11/12/2024

Dahlia from our garden, Summer 2024.

I come back here, ironically, when screaming into the void of the algorithm takes it’s toll. It’s ironic because I’m not pretending like I have some huge following here in my miniature hole in the corner of the internet.

This dahlia from our backyard is shot on 35mm, but since I came into owning a scanner capable of handling my 4x5 negatives, I’m thinking more and more about how much I love that camera. When I was in school and just after (before bike racing took a grip) some of my most meaningful photographs were made on sheet film. I still managed to have a range of format within those years though, shooting my grad project on our schools 8x10 camera and carrying around a Buschman Pressman 2-1/4 x 3-3/4 press camera (that’s, effectively 6x9 medium format, but in sheet film).

My grad project I fleshed out as much as I could in the time I had access to the 8x10 and while I would have liked to continue that theme, I think it’s allowed me to think about new subjects in an analytical way. The press camera I fleshed out as much as I could within a timeframe, but specifically the time frame that I was a bike messenger, for whatever reason I decided this antique, labour and size-intensive camera was the thing I needed to lug around downtown Vancouver in a pocket of my messenger bag.

Anyways, I was thinking about the discipline I applied to those projects. A little strictly with the schools 8x10, a little looser on the press camera. I believe I’m ready to inhabit somewhere between those two with some themes I want to explore around my home in Squamish.

It’s difficult to feel like an artist sometimes. Especially if your explorations are leaning more towards eavesdropping on the conversations happening silently around your environs.

Well. Hopefully keep returning here. Sometimes it’s easier to flap my jaw silently in this secret corner of the internet than scream into the void.