Skating

We're on the brink of the middle of January, and this is the first day that Toronto has finally had its first real attempt at a snow storm. It seemed like a good day for scanning film of people skating at city hall.

It took me almost a year to finish a single roll of film, for a total of nine exposures. I have two backs for my GX680, and the one with black and white film didn't see much use.

There was a problem with this film, and since there's no way to know if it was user or equipment error, I'm going to blame the camera. It wasn't fully advanced when I opened the back, causing light damage to the unprocessed film.

(I actually quite like the results.)

Lake Ontario from The Center

I want to say that this is to give a bit of variety after so many photos from my 'time and motion' project, but it's blatantly the same basic image from a different subject.

I even used some of the same processing techniques. In fact, I'm pretty sure that this is from the same roll of film as the red one, "III".

Happy New Year IV

The fourth in my irregular series of welcoming the new year with a strip club photo.

Time and Motion III

One more before the new year.

This one is from a different camera.

Time and Motion II

When I first started sorting through these photographs I quickly discovered that I would need to operate a little differently. Typically I grade by quality, making further and further refinements as I cull down to the fewest possible photos, but the unexpected nature of these meant that I needed to form broader groups before I could do that. Instead I graded by characteristics, either 'smooth', 'rough', or indeterminate. After living with them for a while, I decided that I generally prefer to look at smoother photos.

These three photos are all examples of the 'rough' category, and have been processed slightly differently from the others that I posted. But this is an evolving series, and the treatments and selections are likely to change over time, so I'm keeping an open mind.

Last week I picked up another roll of film that has more of these photographs on it. I haven't had a chance to scan them yet, but holding them all to the light I saw how the dominant lines aligned across so many of the frames… the next set of images may be able to make use of that. I've always had a soft spot for Serendipity.

Time and Motion

I won't say what the camera was pointing at when I took these photos, because what it is and what it looks like doesn't need to be the same thing.

Most of my photos are the result of reduction and control. For these I've set up a situation and guided the process, but don't know what the results will look like until the very last stages. Captured on film, I've layered the colours and adjusted the tones, but otherwise these photos are created as physically as possible.

I don't quite have a handle on this series yet. There are anywhere from four to ten candidates in the photographs that I've already captured, but my next set are going to be taken with a different camera, and I don't know how well they'll play together. I'm expecting this to become an open-ended project that I can return to with new methods and techniques as time goes on.

#245, St. Patrick Station

This is an out-take from a series that I've been working on recently, and as anyone who sees this would probably expect, it's not for the obvious reason.

The camera was pointing the wrong way.