Monday, December 7, 2009

How to Steal Fruit and Look Cute Doing It


I have a friend who's a fashion student at Quantlen right now and recently I volunteered to take photos of one of her class projects. As it happened, Jamie also managed to coerce her roommate/classmate, Cheryl, into being a model for a day. Her project was meant to be a light, cute spring dress, and indeed it was, the only problem being that it's bloody winter. Thankfully, it was really sunny that day, so (with a little photoshop) we were sort of able to fake spring. I was really impressed with Cheryl's lack of diva-ness, especially given the fact that it was so cold that all of the color had drained from her legs (again, thank you photoshop) and Jamie and I were both in big jackets and pants. She was a real trooper. Main Street ended up being a great place to shoot and then we all got cinnamon buns at Solly's (yes!). Jamie's dress looked really good and Cheryl found a Perry Como record. Huzzah.


Tuesday, December 1, 2009

I Heart Food Photos



So my good friend Karima recently asked me to take some photos of her, and after twisting my arm (literally) and bribing me with food I was right on board!. She runs a great cooking blog called I Heart Big Flavour! This is where she does crazy awesome things with food and even posts lots of vegetarian recipes (she gets an extra gold star for that one). So a couple of weeks ago we spent the better part of a particularly rainy Saturday shooting in her rather, uhhh... cozy kitchen. The idea was to achieve a kind of classic LIFE magazine feel with just a little (a lot) more attitude. The best part was she cooked the whole time! I left well fed and with several rolls of kick-ass material. I shot half the day with Provia 100 and the other half with Reala 100 and I couldn't believe the difference between my positive and negative film in terms of tonality and skin colour. We also played around with lots of diferrent lighing tricks and I leaned heavily on my cameras super fast sync speed to achieve the narrow depth of field in the photo above. I even got to throw open my scrim, only instead of shooting through it, we used some black fabrick and created a dividing wall to separate the light sources. All and all it was a lot of fun, I taught myself a few new tricks, and I think the photos turned out rad. Cheers Kari!

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Why The Hell Is Jeff Wall Famous?


Or more to the point, why aren't I? Here's this Jeff Wall photo from 2002 called....wait for it...... Concrete Ball. I've seen this displayed at VAG (backlit like a bus stop) and lots of people think it this photo is just tits. In fact, here's what the internets say about it:

"Based on a found scene, the quietness of Concrete ball reveals Wall's attention to pictorial composition. The concern here is not torepresent an event, but rather to depict a generic urban landscape, without specific qualities and devoid of any drama. The perspective is carefully calculated and the central element responds to the curve of the road. The large scale of the work, proportioned to the human body, evokes a sense of immersion in the scene."

Well that's just super. Meanwhile in 2009 times, Rob and I were walking past this park quietly (not so quietly) making fun of athletic people when I saw this. Jeff Wall has all this street cred for elaborately staging his photos so I figured I better do the same and I told Rob to stand by the ball and look all artful and shit. Somebody pay me for this.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Stupid Swine Flu.......


So I'm stuck inside my apartment for a week. This is wholly unfair. I don't even eat pigs! In fact, I frequently comment on how intelligent and emotionally evolved pigs are. And yet this is how they repay me. Motherfuckers. Well if we learned anything from Charlotte's Web, it's that pigs are jerks. You knit them some nice messages with your web and in return they give you the goddamn Pig A.I.D.S. and then you die but not before the farmer comes in and kills all your spider children and awards the pig some sort of prize for training the sheep dog.....or something. (Full Disclosure: I never read Charlotte's Web, but I did see it at the video store once. Granted, I rented Red Dawn instead, but I think we can all agree it's the same basic story). Besides, you know who should have got this thing if there were any justice in this world?  

Tristan. I think it's obvious why.

Oh yeah, I took this photo a few nights ago by my house. Go Wolverines!

Update:  I forgot to mention, I do plan on spending this time productively. I'm growing a boss (read: not very boss) quarantine moustache! I'll let you know how it goes.

Friday, October 23, 2009

Walking Home.


After hanging out with my cousin Erin last month I ended up walking home from downtown, part of which involves a trek over the Cambie Street bridge. I happened to have my camera and tri-pod at the time so I figured I'd shoot a roll, including this rather adorably sullen one of Erin sitting outside my office. These were taken during the middle of Robson square getting it's Olympic face lift, hence all the scaffolding. I kind of like the one of the streetlight.


Four more after the jump.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Parksville Sure Is A Fun Place......


Okay, that was a lie.

This past Thanksgiving I went to visit my mother's side of the family and that meant driving up-island to Butt-Fuck Nowhere just past Parksville. There isn't really a whole lot to do and if I'd been raised there I think I would have developed a pretty cool drug addiction. However there is a total lack of light pollution so I thought it would be an interesting opportunity to see what kind of shots I could get of stars. So once it got dark I grabbed my cousin Olivia and with her as my guide through the wilderness we endeavored to go get some shots. I'm not thrilled with the results but probably the most important thing I learned is just how quickly you start to see star tracks when holding the shutter. The world spins pretty fast I guess. 



Two more after the jump

So This Is My Blog.........

I'm starting this blog as a way to more frequently update photos without having to re-arrange my website every time. Also, it's a good place to post photos that won't ever make it into any particular sets or otherwise see the light of day. Once I get into the swing of things, I'll most likely start to abuse the space and just post rants about stuff I like/don't really like at all.

I hope you like my stuff.