Yup well a while back Coaxial and I went to The Frog and had a few beers… well truth be told we closed the place out. Once we were ejected from said bar we decided that because we were the better part of completely loaded, we should go and take random night time photos. All hand held of course because we didn’t plan this or anything so neither of us had anything that even looked like a tripod.  I loaded up the Canon EOS 3 with some crazy old (circa 2003) Fuji 1600 that I had kicking about, and together with the f/1.2 God lens I was able to do a decent job at this drunkin night time photo wandering. I love the grain of the 1600! It is so authentically gritty :)

So yesterday after a band practice – that I am not going to talk about – I was drug out to the Media Club to see this UK band called Frightened Rabbit and I am glad for it. COMPLETE AND UTTER GENIUS!! I had given one of their albums a spin the other day on Coaxial’s recommendation, but I didn’t make the connection that the band that I was listening to was the same band we were seeing, until part way though the first song. Also this was the first show that I had seen at the Media Club and while it as packed I was still standing ten feet from the stage for a wicked show, which makes it my kind of venue :)

In other news, I am having a really hard time visualizing what I am going to do for my “Scenes From A Movie” entry. For those that are not in the know, Stephanie had this awesome idea. A group of us pulled the names of a bunch of awesome movie directors from a hat with the idea that we take a photo in the style of the director. I pulled Akira Kurasawa and Stanley Kubrick out of the hat. Akira Kurasawa I didn’t even know who he was until I pulled his name.  I know of his work, I just didn’t realize that it was his. The only Kubrick movie I have ever seen was The Shining and that was a long time ago.

I have noticed a couple of themes that are prevalent with both directors. I have noticed that Kubrick loves the wide lenses! Both A Clockwork Orange & 2001 A Space Odyssey has scenes that heavily used extremely wide angle lenses, nearly fish eye in some cases. I may use something like that in my Kubrick photo. Kurasawa was a genius with framing and such.  There are a lot of scenes in The Seven Samurai that are shoot throughs (shooting with an object in the foreground that you shoot through to the actual scene beyond) as well as other fun framing so I may experiment with that. He also painted his story boards, so experimenting with that may be interesting. All said and done I have nothing really.  I will watch more movies and see what comes of it I guess.

Today was also a hang out at VGH day so I wandered about and took some photos.

This is my absolute favorite graffiti in all of Vancouver! And I guess it would fall in to the category of mural rather then graffiti but I don’t care I like it! :)

On a walk about, I found this behind a hotel (I don’t remember which one) on West Hastings Street. I like it because it looks like someone actually hand painted it on the wall & in two colours even!

Snapped this in a Gastown back alley last week I love old brick.

So a while back I found a bunch of alleys and such that backed onto some train yards. Nothing but rows and rows of empty lumber cars.

Last week when i was walking to the Lab I found this awesome cross walk. I had to wait for nearly 10 minuets to get a break in the traffic to take this photo but i think it was worth it.

Last Sunday after a wonderful breakfast, Miranda and I went to a Retro Market at the Croatian Cultural Center and I discovered this awesome find. It is a Mamiya DSX 1000 35mm SLR camera with a nice 55mm f/1.8 lens.  The camera body is in remarkably good shape for a model that could be as much as 34 years old. The accessories and hot shoe protectors are all in place and there are no scratches or dents to be found on it. I have loaded up some film and we will see how that all works out!

These are some select shots from my first attempt at shooting some home spooled rolls of redscale film.  Redscale, for those that are not in the know, is when you shoot your film with the wrong side out. So instead of shooting the emulation side toward the subject like normal, you flip it over and shoot through the film backing.  You need to shoot your film about 2 stops over (for example ISO 400 film then becomes ISO 100 or another example is ISO 100 film would need to be shot at ISO 25) to compensate for the light lost getting though this backing. You can read about it here.  I have made up a few more rolls to shoot in the coming weeks. In fact I am going to try some different types of film in order to find the best one to use.

These shots are from an old (possibly expired) roll of Kodak Gold 200, but I have made up a roll of Kodak Portra, as well as buying some crap Kodak & Fuji 400.  It is super easy to package up yourself, here are some instructions.  However Instead of ruining a roll to repackage it as they suggest I would suggest unraveling the roll in a dark bag/room, then flipping it over, and reattaching it. I personally use double sided tape but any type of scotch tape will do nicely.  doing it this way the DX coding on the film canister matches what you are shooting (although you have to manually set the ISO anyway, but at least your auto camera will know how many exposures you are supposed to have)

If you don’t have a dark bag aka: changing bag and you dabble in this film mod thing often I would recommend getting one.  They are super cheap and incredibly useful. Get a small one that you can carry with you if needed.

One other word of advice, if you are shooting with an auto advancing camera, I would also suggest stop and manually rewind your roll on the second last photo, so there is less of a chance of a jam when you do rewind the film.  As you would no doubt notice when you make the film it can require a bit of wiggling to get the film to start going back in to the canister and unless your camera probably isn’t going to be good at wiggling if you advance past your tape job.

I have decided to take up painting again. I even bought a new easel being that I wore my last one out. That takes some heavy use to do that really. :) I know you are all saying to yourself, again? When did you start/stop painting to begin with. Well way back when around the same time that I started blogging. I would spend my nights painting and being creative. I will dig out some of my fav’s and post some photos maybe. I haven’t looked in a long time so I may decide that they are all really awful and not to be shared with the Internet. I had this rad little corner in the kitchen of my old apartment that was filled with random messy artistic pursuits. I even used it as the backdrop for a short off the cuff film once. Let me dig that out some time.

I am also going to start writing again. Now I really know what you are saying right now. “hey I read your blog and there is little that is going on here that could be considered coherent writing.”  I agree with you on that one, however, I have to say in my defense that most of this blog is really first draft material and you are all really lucky if it was even proof read before that publish button was pressed. I will dig up some of my more polished works and see what is presentable for the 3 or 4 of you that skim my blog that I hence forth consider to be the masses. I sorta miss the days when I was always doing random artistic things all the time but being that I am crazy manic about some things I sorta dropped all of that stuff to put all my energies into photography.  I stopped watching, thinking about, or even thinking about thinking about film making thus I will describe my self as a former indie film maker.

I would link to this event but for the life of me i can not find anything about this online.  so this is all the info that I have because it is all the info that is on the flyer.

Vancouver Camera Swap Meet
November 2nd 2008 at the Croatian Cultural Center
3250 Commercial Drive Vancouver BC
Antique, Vintage, Digital, and Optics.
Show time 9:30am to 4:00pm
Admission $4.00 p/p
Call (604) 681-8419

I woke up this morning and as always I ran over to window and I looked up towards the mountains. Only today I can see a whole lot of fresh new white stuff that wasn’t there before.
Look I took a photo of the lions.

Snowboard season is coming!!!!

I have gotten all the film back from our World Toy Camera Day Granville street walk about, and I am posting some highlights of the day. I shot with a large variety of cameras like the Diana+, Pentacon Six TL, Canon Film, Sprocket Holga, and Polaroid Land Camera, and other people were as equally armed with plastic crappy cameras.

Started with some Food @ The Templeton – Canon EOS3

Found some cleaning Supplies – Canon EOS 3

Then we found some camera Supplies – Canon EOS 3

Funny thing is we actually did stop for camera supplies here – Sprocket Holga

Wandered around Granville Street – Sprocket Holga

All the gear.  This was just for 6 of us :)
This photo is from Kimli. You can click on it and it has notes.

Some of the Peeps (m is missing here) – Pentacon Six TL, Canon EOS 3 with Fuji Velvia Cross Processed

And after wandering till the light was bad for our Holgas we went to the Black Frog for a Pint

You can see the rest of the days photos on flickr.

Today I received an email from Dennis at Beau Photo to say that I will be showing at The Plastic Photographer – Low Tech Photo Show.  You may recall a post about my contest entry about a week or so ago. Well it would seem that The Jerk is in.  So here are details about the show and I hope to see everyone down there for the opening reception November 6th.

Plastic Photographer – Low tech Show & Contest

Nov 7-23 2008
211A Artist Run Centre
Opening Reception Thursday November 6th 7-10Pm
221A East Georgia Street Vancouver, BC V6A 1Z6

Yes this Saturday October 18th 2008 is World Toy Camera Day!! We should all do our best to fire off as much film as we can in a plastic/toy/low-fi camera photo frenzy.  I have the Saturday (as it stands currently) free even, which is not something that happens often!!

So I say load up on a variety of 120 films and grab your favorite plastic/toy/crap camera and join us to rock the Low-Fi.  Where to join us you ask?  Well the consensus is to start under the Granville bridge near Beach ave and meander northish towards the Black Frog for beers and good eats!

If you are interested in joining us then meet us down right at the water here for 2:30pm. If you don’t currently have means to rock the low-fi you can go to Beau Photo and pick up some sort of Holga or a Diana+ for cheap!!

Jebus Loves Film!

People keep asking me about the gear I use, so I thought I would show what my day-to-day walk about camera bag consists of. That and I just sewed on some nifty patches and I want to show them off!!

• The Camera bag is the Crumpler Textbook Point with a large Photo bucket inside.  I can fit all this and a Macbook in this bag. Bloody Brilliant Really!
  The Camera is the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II – My favorite camera! I love everything about this camera with no exceptions.  I don’t care the it is heavy, the photos I can take make it worth it to carrying around.
• The Lenses are the Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L USM for all my random wide stuff, and the Canon EF 50mm f / 1.2L USM which I often refer to this as one of my god lenses. (another god lens is the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM) I rarely am not shooting with this lens, for the 50mm is ideal and the 1.2 is unbelevable really. I also carry around a 12mm Extension tube to use for random macro shots.
• The light meter is My Sekonic L-578DR. It is a brilliant light meter and when coupled with the Grey card exposures tend to be bang on!
• The other items in the bag are headphones for the iPhone, flash cards, extra batteries for the mark II,  Moo/business cards lens cloths, and an electronic cable release.
• I also carry around a small plastic garbage bag just in case there is a ridiculous downpour while I am out and about. I can wrap up all my non-waterproof things into this or use it to sit on/haul other crap around if needed as well.

There you have it, my bag in all its naked glory!  Oh and ask me for a Moo card the next time you see me!

We invited people over for thanksgiving, it was a regular party with all the usual party type things then a photo shoot broke out.  It is neat to have a photo studio in ones party area! Facebook Profile photos for everyone!!

We went to see a couple of films at VIFF this week. First we went to see Cuba. Great doc that was filled with interviews and the like with some of the people that were involved in the revolution. There was some footage from Castro and other things like that but the bulk of the footage was interviews with the everyday run of the mill people, people like the court stenographer during Castro’s trial and other people that had a small part that turned out to be history changing. The thing that I took from this film was that one person can change the course of history. One small seemingly insignificant decision is all it takes to change the destiny of a nation, and the entire world for that matter. An example was when Castro was caught after the failed attack on the military armory. He was being escorted to jail by a man (I don’t remember the man’s name) and they were stopped by a corrupt policeman that wanted to “escort” Castro to jail, meaning he wanted to kill him. While it was the norm for this to happen and most of the corrupt police would have gladly done so this man insisted that Castro was to stand trial and refused the corrupt man’s request. The single decision of one man changed the course of history. The film was filled with other examples of single acts that looking back changed the course of history but seemed small and insignificant at the time.

The second was a film (well three shorts actually) called Tokyo. Crazy and absurd movies of complete brilliance. I can not and will not even attempt to describe them. You must see it. If it isn’t playing at the fest again to try and rent it/watch it online/download it. Pure awesome.

I have been going out of my way the last 4 or 5 years to avoid all thing to do with indie film and the like. Mostly because I will get the itch and drop everything and make crazy films again. All good except crazy films don’t pay rent, and I just doubled my rent I hope that I can do something about that this year or next. It is all about the time and I have little of it.