Working Close to Home

Ostrander Point

The world seems a little smaller these days. We are adjusting to our new reality. Sometimes limits can enhance creativity. Keith Richards once said about open G tuning on his 5-string Telecaster – “5 strings, 3 notes, 2 hands and 1 asshole”. One of the first songs he used this tuning on is the brilliant “Street Fighting Man” from Beggars Banquet. Limits sometimes create a box that forces you to work differently.

I love reducing images to black and white or at least monotone. About 7 years ago, I started using an aging process to “rough up” my images.

Old Shed

Vegetable Stand in the County

This process starts with a colour image. I convert it to black and white and add layers of texture and blur parts of the image. The result is a photo that looks damaged and worn.

Old Trucks

Nude in Nature

Sometimes I will leave a bit of colour.

Red Doors, Yellow Flowers

The resulting images become more of an illustration than photograph.

Tree in the Fog

Engine 1095, Kingston, ON

Steam Engine

With all that is going on in the world, I find I’m escaping into my own world of creativity. The world around us is as big as we make it, even if we are confined.

i·dol·ize

–verb (used with object)
1.
to regard with blind adoration, devotion, etc.
2.
to worship as a god.

I used to idolize John Lennon. Oh, I had a few other musicians I thought could do no wrong. Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Cockburn and many more. I see things very differently now. I remember my Dad making very dismissive comments about Lennon after seeing his photo in the paper. He would rant, “Who the hell does he think he is?” or something like that. At the time I thought my Dad didn’t get it. As only a ten year old could think. But I have to admit he did get it. He got so many things that I am only beginning to see now.

Red Canoe on Lake Manitou - Click for larger

There were also many photographers I looked to for inspiration. Some I have since met. Meeting your heroes can be a major disappointment. But I have been lucky. Most photographers that I admired from afar and have since met have turned out to be kind wonderful people. Some I now call friends. That is and continues to be a great gift.

Photographer at Hudson Bay - Click for larger

I recently showed a movie called “Waterwalker” by Bill Mason to my 3rd semester Photography students. This movie was an inspiration to me and frankly changed my life forever. It inspired me to pursue a creative life. A life I really did not think was possible. Bill was driven to create and was a wonderful storyteller. I never got to meet him. He died long before he was on my radar. His actions, work and words continue to influence me and the life I live.

Red Canoe in Temagami - Click for larger

I love to read biographies and have read many including one about Bill Mason. This summer I read a biography about John Lennon. It was not very complimentary. It showed a tortured creative soul driven to succeed. One of the most painful things about growing older is the many myths that are shattered along the way. You start to see the world in a different light. It forces you to analyze the heroes in your life. It’s not their fault we have put them up on a pedestal. It’s not their fault they are imperfect. None of us are perfect.

Does this mean that that these people don’t have lessons to share? No. The radio played John Lennon tunes all day long to acknowledge the 30th anniversary of his death. The music, the talent and his voice still ring true for me. His life in all its imperfection, produced sounds that will always bring joy to my life.

All of them - from my father to musicians, artists, writers and teachers - they have all lived imperfect lives as we all do. They continue to teach me and inspire me even if I don’t idolize them any more.

Dad - Click for larger

Inspiration

It comes from everywhere. I get my inspiration from the people and things around me. It’s so nice to be surrounded by talented creative people. When I see my students' and colleagues' work, I get excited. They push me to try new things through their work and their words.

A former teaching assistant and now friend dropped by the campus to take me out to lunch. Aizick and I always have great conversations about photography and all things digital. We learn from each other every time we are together. During our conversation, he said, "You must get a few students that come into your class with the attitude that they already know it all". I'm paraphrasing here but it was along that line. Sure, some people let their egos get in the way. I guess I too have been guilty of that at times! We continued our conversation and I said, "You know, I can learn just as much from my students as they learn from me". Regardless if someone has been working with Photoshop for 10 minutes or ten years, I can learn from them. The way they approach a problem. The way they see. Their process is always fascinating to me.

Things have been a little stressful and busy of late but I have been shooting a little when time permits. It's nice to get back to the camera and the computer. In this post I would like to share with you some of the images I have produced lately that were inspired by people around me.

Dimitri, one of my 4th semester students showed me a great location for shooting the skyline of Toronto. I have returned to this location a few times since. Here is one of my favourite images from this spot:A couple of weeks after I shot the above image, I returned to the same location with Dimitri, Ray and Marlee. We all shot our own thing. We shot from very different angles, each with our own vision. Ray showed me one of his images and how he processed it and his looked as if he was in a totally different place. So I re-processed one of my images with inspiration from him:Sydney, another one of my 4th semester students dropped by to show me some of his images. He was a bit down, not quite sure of the talent that is flowing out of him in all directions. I'm not sure my words were inspiring to him, but his work was to me. His work is so different, so oddly beautiful. Here is one of my images of my friend Fred (click to see original) re-worked a la Sydney:I can't leave out Carina. She has been working very hard to produce some food images for her final portfolio and is making great progress. Carina inspired me to take this image:One of my 1st semester students sent me an image he submitted for his creativity course. It was a panoramic image, reworked as a spherical panoramic. I asked Sam how he did it. My version is nowhere near as good as his but I will do a bit more of this kind of thing and see what I come up with. Here is my before and after version:
Ah, it's spring. I feel like hitting the road and exploding with creativity! Can't wait to get back out there…

Have I Created My Best Image?

Can you imagine, you are 36 years old and you have landed and walked on the moon? How do you follow that? Would you experience anything as exciting or significant ever again? Astronaut Charlie Duke was the youngest person to land on the moon and has led an active productive life since, but I wonder if he sometimes looks up and longs for that day.When it comes to photography, it is possible and I’m even sure common for great images to be produced at the beginning, middle, and end of your career. Yes for me it is getting a little uncomfortable crawling out of a tent in cold wet conditions. But I’m still young enough to be out there working. I still enjoy the changing light. Still enjoy seeing and looking. Ansel Adams did most of his greatest work before he was 40. Not that the later stuff wasn’t great. It just didn’t have the same energy for me. I think Ansel spent the later part of his career becoming a master printer. He reworked his images in the dark room and expressed the images differently over time. Ansel was a concert pianist and often expressed photography in terms of music. He felt the negative was the score, and the print was the performance. Ansel Adams followed up his walk on the moon with a space walk. Both periods of his life where productive and wonderful.I wonder sometimes though, have I landed on the moon so to speak? I’m sure writers feel this way, especially if they have written a very successful book. Now what? I don’t have that touch stone reference of success but I do feel successful. I guess it depends on how you measure it.When Bob Dylan was interviewed on 60 Minutes a while ago, he talked about how his abilities have changed. When asked about his early work he said "I can still do a lot of things, but I can’t do that." I look at my images from the past and I wonder if I have done this? Am I just reworking stuff or am I still growing as an artist? I guess its like shooting a landscape. I tell my students, start shooting before the light is at its peak and shoot through to the other side. It is only then will you see the difference between the good image and the great one.If we are lucky we will all experience a long roller coaster creative life.

Creativity - Where Does it Come From?

Ideas for images come to me in the night. They come to me while I'm driving somewhere or doing something other than photography. Where does creativity come from? I'm not sure anyone knows. It comes through me and from me and when I least expect it. It's not something I can force or control. Sometimes I get a great idea when I'm stressed and under pressure, or sometimes when I'm bored and navel gazing. Whatever it is, it's the most wonderful feeling when you complete the cycle of a creative idea: capturing the image and then finally showing it. I hope to share with you through this blog, my creative journey.

Cape Spear Old Lighthouse (Digital Composite)

One fall I was under pressure to come up with an idea for an Xmas card. At the time, I was teaching image compositing at Seneca and was working on a class demonstration to turn a daylight image into night. The image was the old non-working lighthouse at Cape Spear in Newfoundland. I had just finished the image, complete with lights on, when this Xmas card crisis hit. The problem with using the lighthouse was that it was photographed in June. A winter image was needed. I looked for a snow scene with the light coming from the same direction as the lighthouse and found an image of snow drifts and grass from Manitoulin Island. I blended in this image but something was still missing. I needed a strong light source. For this I added a moon image from Northern Ontario. The final step was to add a blue tone to make it look like a cold night. It took about 48 seconds to come up with the idea but the whole process to create the image composite took about 48 hours. This was one of the first images we had posted with Getty.