Halifax, Warped

Halifax, from the Citadel, on a sunny day a few weeks ago. My shadow in the bottom left corner. Back in Vancouver now, missing this blue sky.
Will post many more images from my trip soon!

The 40 Part Motet

I have been thinking about sound art lately, and how I might like to learn more about it. I remembered this piece by Janet Cardiff, which I saw at the MoMA in New York in 2006. I find it so amazing and inspiring.

Trying to Diversify...

...my subject matter. Here are some images I shot around the Ross Creek Centre of landscapes, rather than seascapes. I've put then in decreasing order of preference, with my favourite first, but please tell me if you have a different favourite!

Prokudin-Gorskii continued...

So here are my first "serious" images from my Prokudin-Gorskii experiment with infrared film. I'm a bit underwhelmed. Wish I could get brighter colours out of them. (For some reason they come out very purple??) I think I will try again with regular B/W film, because it seems to come out brighter. I'd like to try one seascape as the sky gets darker in the evening, and one city scene at night. See what those look like.


By the way, here is the link once again to the original work that inspired what I am playing with here:
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html

Kingsport

One more landscape picture that I've been working on. I've been concerned that these images look very similar to my ones from Iceland. Always on my toes about reinventing my work and not overdoing a concept. That said, I've been thinking about how to know when it's important to exhaust an idea as far as it will go, and when it's important to move on. Trying to do a bit of both these days.

That said, here is a documentation of sorts from a new project I've been working on. I turned my studio into a giant pinhole camera and shot some exposures from it. I have yet to find a colour printer to process the prints, but this is a view of outside, looking through the pinhole on the inside.

New Images!

Some new long-exposure landscape photographs I have been working on here:

Baxter's Harbour

Hall Harbour

Ross Creek Beach

Halifax Panorama

Halifax at night, looking over to Dartmouth.

Prokudin-Gorskii Experiment Works!

I tried again to make colour images out of 3 b/w images, as I had tried to do once in the summer. This time it works! My results are still very messy, but clear enough to see how I can proceed to make better ones. The first one is infrared film, though very underexposed. The second is regular b/w film (the developing of which I messed up due to trying to use a developing tank I found without a lid). I am going to try both b/w and infrared again, next time much more perfect.

Grand Pré

"Was it a year or lives ago
We took the grasses in our hands,
And caught the summer flying low
Over the waving meadow lands,
And held it there between our hands?"

-Bliss Carman, Low Tide on Grand Pré

Bay of Fundy

I am now at my residency in Nova Scotia! I walked down to the beach from the centre today, overlooking the Bay of Fundy. I had heard about how the highest tides in the world are here, but it didn't strike me how fast and how far the tide moves until I saw it. The tide must have advanced about 20 meters in the half hour or so I was down there. It is intimidating, almost frightening, and very exciting, to see something so big moving so fast.

Solo Exhibition!

An exhibition of colour prints and a video installation, attempting to address the mystery and inscrutability of the natural world.

A New Way of Looking at Colour Photography

A few weeks ago, I found this amazing body of work by Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, who took colour photographs of Russia around 1909-1912. How is that done? Have a look at the link:

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html

I wondered if I could do it myself, and with infrared film. First time, fail. Next time better.

Some last Iceland images

I finally got around to scanning the last of my holga images from Iceland. Here are a couple of pictures from that last few days I spent there, at the beginning of April. I took a couple of trips in around the south of the country. The beach is very near where the volcano erupted.

BC Underwater Photos

I went diving a couple times this summer on Vancouver Island and Bowen Island and had some pretty awesome encounters!

The Art Review Blog

Check out a review of my work on The Art Review Blog!

http://theartreviewer.blogspot.com/

Photo Contest

I entered a photo contest which has a people's choice award and am trying to drum up votes on my work. If you want to take a moment to vote, the link is:

http://www.artistswanted.org/ella629

Just go to the bottom of the page and click on the 5 stars. Thanks!

Also, here is a spooky picture of Reykjavík taken with my Holga last February while it was snowing very hard.

Ferry Building Exhibition

I have some work in a group show, coming up June 1st. I will be showing photographs from my trip to Iceland. If you are in Vancouver, come check it out!

Stykkísholmur

At the request of one of my most diligent blog followers (my dad), I have made another panorama of images pieced together from Iceland. This is 360 degrees around of the town of Stykkísholmur and its harbour, on the Snæfellsnes peninsula.

Skagaströnd via Holga

Northern Lights

From the evening when I was shooting and the Northern Lights came out. They are harder to photography than I thought. It's interesting though how the Holga made this large curvy burn at the top of the pictures.

Double Exposures

Some more Holga double exposures I made in Iceland:
Hverfjall crater near Myvatn and the sky.

Lighthouse, further up the peninsula from Skagaströnd.

Dimmuborgir gate, mountains, lava rocks and sky near Myvatn.

Iceland Holga Panorama

Now home from Iceland, I have been working on photoshopping all of the photos I took there. I made some images with my Holga camera, which I like to think of as my "sketching" camera. By that I mean that I use it to take experimental pictures that won't necessarily turn into a body of work. In this picture, I tried to make an in-camera panorama of a beautiful beach we found after a long hike in the Snæfellsnes Peninsula.

Iceland Underwater

I went on a diving trip this past weekend, in Eyjafjor∂ur and around the North of Iceland, then down to Silfra in Thingvellir Naitonal Park. It was so beautiful and freezing cold! I am thinking about how to pair up underwater images with above-water images. Here are some with similarities.

Car Ride

I went on a couple of trips this week and entertained myself in the car by taking exposures of 4-8 seconds out the window. This is approaching the town of Varmahli∂ on the way back from Myvatn.


These are on the way back to Skagaströnd from Snæfellsnes.

Big Waves

It was very windy yesterday and there were huge waves on the ocean. The sun came out in the afternoon and the scene was something like this. The wind is so strong here, you can lean almost all your weight into it and not fall down. It gives new -and maybe more accurate- meaning to the Cat Stevens lyric, "I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul."

Skagaströnd!

I am currently at an artist residency in a small town called Skagaströnd, in the North of Iceland. Most of my work focuses around water and the ocean, so I have been exploring a lot of beaches around this town. I found a beautiful beach the other night, from which I sewed together several photos to make this panorama. Planning to go shoot 4x5 there as soon as it's not too windy!

Olympics in Vancouver

A photo I took of these spotlights that were in the sky in Vancouver during the 2010 Olympics. 20 minute exposure, from the Burrard Bridge.