Archive for Musings – Page 9

This is Going to be Fun

February 8, 2010No commentMusings

Its inevitability has, for a decade now, been forced into my consciousness and my subconsciousness. It's become a part of my Id, my Ego, and my Super-Ego. Its costs, benefits, politics and promise have permeated local news outlets since I first moved to Vancouver at the dawn of the 21st century. "It" is the XXI Olympic Winter Games and, in four days, "it" finally arrives in my downtown neighbourhood — on the very streets that I traverse each and every day.

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DagNAMMit

January 28, 2010No commentMusingsPhoto Techniques

This is an article about photographing the culture, chaos and cacophony that surrounds the NAMM music products show in Anaheim California. It includes several photos from the show, plus a link to a multimedia presentation about NAMM. The article also discusses the current state of photojournalism, and the difficulties facing those of us in this ever-challenging profession.

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Year One

December 22, 20094 CommentsMusings

This photo-laden article displays several previously unpublished photos from 2009 and invites the readers to tell me what they do with their own orphaned, unpublished images. It discusses the philosophy behind the ULTRAsomething photography blog, and why I try to achieve a balance between equipment reviews and articles designed to help photographer's develop their own "soul" and style.

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The Self Portrait

December 1, 20092 CommentsMusings

Most people would define "self portrait" as a photograph in which the photographer, himself, is the subject. This article discusses how, over the last couple of years, I've come to define "self portraits" in an entirely different way. To me, a "self portrait" is a photograph that reveals something about the photographer's true soul — his proclivities, fantasies, aesthetics, and personality. The photographer, himself, does not need to be the subject. Nor is there any requirement dictating that the photographer need appear anywhere within the photograph at all, Rather, this article asserts that a "self portrait" is a photograph that divulges something of the photographer's inner self.

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‘Tween the ‘Weens

November 2, 2009No commentMusings

Those of us who photograph the human experience spend 364 days a year trying to be 'the invisible man.' But for one glorious day each calendar year, we street photographers can drop our disguise, emerge from the shadows, and proudly hold our cameras aloft. All Hallows Eve is our night. Halloween is, quite frankly, the easiest pickins a street photographer can get. It's our Labor Day, Christmas, and Thanksgiving all rolled into one.

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What Color is Happy?

September 29, 2009No commentMusingsPhoto Techniques

"We humans are quick to embrace new technologies, aesthetics, techniques and trends. We are equally adept at discarding the old ones. And, while few of us would choose to live in the past, its wanton abandonment comes with a heavy price — ignorance." This article discusses why Black & White photography is still relevant.

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The Mythical Invisible Shield

September 9, 20091 commentMusings

Cameras have an odd psychological effect on me. They have a way of heightening one form of reality, while diminishing others. With my camera in hand, I'm singularly focused on creating the perfect image — one with the potential to entertain, enlighten, inform, or influence those who view it. When I'm on assignment, everything in front of me is filtered through my eyes as if it were already a photograph. Realtime is no longer time at all, but a series of contact sheets from which I'm choosing the images I want to preserve. The result is that non-photographic impulses fail to trigger proper cognition and, subsequently, adequate defenses. This is what I call "the mythical invisible shield." And this article discusses how to use it to your advantage.

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Listen to Your Leica

August 3, 2009No commentMusings

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.

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Torment of the Innocuous Query

July 8, 20092 CommentsMusings

"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!

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The Miscreant Photographer

April 23, 20092 CommentsMusings

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?"

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Shut Up and Shoot

April 7, 2009No commentMusings

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.

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The Reel World

April 1, 2009No commentMusings

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.

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