Cory Street Portraits - #sayhelloottawa

Cory

Walking down Bank St. and who do I see walking down Gladstone a guy with a guitar, just playing away walking. His name is Cory @wornro a musician and an guy just totally into his music, love it. We went to one of my fav pieces of wall art along Bank beside the Staples, he jammed, I photographed, we talked a great experience and it all started with just a hello. 

Check Out Cory’s profile @wornro and his Spotify page.  Awesome street art background by @domlasoul and @thehigherups

I love the few fleeting minutes spent together when photographing these Street Portraits, connecting through photography at 1/200 of a second.  I hope you will enjoy these images too and get inspired to say hello to someone you don’t know. 

Also if you are walking down Bank keeps your eyes open for some #sayhelloottawa signage!!

Wheat Paste

Street Art is one of my favourite things to look at, I love using it as backgrounds for my images and I really enjoy studying it. However, I have never considered doing Street Art myself, until now. After researching art for my MA I like the idea of showing in a gallery and the process interests me but I like the fringe adventurous side to Street Art. So I am going to be documenting my process starting with creating your own wheat paste.

how to

So this is just glue but it is made out of some very basic household items. If you cook it is like making a roux. The flour thickens to make the base and the sugar adds more stickiness, the salt is added as a stabilizer and is recommended for working with in colder climates.


Fig 1. Flour, Salt, and Sugar for Wheat Paste

Fig 2. Finished Wheat Paste

The Wheat Paste Mix:

  1. Bring 3 cups of water to a boil.

  2. Meanwhile add 1/4 cup of flour to 3/4 cup water, mix well.

  3. Add the flour and water to the boiling water and stir well for 3 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and immediately add 1/2 cup sugar, stir well.

  5. Add 1 Tbsp of Salt, stir well.

  6. Let cool and your are ready to go.

This will give you about a quart (32oz), this gave me enough to put up a 72” by 72” poster with a little left over. The image was printed on bond paper on four separate panels to get the size I wanted. I am going back to the image to see how it is holding up.

When applying the glue work quick as it dries quick, then apply a layer of glue to the top of the poster to help seal and protect it. This stuff is very sticky quite amazing for flour, sugar, water and salt.

Here is a video of my first attempt.

Fascinated by Street Art I decided to try it myself. I like the idea of using images of people from my Street Portrait series perhaps, reposting them back into the neighborhoods​ I am photographing in. Regardless here is my first attempt of putting a piece up and with some homemade wheat paste. ​

Head To Rest

Dalton - Out Of Darkness

A concern of mine while shooting with the 8x10 in studio was that even though I was using a Speedotron 2401 pack at full power I was only getting f/64.

Based on my subject distance, and the focal length, I figured out that I only had a 6” window of focus. So I spent my time constantly checking focus as the subjects kept moving, which is fine with an autofocus camera but not so good with a view camera, especially as you have to stop down the lens and load a film holder before you shoot.

After reviewing the images most were in focus but I still had some concerns so I started researching photographer’s head rests, to help keep the subject’s head in place. Surprisingly, ha ha, these items are not readily available at your local camera store anymore, so I decided to build one of my own. Opted for the non-screw or pincher type and opted instead for more of a head rest. For the base and support I decided on using a studio stand, a sandbag, and a Manfrotto Lite-Tite to attach the head rest to the stand. The Lite-Tite would give me the angle I wanted and the ability to adjust it if needed.

Fig 1 - Parts For Head Rest plus Manfrotto Lite-Tite

Fig 2 - Assembled Head Rest and Lite-Tite

Tools and bits I found at my local hardware store::

  1. 3/8” Screw Shaft

  2. A Head Rest (A Float Pad Handle for Grout, Concrete and/or Plaster)

  3. Drill Spades, 3/8” and 9/16”

  4. Two 3/8” Locknuts with a 9/16” in Diameter

The diameter of the umbrella holder hole on the Manfrotto Lite-Tite is 3/8”, so the the screw shaft had to be the same. I counter sunk the holes on the Float Pad Handle with the 9/16” drill spade to recess the locknuts. Wanted to make sure that the locknuts did not poke into the sitters head, ouch. I then cut off the ends fo the Float Pad Handle so you wold not see it, and viola a homemade head rest, see Fig 2 for the completed kit. I plan to paint the head rest black as most of my portraits will be shot against a black or dark background.

The head rest with the drill spades cost me $21 and it took me about 15 minutes to assemble. I have since cut down the screw shaft enabling me to make two out of the one shaft.

By the way Photo Buddy is a great app for view camera and film shooters it has just about everything you need, helping you figure out exposure factor, reciprocity, hyperlocal distance, depth of field and a lot more. This app is something I always use when shooting with the 8x10 or 4x5 view cameras.

Jasper Street Portraits - #sayhelloottawa

Jasper

Met Jasper @jasper_bridge while walking down Bank St. he and his band were setting up for a show at The Atomic Rooster. I have always wanted to photograph someone against the graffiti in the back alley, Jasper definitely was a perfect fit for the location and he was up for it so back we went, thanks Jasper love the beard!!

I love the few fleeting minutes spent together when photographing these Street Portraits, connecting through photography at 1/200 of a second.  I hope you will enjoy these images too and get inspired to say hello to someone you don’t know, #sayhelloottawa.

David Street Portraits #sayhelloottawa

I bumped into David @bareke6 while walking down Bank St. in October, he is one of those people you meet who just seems happy. He has a great style and instantly said yes to a portrait. His image is one of my favs from this series so I have been playing around with it, doing some embroidery and playing around with different ways to display it. 

I love the few fleeting minutes spent together when photographing these Street Portraits, connecting through photography at 1/200 of a second.  I hope you will enjoy these images too and get inspired to say hello to someone you don’t know, #sayhelloottawa!!

Jessica Street Portraits - #sayhelloottawa

Jessica

Walking down Somerset St. and what do I see, someone sporting a @nofunpress tee, a pineapple cellphone case, cool bright yellow earrings, and decked out in my fav color black!!. So had to stop @jessie.rabideau and ask to take her portrait, some people just exude their confidence and cool through their style, thanks for the pic Jessie!!  

I love the few fleeting minutes spent together when photographing these Street Portraits, connecting through photography at 1/200 of a second.  I hope you will enjoy these images too and get inspired to say hello to someone you don’t know, #sayhelloottawa!!

Tabani Street Portraits  - #sayhellomontreal

Tabani

Always have you camera ready!! Walking out of a restaurant in LaSalle and Tabani was on his phone, sporting a @bbcicecream, not to sure what he was doing but it looked like he was takin care of business.

I like photographing people with a cool swagger, a interesting style or they just have that look in their eyes and Tabani definitely fit the bill. Wish I had a bit more time as he wanted to head home and get all decked out but we had to head out to OT. So Tabani next time I am in Montréal we need to meet up for another shoot. 

I love the few fleeting minutes spent together when photographing these Street Portraits, connecting through photography at 1/200 of a second.  I hope you will enjoy these images too and get inspired to say hello to someone you don’t know, #sayhellomontreal!!

Vintage Cam Project

IMG_8609.JPG

Starting a new project that combines two of my favorite things, hunting down vintage treasures and photography.  I love thrifting, flee markets, estates sales, garage sailing and picking, my wife loves it too and so does our daughter, we buy and sell vintage items often.

Collectively we enjoy mid-century modern furniture and anything with a cool graphic or text.  We each have our own side collections, for Abby, our daughter, it is cow gravy boats, my wife wooden cabinets and shelves, and for me it is cameras.  However, I am a fickle camera collector I love the hunt but keeping the cams is not something I need to do. Once that first roll goes through a recent vintage find my thoughts drift once again to the hunt for the next camera.    

So I will be hunting down my all time favorite cameras, shooting a roll of film through each, with subject matter well suited to the camera, posting the images to Instagram and then selling the cameras on eBay to the highest bidder.  I am going to start with an affordable classic, 35mm cameras.

As I teach the history of photography and have extensive experience buying and selling used gear expect a few tidbits of history and camera trivia along the way, let the hunt begin!!

To see the cameras up for sale and the pictures taken with them check out:

instagram.com/vintagecam.ca

To bid on the cameras, check out: 

ebay.ca/usr/vintagecamca

Reflection

Why you work in the way that you do? 

These last two modules for my MA, Research and Practice and Practice 1: Art and Design, has really given me the courage to explore my own personal work and change the way I work.  For although I teach for a living and have photographed professionally something has always stopped me from pursuing personal work.  Reflecting on why I think it steams from my personality, as a child I was an observer, great listener, introvert, a shy child, reserved in large groups of kids, fearful of public speaking.  At least this is how my teachers would describe me to my parents and it was always a concern to them, I saw it on their faces, my introversion was a problem.  My mother was outgoing and gregarious my father, I believed, was naturally so too and their extroversion was for them a healthy trait.  As a kid I had always longed to connect with others, I have always enjoyed listening to people’s stories and people watching.  In high school I found a way to become an extrovert, to engage with others which I was desperate to do, I drank and became outgoing and could “be myself”, the life of the party.  Drinking silenced that little voice in my head that kept me from speaking up and talking easily with others.  Although it was fun to drink and be outgoing it was a crutch, and it was something I noticed that my father suffered from too.  Seeing your parents reflected in yourself can be a great comfort or a great motivator for change, this is something I did not want to be my crutch for the rest of my life.  

Growing up I was interested in photography but it was not until I saw a silver gelatin print develop in a darkroom that I really became hooked, the process was magical.  So I threw myself into photography and it became a healthy obsession.  Then photography became my business, photographing for weddings, portraits and commercial clients and it eventually led me to teaching.  Photographing for clients was easy for me as I was commissioned and although the work was creative, I did not fully put myself out there and I always admired the artistic work of photographers like Diane Arbus who engaged with her subjects and produced the most amazing portrait work of strangers.  Researching Arbus I came across these two quotes that really resonated with me:

“Photography was a licence to go whenever I wanted and to do what I wanted to do.” Diane Arbus (Scala, 2014:p.10) 

From this quotes I think would think that Arbus might have been an introvert who used photography to help her connect with others.  I do know about her death by suicide so perhaps for her photography was not enough of a connection to others, why she killed herself we will of course never know for certain.

Has photography become a crutch for me?  No, as I now understand what a crutch really is, it is an aid something to help you cope with pain on the road to becoming a better person, it is not something you rely on for the rest of your life.  Photograph for me now has become an artistic outlet, something that enables me to connect with others and express myself.  For my last Research and Practice post I am including  an image inspired by Diane Arbus.

Steve

Fig. 1. Steve: Street Portrait 001 (Source: Machinski, 2018)

I have passed by Steve several times dropping off film for processing. One day camera in hand I got up the courage to ask him if I could take his portrait. He instantly said yes and we connected immediately over photography.  We talked about Kodachrome slides he used to shoot, our love for film and old cameras, sharing the photographs with friends via projectors and slideshows.

How do you develop solutions to creative problems?

For me I develop solutions to creative problems by trying out different techniques and processes until I come upon a solution that works.  I really like iterating ideas to come up with a solution, I also find that I work best when I have time to reflect and not think about the problem.  Letting an unfinished problem float around in my mind makes me go back to it often and it allows me to be open to possibilities that I might not have otherwise thought of. 

How does your work relate to other, current activity in your field?

At this stage of my professional career I am really open to looking at and experimenting with any process, style or genre.  I have realized through-out these last two modules that I am moving toward a more film based practice something, akin to the work of August Sanders or Judith Joy Ross.  I like the older techniques and film in general as they slow you down and give you time to reflect. 

Citations 

Machinski, J. (2018) Steve: Street Portrait 001. June 2018. Unpublished.

Scala, A. A. (2014) About Photography. Lulu.com