Happy Holidays

Christmas in Vancouver. Best Wishes To Everyone.

Invitation II

Zacharias Family Home

These are photos from my trip to southern Manitoba in the summer of 2008. I grew up in Winnipeg and both my parents were from the farming community around Altona and Morden. My mother's family name is Zacharias.  She and two of her sisters married Friesens. The pictures from the top are:

top - Marie Friesen (my mother), Katherine Headrick (my wife) and Helen Friesen (my aunt) in the overgrown yard of the Zacharias home.

second - what remains of the Zacharias farmhouse

third - the road leading to the farm

bottom - Helen and Marie Friesen in Helen's basement

Speed Limit

As I learn more about Photoshop I find ways of doing things better. By better I mean saving steps, preserving pixels and getting the results I want. Shooting and working in RAW is one of the best. This is something you can try in CS2. Take the saturation slider, at the bottom of the work area when you first open a RAW file, all the way to the left. Then use the sliders (and the Curves in the calibrate tab) to experiment with getting the shade of grey/black/white you want from the separate colours. It is one great way of creating a greyscale image. Remember to OPEN AS A COPY! In Mac you do this by holding down the option key and clicking the 'Open' button (which should now be the 'Open As Copy' button). I found this in the September, 2008, issue (#107) of 'Digital Photo'. It's a really helpful magazine from Britain. After converting the image to photoshop (PSD), I gave it a colour tone by going to Curves and working in the separate RGB modes until I got what I liked. I then converted it to 8 bit and saved a copy as a JPEG as well.

Luke Howard

Luke Howard was the man who gave clouds their names. There is a wonderful book, 'The Invention Of Clouds' by Richard Hamblyn, that chronicles the life of Howard, focusing on his meteorological contribution. Clouds were one of my early subjects and still are. They are also one of the primary tools of the outdoor, natural light photographer. The illustrations above are: 1) a portrait of Luke Howard  2) one of his sky sketches  3) one of my Instamatic X-15 cloudscapes (circa 1977)  4) Maple Ridge Sky (2008)  5) Cloud Over Cypress Mountain (2007) 6) Night Cloud Over Vancouver (from Stanley Park) (2007)

Geese Over English Bay

Late October, English Bay, Vancouver

Still-life

The Vancouver Art Gallery has had some incredible photography exhibits in the last year or two. One of the best was: TruthBeauty - Pictorialism and the Photograph as Art, 1845-1945 I was overwhelmed at the beauty of some of the prints and I feel deeply indebted to, and have been profoundly influenced by, the great photographers and printmakers of the past. This is an attempt to try to emulate some of what I saw. This photo also owes a note of thanks to the litho prints of Skip Smith.

Boundary Bay, B.C.

The other thing about programs like Photoshop is that you can have a hard time deciding which versions to print. Here are three versions of a shot I took at Boundary Bay, B.C.; the basic (at the bottom), a crop and tone (middle) and a more extreme crop and tone in a different colour (top).

Inuit Art (sort of)

I often went to the Winnipeg Art Gallery , when I lived in Winnipeg, and was always impressed and inspired by the carvings and sculpture of the Inuit. I learned that they created each work by interpreting what the medium, whether it was bone, tusk, stone or whatever, held inside it. It was their job to release the image. Working with photographs, whether you use traditional forms of image capturing and printing or digital programs, is the same. I was in Queen Elizabeth Park, in Vancouver, B.C., taking pictures to experiment with digital panoramic stitching, when I was struck by the image of the small dog and the tall tree. It was only two steps to the final image. Of course within those steps there were many alterations. I still have a lot to learn about Photoshop but I am enjoying the process. The first image is the way it would have come back from a basic commercial printer with little alterations. The second is my attempt to get the best cropping and exposure for printing a basic 4x6. The third is the way I interpreted the photo to get the image that I felt was waiting inside. In this case it was an elongated crop, desaturation of the colour and then a slight toning effect to try to get a look that would mimic a Victorian print. Others may have come up with different, maybe better, interpretations or not bothered taking the photo at all. But that is one of the beautiful things about art, the way it allows room for all of us.

CD Art

Something I am hoping to do more of is art for books and CD covers. This is a CD cover I created for a recording a friend did. Cliff Ridley and Danielle Marcinek volunteer their music at the facility where I program activities. He is a tenor and she is his accompanist. The text is by a west coast poet, Ken Cathers, and has a maritime theme. The music is by a contemporary composer, Christopher Ludwig and was commissioned by Cliff. The recording, entitled 'Outward Voyage', is waiting to be published. The image was one I showed recently and Cliff suggested the connection to his recording project. It felt like a nice fit.

Kodak Instamatic X-15

I mention in my biography (in the little-eye-studio website) that my first camera was a Kodak Instamatic X-15. These are some examples of the shots I took with that camera in and around Winnipeg (vine covered building is Vancouver). Because of it's limitations I had to learn what it could do well and it forced me to pay close attention to lighting and composition. I will let you be the judge of the success or failure of these early attempts. Photoshop has been used to attempt restoration where needed. On two photos, the statue of pan and the vine covered building, some small liberties have been taken that go beyond restoration. 

The X-15 was in production between 1970 and 1976. These photos were taken around that time. I would have been between 17 and 26 years old. 

Japanese woodblock prints & Jeff Wall

In my last blog I mentioned the 'Views Of Fuji'. A number of Japanese artists have done views of Fuji but probably the most famous is Hokusai (1760 - 1849). These are three of my favorite views. Japanese woodblock prints were a major influence on 19th century European artists, including the impressionists. Both the Japanese aesthetics and early photography affected the impressionist movement. Jeff Wall, a fabulous and world renowned Vancouver photographer has a photograph in the Tate Museum that is clearly a response to the top picture. It is a marvelous photo. Follow the link below to see it.   http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/jeffwall/rooms/room7.shtm

Looking For Fuji

I took a series of photographs for my "Winnipeg Adventure", hoping to create a 'photo-graphic narrative'. This photo, in its digitally altered state, reminded me of Japanese woodblock prints, especially the beautiful views of Fuji.

Iona Beach

Another of my favorite places is Iona Beach. It always gives me something special, even if it isn't always a picture. The surrounding area has changed over the years as the airport spreads but I hope the beach will remain protected. The small pockets of outlying geography, Like Iona Beach, contain  aspects of Vancouver's personality that are as important as any street or building. 

Gary Point Trees

Sometimes you go out and nothing happens. Other times the light is just right and beauty sits staring you in the face. Gary Point in Steveston, B.C. is a wonderful place. They also have a great hamburger/fish & chips stand called Pajo's. I had the everything burger. www.pajos.com/

Jericho Sailing Club, August '08 (early morning)

During the summer months the sun usually rises well before I do. When circumstances, or uncharacteristic self-discipline, find me awake before 6 a.m. it would be criminal not to take my camera out. One of my favourite places, any season and any time of day, is Vancouver's Jericho pier, near the sailing club. 

Page 2 Winnipeg Adventure

Wim Wenders

Recently my children gave me a book of photographs as a gift. It was "Pictures From The Surface Of The Earth" by the great movie director Wim Wenders. He is the director of one of my favorite movies, "Wings Of Desire".  It is a beautiful black & white film that never fails to move me with it's compassion for our failings and frailty and its respect for the human spirit. Apparently he keeps a panoramic camera with him most of the time and the results are in the book. They are beautiful to look at but are more than that. Like his films they  leave one with the feeling that Mr. Wenders truly enjoys the world and respects his fellow inhabitants. But he is not above being critical or sharing a joke. Many of the photos are from the American southwest where he shot, "Paris, Texas" and "Don't Come Knocking". "Don't Come Knocking" was especially beautiful to watch, with the richly textured landscape, architecture and light of the western desert area. Mr. Wenders sites Edward Hopper as a strong influence. There will be more on Mr. Hopper in the future.

Angela

My daughter, Angela, is the first name I'm going to name in my thank you list. There is a link to her blog in my links bar. If you get an opportunity, and you should make the opportunity, visit her blog http://www.thenewisthetrue.blogspot.com/ and see for yourself what an amazing young woman she is. Her gentle urging has gotten me this far in the virtual world. I love having lunch with her or going to the movies or talking books. She is open and enthusiastic and emotional (in the best way) and I'm going to miss her so much when she goes east to further her studies. I love her more than I can say. Here are some pictures of her in Hon's  http://www.hons.ca/hons_english.htm 

Guy Maddin

This photo is a still from Guy Maddin's "My Winnipeg". A person's relationship with the city of their birth can be a complicated one. Coming from Winnipeg brings me a particular joy. "My Winnipeg" is a good way for someone from someplace other than Winnipeg to start to get to know the city, and Guy Maddin.  To find out more about Mr. Maddin's movies, go to http://www.guymaddin.net

My family home is on Lorette Avenue. This is important to remember if you ever watch "My Winnipeg". You'll find out why we don't talk about Lorette. 

Buoys

In early summer I wandered into the life guard station storage room on Spanish Banks beach. The buoys on the bench, chained and inanimate, looked like  prisoners, forgotten by the world but blessed by a random ray of midmorning sun

Winnipeg Adventure

I went to Winnipeg this summer. I have gone every summer for the last eight years or so. This year I decided to experiment with a 'graphic novel' style chronicling of the trip. There was so much I left out, like the trip downtown to see Guy Maddin's "My Winnipeg" and walking home through the ghost town of Portage Avenue, following a trail of dry  blood drops down the sidewalk of Memorial Boulevard to Broadway. How long had those drops been there. 

This is page one of my Winnipeg adventure. 

Childhood Summer

Occasionally we are given a glimpse into the fact that being a child is still a wonderful thing. Jericho Pier, Vancouver. Summer of '08.

Invitation

For anyone who missed it on my website, here is the invitation to my first show at Cuppa Joe's Coffee bar on 4th Avenue, just west of Alma Street, in Vancouver, B.C.

I hope to see you there.