Taken with a “Snap Crackle & Pop” Trash Cam.
Crossing lines
Taken with a “Snap Crackle & Pop” Trash Cam.
Taken with a “Snap Crackle & Pop” Trash Cam.
The Hollywood
The Hollywood – Taken with a Holga 120 CFN
Beam me up
In a follow up to the entry about Utata weekend projects from the other day, “Beam Me Up” has been launched over at Utata.org . You can check it out here. There are a few photos of interesting experiments with long exposures using flashlights included, and the use of these as a light source in general gives me a few ideas…
Art of the street
One of the ongoing photographic projects I’ve undertaken since moving to Vancouver is the documentation of local street artist’s work. I try to keep an eye out when wandering the city and photograph new paste-ups or stencils as soon as I see them because due to the weather and strict anti-graffiti laws, very few pieces stay around for long. I’ve always had an interest in Graffiti but not to the same degree until now because the Vancouver scene distinguishes itself with interesting styles and distinctive work. Some may consider this sort of thing vandalism but I like the idea of bringing art to the street, because it adds a more interesting aspect to the visual landscape of the city and takes art out of the safe and typical environment of a gallery.
Street art is defined as any art developed in a public space, and can include traditional aerosol paint graffiti work, but encompasses many other media and techniques such as wheat pasting, stickers, and stencil graffiti.
This week two gallery shows will begin after the cross country moving service gets all of the art here! Vancouver street artists. “Plumage” opens at Midtown (438 Pender St.) on Friday January 27th at 8pm, and on Saturday “Faces of Basco” opens at Les Gallery (1879 Powell St.) at 7pm.
Cuban Soul
In my quest for a suitable venue to show my work this year I came across the wonderful little gallery at Havana Restaurant on Commercial Drive. The current exhibition is called Cuban Soul, featuring the work of Surrey-based photographer Gabor Gasztonyi. His black & white photographs were taken in the barrios of Havana, Cuba and feature the beauty and energy of the people who live there. “They are some of the most beautiful people in the world, full of life and music, this comes through in their faces, even though the communist regime limits their freedom.”
Check it out soon because the show ends this Saturday January 28th.
Utata Weekend Projects
Over on the photo sharing community of Flickr there is an interesting and very active group called Utata that was originally started by Catherine Jamieson. She wanted to create a salon in the traditional sense, where people could gather to talk, share, learn and grow. The group has become a very vibrant community that I’m very proud to be a contributing member of. It’s one of the few groups I make an effort to keep up with (besides Vandigicam) because it seems to attract a higher calibre of photographer and many of the members are flickr contacts that I admire.
It’s a constant source of inspiration and ideas because there is often a new project on the go to get everyone out and shooting. This past weekend’s project was the theme “Beam me up” – photos taken in general darkness but lit with an artificial directed beam of light. The above three photos are ones that I chose to submit and I’m looking forward to the end results of the group project.
Click here for more Utata projects.
Polaroid Transfers
If you’re looking for something new to try with your photography I highly recommend experimenting with some of the alternative photographic processes that are available. Years ago I took a workshop on Polaroid Transfer that I quite enjoyed, and was very happy with the results from the session:
About these prints: the top photo is an emulsion transfer and the bottom is a dye transfer, both from polaroids. The technique is one in which the image of a “peel-apart” polaroid negative is transferred onto a non-photographic surface, such as paper, fabric, vellum, or wood.
“Polaroid transfer begins with the exposure of the color film, either in camera or through an enlarger. Instead of allowing the full development time, the film halves are separated before the dyes can migrate from the negative portion. The negative is placed face down on a damp receptor, most commonly a sheet of watercolor paper, and pressed firmly with a roller. After a short period, one to twenty minutes, depending on the artist’s particular technique, the negative is carefully peeled back. If all went well, the fully formed and developed image is now present on the receptor surface.”
A good place to start for further information on techniques for this process and a listing of the appropriate types of films can be found on the Polaroid website. There is also a good description of the difference between emulsion and dye transfer here.
Scanner Photography
An interesting item on the scanner photography project of Mike Golembewski was brought to my attention today via Utata. He’s spent the last several years experimenting with homemade digital cameras created from combining a flatbed scanner and a large format film camera.
“Instead of building a camera that mimicked the functionality of a traditional photographic camera, I had stumbled across a new tool for examining the relationships between time, motion, and image. What I thought would be a two week art project has turned into one that has lasted for almost three years, and shows little sign of stopping.”
The image gallery of his website contains a selection of the best results from his experiments. There are some good stock photos but the main focus of the website is on the more abstract pieces. The work is very surreal with a similar look in some respects to pinhole photography or toy camera shots, and with bizarre distortion to moving objects.
Studies in Motion
If you’ve done any reading on the early history of photography then Eadweard Muybridge is a name that you’ll surely recognize. He began his career as a landscape photographer in the mid 1800s, gaining recognition for his photographs of the American West between 1868 and 1873. The work Muybridge is most well known for are his studies in human and animal locomotion, that dramatically changed long standing perceptions of motion of that time period, and led to the development of the cinema.
I was reminded of Muybridge because “Studies in Motion: The Hauntings of Eadweard Muybridge” is opening this week at the Push International Performing Arts Festival here in Vancouver. The play explores the darker aspects of Muybridge’s character, and the lesser known event of the murder of his wife’s lover, for which he was acquited. The play runs from January 17th to 29th at Frederic Wood Theatre UBC. Tickets are $18 regular, $10 student, or $12 seniors and can be order by phone at 604.822.2678. I’m planning on checking it out because I’m intrigued by the idea of a play about photography.
Oops Magazine Artist Feature
Oops Magazine is a local bi-weekly Japanese language paper about life in Vancouver. My friend Noriko Miyamura is a writer for the magazine, and I was recently interviewed by her for an article about my work that’s in the current addition. Some of my photographs have been included, as well as a picture of me taken by Joanna Garfinkel. Please do take a look at their website.
Noriko has very kindly translated her article to English, and I’ve included it here:
Rachael’s photos are mysterious, and each one seems to have its own hidden message. People who become subjects of her portraits find them fascinating because it reveals their true feelings or subtle sexuality. Her subjects are mostly ordinary people, not professional models. They look natural in the photos and there is a feeling about them that each person is willing to open up their heart to her.
Rachael was born in Toronto, Ontario. Her interest in photography first developed when she was in high school. As an artist, she always feels the need to create something every day. Over the last few years she has focused on creating digital art, “I love to play with imagery (in Adobe Photoshop) and have fun with the original photographs. By doing so the photographs are telling their own story.” Rachael moved from Toronto to Vancouver in 2004, and is now working towards establishing herself as a freelance photographer. She is an avid blogger with various photo-related blogs. She enjoys interacting with other artists and shares her ideas, thoughts, and inspirations on her blogs. “To maintain an artistic practise, I feel that you have to do something creative every day. It takes dedication and determination to persue your dream, but it’s important to just do what you want to do and have fun with it!”
She often can be found walking around the city with her camera, trying to capture “the moment” of everyday life. Today, maybe you will bump into Rachael as she takes her photos with passionate eyes.