Photographer
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.
A street view in the 300 block of West Hastings Street on the edge of Vancouver’s downtown east side district.
Recently I’ve managed to get out and photograph a few local bands playing live, something that at the beginning of my career I did a lot. It’s still fun and there’s nothing like a live performance in a small venue. I’d never photographed any of the three bands, pictured below, before and they were photographed on different nights. What I found most interesting was how …
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.
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 …
The beaches were crowded during a recent visit to Parksville on Vancouver Island. Crowds were watching and participating in a big interprovincial beach volleyball tournament and lots of people were taking in the sandcastle sculpture competition. Then there was the Parksville Beach Resort, all boarded up, just above the beach and crowds and next to new towers of other hotels. I don’t know the history …
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 …
A vacation in Ontario provided the time for a stroll down Toronto’s Queen Street West and the incredible variety of small businesses along the street. I’d meant, during previous visits to document the street, but didn’t get the chance until now. Many of the stores are short lived so the streetscape is constantly changing.
Old school garages and auto wreckers are almost as appealing a subject as neighbourhood corner stores. They are disappearing just as fast too. Coaltown is a reference to Nanaimo’s past as a coal mining town.
The Surf Hotel is an architectural fixture on Victoria’s Dallas Road waterfront. A visually appealing anomaly among the residential units lining the road. The motel was built in 1960 by a Saskatchewan farmer Peter Mangelson who had been spending his winters in Victoria. He spent $3500.00 for the lot. The building was designed by architect Bob Siddall, who designed other local projects including UVIC’s McPherson …
I find it interesting to look at other photographers who are working on similar projects, if only to see how they look at the world differently. Locally a number of us are photographing our immediate world, shooting land/street/environmental scapes of Vancouver Island. One surprising discovery was that all these photographers are men, the women I know shooting documentary tend to shoot people, not exclusively, of …
Looking for inspiration for my own work I’ll look at the work of contemporaries but I also like to look through collections of the work of documentary photographers who photographed in earlier eras. The British Columbia Archives is the largest collection in the province (and the most diverse) but the Vancouver Library has some interesting holdings including images from the collective the Leonard Frank Memorial …
The Travellers Hotel on the main street in Ladysmith on Vancouver Island has seen better days. The construction of the hotel was completed in 1913 when the town was an important coal shipping port. although a miner’s strike in 1912 had halted the economic boom that had been underway.
The Bay Grocery is one of those neighbourhood establishments, the corner store, that get get harder and harder to find each year. I enjoy how they look front the street, at either dawn or dusk, lighting up the street for the residents.
This is the Kamloops Daily News building on Seymour Street in Kamloops, British Columbia. The News ceased publication on January 11, 2014, another victim of the declining fortunes of the newspaper industry. The man in the suit pictured on the wall is long time editor and former Mayor Mel Rothenburger. The News survived when the Daily Sentinel newspaper folded and is itself survived by Kamloops …
A surfer walks past a van and board at Jordan River, British Columbia on Vancouver Island.
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 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 …
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.
I’ll be teaching a documentary course and a couple of one day workshops at the University of Victoria. Sign up here http://www.uvcs.uvic.ca Courses are: 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 …
I’ve just finished up the documentary project class I was teaching as part of the University of Victoria’s Continuing Education program. The first time for continuing ed and it was a great experience. A small class but enthusiastic and everyone ended up working on a great project of their choice. The best part of teaching for me is watching the students’ confidence and skill improve …
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 haven’t been posting a great deal here. That said I have been checking out a few other blogs. One that I’ve spent quite a bit of time on the past week is Daniel Milnor’s Smogranch. I’d never run across Milnor until a week ago so it’s all a pleasant surprise. I enjoy Milnor’s writing and his images are amazing. It’s oddly nice to see …
I love to tell stories the way I see them as oppose to translating another person’s vision, which is what
you often have to do when on assignment. I have my own unique way of seeing a situation / the world and to me it really is story telling and
I’m the author.
About a month ago I wrote about crowd sourcing to fund photo projects and Victoria photographer Mike Andrew McLean and his use of Kickstarter to fund his project The Range. Since then I’ve come across another good example, Australian photographer, and Oculi member, Claire Martin is currently photographing in Haiti and she’s using IndieGoGo to create a funding program for that work. You can follow …
Documentary photographer, and rising art star (check out the 12 page spread in the Fall 2010 edition of Canadian Art magazine) Donald Weber has a new book INTERROGATIONS coming out in the fall of 2011. Published by Schilt Publishing, features more of Weber’s images from Eastern Europe. The following, from the release for the book, explains Weber’s work: ‘Interrogations is the result of his personal …
I like to travel light, usually one camera with one lens. I like to hang out. I like to go back to the same place over and over again. I like to watch for the little changes.
Like most people when I notice my bookmarks page is getting out of control with far too many links I’ll go through and delete those links I’m not visiting any more, that no longer work, or that simply are not updated anymore. There is one site though that doesn’t get updated that I still leave on my list. That site belongs to the British photographer …
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 …