Waiting my Turn

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I’ve been shooting a lot in High Park recently, as I love the lighting and settings available. Last week, while waiting for a model to arrive I noticed a dead tree, set amongst living plans that I though would be a great place to shoot, but before the model arrived, another photographer and a model arrived (I think it was his girlfriend)  and set up camp at the spot. They spent more time engaged in a bitter argument than shooting; I don’t think they will be happy with the results. Luckily, when I came back the next day for a shoot with model Chantal (featured in the image below) the spot was available, so we started our shoot there 🙂

Chantel

Dangerous and Domestic

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Last Sunday I had a great time on a shoot with Mallory: the concept was combining the dangerous/sexy look of the motorcycle with symbols of domesticity: in this image Mallory is holding an old-fashioned egg-beater, one of my favourites from my prop collection.

Mallory is a great actress, and was easily able to create a character that made the concept come alive!

Dangerous Domestic

Magic

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Today’s image is turning into one of my favourite portraits of the year. It is another image of Tara in High Park. The direct low sun made for a magical light, and the variety of reflections in the glass sphere seemed endless.

Tara On Film

Rush Hour

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Today’s image is another street shot taken with my Voigtlander Vito B. It was around 5 pm on a weekday at Yonge and Bloor here in Toronto, and a mass of people were going home, like a tide going back out to sea.

Rush Hour

In Motion

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Today’s image is the first of a couple I’ll be posting from a shoot with model Tara on Friday evening. The shoot featured steampunk elements such as the goggles, and in the image below a parasol that I tried to give a brass effect to. In this image, I asked Tara to spin the parasol, while I used a very slow shutter speed. I think it worked 🙂

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Coming Home

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I think I’ve found the perfect street photography camera for me, and ironically it is one I have had since the early 1970’s: my late father’s late 1950’s Voigtlander Vito B. I have not put a roll of film through it since early 1977, and I am happy to report it still works just fine 🙂

What makes it great for street photography in my mind is a feature it lacks — it has no built in rangefinder, just scale focus. This lack forces me to trust zone focusing and hyperfocal distance, getting it ready ahead of time, and then just bringing the large, bright, unencumbered viewfinder to my eye. For today’s image, it was maybe 2 seconds to see the scene, and quickly fire off the frame.

I have left this camera sit idle for far too long; it’s nice to be home.

Caught in the Act

Facial Landscape

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The first two images I posted of model Theresa in High Park were to some extent dominated by lines and background. Today I return to more familiar territory: the amazing landscape of human facial expression.

Theresa On Film

(Mamiya 645 Pro TL camera, Tri-X exposed at E.I. 800, developed in Diafine 3+3)

A Gift of Luck

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If you shoot lots of frames, you are bound to get lucky, in terms of getting more in an image than you expected. After two days of being more or less housebound due to back pain, I made it out this evening to have dinner with my two daughters, and on the way home I quietly snapped a frame “from the hip” with my iPhone and the Hipstamatic app, at Broadview Station. When I looked at the frame I was struck by a dividing line that bisects the image, through the woman’s head. I like it!

Broadview Station

Complexity

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Today another image of Ren from the Steampunk shoot the other day. This image is very different from the one I posted last time: there is no anonymity imposed by dark goggles. Instead, an intriguing, complex expression. Ren is a complex person — creative, driven, certainly not shallow, and hungry to experience everything life has to offer. I think that comes through in this image.

Ren last roll012

Steam Punk Polaroid

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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!

ren steam punk polaroids001