Photo Idea

Driving home from work today through the snowy streets I thought of a new project I would like to work on. The photographs would be a series of portraits of my father, the photographs would be taken from now to the end of his life. I watched a fascinating documentary on the wonderful photographer Sally Mann, the doc reminded me of the importance of family and the powerful effect photography can have on those relationships. I want to share this photographic experience with my father, I will talk to him about it this week.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0483836/

Think I might call the series "My Father"

Latest Stuff

Been busy over the last weeks developing all my 2009 8x10 white background images along with some 5x7 stuff from 2007. Last week I also did a ton of contact sheets along with some 11x14 RC prints. I have to finish making the contacts in the coming days and also print all the better images on 11x14 RC paper. I want to make a selection from the 11x14s for my VAAA show of 2011. I have been taping the photos to the wall and trying different combinations to see what works best.

I also want to make a selection of the best 2007 and 2009 sex worker white background images for a submission to a photographic gallery in British Columbia. The hope is that I can get my first one man show, I have talked to the owner of the gallery and there is a chance it might happen. I have to make a selection of fiber exhibition prints for him to examine and if he likes them then the one man show would be a go.

I so want to get the work seen on a larger scale. The group show I have coming at the VAAA will only allow me about 8 large prints, if I get the one man show in BC I would have more photographs on the walls which would allow me to tell a bigger more complete story.

Over the coming month or so I should be posting more work here on the blog along with updating the webpage.

I also recently had a fun photo outing with a my friend Rob. I took my Leica's and shot some Tri-x at an abandoned school and at a graveyard. It was fun and fast shooting with the Leica's, I used 3 bodies and 3 lens, a 21mm a 28mm and a 50mm. If any of this 35mm stuff turns out I will post it on the blog. I need to become more fluent with these cameras, there is a real rhythm and beauty you can get out of shooting 35mm that is hard to capture with other formats.

Joy, Werner Bischof Photograph

I read a story about this photograph yesterday, what struck me about the story was how they described the image, they called it an image of "Hope". I think that pretty well nails it, it is a photo of youthful joy, of optimism, of beauty, it allows the viewer to enjoy the past and feel hope for the future.

My photographs are often to gloom and doom in nature, I must make an effort to take photographs that communicate hope, joy and beauty.

Mr Bichof died a few days after making this photograph, he would be happy to know I am sure that he left us all with a bit of hope.

Quote: Bruce Lee

"Man, he is contantly growing and when he is bound by a set pattern of ideas or way of doing things, that's when he stops growing."

Quote: Ann Noggle (Photographer)

Speaking about self portraiture/portraiture:

"I don't try for expression, I try for feeling, and the expression follows... expression comes from our thoughts which are the breeding grounds for how we look, it's the subtle things, like the play of emotions inside your head, that reflect in your face."

Quote: Eugene Richards

Speaking about the impact photography has and what photographs can do:

"....that it provides a record of history, that photographs can prompt dialogue. What we can do as photographers is to carry viewers into the lives of others - the life of an African villager or the a drug addict or a new mother - so hopefully viewers will be more understanding and sympathetic."

Need To Make Photographs

Feel a hunger to make photographs a deep need that I cannot satisfy. I am in Canada stuck working my regular job, I need the money but time is passing and the photos are not being made. It is frustrating to not be able to chase down the images that dance in my mind.

I have to be happy with printing last years work but I want to move on to new and exciting ideas. Wish I had the money so I could just go make photographs and forget everything else. The minutes are ticking by and I am not using them as well as I should be.

Quotes: Diane Arbus

"A whore I once knew showed me a photo album of Instamatic color pictures she'd taken of guys she'd piked up. I don't mean kissing ones. Just guys sitting on beds in motel rooms. I remember one of a man in a bra. He was just a man, the most ordinary, milktoast sort of man, and he had just tried on a bra. Like anybody would try on a bra, like anybody would try on on what the other person had that he didn't have. It was heartbreaking. It was a really beautiful photograph."

"One of the extcitements of strobe at one time was that you were essentially blind at the moment you took the picture. I mean it alters the light enormously and reveals things you don't see."

"What is thrilling to me about what's called technique - I hate to call it that because it sounds like something up your sleeve - but what moves me about it is that it comes from some mysterious deep place. I mean it can have something to do with the paper and the developer and all that stuff, but it comes mostly from some very deep choices somebody has made that take a long time and keep haunting them."

Quote: Edward Steichen

"The art of photography is a dynamic process which gives shape to ideas and explains man to man."

Quote: Vincent Van Gogh

Speaking of the ultimate truth he was searching for in art.Van Gogh said that art was

" Greater and higher than our own adroitness or accomplishments or knowledge."

This belief gave him a deep modesty, and he often signed his painting simply "Vincent"