Expect to see more steam punk images over the next little while! Today’s image is of Ren Brockhouse, who I know through a Toronto theatre group. One of the things that appeals to me about steam punk is how it celebrates technologies that were accessible: things you could build, repair, change or hack with the right tools or know-how. So much of technology today is hermetically sealed away and abstracted; we seem to know so little about how things work, and that is a dangerous state of affairs!
I think I’ve mentioned before how so much of my portrait work is close-up; I am addicted to the biography (indeed the landscape) that is the human face. I have to force myself to pull back ever now and then, and let more of the setting into the story, or even become the story, as I think it does in this image of model Theresa in High Park.
A wavy fence in High Park really caught my eye, and I had to work it into a portrait!
Today’s image is the final one from my recent photo shoot with Shreeti. The first post featured a colour digital image. The second was a negative scan from an instant print. Today, traditional black and white film. I feel each different technology captured something different from the shoot. For me, black and white does the best job of capturing the detail of the lovely clothing worn by Shreeti.
(Mamiya 645 Pro TL, Ilford Delta 400, negative scanned and post processed with Nik Efex pro)
This is my second hand-tinted print where the colours are somewhat surrealistic. It is model Keira, taken in Kensington Market, where the colours are already a bit surrealistic, to my eye.
Toronto is not know for vintage architecture, thanks in part to a lot of bad development decisions over the years. Much of the downtown core looks rather generic. I was walking downtown the other day, and came upon a dark, gloomy alleyway, aand it seemed to take me back a century or more.
In my last couple of shoots, I have made a point of using different cameras and technologies at the same shoot, and I am glad I did so — I love the different kind of results I get. As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, here is another image of Shreeti, but instead of a high resolution digital image, today’s image is a scan of an instant print (using Fuji FP3000B film in a Polaroid Model 455 Land Camera). Shreet’s look is timeless, and I think the vintage appearance of this print technique captures this, while still retaining her thoroughly modern sensibility.
Yesterday I had a great shoot with model and photographer Amy Sarfinchan, using the infamous “shipwreck” located along the Q.E.W. (exit 55) in Southwestern Ontario. I shot a number of different cameras and film: Colour and black and white instant film, traditional black and white film, Infrared/Hybrid black and white film, along with some digital. One of my favourite shots is from an instant print, where I scanned the negative from the Fuji FP3000B print. I think the retro, low fidelity look really compliments Amy’s timeless, haunted expression.
<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnmeadows/7926327794/” title=”Waiting 2 by John G Meadows, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8315/7926327794_450eb25c82_z.jpg” width=”491″ height=”640″ alt=”Waiting 2″></a>
Over the last couple of years I have gone from lukewarm Christian to resigned atheist (in a family of Christians), so when it comes to taking pictures with a religious theme I’m sort of conflicted — I like the grand traditions of Christian art, architecture and music (especially the latter, and I don’t mean Christian rock!), but I am now considering it from behind the glass window of non-belief. I took this picture a couple of weeks ago — I was part of the choir at a wedding in the chapel of Trinity College, University of Tor0nto. the choir stalls are in a raised gallery at the back of the chapel, as as I was early I had time for a few pictures. For me, the image is symbolic: the setting and architecture have beauty, but it is empty.
Today is the final post on the photo shoot with remarkable model and Cystic Fibrosis survivor Sarah D. In this image I made no attempt at glamour; Sarah’s surgical scars from her double lung transplant are plainly visible; nothing is hidden.
The clock to me symbolizes many things; from what I have read, various treatments have improved life expectancies, from a median of 6 months (U.S., 1959) to over 47 years (Canada, 2007). The clock can also symbolize the patient waiting for suitable donor lungs to be available, as the race against her condition continues.
The final symbolism was quite by accident — after seeing the image, Sarah remarked that the clock was showing a time of about 8 o’clock, and that this was the time of her surgery which saved her life. A striking coincidence, and a testament to the operation that gave her the physical strength (buttressed by her obvious mental strength) to extend the timeline of her remarkable life.
(Mamiya 645 Pro TL, 80mm f2.8 lens, Tri-X)
My Third Eye 
