Being There

It was a heady time, those months that I spent shut­tling back and forth to the Big Smoke. I was there three times in six weeks. Each visit brought me a lit­tle closer to the pos­si­b­lity of mak­ing some­thing of pho­tog­ra­phy. Every time I went things seemed a lit­tle more real. I gained a lot of con­fi­dence. Going to Toronto started a series of invest­ments that have allowed me to do some inter­est­ing, excit­ing, and reward­ing work over the past few months.

a lost white dia­per sits on the pave­ment out­side the First Bap­tist Church, cor­ner of Elgin and Lau­rier, Ottawa In just under two weeks, I’ll be par­tic­i­pat­ing in a fundraiser for Médecins Sans Fron­tières involv­ing many of Ottawa’s best pho­tog­ra­phers. Held at Ottawa’s most plea­sure ori­ented gallery come party spot, it’s shap­ing up to be […]

Well, it was late arriv­ing, but this is offi­cially the song of the sum­mer: Dia­mond Rings — All Yr Songs This lit­tle pop gem is on repeat at my house, and I almost have the dance moves nailed. Amaz­ing. Rap­ture. Once it gets in your head, there’s no turn­ing back. Finally, credit where credit is due: […]

the best way to suc­ceed in pho­tog­ra­phy is to quit. I think that this is what I am doing. And I’ve been invest­ing in myself at the same time. I found my voice at the end of a very long year.

Dion was skinny and pale in his boxer shorts, like a boy. He seemed aloof, dis­tant. His out­ward demeanor was unin­spired and unin­ter­ested in the pro­ceed­ings unfold­ing before his in the lit­tle apart­ment inCen­tre­town . The large screw­driver he drank a few min­utes later dis­pelled any delu­sions of polit­i­cal infancy or waver­ing of pur­pose. The abil­ity to drink steadily at all hours of the day is mark of a sea­soned politician.

After a long and ram­bling post the other day, I’ll keep it short this time — I have a cou­ple of read­ings worth your time. I’m not totally con­vinced by the online mag­a­zine. It’s a for­mat in infancy, the kinks haven’t been worked out yet. And yet, this week two online mag­a­zines caught my atten­tion: First up, […]

Today, the con­flict between rad­i­cal Islam and reform leaped from the implicit to the internecine and all too real. Kaplan con­tin­ues:
…the issue of “fun­da­men­tal­ism” in Iran, and the West’s pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with it, was about to be over­taken by larger shifts in the political-historical land­scape that few could yet fathom.
It took twelve years for Kaplan’s pre­dic­tion to come true.

Some­where along the way, I trained myself to ignore my instincts. I focused on style and tech­nique over sub­stance and mean­ing. I lost focus of why I love pho­tog­ra­phy. I’ve been sup­press­ing the emo­tional, non-technical, and intu­itive way of shoot­ing that is actu­ally my strength. Despite count­less hours work­ing on other types of pho­tog­ra­phy, I keep com­ing back to doc­u­men­tary photography.

I’ll be spend­ing the week with one per­son, all the time. Hon­estly, I am scared. I don’t know what to expect. Each per­son will be dif­fer­ent. I am hop­ing to be sur­prised. I am hop­ing to learn. I hope to fall in love, in a small way. It’s time to get up-close and personal.

The con­flict in Sri Lanka is rag­ing. Canada is home to a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple from the island off the tip of India. Almost a quar­ter of a mil­lion Tamils live in Canada, 200,000 of them in Toronto. I was in the city this week, for a con­fer­ence. On my way home, I walked […]