A simple little story about heat stroke, and the way it makes you do crazy things. Like, say, photograph fireworks in black and white on a dark beach in the middle of the night — hand-holding a Leica M8 while using ridiculously long exposures without benefit of a tripod.
"What do you photograph?" Inevitably, when someone discovers that I'm a photographer, this is their Pavlovian response. It's a question framed in an expression of utmost earnestness — as if they were asking a medical doctor to state his specialty, or an actor to enumerate the roles they had played. It's an Innocuous query, but one I find absolutely impossible to answer... Oh, the torment!
On February 16th, 2009, the UK began to enforce their ambiguously-worded counter-terrorism laws that, essentially, call into question the motives of all photographers and cast doubt upon their actions. Photographing any police officer, military personnel or intelligence official is an 'offense' for which a photographer can now be arrested. The vagueness of the law is nearly as disturbing as the fact it even exists, because it empowers any police officer to detain a photographer and confiscate both equipment and images under the flimsiest veil of legitimacy. As I mourned the vilification of my UK brethren, I took solace in the fact that I lived in Canada — a nation fiercely committed to rights, freedoms, and artistic expression. But is it time for Vancouver photographers to start worrying about the "British" in "British Columbia?"
For a photography blog, these posts certainly skew toward the wordy. Every now and then I need to exercise a little restraint, and simply let the images do the talking. So, in that spirit, I present a few street shots from the previous couple of weeks — each of which can tell its own story without my usual reams of imposing prose.
Canada's annual musical celebration, the Juno Awards, descended upon the streets of Vancouver and so, inevitably, did I. It took me only a couple of minutes to grow bored with the musical performances — all of which "borrowed" from classic rock structures of the 1970's, but regurgitated them into soulless clichés. Dismayed by the fact that another generation of musicians was failing to make an imprint on culture, and annoyed that I was neither hearing nor seeing anything new, I lost interest in photographing the bands. Instead, I turned my attention and camera to the audience. And that's when I saw it — the cultural difference between this generation and those that preceded it — the video monitor.
I'm sure my accountant would argue that there's nothing good about volunteering for a free photography assignment. And, should one wish to pay for such mundane things as rent and food, she would be right. But for me, both rent and food rank slightly below coffee on my list of life's essentials. So when my friend Mike, who owns Coo Coo Coffee on Davie Street, mentioned that he needed a few photos to boost his business, I jumped all over it. Fortunately, there are some non-remunerative advantages to working for free. For example, your client can't be even remotely particular about what you shoot. "Shooting for free" means "freedom of choice." And "freedom of choice" means you get to pull out all those wacky little photo tricks that you never get to use on "real" jobs.
To many photographers, photographic artifacts such as grain, grit, softness, and noise are about as welcome as a rabid Rottweiler. To me, they add texture and intrigue to an image. This article discusses how, after spending several years seeking images of the highest fidelity, I've come full circle and, again, embrace the "texture."
After a week of malady compounded further by the medicine meant to combat it, I finally felt like venturing out of the condo yesterday. Well, maybe I didn't exactly feel like it, but I was beginning to suffer from an opportunistic affliction known as termino morbus. Don't worry, it sounds worse than it actually is. Like all things medical, it's a latin term that, roughly translated, means "closure sickness." Its folksier name is "shutter withdrawal" and, as any obsessive photographer knows, it's an affliction that causes one eye to close and the index finger to flex up-and-down. Without a camera in-hand, such behavior appears "eccentric" at best. Fortunately, I was finally strong enough to carry a camera and, like a newborn fawn (but not nearly as adorable), take my first tentative steps into the great outdoors — even if it was just to the Vancouver Public Library.
My good friend, Dan Timis, passed away yesterday. I was fortunate enough to have worked with Dan on two separate occasions over the last twenty years — at both Opcode Systems and at Muse Research. Dan was a brilliant digital audio programmer, and a very clever fellow. He could see a solution to a problem before many of us even knew that a problem existed. He always had an interesting idea; another angle; or a unique take on a design.
Sometimes a walk is just a walk. Other times (particularly those when you carry a camera), it's a metaphor for everything from the latest financial meltdown to a miserable Vancouver Canucks losing streak.
Vancouver has recently seen about a foot-and-a-half of snow, and more is falling as I write this. The air is fresh and crisp. The dogs are happy. The trees are enrobed in a shroud of white where, just last month, they were warm in their brightly saturated red, orange, and yellow jackets. Naturally, I couldn't help but take a couple of photos.
