Untitled Graveyard Photo

Seeing as though it's Halloween, I thought I'd go back to the cemetery for there is no one better to spend this day with than with the dead. This trip wasn't as creepy as the last bceause I went as the sun was setting. However this time I encountered more people walking around. A couple of them were like myself, cameras in hand, but most were mourning a loss.

I didn't know how to feel amongst these people. My instant reaction was insensitivity. Here I was using their loved ones for creative gain. I had no real business being there in comparison to them. No one said anything of course, but every time they looked at me, I thought about it.

I thought very long and hard about the stories surrounding each of these people. There was one elderly couple who seemed to be having a hard time both physically and emotionally. I thought about the deceased friend they were visiting and the fact that they weren't soon off. I know that's a horrible thought but it's very true. I can only imagine how difficult it must be to watch everyone around you die. To be one of the last few surviving people in your social circle, waiting for your time to come. It's all so depressing.

However, this feeling is to be expected when walking around a graveyard on Halloween night. What exactly was I expecting?

Untitled Teddy Bear Photo

Today is my day off and what does a normal person do on a day off? Sleep in. What do I do with my day off? Go for a walk in the cemetery. At the crack of dawn I headed towards St. James cemetery located on Parliament just north of Wellesley.

My original intent on this journey was to find something for my family portraits category. Many family members are plotted next to each other and given the time of year it seemed like a good idea. While I did get some good pictures of family head stones, I found something which was so haunting I could barely stand it.

In anticipation for this project, I bought a book called "Toys Were Us" which gives a complete history of twentieth-century toys. The first toy that the book discusses is "the teddy bear". Before Cabbage Patch Kids and Popples, there were these fuzzy bears. An extremely simple concept, the teddy bear "represents a study in endurance of basic values in a century wrought with change and advanced technology". With the ever changing world of technology, we can always count on the teddy bear to be a childhood comfort.

"Here Lies Theodore"

However this particular teddy gave me anything but comfort. Hunched over, the bear looks weathered, run down, and extremely lonely. He looks like he's mourning the loss of something or someone. Is he sitting with someone he loves or was he abandoned by someone he loves? I don't know. All I know is that it gives me the chills. I love it!

Untitled Family Photo

"Are we not like two volumes of one book?"

So it seems that I made a small mistake with my photo project. When I checked the website for the due dates, the category of family portraits is due next week. It turns out each category is due in a different month and I thought I was screwed. My first instinct was to just lay down and skip this category. But a voice of reason told me that a week is more than enough time to come up with something. What can it hurt? There's no harm in trying. Just because I've not thought about this one as much as the others doesn't mean anything. When certain obstacles are in your way, you force yourself to make decisions quickly and be creative in different ways. And sometimes that can be a very good thing.

I looked around my apartment trying to find something that could pass as a family and on my window sill sat the answer. Among several bottles of perfume were two pumpkins my mother had bought me for Thanksgiving. The fact that both of them were different sizes worked out perfectly to give the picture a new level and of course symbolizes the parent/child relationship.

I took several photos in colour and black and white. The way I shot it called for black and white but I prefer the way the colour ones turned out. I'm still unsure as to the look of the black and whites on this camera. Still haven't mastered it yet.

Untitled Green Photo

This is my first attempt for my something green. The original photo was just a Hershey's Kiss on my coffee table. I liked how dark it was and that the green slightly emerged from it. Pretty much everything about the original satisfied me with the except of a blue light that reflected from my dvd player.

As soon as I saw a bigger version of it I knew that the image should mirror itself. However when I did this it was horizontal. It was when I mirrored it that the bow jumped out at me. So I took the blue light out and made it a vertical image. Now it has interesting framing and looks like something could be in the dark.

I am very surprised at how fast this one came about. It was one of those rare times where you have a clear image of what you want in your head and it's completed as such.

Untitled Cootie Catcher Thought

Today marks the day I officially started my photo project. I took roughly eighty pictures tonight and they were all of one subject. Toys From My Childhood was my starting point and the first toy I used was a Cootie Catcher. Definitely a girly pastime, this item could always be seen at least once on a typical grade school day. It was such a simple toy that could be created anytime and anywhere. As long as you had paper, markers, and a pen, you were set.

I always loved these things because each one you made was totally different than the previous one. There was always room for creativity whether you were getting fancy with the colors or making wildly immature fortunes.

When called upon, the child in me who knows how to make these things was missing in action. I stared at that blank page for an embarrassingly long time and after a sad first attempt, I googled it. Then once I started it was like being ten years old again. I had so much fun making it and even more fun photographing it. It's a satisfying feeling to take these small details from my childhood and use them for artistic purposes.

Untitled Ideas Thought

Ever since I started this blog, I have become more and more fascinated with pictures (both taking and manipulating them). This new passion of mine has quickly escalated from using a simple point and shoot camera to a more professional tool. I recently acquired a new camera, entry level of course, but more complicated than anything I've ever used before. So I've been looking into courses and contests in order to keep my new hobby from going stale.

Even without any professional training in photography, I will be entering a photo contest in the new year. It's a Canadian contest being held by Photo Life magazine. They provided the categories for the contestants with very little (and by little I mean no) rules or guidelines. I have no clue whether the photos should be as they turn out or if photoshopping is allowed. As everyone knows, photoshop is a good friend of mine so I will be submitting a mixture of both. I'm allowed five photos per category and therefore I shall max them out.

The categories are as follows:

...FAMILY PORTRAITS...

There is nothing in the rules that says it must be my family in the portrait. I've been bouncing around many ideas including television families, coffee cups, and coke cans. All of which are extremely primitive and will most likely be roadkill on the road to result.

...THE COLOR GREEN...

At one point in my life I would have claimed this color to be my favorite one of all. Over the years, red has creeped its way into my life and soon became my signature color. However I haven't forgotten the things I loved about this color. It's the color of money, landscapes, and Kermit The Frog. What's not to love? For this category my plan is to go as obscure as possible. There are so many cliche items that are associated with this color and I wish to avoid that. I want to find things that we see everyday but don't really notice their uniqueness. I want to find the green in the small stuff.

...TOYS FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD...

Probably the category that excites me the most. There are so many possibilities here that my brain hurts trying to process them. I'm overwhelmed with the different routes I can take and with a five picture limit I know it will be tough. There are two ways I can take this one. I can be literal and go with eighties toys. Or I can be generic and go with the timeless toys whose era are hard to pin down. The one that attracts me the most is (of course) the 80's route. This would include the Rubix Cube, Cabbage Patch Dolls, and Skip It's. I think this will be the most challenging category out of all three. But I love a creative problem. It makes the victory all the more sweet.

What it all comes down to is excitement. The brainstorming and experiments are the best part of doing anything creative. I welcome the possibilities and reject the failures.

Untitled Roof Photo

"The roof over my head leaks."

This picture is missing something but I don't know what. I felt there was so much potential with the amount of open space but have yet to figure out how to occupy it. I really wanted text, and had some for a while, but it seemed to take away from the open space. So perhaps the space is a good thing. I read a really good quote the other day that says "You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough." So based on that, I could say that there is nothing more to be done here. Other than text, I've placed many different photo's and textures in the gap and they all looked wrong.

In the end I am left with this. A simple photo that consists of four parts. Two are the exact same photo just with different effects. One is a close up of the cracks on a rock with a medium motion blur. The last is a picture I posted in a previous blog of a lake with some sun sparkles. I like how it looks like stars in the sky. However it also looks as if they are bursting out of the window into the air.

Very interesting.

Untitled Diet Coke Photo

“Success comes in cans; failure in cant's”

While this quote is a tad on the lame side I do enjoy it when juxtaposed with this image. Lately I have become interested in taking pictures of cans on the ground. I'm toying with the idea of making it a series. I have several raw shots on my hard drive but so far I only have two to speak of. The Red Bull can which I posted in an earlier blog and now this Diet Coke can.

I really love this one. My eyes are so compelled when I look at it. This might be because of the colors. Black and red are two of my favorite shades to use and it happened to work out as they were the vital colors of my subject.

The image itself consists of two pictures. One of the Diet Coke can on a bed of unhealthy grass. Originally shot in black and white and left as such. All I did was slightly posterize it in order to give it a grainy look. The second picture was of a pile of leaves on the ground. The picture was originally taken in sepia but I changed it to red. Red keeps with the autumn feel that I had when I took the picture yet makes the image more dramatic. I also played with contrast in order to give it some definition because at first it you couldn't pick out the leaves. On top of the background image it just looked like red splotches.

I am very interested in this can series idea. It intrigues me immensely. We'll see where it takes me.

Untitled Autumn Photos

"Autumn wins you best by its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay."

Untitled Nuit Blanche Photo

"Any form of art is a form of power, it has impact, it can affect change--it can not only move us, it makes us move."

Last night I participated in the 5th annual Nuit Blanche, an outdoor art show that seemed to mark the transition into a new season. Of the hundred and sixty four pictures I took, this one was the very last of the evening. It was three o'clock in the morning and I had been wondering around the streets of Toronto for roughly six hours.

The original picture consisted of two parts. During my travel I came across an underground movie house that displayed a sign saying "...free popcorn and free art films all night!". So naturally I followed the signs in to find an extremely retro theater, beaming with individuality. I approached the concessions counter for my popcorn when I was given this old school bag you see in the photo. It was classic orange in colour and displayed the words "Poppa Corn", something I didn't realize until I finished eating it. And of course being the nerdy sentimentalist that I am, I decided to keep the bag as a souvenir.

The second part of the picture was the program I received at the start of the evening. As I already mentioned, I am very sentimental so I like to save things, programs and ticket stubs mostly. It means a lot to me to look back at these items as they represent my journey in the art scene. Each day it becomes more important and ingrained into my routine.

Both of these parts were taken together while I was waiting for the subway home because after hours of walking, I was done!

The third and final part of the picture was added in photoshop. I believe it was taken in the underground cinema as I was leaving. Many of their signs were simply made with stencils and spray paint which inevitably will have some drip-age and as I've mentioned in previous blogs, I love the look of paint when it drips.

I like the way it all looks together. It's simple and really didn't require much thought but that doesn't make it any less interesting. Just because it didn't take me days like some of my others, doesn't mean it can't be appreciated. Whether it's a movie or an outdoor art show, creativity is all around me and that's what gets me going each day.

Untitled Rival Photo

I'm choosing to say nothing about this photo. In my heart it speaks volumes and I think it's best to leave it at that. What I will say is that it is part of my six word memoir obsession and is one of few that I have written myself.

Untitled Horror Movie Thought

"Everyone's entitled to one good scare."

I have never really been a fan of horror films. Specifically those that are so sick and disgusting you want to run away and vomit. I am however, a fan of the ones that are "can't sleep at night" scary. Movies that do not require any serious gore to terrify me. These were the movies that I would never forget.

I was twelve years old when I saw Halloween for the first time. It was the summer of seventh grade when my friends and I thought it was a great idea to rent this movie. We thought we were playing it safe by watching it during the day little did I know that some of the film's creepiest moments took place in broad daylight. It was a film that was set in a typical suburban town, where evil was lurking in the most non threatening domestic spaces. Growing up in a similar suburb, I was paralyzed with fear. Once the movie was over I walked the block and a half home, looking over my shoulders and inspecting each shrub for any one who may try to jump me.

At the ripe old age of twenty, Halloween left quite an imprint on me. If you ask me, that's impressive. The fact that a movie could be so timeless and affect its audience whether it was in 1978 or 1998, is just remarkable. Of course this movie owes a lot to the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Psycho being most obvious. Hitchcock and Carpenter reminded us that horror does not have to exist in a gothic castle with vampires and werewolves. They took horror and put it into modern settings with everyday problems. This is why I believe these films are so effective and are still watched and studied today.

In honor of October I'll be watching nothing but horror movies, Halloween and Psycho being amongst many. Tonight I will start it off with Friday The 13th, a Halloween knock off that became successful with it's own style and technique.

My only problem is that there are so many films to choose from and not nearly enough time to watch them all. But I will certainly try.