VPL

I like walking around the Vancouver Public Library. There's a number of neat shops inside of the library complex as well as on the outside (including one of my favourite Japanese quick meal places). I find it a great place to walk around and take photographs of not only the amazing building but the people around and inside it.

It may be a bit confusing at first but the people in the image are actually part of an image that is placed on a fence that surrounds a work site.

Obligatory selfie?

Medium Format B&W

It's been very sunny and hot here in Vancouver. However, not that long ago, it was pouring rain. During that time, I took out a medium format camera to play around for a bit (Bronica ETRS). I don't usually bring out medium format as I still prefer using 35mm (size). However, the quality with medium format is quite something. For most of my personal work, I find it a bit much to carry multiple cameras, especially a heavy medium format camera (I tried carrying two of them around the Stanley Park Sea Wall and promptly cancelled my gym membership). 

There's a whole debate I can start on this but I'll save that for another blog entry. Experimenting and playing around with different cameras gives me insight into different options to ultimately accomplish my vision, which is... really... the main goal of this whole photographic thing. I just want to make a nice photograph in the end. And for me, at least, 35mm just fits me for multiple reasons (style, native print format being wider, easier to carry, faster lenses to name a few) but the main one being... well, it just clicks with me.

Anyways, enough babble on that. If I feel the urge, I'll return to it another time and blog on it again! For now, images:

Looking Back to Look Ahead - Part 4

In this final segment of the series, I do another selfie (gosh, they're addicting), run around in wet weather and show one of my favourite places to go.

Photographic "Selfie". Arcade machines. Reflection. Boo yeah.

On this day, the rain was coming down lightly (thankfully). My camera was hidden under either it's case or something else but I was hastily walking when I saw these people. I had to quickly raise my camera, run forwards to wards them to try to frame them and get it all focused. 

I looked up and saw the lights. :)

For those outside of Vancouver, BC... be warned. It rains a ton here. 

And when it rains that much, we go indoors into cool shops like this. This is the inside of the Old Faithful Shop in Gastown.

Interaction in Old Faithful. 

Looking Back to Look Ahead - Part 1

In the midst of a very busy 2014, I didn't really get a chance to blog or post a lot of images that I wanted to share with you all. In a way, I can understand how a photographer such as Vivian Maier had all those rolls of undeveloped film... sometimes you're just so busy taking the personal project photographs that trying to sort them all and process them takes time that sometimes one doesn't have. The enjoyment comes from getting out there and photographing and it's easy to put aside the actual processing. Of course, any work assignments I'm hired for come first (and gets processed, edited, etc.) which is why personal projects are a bit behind. Oh well. Such is life.

With our faces being bombarded with a bazillion images, I'd like to take time to just review and comment on each image. Stop and smell the roses... er, photographs... in this case :)

Plenty more stories to share about 2015 (a few assignments being completed and to be blogged soon) but for the next bit I'd like to reflect (with photographs) on my previous year as a way to look into the future and my photographic future.

Taken while riding the bus down Granville St in Vancouver.

There are quite a number of homeless people in Downtown Vancouver. There are projects in place attempting to address the situation and I hope, for the sake of those who are homeless, that they are fruitful projects.

I took this in a coffee shop in... well, somewhere in Vancouver. Not sure if the man saw me but I caught his glance in this photograph!

Taken during the Powell Festival (a Japanese cultural festival that we have annually in Vancouver).

In some ways, I am a street photography. I like to get close and capture the scene around me and document this specific moment in time. Here, I Was probably a bit closer than I usually go but where I hope to push torwards (All while being respectful to those around me).

I really liked the rolling curtains in this image. Taken during the Powell Festival.

Sunny Days

In October of last year, I bought a Leica camera to... well, I really wanted one partly. But the reason I wanted one was not simply because it's a fancy camera and is looked upon with favour (in most cases) by the photography community. It was because I wanted a tool that would further enhance the vision that I had for my approach to my work: Documentary photography.

It's taken me quite a while to get used to this camera and while I've learned a lot over the last few months, I've come to realize that the Leica camera is one that you have to kind of struggle with at first, learn to grow with and eventually make it a part of you. Some people may not jive with rangefinder cameras. Honestly, there are some days when I tire of the learning curve and put it down and give it a rest only to find myself wanting to learn more about it and to try to push myself and it to greater heights.

4 Years Later

While browsing through some old photographs I found one that I had taken just after the Stanley Cup riot. I remember getting out of Downtown as quickly as I could with my wife and friend as the place become a complete mess of chaos.  I took the first photo a few days after the riots.

It was recently that I walked by the BMO once again and I decided to take a photograph to see how times have changed.

BMO in 2010 just days after the Vancouver Stanley Cup Riots.

2014, just 4 years after the riot, and it looks like nothing ever happened.

It's amazing how photography can act as a time capsule to take you back to a time and place in history. This is one of the many reasons I love photography.