Back in October, the fine folks behind Supercreative, a contest that grants photographers with a hard working collective of capture, prop, location, and production specialists, awarded me one of their production extravaganzas. My winning creative pitch was based on recreating a night with a lousy 80’s rock band, which stemmed from my high school days in rural Ontario. Yes I was in a band in high school, and no, I never wore a cut-off mesh tank top.
We booked ourselves into the legendary 80’s rock club ‘The Big Bop’, which served as our principal location for the day, and we utilized every square foot of the sprawling venue. To my surprise, the club shut down for good last month, and these photos now help document, in a way, one of the last un-gentrified pockets of the Toronto concert scene.
Unfortunately, I was very busy shooting my big Canadian Tourism job when it came time to produce the shoot, and it just didn’t materialize into the creative gem that I had originally envisioned. A lot of the production elements that I initially conceived of never fully materialized as I hoped they would, and to make matters worse, my agent at the time dropped a bomb, notifying me the morning of the shoot that she was shutting down her business. Needless to say, the creative struggle I was having only got worse when it came time to shoot.
But this, in many ways, is indicative of the struggles that the job of making & taking photos can present. Some jobs go so very well, and others, well, they never really launch properly; they just sort of fizzle on the launching pad. Often, a job can attract some degree of negativity, and it’s up to you as a photographer to access how to handle the adversity, and get things spinning quickly in your favour.
Anyway, I think I managed some nice shots out of the opportunity in the end. Many thanks to all involved, and who worked hard and donated what they could in getting this creative produced.
Back in October, I got a call from my friends Geoff Teehan & Jon Lax, Creative Partners of the energetic Toronto agency teehan+lax, asking if I’d be interested in shooting their Holiday card again.
As for 2009, they were hoping to raise the bar. So I got thinking over the top, and what immediately came to mind, for some reason, were Karate Dojo’s. Have you seen the size and quantity of Karate trophies at your local Karate Dojo? Biggest trophies, ever.
So I thought about putting Geoff & Jon in a sea of Karate trophies, along with some sort of line like “We kicked ass in ‘09″. That’s where we started, and this is where we ended:
I think the copy they came up with was really fun, and look forward to doing another next year…with Monster Trucks, perhaps.
There’s a new photography site on the block, and it’s a graceful and welcome addition to the online photo world. The Photography Post will offer “the most current discussions on the state of photography“, as well as offering a lot of fresh feeds, scintillating interviews, and some unique buys.
One of it’s founders, photographer and blogster Rachel Hulin, contacted me a few weeks back asking if I’d like to be a part of their new site launch by participating in their ‘Question of the Day’ feature. I gladly agreed to it, and got to answering their inaugural question: “What’s your standout image from 2010?”
A quick update on my Agency Art post a few weeks back. The back-lit piece is done, and can be seen below. Many thanks to Stephen Jurisic and his production staff at John St. for all their work on this little project.
It’s not often that I crop my work. I like to shoot full frame, and utilize everything that the lens has to offer. I think I could trace this back to some of the printing snobbery I’d run across at my local printers, back when I was starting out. A lot of the big gun shooters would include the rebates in their prints, and editors really ate it up. It was around that time that I really fell for those two little teeth marks in my Hasselblad contact sheets & film, and started noticing full frame appreciation in magazines like The New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine.
However, as nice as a full frame shot with rebate is, a close second is a nice crop by a talented Designer.
A few months back, Jen Clark, a Designer at Hambly & Wooley (an award winning design firm here in Toronto), gave me a ring to shoot local chefs for a piece in an upcoming issue of Toronto Magazine. It was a fun piece to shoot (chefs, in general, are the most hospitable people to photograph), and I just received the issue the other day, and I must say that I love the crop applied to the opening shot.
Here is the origional shot:
And here is the crop she applied…
…and how it appears in the magazine:
To help cure your curiosity, this is Chef David Garcelon of the Fairmont Royal York, and he’s a Bee Keeper. So dedicated is Chef Garcelon to his food, he actually has a Bee Hive colony on the roof of the Fairmont (that’s the 41 floor RBC Plaza behind him, and each of its windows is coated with a layer of 24 karat (100%) gold).
Another great Toronto chef I photographed for this piece was David Chrystian of Le Germain Hotel’s Victor Restaurant. David’s famous for his flavourful chicken dishes, so I asked him if we could photograph him with one of his heritage breed hens in the hotel’s remarkable lobby. He said it wouldn’t be a problem, but we’d have to shoot at 6 AM before the hotel patrons left for their morning meetings. So we got there at 5 AM, woke-up our Rode Island Red Hen, and got some funny looks from a few limo drivers waiting for their customers.
Over the last few years, with the emergence of Adbase and other list services, Ad Agencies have been bombarded by email and direct mail blasts from thousands of photographers. I’m just as guilty as the rest of them (I do, however, edit my lists thoroughly), but I’ve seen it as a necessary evil to help maintain my profile amongst creatives. So during the last year, I’ve been looking at new ways to reach agency creatives.
About a year ago, my friend Tory Osler at Bijou Editorial, called me asking if I’d be interested in hanging some of my photos in her newly renovated editing suite. I showed her some work from my County Fair series, and she really connected with the demolition derby shots. We selected three from the series, and settled on printing them as large as possible (40″ x 40″, framed in white maple).
The series was up for almost a year, when I got an email from my friend Anne Maureen Mckeating at Taxi, after seeing the prints at Bijou, asking if she could put them up at her agency. That would work out well, as Tory was hoping to get a new series of mine up at Bijou.
Tory and I decided on three pieces from my ‘A Moment Before‘ series to hang at Bijou, and switched them up with the ‘County Fair’ pieces.
Here are some shots from the installations at Bijou and Taxi.
'Deer Hunt - Roberts Lake' from the series 'A Moment Before' at Bijou Editorial
'Deer Hunt - Roberts Lake' from the series 'A Moment Before' at Bijou Editorial
'Line 37, Concession 8 - Caledon, Ontario' and '1278 Olde Base Line Road - Inglewood, Ontario' from the series 'A Moment Before' at Bijou Editorial
'Demolition Derby 01' at Taxi
'Demolition Derby 01' at Taxi
'Demolition Derby 03' at Taxi
After the ‘A Moment Before’ series had been up for a few months at Bijou, it caught the eye of Stephen Jurisic, a Creative Director at John St. He asked if I’d be interested in printing the photo ‘Deer Hunt – Roberts Lake’, on back-lit film and hanging it in an existing back-lit space in their office. I’ve always wanted to print on back-lit film, so I signed on right away. Here’s the back-lit space as it sits now (I’ll post installation photos once it’s in):
I think getting my project work up in the Agency halls has been a successful undertaking thus far, and will help expose my work to some of the Art Directors I hope to work with in the New Year.
My final leg of this epic summer job was heading back to Québec, and into the beautiful Eastern Townships. As I mentioned in my previous post on Québec, I went to Bishop’s University, which is in the heart of the Townships. I have fond memories of the area, and made lifelong friends while living and studying there, so it was a real treat to profile the beautiful countryside that surrounded the University area.
First up was a trip to the city of Sherbrooke, where we joined-up with the Traces et Souvenances theatrical production tour.
I think my favorite clip that I shot that’s used in this story is at 0:04 -- a nice portrait of actor Lysanne Gallant.
A quick drive brought us over to Arbre Sutton, an exhilarating high ropes course.
Favorite clip: 0:12 -- I really like the movement of the woman coming into this shot, and the fading-in of the title treatment.
Next up is a profile on the small farming community of Compton.
Favorite clip: 0:50 -- I loved this old apple sorting machine.
Did you know that wine is grown in Québec? It’s true, and you can find it exploding along the Brome-Missisquoi wine route.
Favorite clip: 0:06 -- I really liked using my new Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L lens, and here’s another great example of a little rack focus at a really low aperture setting.
The Eastern Townships also boasts one of the most prolific Duck Festivals in Lac-Brome.
Favorite clip: 0:14 -- I like the series of clips here showing this adventurous cook whipping up a Duck crêpe.
One of the most exhilarating stories we did was profiling The Orford Express, which is a tourist train that sweeps through the countryside between Sherbrooke, Magog and Eastman.
Favorite clip: 0:01 -- that’s me, at the front of the train, wind in my hair, “I’m the king of the worrrld!”.
The last story we did on this epic journey was profiling the Montreal Botanical Garden.
Favorite clip: 1:13 -- the Mark II’s ability really flexes in this little clip.
It was an anticlimactic finish to the job, but the relief was huge, for sure. I met hundreds of great Canadians, and got a real lesson on how big and proud Canada really is. Although the videos may not be flashy or overly exciting, they do show a lot of what Canada has to offer, and it was such a great exercise to get acquainted and comfortable shooting video with the Canon Mark II. I’m looking forward to translating that new knowledge into bigger projects in 2010.
