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June 27, 2012 – Looking To Sea
[download_box]To save, left click image to open, then right click and save as…[/download_box]
I took this on our trip out to Nova Scotia last year, and kind of forgot I had it. It is at Peggy’s Cove, with the famous lighthouse behind me. The place was packed when we were there, and aside from another couple, these were the only two people really paying attention to the ocean. I didn’t think much of it at the time. The whole trip was like a buffet of great iconic images. I’m still going through them and finding things.
I came across this when I was selecting images for the main page slideshow and fell in love with it. It was really a beautiful day to see the place, and seeing this picture put me right back on that day. You may notice it is currently a default background on the site as well. It also is the current wallpaper on pretty much all my computers at work and home.
It also makes me think I should take another pass through my 20,000+ photos and see what else I missed.
June 25, 2012 – Leah Morise
So here we are, week two! As I mentioned before, my Monday posts are going to be used to talk about music. I’m going to make it a goal to only write about people I have photographed. That way if I want to write about someone I haven’t, I’ll have to make it happen somehow. Even though last week I talked about a relatively big star, I’ll have a lot about people you might not know of, but should.
For my second music post, I’m going to talk about my partner, and one of my biggest supporters, Leah Morise.
I met Leah in the February of 2006. A friend and I had started hosting an open mic night at a pub, and Leah was one of the first people, along with our good friend Jim Johnston (who I also met that night) to take the mic. I vividly remember being struck by her voice. She sings with an ease and joy that can grab a noisy rooms attention, stopping people in mid sentence. Her smile when she sings is my favorite part; there is no doubt that she loves singing as much as people love listening.
Aside from singer/songwriting gigs, Leah is also a soprano in the First St. Andrews Choir, and has performed in several local musicals. It is not uncommon to see her jump on stage with a friend to add some harmonies. I’ve been lucky enough to share the stage with her often over these last few years, both on guitar and with some trumpet. Last year we toured out to Nova Scotia for two weeks, playing gigs along the way with another friend, Manitoba Hal. You’ll likely see a lot of pictures in future posts from that trip.
Leah is also a very good photographer, as well as a graphic designer. Last year, we made a shared exhibition at the 2011 Visual Fringe. Leah turned the camera on me, while I was turning my antique film cameras on the landscape.
In 2006, Leah released her first CD, “Take Me Anywhere”. It is a great collection of original songs, and was recorded by another good friend of ours, Greg Lirette. Though there are no solid plans in place for a second CD, the broad strokes should start to happen soon, as soon as we are done another project we are working on.
As I write this, Leah and I are 8 days (8 days, 8 hours and 8 minutes actually, weird; yes, we have a countdown timer) away from taking possession of our new home. Several years ago, on one of our many road trips, we came to the realization we both had this dream to live in an old country church. Fast forward to now and its about to happen. Among the many creative plans for the new place, we will be using the space to rehearse, and record Leah’s second album. If you would like to see more details about out it, click here to go to the little site we made about the project.
I won’t go into too much more here. It’s surprisingly difficult to write an article about Leah without it sounding like a tweens diary entry. My life with her these last 5 years has been an amazing adventure filled with music, art, theatre, and campfire jams that last till the sun comes up.
A couple of years ago, Leah and I spent a couple late nights and made a music video for one of her songs:
Here’s an old video of one of our collaborations:
If you would like to see more, you can find her here:
Website: www.leahmorise.com
Twitter: @leahmorise
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Leah.Morise
June 22, 2012 – Vivian Maier
Ok, so I made it through a week on schedule! I feel pretty good about the site so far, and am excited for what’s to come.
This is the first of my “Photography Friday” posts. I’m still trying to solidify what I want from these. In a broad sense I want to use them to share other photographers that inspire me, but that will likely develop into me writing about other things related to photography and art, gear I like, things that bug me, stuff like that.
I’d also like to have a small interview component for the artists I write about, and have started sending out a set of questions that I think make sense for this. Of course, that won’t work for those who are no longer with us, but I’ll figure something out to make it interesting.
For my first week, I’ve decided to write about one of my my favorite photography stories from last few years. If you spend any amount of time online, you have likely seen a viral video about Vivian Maier. She was an American street photographer from the second half of the last century. Completely unknown while she was alive, her vast body of work was discovered when her storage locker contents went up for auction.
Born in 1926, Vivian spent the first 25 years of her life in France, before moving to New York, and then Chicago. She worked on and off as a nanny for the next 40 years. She was from all accounts a very private person, and details of her life are still being discovered and pieced together. In her later years, she may have been homeless for a time, before some of the now grown children she raised provided her with an apartment. She slipped on some ice in 2008 and hit her head. She never fully recovered, passing away April 21st, 2009, at age 83.
Her work started to surface in 2007, when Chicago real estate agent John Maloof acquired 30,000 prints and negatives from an auction house. Maloof was collecting photos to publish a book on the history of his community when he found them. The photos weren’t relevant to the book, but after it was completed John went back, and started scanning them. He became inspired himself and started shooting, taking courses, and created a darkroom to learn how to process film.
Over the next year, he also managed, along with another collector, to salvage the rest of her collection that had gone to other buyers (over 100,000 negatives!). After posting some of the pictures to a discussion group on flickr, interest in Maier’s work exploded.
Though she photographed almost compulsively, she never showed her work to anyone. In her later years she fell on hard times; she couldn’t afford to develop the photos she took, and simply amassed thousands of rolls of exposed film; continually shooting, but never seeing the result.
There are many things I love about this story. The thought that somewhere, in every town, there could be a storage locker like this, containing the brilliant work of someone who seemingly had no interest in greatness or recognition or fame. Just an honest interpretation of the world through their eyes, that they felt compelled to create. To me that is art in one of its truest forms.
I won’t go into too much more detail here; I hope I have ignited enough of an interest that you will check out the official Vivian Maier website. It has some amazing galleries, as well as information on the process of researching and curating this wonderful collection. Also, I highly recommend the book, which does a beautiful job of presenting some of her work, and is one of the favorites on my shelf. You should also check out John Maloof’s blog; although it hasn’t been updated in a while it’s a great repository of her work. If you are interested in buying prints you can contact the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York City.
All images in this post are of course by Vivian Maier and are part of the Maloof Collection.
For a little bonus, this is the video that first introduced me to her work:
June 20, 2012 – Bird In A Tree
Here is the first of my “Wednesday Wallpaper” posts. Every week I’ll try to put up an image that would make a nice desktop. Just right click and select “save link as…” to save it. When you set it to your wallpaper, make sure to set it to maintain aspect ratio if that’s an option.
[download_box]To save, left click image to open, then right click and save as..[/download_box]
I took this picture in the back yard of another London artist, Beth Stewart, while we were on a tour of local studios. Beth specializes in coloured pencil drawings of birds. Her backyard is full of bird feeders, so this wasn’t the only shot I got that day, but it is my favorite. I have had this as my own wallpaper on all my computers for the last few months.
June 16, 2012 – Henry Rollins
So here it is; the first of my try-and-keep-to-a-schedule posts. Mondays posts are going to center around music. Cause, you know, they both start with M. Very groundbreaking, if I do say so myself. My girlfriend is also very impressed and in no way laughed at me.
Because Leah and I are both musicians, we spend a lot of time around other musicians. Photographically speaking, live music is among my favorite things to shoot. It is definitely the only thing involving people that I can shoot without second guessing myself.
In these posts my goal will be to centre on a particular artist I find inspiring, and what surrounded the particular shots I share.
Since this is my first post, I figure I’ll start with the most recent I have seen; arguably the most well known artist as well.
Last week, Leah’s workplace, The Grand Theatre, played host to Henry Rollins. I found out about the show a few months back and got tickets right away. It was well worth the price of admission. Rollins gave up music (his words) years ago, and does amazing spoken word shows, as well as television and movie work.
He is best known, musically at least, for fronting Black Flag, widely considered to be central in the development of the underground punk scene that came up around the mid to late 80s. Though I don’t consider myself a huge fan of hardcore punk, there is no doubt that Rollins was a huge influence both directly and indirectly on my taste in music and how I thought about it.
If you get a chance to see him live, take it. Though you could describe it as “a cool guy tells you cool stories for three hours” its much, much more than that. First off its three hours. No water, no break, no props. I’ve never seen anything like it. It feels like he’s just talking unrehearsed, directly to you, in your seat. He’ll be telling a story, then branch off into another related story, and merge back in 45 minutes later, seamless.
As far as subject matter, the stories are indeed cool. From road tales with Black Flag to wrestling alligators for National Geographic, to politics and to what punk-rock means to him. There was so much. As I type this I’m killing myself to remember a particular thing he said that I thought I should write down, and I can’t remember for the life of me, because there was simply so much cool stuff.
One message I did get from the show as a whole was to just try the things you think you are afraid of. He didn’t say it directly, but thats what I took from it. And this is where we swing around back to photography.
Anybody who knows me, knows I don’t really take a lot of photos of people. I get nervous and I forget to check settings. I get shy and hesitant to direct the person I’m shooting. I am terrified of going up to a stranger and asking to take a picture of them. I don’t know why, but I am.
Sitting listening to Henry talk, I decided I was going to ask to take his portrait after the show. I had everything I would say planned out in my head. I was gonna check my settings right after the show and make sure everything was right, I was going to take my flash off the camera and light it off axis. It would all go fine and I would see that I wouldn’t have to be nervous.
So the show ended, Leah, some friends and I went out to the stage door to wait. When he came out we introduced ourselves and asked if we could get some pictures with him. He said sure so I handed the camera to my friend and they snapped a shot. Then we traded and I got a shot of them. I wasn’t looking for anything spectacular, just a memento of our meeting.
Bad focus wasn’t my friends fault, I should have put it on auto 🙁 
Not sure what my excuse was, using my own camera and all…. Though it would have been nice if either of them were in focus. This is an example of what happens when I get in front of a subject. I forget to check things, just little things, like what the picture looks like. I suppose I didn’t want to waste his time, or look stupid, or both.
Since we had gotten all our pictures taken, I asked if he would mind if I took a portrait of him. It did not come out like I thought I was going to say it. Again, he said sure. He is an extremely nice guy, and very patient. I snapped a quick shot, thanked him and retreated. I didn’t take the flash off, didn’t think about lighting. Upon getting to the van and seeing the quality of the group shots, I was terrified for how the portrait turned out.
Henry Rollins, London Ontario, June, 12 2012- Click to Enlarge A little bit of processing in lightroom, and I am very happy with the result. I’m glad I asked for the chance, but am pretty sure the next time I do it will be just as nerve wracking. At least I know it will be worth it, so I’m likely to try again.
Here we go again.
I am a photography, music, gaming, computer and gadget nerd living in London, Ontario, Canada.
I have been shooting since around 2003, when I got my hands on my first digital point and shoot. Since then I have become more and more compelled to shoot. What started as an interest in gadgets has evolved into a need to understand this wonderful craft. I’ll shoot with anything I can get my hands on, whether it is a state of the art DSLR or a simple pinhole camera.
Besides photography, I have a great love of music. I studied audio engineering in college and have played in several bands over the years. I sing, play trumpet, guitar, some keyboards and am trying to teach myself trombone. One of my favorite things to shoot is live music because of this experience with music.
My goal for this page is to turn it into a place to share the things that have inspired me, and maybe inspire others by sharing what I make.
I’ve tried and failed at this blogging game before so I am going to approach this differently. Rather than just force myself to make a post everyday, I’m going to make a bit of a schedule:
[one_third]Music Monday: I’ll post an article on a group or musician I find worth talking about. Wherever I can, Ill try to review someone I have photographed personally. There are a few I want to talk about that I haven’t had a chance to see live and get a shot of yet, so we’ll see what happens.
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[one_third]Wallpaper Wednesday: I’ll post a downloadable image that anybody can download and use as a wallpaper. I’m still figuring this one out, I may just post one size, or a couple. But I plan to have a short explanation about each image and the story behind it.
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[one_third_last]Photography Friday: I’ll take some time to talk about other photographers I find inspirational. Some are other amateur photographers I know personally, some will be big fish that have shot magazine covers and some will be masters. I’ll also post articles about books and gear I like (or don’t) from time to time.[/one_third_last]
I will very likely break this schedule within the first month. Hopefully it will be posting a review of a video game on a Tuesday rather than missing a scheduled post. We’ll see. Rules are made to be broken, even self-imposed ones.
I don’t have any commercial aspirations for this site, I’ve found I enjoy shooting much more when I’m not worrying about how much I can sell a picture for (of course, that’s not to say don’t ask if you are interested in a picture).
