street
Whenever I get a chance to walk around Vancouver, I'm always amazed at all the little surprises we have. Continuing from my last post, here's a few more photographs from January 2014 of last year, when the sun was out but the heat was not (it was cold...). Ah well, that's Vancouver :)
Read MoreIt'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:
I keep finding myself back in Chinatown in Vancouver. There's something about the place that keeps drawing me to it and I can't really put my finger on it. If anything, it's a combination of nostalgia for me in combination with a connection to such a lively and unique community. I've been documenting since 2013 and at first it was a way to "improve" my photography but now it has evolved into a story that I hope to tell people through another book some time in the future.
We'll see what happens :)
In the meanwhile, here's a few images from 2014:
Whenever I am in Downtown Vancouver and walk along the streets and alleys, there are days when I'm a bit lazy and don't bother taking the camera out of the bag. However, on most other days, when I push myself over the hump and instill in myself this desire to create, I grab the camera out of the bag and document as much as I can. Suddenly, my attitude changes and I get into this "mode" of searching for light, composition and subjects.
As I type this and upload the images, I've been thinking to myself "why bother with these images?" To preserve. To document. To tell stories through photographs and preserve that moment in time, which will never happen again.
So I was with my wife and we were on our way to my haircut in Downtown Vancouver when we saw that Granville Street was closed off.
Suddenly... Dancing!
I didn't get a chance to check out this whole routine and, for that matter, I was also behind them (their act was positioned to face the other way) but it was really cool to see them performing some cool dance moves while the person in the center chucked around the spinning top.
Right next to the old Sears building, a crowd of dancers were "busting a move" to some music placed by a live band in the white tented area. It was really awesome to see Vancouver so lively. We should do this more often!
OK, no dancing here. I was on a personal photography assignment for a friend's going-away party and snapped this. And yes, food in hand while doing it...
I saw the dog starting to walk out of the frame so let the camera blur it's movement in order to keep it in.
At the end of my 2013 Chinatown Project year, I came to realize how little I had actually documented in that year. That is to say... I don't think a year was long enough to really photograph and document the essence of Chinatown.
So here I am, 7 months after "finishing" photographing for my Chinatown book and I'm still itching to go out there and photograph.
This time around, I want to meet more people. Be bolder. Be fearless. Be #tangible.
Also, I think I will be taking this project to... well, at least another year... or for that matter, I think it's really an on-going project that I will be working on for the next few years. I think over a few year's time we'll be able to see more of the changes and the shifts that may occur and also I'll have more photographs to have to document this place we call Chinatown.
Here are a few I've taken recently:
Sun Yat Sen Garden was recently painted a light blue color.
The imagery of the chinese writing against the newspaper blocking out the windows made for an interesting dissonance in this photograph. At least I think so.
Here I try to use the window to not only show what's ON the window but also what's reflected. The reflection, in essence, becomes the image.
It was a sunny day and I really wanted to make use of the shadows.
