take a peek when I saw the Globe and Mail was running a Share Your Self Portrait page. I kind of like the smily face finger image. If you really want to want to spend some time looking at self-portraits check out the many pages of …
Basically, I go and have an adventure and write about it.
A very positive offshoot of the boom in the interest in photo books is that we’re not only seeing more professionally published volumes but we have so many independent publications available. One of my daily stops on the internet trail is The Independent Photo Book site put together by Jorg Colberg and Hester Keijser which posts about books and zines published by photographers and/or very …
We are working hard to create a place where people can engage with photography
I think I was pretty realistic about what to expect when starting a business.
I ‘ve mentioned it before but I’ll say it again. I’m a big fan of photographers’ collectives. Collectives aren’t a new idea of course. Magnum, the prestigious photo agency is perhaps the oldest photographer’s collective or cooperative having begun in the late 1940’s. The past few years however have seen, if not quite an explosion, then certainly a surge in the creation of collectives. Collectives, …
A link to an interview with Ottawa photographer John W. MacDonald by Bookninja’s George Murray at Open Book.
A few months ago Neil Burgess caused a stir with a posting on the EPUK site when he declared that photojournalism was dead. His comments created quite a debate in the world wide journalism community.
DIY photographer Arnold Lim takes advantage of colleagues Travis Paterson (hand model) and Kyle Slavin (backdrop holder) to create a photo illustration in the offices of Black Press.
I hope to start posting new interviews with photographers shortly. In order to give you an idea of what I hope to post here are a few links to interviews with photographers from my literary site Literary Photographer. I’ve put that site on hiatus in order to concentrate my energies here. These interviews all have a connection to writing but give you a pretty good …
Atlanta based photographer Zack Arias had a recent blog post called Imperfect Work: Blowing it on Purpose
I hate making mistakes. I especially hate making mistakes that are so basic I should have stopped making them years ago. When I teach photography one point that I really try to drive home is that photographers have to pay attention to the foreground and background in their images. Our eye naturally goes to our subject and we don’t notice unfortunate details in front or …
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 …
It’s now October and this time of year I always take a drive up through Saanich agricultural zone to see if the annual pumpkin harvest has started. It was cloudy out but the rain was holding off a good sign as they won’t harvest in the rain. It turned out to be busy in the fields with workers from both the Mar and Michell Farms …
Quite a few trips on BC Ferries across the Strait to Vancouver recently but never have quite enough time there, even on the rainy days. A wet evening view at a constantly changing skyline.
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.
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 …
Shadows and patterns and a touch of red on the University of Victoria campus