Hello everyone! This is part 6 of a series where I go through my catalog of photographs to reflect on how I became the photographer I am today.
This first image was taken near Africville Nova-Scotia. I went back to this site a few times trying to get a good shot of stars moving across the sky (it never worked out). I arrived early so I had to wait for the evening light to die down in order for the stars to come alive. At this point in time I was still taking photographs of everything and anything but my sensibility towards making images of humanity was starting to come out. I’m currently thinking about how my life would be different if I chose to stay with this path of urban exploration/landscape-y photography instead of taking pictures of people themselves. But alas, sometimes we need to let certain parts of ourselves fade away if we’re going to shine in the dark night.
Alright enough of the poetic crap. Let’s get back to something interesting. As I’ve mentioned before sometimes I enjoy skateboarding a bit too much, but my photography never really went in that direction.With the exception of French Fred and a few others I always experienced more enjoyment watching a video than looking at a photograph. I still tried my luck at it and got something that almost resembles a good photograph from the process. This is a Halifax skateboarder named Kale (if anyone knows his last name and/or has an IG profile/email address with which I can give him this photograph please comment or email me), and if I remember correctly this wasn’t the one where he landed the backside flip, but it was only a few tries later that he got it.
I remember one day when I was at da Vinci college my instructor mentioned how Halifax Dance was looking for someone to take photographs of their ballet dancers. The others weren’t interested but I leaped out of my seat at the opportunity. Dancing is an incredible art form. The constant practice and determination required to perfect each movement is synonymous with the kind of discipline required to become a great photographer. A great anything really. Of course the same goes for skateboarding. But the scene that you’re looking at is a lie. Well, more of a lie than most of my photographs. The mirror is where everyone put their bags and water bottles so I spent hours in Photoshop taking patches of one part and putting it over the other. It was exhaustive work but I think it was worth it in the end.
This is one image that I always liked but never got around to posting. I’m not sure why, it just never seemed to fit in any of my other portfolios or blog posts. It still bugs me that the moon isn’t perfectly center, but I feel as though it’s critical to maintain a certain discipline and not use Photoshop on your photos. Why this image and not the last one? Because if I Photoshopped this image to perfection then I’m no longer telling the “truth” as I want to express it. The only excuse I can give for the last image is that I’m trying to please another group of people and I made the choice to put their needs first. And I’m just not good enough of a photographer to follow my own discipline 100% of the time.
I feel as though an important part of photography is to stay “true” to how the world really is. I’m sure most people probably realize that this statement makes no sense because photographs are inherently a transformation of the world, but that’s just where I draw the line in the sand at this point in my artistic life. I don’t want to take out power lines, or tree branches, or center the moon, I want to show you the things that were in front of me in a way that you could potentially observe them if you were standing where I was.
This last image is one that I was fortunate enough to sell a framed print to my former boss. He was a great guy who loved art and owned several coffee franchises. I told him that he should hang it in one of his stores because I definitely purposely included his brand’s coffee cup in the corner of the photograph.
Coming back another day wasn’t an option because construction happens quickly in downtown Halifax, and I probably wasn’t going to be lucky enough to get those great lines of light on the wall again. I remember standing on the corner of Spring Garden road, almost in the road, and waited at least ten minutes to get the right subject to pass by. Everyone at the bus stop was staring at me with confused looks, the expressions on their faces seemed say “What the hell is this guy taking photographs of?”. I don’t know if this image does a good enough job to answer that question, but it still manages to put a smile on my face.
If you’re still with me this far then thank you for reading yet another of my photo ramblings. Check back next week for even more!