Tagged !

I got tagged by Janina over at ( jm.n) and I am supposed to come up with eight things about myself, the picture posted of myself is when I was visiting Vancouver's China town this past summer.

1. I grew up and lived most of my life on Vancouver Island , our family( Mom and Dad, two brothers and a sister ) lived in Metchosin ( one of my favourite places on earth ) and Sooke, later we lived in Langford.

2. In high school I was always good at art, I regularly got A's and B's and shop classes too came easy to me also , I was terrible at English, my grade 12 English teacher said she passed by by the skin of my teach.

3. I started my interest in photography when I was about 15, before that I wanted to me a musician, but was terrible at playing the guitar.

4. I got my first newspaper job when I was 18 years old, I had just graduated from high school ( grade 12 ), beside taking pictures for the weekly paper, I had to deliver papers to drop boxes in stores, clean the office, make coffee, help with page layouts.

5. I moved to Brampton Ontario when I was 21, to start my first job on a daily newspaper, I had been never further east than the Province of Alberta in Canada, I drove the 5000 km in a 1973 Volvo loaded down with all of my worldly possessions.

6. I came back to B.C. after 4 1/2 years in Ontario, I missed the mountains. I applied for a photographer's job at the Kelowna Daily Courier where I have been ever since, during these years I have won numerous awards, including the Canadian Press 'News' picture of the year award in 2004 for coverage of wild fires that destroyed 234 homes.

7. I am an avid wood worker, I have built a quite lot of the furniture in my home, pretty well my complete office furniture, my computer desk, printer stand, shelves for CDs, light box stand, print paper holder. Mostly I used my Dad's work shop, but recently I acquired wood working tools from y friends who moved to Vancouver.

8. I have never been married, have no kids and live alone, I have my friends, family and neighbour's cats, to keep my company.

I don't know anyone else I can tag so I will leave it at that.

Follow Your Own Path

Andrew over at Tao of Photography left me this nice response to my post ( Thanks Andrew ! ) about the Whys of the View Camera:

The web and blogging at its best! A wonderful, thoughtful essay on the artistic path of a great artist, for all to enjoy. Just a superb piece. I can well resonate with your view that "camera helps me to slow down". Though I never used a view camera (indeed, a photographer friend of mine who *does* is likely to talk me into doing precisely that), I often lament the "old" days (even with my film 35 mm), when everything was "slower". I would not go so far as to say that something deep has been lost in the modern world of instant digital review (though something clearly has), but speaking as a devout practitioner of (and convert to) the "digital" version of photography, I find I must discipline myself to always "slow down" when behind the camera. I never had to do that with film.

Thanks again for that lovely post. It is a pleasure reading about other artist's life's trajectories, and what their own trajectories have taught them.

Your words made me think how we should follow our own paths what ever that may be, we can take a little something from here or there and apply it to our own situation, it then gives us a different perspective on the world around us, and transforms how we see our own world through our camera lens ( since this is a photography blog ) or for that matter with a paint brush, pencil, chisel if you are a sculptor or what ever. I think if one's main camera is a digital camera many of the though processes that are inherent with the view camera can by translated to the digital or any other type of camera. I think one of the things about the recent whirl wind advances in photographic technology is that there has been not much time to take a breather and reflect on how this technology has changed the way we interpret the world, I do think it's good to slow down, every once and a while, not that you will miss pictures possibilities ! but to just take the time and ask is this the very best I can do ?

The picture posted was taken with my 4 x 5 view camera and a 120mm lens while visiting Saturna Island in October of 2005.

Whys of the View Camera

Last week at Behind the Lens blog, George Barr posted an article , titled "Is the View Camera Dead ?" I responded to his post and he asked if I would write a piece on what the view camera does for me, here is my response:

I have been shooting pictures with various cameras of one format or another since I was teenager, I started my first newspaper job at the Goldstream Gazette on Vancouver island where I grew up when I was 18 years old, in those days I was using a 35mm Nikon F and later F2's cameras. For the past 24 years I have been employed by the Kelowna Daily Courier in B.C.'s Okanagan Valley , these day I shoot all digital with the Nikon D2Hs which I love using. I have always enjoyed taking pictures on my time off for my own personal work, and in the early years of my career I shot Kodachrome with my Nikons. My interest in view cameras started more than 30 years years ago when I bought an old view camera at an antique shop in Victoria, B.C. it was rickety old contraption on its spindly tripod with a draw string shutter along with wooden film holders that leaked light like sieve, I didn't use it all that much, but I did get the film holders sealed and cut down some 5 x 7 film and made a few exposures just to see what the pictures looked like, I eventually sold it but kept the lens. Its wasn't till about 8 years later around 1985 when I walked into my local camera store in Kelowna, B.C. and spied this beautiful wooden modern day view camera on display , the camera was a Tachihara 4 x 5 wood field camera ( I now have a newer version ) it came with a 150mm Schneider lens, so I ended up buying the camera, little did I know at the time what I had got myself into.

I soon discovered that the view camera was heavy and bulky, ( especially with film holders and tripod to carry ) also the lens had no real depth of field. I quietly put the camera away for a year or so. A year later I decided to tackle the camera once again , I traded in the 150mm lens that came with the camera for a 120 mm lens which was more like a 35mm lens on a 35mm film camera, one of my favourite all time lenses . I persevered and became comfortable with using the view camera and learned how to process black and white sheet film plus learned the zone system. By 1990 or so, I was fully immersed and had felt I could produce images with confidence with my big box camera.

More than twenty years later my artistic vision has matured and feel comfortable with my technical technique in order to produce pictures from the view camera. When I am out photographing with my camera along a hiking trail for example, I can get some pretty strange looks from people who may have never seen such a camera, most people are curious and think its really old and some people like to know why I use such a camera, if I had to give a short answer I would have to say because I really enjoy using it and its a lot fun. I find that the camera helps me to slow down and think more about the picture at hand, that is not to say that I have lost picture possibilities here and there due to the fact that I did not get the camera set up in time, being on a tripod and all but I am not at all concerned because at the end of the day I always seem to come up with photographs that I am happy with. When I am out in some of the beautiful national and provincial parks in Western Canada I like to take the time to contemplate my surrounds between taking pictures, and quite often but not always, I have found other picture possibilities in the very area where I am set up. I also like the 8 x 10 frame format, I like the extra depth I get from my horizontal landscape images and I like to frame my subjects full frame with little or no cropping in the final print. My view cameras are challenging but rewarding to use and have given me years of enjoyment which has resulted in many fine photographs, which can be seen at my website

The above picture was taken by my friend, documentary photographer, Wendell Phillips while hiking in Canada's Glacier National Park a few years ago.

Philosophical Printing

Lately I have been in the 'printing mode' and I am in the midst of printing up images from 2005, I admit I am way behind on my printing, which is for my portfolio, but my finances have unfortunately been deferred to other day to day living expenses, like keeping my car repaired, paying the bills, etc . Beside me in my print room as I write this, I have a stack of Museo Max paper waiting to receive an image, an Epson 4800 printer, waiting to print out the images and DVD's and extra hard drives with the saved images. Since I have switched over to digital printing I have been using mostly fine art matte papers, which I have surprisingly really have enjoyed using, like Sommerset Velvet, Ultrasmooth and now Museo Max, I have some Silver Rag being sent to me to try out , I will see what comes of it.

Getting into the philosophical thoughts on printing, I have always enjoyed the art of print making, although the creative road to make the print is fun, I think its the conclusion that I thoroughly enjoy, the moment when the print comes out the printer or when a the room lights are turned on after the print is in the fixer while working in the darkroom. This when I see my print for the first time, there is a sense of satisfaction when I feel that all the stars have lined up and there would be my hopeful vision before me, the image that I had first seen in the camera's view finder, then nurtured along through the development stage, ( in my case developing film ) then scanned and enhanced then printed.

Its a feeling I have not lost since I have switched over from my darkroom made prints to digital printing, I love making pictures. I know some critics of digital printing will say that each and every print is machine made , each copy being exactly the same as the one before , which is true, but since I'm the captain of this ship, I try and make each print from the same file or negative a little different, when I am finished with my major scan work and enhancements including spotting I never quite finish the image off totally I try and leave a little bit of enhancement to do for the final print, so for example when I go make a print for someone down the road, they get my individual attention for that specific print, there may not be a big difference from print to print, but there is a subtle difference, just as I would have done in the darkroom, that is to make my photographs as human as possible.

The picture posted is one of my images from 2005 that I am printing, it was shot at East Sooke Park on B.C.'s Vancouver Island with my 4 x 5 view camera and a 120mm lens.

Galiano Island

This image is featured in today's issue of Canada's National Newspaper, Tha National Post. It can be found on page B8 & B9 of the Arts & Life Section. I made the image with my 4 x 5 view camera and a 120mm lens on a cloudy rainy day on Galiano Island's north end.

The Old Car Hood

Nothing ever gets thrown out at my uncle's place in Metchosin on Vancouver Island where this old car hood serves as a shelter of sorts to protect old gears and other metal items from the natural elements. This images is featured in my current show at the Art Ark and was taken a year or so ago, I used my 4 x 5 view camera with a 120mm lens mounted, loaded with Tri-x film.

The Work Bench

This is image is featured in my current show at the Art Ark, called 'Shadow and Light', I made the image last year in the work shop of my uncle's place in Metchosin on Vancouver Island. The metal chunks and bolts was on his work bench which I thought would make an interesting image, I played around and moved a few of the metal chunks around, just so they would catch the light nicely, the light for the image came from a window off to one side. I also played around with the composition for a bit till I found something that pleased me which is what you see here. I made the image with my 4 x 5 view camera, on a tripod of course with the 120mm lens, ( Tri-x film ) . The print at the gallery is 16 x 20 inches in size and the bolts and metal pieces look quite a bit bigger than they really are.

Shadow and Light

I have a spotlight show called 'Shadow and Light' that runs from September 15th to the 27th at the Art Art Gallery in Kelowna, B.C. where my mechanical still life series are being featured along with metal work sculpture artist, Brent Bukowski

Today's featured picture is the guts of an old truck engine being rebuilt at a garage that was once an old boat repair building in Gibson's B.C. on the Sunshine Coast that I made in June 0f 2006. The image was taken with my 4 x 5 view camera and a 120mm lens.