Author: johnmeadowsphotography

An amateur photographer in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Jumping (Or Becoming) the Shark

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Today’s picture is not great art;  it is just a snapshot. However, it is the best image for the point I want to make today.

The image is of three attendees from the recent Kodachrome photo-walk I’ve mentioned a few times, and the key point is that all three people in the image have cameras, and were actively shooting, creating images at the event. At every other photo walk I’ve been to, it’s been the same; the emphasis has been on creating images, and sharing the joy of doing so in a social setting.

Friends at the Kodachrome Film Walk

When I compare the photo-shoot vibe and attitude to what I’ve experienced at recent podcamps, the podcamps do not come out on top. Podcamps used to be about creativity (heck, they used to be about podcasting!), but to me it doesn’t seem to be that way any more. The best way for me to describe how I see podcamps now is to describe how a photo-walk would be if it followed the spirit of current podcamps:

  1. Only a distinct minority would actually carry cameras.
  2. There would be very little discussion of actual photographic techniques.
  3. Amateurs would definitely be in the minority.
  4. We would have sessions and/or discussions like “How to pick the best camera gear to impress an creative director”, “Making money from iStock and Getty” and “Tagging strategies for Flickr”.
  5. For the most part, the only pictures we would see would be images of people’s photographic equipment.

I could go on, but I think the point is clear; Photo-walks are about creating, and podcamps, despite the best efforts of a determined minority, are about marketing.

Podcamp, you’ve jumped the shark. So long, we barely knew ya.

Life Imitating App?

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These days there are a number of  popular iPhone Apps (and Photoshop plug-ins) which render an image as monochrome, except for one spot of colour. Yesterday, while on a solitary photo-walk along the banks of the Don river in Toronto, I captured an image which seems to duplicate this effect; the red leaves and stems jump out from the muted shades of the background, and no post-processing was required to get this effect.

Reality is the best app there is 🙂

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Kodak Ektar 100: Falling in Love

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It is sadly ironic that at what might appear to be the twilight of the analog film era some of the best films ever made are now available. I’ve only shot a couple of rolls of it so far, but Kodak Ektar 100 colour negative film is rapidly becoming my favourite colour film. I used to see colour negative film as a decidedly poor sister to slide fim, in terms of sharpness and saturation, but I see no such weakness in Ektar 100. The image below is from the Kodachrome walk, where in addition to some Kodachrome I did shot a roll of Ektar. I look at the blues and red/oranges, and I’m in love with this film!

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Portrait of an Artist: David William White

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David William White is a photographer I met this past Saturday at the Kodachrome photo-walk at Morningside Park in Scarborough. He is shown below with the camera he brought along: a view camera over 100 years old. On a day when the retro feel of film cameras was in the air, he really underscored the feeling by shooting with this camera. He was also using the paper negative technique, a process that goes back to the dawn of the photographic era. (After all, Fox Talbot used paper negatives in the calotype process of the 1830’s/40’s.)

View Camera Fan

It was great to know that on the same day as a glitzy photo show,  showcasing all the new high-priced digital toys available was going on in Mississauga, at the other end of Toronto David was quietly going about his craft, exploring and typifying what is special about traditional photography.

Time-Warp Tuesday: North Rustico, Prince Edward Island, 2004

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Again not too far back into the past this week. This is an image I made in North Rustico, Prince Edward Island back in 2004. The image appeared (to my eyes) rather non-descript in colour, but when I converted it to black and white, I liked it a a lot better. I used my old Canon Digital Rebel, with the 18-55mm kit lens at 18 mm (equivalent to about 24mm for a 35mm camera) to include as much foreground as possible.

North Rustico

It Was a Marathon Weekend ….

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… with the Kodachrome photo-walk on Saturday, taking pictures at the Toronto marathon on Sunday morning, then another photo-walk/meet-up in High Park in the afternoon.

It was fun taking pictures of the marathon, and especially of the half-marathon at the finish. Seeing the joy and sense of victory on the faces of otherwise ordinary people who had just accomplished something extraordinary was quite powerful. The image below is one of the pictures that for me captured it best.

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A Great Day for the Kodachrome Photo-Walk

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Thanks to “The Scarborough Dude” for the photo!

It was a great day for the Kodachrome photo-walk in Morningside Park in Scarborough, Ontario yesterday; we couldn’t have ordered better weather, and we had a really nice group of people in attendance. The most popular cameras were Nikons, from a Nikkormat FT2 (mine) to a beautiful F100. A couple of folks had Pentax cameras, and one lucky attendee (here from Texas!) had a gorgeous Leica M6 rangefinder.

What was also really neat to see was over one century-old view camera brought along by one attendee; he wasn’t able to shoot Kodachrome, but instead was shooting paper negatives. Imagine, in an era where digital cameras are declared obsolete after a few years, here was a camera from around 1901, still being used to make images!

The leaves were beautiful, and I can’t wait to see the images. Waiting is part of the experience of course; it will be about a month before we get our slides back. By then the leaves we made images of today will long since be gone, but thanks to Kodachrome the colours will last a long long time!

Portrait of an Artist: Sage Tyrtle

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One of my photography projects this fall is to take environmental portraits of various creative people I am lucky to know. For this project I am using black and white analog film, and old cameras in order to get a more organic look for the images. The artist featured in this image is podcaster Sage Tyrtle.

Sage Tyrtle

Simply put, Sage is perhaps the most talented podcaster I know. Her podcast QN is always thought-provoking, often very funny in an ironic and sardonic kind of way, and always extremely well crafted both from a technical point of view and especially in terms of the writing involved.

Shooting this image was challenging; I used my old Nikkormat FT2 with a 24mm f2.8 Nikkor lens (one of my favourites), and Ilford XP2+ film. Technically it was a very challenging shoot, with dim lighting and very little room to work in. Also, the shutter on this 35 year old camera started sticking, ruining a number of frames. I literally got only one usable frame (the one you see above) but I was really happy with how the image turned out; I think it captured Sage’s energy and joy in doing what she loves to do.

Telling a Story

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I like street photography that hints at the stories that are hidden inside of everyone. I took this photography in Brussels this past August, in an historic part of town called Central Place. It is an amazing old square with a lot of great historic architecture, but the people who filled it gave it its vibe, and its stories. We only had one night there, but I am longing to go back.

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