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Published July 14, 2021 by avardw

More from the Monochrome Dreaming series

Monochrome, Monochrome Dreaming, photography,

I have always been monochrome dreaming. Since first picking up a camera, I have been interested in recording odd scenes; photos that make you do a double take. In the early days, I didn’t concentrate on it very much. I’d take a photo whenever I came across something unusual. It wasn’t until I got a digital camera in 2006 that I began to actively look for everyday scenes that make the familiar seem a little strange.

With a digital camera, I could experiment more–take many photos of the same scene in order to change the angle of a reflection or align elements perfectly. My image making went from taking a one-off of a particular scene to exploring the scene more fully to get the best possible shot. In this post I show photos taken over the past decade

In my Wish You Were Here series, I aim to challenge the viewers’ attention in a subtle way by finding everyday scenes with elements of whimsy and surrealism. Like Magritte, and Friedlander, I want to make the familiar seem a little strange, but without Photoshop and image manipulation. These photos come about through observation, using juxtaposition, reflection, typography, and scale. My new project, “Monochrome Dreaming” shows black and white images with dream-like qualities that aspire to entertain the senses.

Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2011 – © Avard Woolaver

Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2013 – © Avard Woolaver

Black and White Observation Photography

black and white black and white photography monochrome Monochrome Dreaming

Published February 2, 2021 by avardw

Toronto street photos from the 1980s

Toronto street photos, 1980s, — Nathan Phillips Square Toronto, 1982 – © Avard Woolaver

Here are some Toronto street photos from the 1980s. They are images that I scanned quite recently, and have not been previously posted or published. There is a certain satisfaction for me in re-discovering these photos that I took so long ago. They tell me a lot about how much the world has changed, and I myself have changed. And, conversely, they also remind me that so many basic things in the world remain unchanged.

As we cannot travel back in time, photographs are a way to come face to face with the past–to reconnect with it without actually going there. Photographs are also a good memory aid. There is so much information crammed into our brains that forty year old information can slip away very easily. It’s funny that I can remember very clearly taking some of these photos, yet others are a complete mystery. I only know that I must have taken it for a reason. A few photos in this post were taken for a school assignment at Ryerson called “Exploration of the frame” – new and novel ways to frame photos. I’m not sure if I succeeded.

These Toronto street photos bring me joy and feelings of nostalgia. It’s hard to separate them from the memories that surround them: good times with friends at school and at parties, endless hours in the darkroom, the joy of being young and alive with a head full of tunes.

Black and White Film Photography Photography Toronto

1980s black and white film photography street photography street photos Toronto

Published October 10, 2020 by avardw

Recent black and white photos

During the pandemic I have been in relative isolation, and have taken some comfort in returning to black and white photography. It takes me back to the late 1970s when I first learned to process and print black and white film. These days, however, I shoot everything digitally in colour, and do the conversions to monochrome later–it leaves more options.

I’m in my early sixties, which means I grew up with a black-and-white television. When I was young our TV got two channels, both of them snowy. Even shows that had been filmed in colour were, in our household and others like ours, translated into varying shades of grey.

And I loved paging through Life magazine; there, too, reality was shown in black and white. It became my default understanding of what a photo was.

Old family photos in my parents’ and grandparents’ albums, similarly, were in black and white. We had colour film, of course, and I enjoyed my father’s colour slides (shown on a big screen in the living room when we had company or at Christmas). But the basic set of beliefs I had about photos or images was that they were in black and white.

I think there’s some level at which, when I got seriously into photography in my twenties, I was working from that assumption. I still love looking at tonal variation and shades of grey—how a black-and-white photo can contain everything from deepest inky black to a pale, foggy, mist, to white and nearly silver. Black and white isn’t lacking, or second-best; it’s just different. American photographer Robert Frank called it the colours of hope and despair.

And it’s not better. There can be a kind of high-handedness about it, a sort of snooty, superior quality. A whiff of reading Russian novels at breakfast and watching only foreign films, an “I’m better than you” air. That’s an empty pretense, though. There doesn’t need to be any message in using it.

It’s beautiful. Colour is beautiful. Both are great—a pleasure to shoot, a pleasure to look at.

Black and White Photography

black and white monochrome photography

Published September 2, 2020 by avardw

Wish You Were Here – Monochrome Dreaming

The Junction, Toronto, 1982 – © Avard Woolaver

In my Wish You Were Here series, I aim to challenge the viewers’ attention in a subtle way by finding everyday scenes with elements of whimsy and surrealism. Like Magritte, and Friedlander, I want to make the familiar seem a little strange, but without Photoshop and image manipulation. These photos come about through observation, using juxtaposition, reflection, typography, and scale. My new project, “Wish You Were Here – Monochrome Dreaming” shows black and white images that aspire to challenge and entertain the senses.

Dundas Street West, Toronto, 1983 – © Avard Woolaver

Danforth Music Hall, Toronto, 1982 – © Avard Woolaver

Brooklyn, Nova Scotia, 2014 – © Avard Woolaver

Brooklyn, Nova Scotia, 2012 – © Avard Woolaver

Windsor, Nova Scotia, 2010 – © Avard Woolaver

Blogging Observation Photography

black and white Monochrome Dreaming photography Wish You Were Here

Published March 5, 2019 by avardw

Changing colour into black and white

Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, 2019, black and white, — Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, 2019 – © Avard Woolaver

Although I’m not a big fan of digital manipulation and do almost none to my images, I make an exception when I convert colour images to black and white. To my eye, some scenes just look better in monochrome.

I have always thought of black and white photography as an abstract medium and colour photography as a psychological medium. American photographer Elliott Erwitt said, “With colour you describe; with black and white you interpret.” So, there is more left to the imagination and perhaps more attention paid to graphic details.

When I first heard the version of Kodachrome on Simon and Garfunkel’s The Concert in Central Park, I realized that the lyrics had been changed from the original. According to Songfacts Simon sometimes sings the line “Everything looks worse in black and white” as “Everything looks better in black and white.” He changes it a lot, and claims he can’t remember which way he wrote it.” Neither is better, just a different view of the world.

I used to shoot my digital monochrome images using the b&w mode on my camera until I saw a documentary on Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama. He was going over images on the computer with his assistant and telling him which ones he wanted to be converted to black and white. I started shooting everything in colour and doing the conversions later–it leaves more options. If it’s good enough for Daido Moriyama, it’s good enough for me!

Here are some recent photos that I have converted.