I took this window reflection yesterday in Halifax with my recently purchased Canon D5 Mark II. It is an older camera (from 2009) but is in good condition. Using an unfamiliar camera (and lens) really changes how we see things and how we photograph them.
For the past few years I have been mostly using my phone to take photos. I have gotten used to framing scenes using the screen, held out at arms length. Looking through a viewfinder, and using a 50mm lens, gave me such a sense of joy and freedom. And it seemed that different details caught my eye. There is so much to be learned about perception.
For me, nothing beats a straight photo of an unusual scene. I’ve never had much interest in image manipulation after the photo has been taken. I’d rather see the scene and try to record it in an interesting way–a sort of truth is stranger than fiction approach.
There are plenty of famous photographers out there who have a knack for recording oddball scenes. Lee Friedlander, Martin Parr, and Elliott Erwitt are three that come to mind. Their images can make you laugh out loud, or shake your head in wonder. You ponder how they were able be in that place and capture that fleeting moment. Part of the answer, I think, is natural ability, but the bigger part is just practice. They were out shooting everyday, honing their skills, and sharpening their eye.
My photos of unusual scenes are mostly things I come across in everyday life. Seeing them sometimes makes me chuckle, or makes me think that the world is , indeed, a strange and wonderful place.
I have decided to post some recent colour photos. It has been an unusual year with the Covid-19 pandemic, and I have mostly stuck close to home. However, this has not deterred me from taking my usual photos.
When I take a walk with my camera, I’m always on the lookout for the unusual–odd scenes, quirky juxtapositions. To me unusual things are more visually interesting. They demand our attention in different ways than traditional beauty does.
Do you remember those unforgettable Hipgnosis album covers? If you are around my age, you probably spent a lot of time in your teenage years listening to LPs and studying the album covers. You would play side one, then flip over to side two, all the while contemplating the meaning of the prism on the cover. The album art was sometimes humorous, but often it was surreal and enigmatic–very artsy, and unusual.
When I got a camera some years later I remembered those cool Hipgnosis creations (by Storm Thorgerson) and looked for photos with similar moods and juxtapositions. A discarded door on a sidewalk, an odd reflection in a mirror, a blank sign–this lead me to produce a series titled: Wish You Were Here. Thorgerson was good at isolating odd elements in the image, much like the painter René Magritte. It was clear what you were supposed to notice, but an intended meaning was not so clear. This ambiguity can draw you in and keep you looking for a long time.
I take photos for many different reasons, but am always on the lookout for those quirky, off-beat scenes–the ones that make you do a double-take.
My Wish You Were Here series aims to challenge the viewers’ attention in a subtle way by finding everyday scenes with elements of whimsy and surrealism. Like Rene Magritte, and Lee 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.
This project has been ongoing for several years now, and also have a black and white series called Wish You Were Here – Monochrome Dreaming. As 2020 has been such a strange and unusual year, I thought these 2020 photos, since the start of the pandemic, may be appropriate for the times.
Here is the introduction to the book, self published in 2018: “When I was a teenage boy in the mid-Seventies, living in rural Nova Scotia, I spent hours studying the album covers created by Hipgnosis, the London-based design group. This was before I grew interested in photography, but, as LPs like Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” or “Ummagumma” played on the turntable, I scrutinized the covers, trying to penetrate the mysteries of the evocative, layered visual compositions. My “Wish You Were Here” is an ongoing photographic project that’s been in the works for several years. I aim to capture images that have a sense of the surreal yet are readily seen in everyday life. Additionally, I try to capture the sense of whimsy and humour that I liked about those album covers. The images come about through observation, rather than with Photoshop or other manipulations. For me, that’s an important aspect of the project–there’s no manipulation of the image. Reflections, juxtaposition, and scale all come into play.”
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 a few early examples from Toronto in the 1980s, and then some more recent examples.
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.
