Nov
03

Isolation

‘Isolation’
2020

“Stay at home”. That was the recommendation. Other than occasionally going out for groceries, that is what I did for the last two weeks of March, with the advent of the pandemic order in Vancouver. I stayed at home to help flatten the curve, but mostly because at any one moment, there were over a hundred people in front of my apartment building seeking connection with nature. I live across the street from Stanley Park; it is my “front yard”. The weather was lovely. The cherry blossoms were in full, fluffy bloom. People had cabin fever. However, I didn’t want to go out. Daytime was when it was risky to go out. It was the night that was safe.

One of the largest urban parks in the world gets eerily quiet after the sun sets: the beaches clear of sunbathers, the seawall empties of joggers, rollerbladers, and cyclists, and a conga line of cars exit the park for points east. Heading out after 10:00 P.M., I found comfort in the night, and saw the silence and stillness as a perfect analogy for a world in “lockdown”.

Making the long-exposure photographs for this series – exposures were from 1-minute to 12-minutes – allowed me time to stand in the silence and be exposed to my surroundings. I witnessed shooting stars, and a ring of satellites passing over head. I saw the herons fishing in the shallows, heard eagles chittering at each other in their aeries, and saw raccoons, otters, and beavers going about their nocturnal routines…a world mostly unseen in the daytime.

The darkness obscures the noisy details, and brings other objects into clear focus. Using only available light the photos in ‘Isolation’ capture aspects of the park often overlooked during the day, giving them new life in the night.The photos express the silence, solitude, and stillness of the park left alone, and comfortable in its isolation.

Oct
29

Oregon Coast

Oregon Coast
2019

A beautiful place any time of the year, the Oregon coast really shines when the waves are high, and the weather clears just after the rain. The rock formations along the coast make it easy to imagine when the earth was young.

Oct
07

Time Passages: Pacific Cruise

Time Passages
 (2012 – ongoing)

‘Time Passages’ is a continuing series of long-exposure photos split into several categories, ‘Mountains’, ‘Cities’, ‘Hulls’, ‘Trains’, and others, taken from the decks of passenger ferries, trains, and vehicles in motion as they pass along their routes; and is, in essence, painting with the camera.

The ‘Mountains’ series is compiled from a year and a half of travelling aboard the various BC Ferries. The ‘Cities’ series includes images from Istanbul, New York, Toronto and Vancouver.

‘Time Passages’ uses the technique of long-exposure photography in a way that allows an element of chance into the process. The movement of the boats I travel on, their course changes, the weather conditions and ocean swells are all beyond my control as a photographer and all affect the final image. Repeated journeys yield varying and dramatic results.

‘Time Passages’ was shot both in 4×5 slide film, and in digital format. The film and the digital media offer different results; the digital is more ‘painterly’, while the film is more sublime. Both mediums capture the passing of time and the questioning of memory and lie somewhere between a short film and a multiple exposure, capturing superimposed vistas in the ‘Mountains’ series, creating new architecture through abstraction in the ‘Cities’ series, and expressing the sensation of movement in the ‘Trains’ series.

May
11

Time Passages: Autoview

Time Passages
(2012 – ongoing)

‘Time Passages’ is a continuing series of long-exposure photos split into several categories, ‘Mountains’, ‘Cities’, ‘Hulls’, ‘Trains’, and others, taken from the decks of passenger ferries, trains, and vehicles in motion as they pass along their routes; and is, in essence, painting with the camera.

The ‘Mountains’ series is compiled from a year and a half of travelling aboard the various BC Ferries. The ‘Cities’ series includes images from Istanbul, New York, Toronto and Vancouver.

‘Time Passages’ uses the technique of long-exposure photography in a way that allows an element of chance into the process. The movement of the boats I travel on, their course changes, the weather conditions and ocean swells are all beyond my control as a photographer and all affect the final image. Repeated journeys yield varying and dramatic results.

‘Time Passages’ was shot both in 4×5 slide film, and in digital format. The film and the digital media offer different results; the digital is more ‘painterly’, while the film is more sublime. Both mediums capture the passing of time and the questioning of memory and lie somewhere between a short film and a multiple exposure, capturing superimposed vistas in the ‘Mountains’ series, creating new architecture through abstraction in the ‘Cities’ series, and expressing the sensation of movement in the ‘Trains’ series.

Oct
21

Deconstruction

‘Deconstruction’
(2016 – Ongoing)

‘Demolition’, as a term, is now outmoded. With civic governments requiring the demolition of buildings to be more sustainable and the increase in the percentage of recycled construction materials, ‘demolition’ has been reborn as, ‘deconstruction’.

In the fast-paced real estate market that is Vancouver, land assemblies and buildings with “too much air” above them are being razed at an ever-increasing rate. The photographic project, ‘Deconstruction’ captures this activity mid-stream, creating images that are both documentary and abstract. As the process of deconstruction is slower than traditional demolition, opportunities arise to capture the inner structures of buildings, and the remains of its former purpose.

‘Deconstruction’ shares many similar aspects to my previous work, ‘Pyres’, wherein, the image is but a document of what I like to consider as the, “unintended artistry of the excavator operator”. The excavator operator acts as a curator of construction debris, categorizing the valuable recyclable materials – concrete, rebar, metal, and wood – into discrete piles, while slowly picking away at the building itself. By making photographs during the deconstruction process, it is as though I have captured the building while caught in the act between being, and not being, simultaneously revealing the mysteries of its construction in its deconstruction.