15-12-29

I like this little crook in Hastings St that lets you stand on the elbow of the bend and look straight east down the center of the street. And I like sunny days in December, even if the buildings need to reach high for the last rays before 5pm.

15-12-28

Snow on the mountains. Blue skies. And the days are getting longer. All making up for working on a day off.

15-12-27

15-12-26

15-12-25

15-12-24

15-12-23

Not the same, but not entirely different. Blurry, dynamic, filtered, with a narrative, and energy. The biggest difference is that in the 21st Century they will give any monkey a camera. I wish there was more of the car I was in in the foreground. But it will do. Another thousand photographs and I might get another one.

15-12-22

It reminds me of this song; "Lost in a Dream" by Astropop 3. It's a lovely little blurring of reality, and what I imagine a photograph of a dream might be like.

15-12-21

15-12-20

I don't know where I'm ripping this off from but I heard recently, something along the lines of, "the streets of Vancouver resemble the smile of a professional hockey player with random teeth knocked out."

15-12-19

I resisted getting an iPhone and now that I have one I can legitimately say it's not as good as Android phones, but it's what I have, and I will admit that the pea sized camera on it takes a not bad photograph. You know, for a pea sized camera.

15-12-18

15-12-17

East Van Pronto is really, really amazing. Really.

15-12-16

All of this graffiti is fake. It's all been applied to a building for a movie and it's been protected by plywood when it's not under the scrutiny of cameras. The movie shoot is over, the plywood is gone, and the fake graffiti is still there. Even the cow.

15-12-15

15-12-14

15-12-13

"If we put an avocado pit into water, held up with toothpicks, it will start to grow," said Sophie.

"I don't think so. But we can try."

"Okay."

Guess I was wrong. It's not the first time. It won't be the last.

15-12-12

15-12-11

Found objects and spray glue.

15-12-10

15-12-9

15-12-8

15-12-7

Half frame camera wonderfulness. I hope it works.

15-12-6

15-12-5

Best restaurant in Vancouver. Hands down.

15-12-4

It's an issue. Sadly, that dick who owns and runs the Regent has been in this situation before. It's been going on since 2002. Embarrassing, really.

15-12-3

15-12-2

Tomato soup from scratch. Step 1, tomatoes.

15-12-1

15-11-30

15-11-29

 No more Toy Camera Filter shots. Or maybe one more, as a comparison. Two different photos, the first out of the camera with a traditional film type setting (that's why there was different films, right?) and then a warming photo filter (found in any photo lab, right?) and it's a photo. Or you push the magic filter button on the camera and you get the second photo. Is that a bad thing? Maybe not. I don't think it's any less legitimate than buying Kodak Portra film for a desired affect. And yet I resist it even as I use it.

What I find more intriguing is how consistent the composition is between the two images. The pair of images weren't taken right after each other. I had to go into the camera menus and change the settings and recompose the shot and it's nearly identical. I find that interesting.

15-11-28

Toy Camera Filter day 2. I've now turned it off.

15-11-27

Toy Camera Filter. Makes your fancy new compact camera take pictures like an old crappy camera. Fun for a day, I suppose. Maybe eve two days. We'll see.

Blessed with sunny but cold days. No rain for nearlya  week now and it's been appreciated.

15-11-26

Nearly a month later and you can still smell the smoke in the street. The lingering effects of a moment in time are so multidimensional. A tarp to protect a broken thing, and even if you close your eyes you can still smell it. It's going to need more than a bit of paint to fix it. But isn't that always the case?

15-11-25

A pile of skids. Maybe it's time to take a break from this. Though I did find the "toy camera" filter on my camera. That only supports the fact that maybe it's time to take a break from this.

I found a cheap-ish Olympus Pen EE camera on eBay. I've had a half frame camera before but the drive cog stripped out. I got exactly one roll of film out of it before it broke but the photographs were quite soleful. That camera might have even made a pile of skids look interesting. Or not. But it's that to "toy camera" mode on my current camera. There's something about shooting pictures on a camera that's older than you are. I'm looking forward to the Olympus.

15-11-24

Terrible photograph today. I should have skipped it but I do like the subject matter even if I did a terrible job of trying to photograph it.

15-11-23

It's been a while since I've used this crap little S100. But when I bought it I thought it was the best little camera in the world. It probably was. Now all I see is soft focus and muddy details. There's been an S110, and an S120 since. And now Canon doesn't even bother with the S series. I don't often complain about cameras anymore. I'm exceptionally lucky in that I have a couple of really amazing ones, and they are both quite old relatively speaking, in a world driven by technology anyway. Both have been replaced by newer models, one has been replaced by a newer model twice. It's still a good camera. A Nikon D700 is still a very good camera. A Fuji X100s is still a very good camera.

The Canon S100 produces muddy images at anything above ISO400. It's half the size of my Fuji but the pictures are a quarter as good. If nothing else, I'm good at math. It's also bigger than my phone, and my phone has as many megapixels.

I don't know if there's a compact camera that takes decent photos. Video killed the radio star and cell phone cameras killed the need for a decent compact camera.

1st world problems.

15-11-22

15-11-21

JFK.

In 2000, Laurent Malone and Dennis Adams put together a collection of photographs documenting their walk from Manhattan to JFK Airport in 1997. They shared one film camera (it was 1997 after all) and they took turns taking photographs, either one being able to take a photograph at any time. The catch/gimmick/beauty of this walk was that each time one took a photo the other had to take a photo in the opposite direction. They placed all the photos on opposing pages. I've been trying to find this book for 7 or 8 years.

There was a book store in Toronto that claimed to have a copy but they couldn't find it to sell it to me. I've tried to find it in various art book stores in various cities. I finally found a copy available on the wonderful world wide web and though I've paid for it, it will still take a month and a half to arrive, but that's not much time after looking for nearly a decade.

I've been intrigued by the idea for a long time and though I didn't have someone to walk with me to the airport, I finally found a day when I could take a camera with me and spend the day walking from where I live to where I would leave where I live, YVR.

It's 15kms. It took about 4 hours; I wasn't in a hurry. I will have to do it again with someone to hand the camera off to, to look in the other direction, to make me look in the other direction.

Regardless, it was a lovely way to spend a morning.

YVR.

15-11-20

15-11-19

This is taken looking east at dusk. Strange light. Sophie and I talked this morning about prevailing winds and standards. "the winds usually come from the west, but sometimes they come from the east, and the easterly winds usually bring bad weather." I wonder what sunsets in the east bring...

Another day with a bonus photograph. It's 2for1 week, I guess. Unless tomorrow only brings one. We'll see. Maybe.

15-11-18

They built an outlet mall by the airport. It's such a strange distortion of reality and nearly deserted. And it's on the flight path so every few minutes it feels like a plane is about to crash into it.