Hello everyone! This is part eight of a series where I write down my thoughts on my old photographs. To see how my work has evolved and to reflect on the successes and mistakes that I’ve made as an artist.
This first image was taken with a bellows system, a way of making just about any lens capable of extreme macro photography. This was one of those days in school when I was the only one that showed up, and it was just me and my instructor Steve Kaiser taking photos of whatever old computer stuff we could get our hands on. If I remember correctly this image took about 20-40 images stacked together to make sure everything was in focus. This is because extreme macro photography, due to the laws of physics, will only have a very tiny part in focus.
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This second image was taken in my backyard. I did this dozens of times, just go out and take photos of silly little things like way the sun hit the plants, or close ups of flowers. Overall they were pretty terrible. Much like any kind of activity that a person does there’s a lot more failures and almost interesting attempts than successes.
This was taken after a rainy day and I noticed that for a short period of time there were rain drops that stuck to spider webs. The pattern and the multitude of the little drops was just so cool. Even though I don’t take photos like this anymore and I don’t go out looking for photos like this I still really enjoy this image. It’s a document of a previous version of myself, what I was interested in in the past. Every photograph captures a small part of the creator that doesn’t, and never will, exist again.
This image was taken the day before my brother got married. The day before we had a great party and my amazing aunt Eileen decided to make sure everyone in the my now sister in-law’s family felt like they were true Newfies. We screeched them in. My aunt put on this hilarious mix of rubber boots, a rain jacket, with hats and sunglasses to go with it. She poked fun at the Newfie accent and asked them if they wanted to get screeched in. Everyone agreed, nobody knew what my aunt was saying, and we all had a great time.
After the wedding I was in my last semester at school, we were preparing for the graduating exhibition and I had to decide what I was going to present. At first I wanted to do landscape photography and my instructor had a puzzled look on his face. He knew that deep down I was already a street photographer but just wasn’t ready to call myself one. I told him I wanted to shoot landscapes because that’s what other people would’ve liked. He said something along the lines of “but what about street photography?” My only response was that I didn’t think other people would like it. After some serious reflection I realized I can’t do that. I’m too stubborn and dead set on doing my own thing. I can’t get caught up on what other people think.
With only a few weeks until the deadline I decided to change my subject to street photography. So I went into a mad dash to take as many photos as possible. I was in the streets for hours at a time trying to get something better than what I’ve done before. I felt as though my portfolio up until that point was worthless and that I needed to do better. That’s when I made this image.
Looking back now I’m ecstatic I chose street photography. Every time I present my work I think everyone’s going to hate it so I put all my effort into improving everything I can, then when the time comes I get afraid that I didn’t do enough and my work is terrible. But every time I show it to people it turns out they actually enjoy it. I think I’ll be rebelling against this desire for perfection or the rest of my life. It’s an uphill battle, but through small victories the war can be won.
This last image was also taken during the end of the school mad dash but I didn’t end up using it for the exhibition. That was probably a mistake. Artists are often terrible at choosing which of their work is of the highest quality. I was just walking through the downtown area and I realised that this guy had a freaking pigeon on his shoulder! I was so surprised I couldn’t help but say something to him. We ended up talking for a little while and I made this portrait of him. I don’t usually do these kind of street portraits but this is one that I really enjoy. I asked him if this pigeon was his pet and he said no, he just fed him and he ended up chilling on his shoulder for a little while. It’s amazing what you see if you keep your eyes open.