New Westminster

New Westminster, in November.

Not a half frame camera

I have a Konica EYE half frame camera. I managed to get exactly one roll of film out of it before it broke. You can see in the last few frames that the images overlapped a bit. The drive gear under the thumb lever has since stripped completely and it no longer draws film through its magic little hands. I tried it today, it didn't work. 

I had shot about 50 images when I realized it just wasn't working. You get 48 images out of a 24 roll of film, it's pretty neat. I wondered about trying to recreate the sensation with a digital camera. I have a little point and shoot camera. I put it in 1:1 aspect ratio mode which is the closet to the portrait mode of the Konica that my little camera could do, and then I "stream of consciousness" took a series of photos. Every single one of them are here, in order. 33 of them. Old habits crept in, I took multiple shots of some things, but since you can't edit images out of a strip of film, I left the variants in here too. 

I don't think I was aiming to accomplish anything with this. I probably didn't accomplish anything with this. I would like to shoot more film, this isn't film, and it makes me want to shoot more film. So maybe I accomplished that. 

The broken EYE is going into the trash. I will keep an eye on craigslist for a while and see if another one shows up. I'm not going to hold my breath, I don't think they were a big seller to begin with, there probably aren't many used ones to be had. 

These photos? I like them for what they are. Digital can take better photos but somehow still lacks soul, especially at the entry level. I find it amusing that for years and years the photo industry strived to find ways to better represent reality, to make their colours more realistic, and to get full tonal range out of a chemical process, and when they finally got that we decided to be nostalgic about Kodachrome colour space, and Portra, and old film in general. I batch processed these images, adding a bit of darkness and contrast. The pictures out of the camera were too "good." They needed to be given soul. 

My Yashica T3 still works. Maybe I'll try that one tomorrow. 

Vancouver Alley

Vancouver rarely feels dense and claustrophobic. It's a relatively "low" city with lots of vistas afforded by the bodies of water in and around it. But I like this. It feels like a city in this alley, while most of Vancouver doesn't.

politics...

I like the juxtaposition of the changing space with the changing world; both in transition...

Sunsets...

One of the more spectacular sunsets of the summer.

Telephone Poles and Trees

The idea of naming photographs, giving them titles, seems off to me. Like "Evolution" or "The Natural and the Constructed" or "Two Against One" or "Selection: Natural" or so many other things. The file name for this image on my hard drive is "Phone Poles and Trees." That's how I usually name these things; straightforward and honestly. This is a photo of telephone poles and trees. It's not about an abstraction of ideals represented by a tree being distorted by distorted/subverted trees. It's not about the absurdity of process that requires contorting nature to protect infrastructure when a breeze through branches won't damage a power line but when the serious winds arrive that tree is going to fall over and take out those lines in a heart beat. If one were to romanticize it all one might create a narrative where the tree longs to be straight and tall and proud like the phone poles, or maybe the phone poles, by nature of their conformity to a standard, outnumber the tree which is organic and natural and there is a tension between the conformed majority and the marginalized but free individual, the individual oppressed and compromised.

It's easy to project meaning onto the meaningless. But I didn't take a photograph of "Telephone Poles and Trees."

Brooms. For sale.

I will buy a broom here this week. Probably.

Old Car

False Creek Sunset

Fish in a barrel.

Random Photos from about two years ago

Dust spots notwithstanding. Digital is amazing. Digital is terrible. Old cameras have dust. I'm sure this is a metaphor for something.