Clara + Enzo = Idiots in the woods

While walking my dog through the local forrest I came across an area where at least 10 trees were marked senselessly by people who clearly don’t respect the nature around them. Normally I don’t feel like ranting about such things but this is a re-occurring motive in many places I have been to. What possesses people to do this is still a mystery to me. Is it because trees don’t hit or bite back ? Surely if I had the sudden urge to scratch my name into someone else’s face on a subway I would be stopped by others or at the very least be annoyed and compelled to stop by the screams of the victim.

I saw some ancient petroglyphs in death valley that were scratched over by the same type of minds, ruining it for everyone else. Maybe those types of people think their senseless markings are their petroglyphs for the future generations to remember. All that will be remembered however is the enormity of their stupidity and disrespect. There are a lot better venues to leave a mark for others to see, ones that don’t involve desecrating the ever shrinking areas of natural beauty we still have. Next time you see the likes of Enzo, Clara, Mike, Rose and similar idiots desecrating our natural environment, do something about it.

It’s so simple

Simple as can be. Nature and a hand made large format camera.

It’s safe to say that I’m a product of the digital age. While I was not born in a country where computers were available to me from early childhood, I can still remember using photoshop 2.0 (no layers) and early 3D software (infini-D, Strata Studio “pro”) on a 25mhz Macintosh shortly after we moved to Canada. I treat digital tools just like my parents generation treats pen and paper. Despite all that it’s very easy to forget how simple the things digital technology aims to demistify really are. Photography at it’s core is a natural phenomenon, a simple opening in a box that lets in light from the world and focuses it on whatever surface is in it’s way.

In spite of digital technology’s influence on photography, the basic principles remain the same since the first rival processes for “fixing the shadows” were discovered by Henry Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre. While digital technology brought unprecedented control over exposure and the final image, it has clouded the simple roots photography stems from.

The images below were shot with my wooden Ebony 4×5 camera. Handcrafted in Japan, it uses no batteries, no presets, has no flower and mountain icons and it has never heard of auto focus. It’s only a shutter, a lens opening and a light sensitive sheet of film that brings everything together. When compared to a modern point and shoot, it really is so simple.

Random Portraits

While my primary interest is not portraits, I enjoy taking them whenever I get the chance. Here are a few I found while consolidating my image libraries today. The black and white were shot on film and the colour ones are digital.

Photos from my dog walks

My energetic hunting dog needs his two hours a day of roaming around the nearby forrest so I can keep my sanity. This is a great excuse to take the camera out and keep myself occupied.

Busy day to day life does not always cater to photography and it would be a shame to put the camera down for weeks or months at a time without coming up with some sort of excuse to keep shooting. While the surrounding area is not to exciting, there can be some interesting light and colour to photograph.

This weekend was pretty cold and nostalgic, but the muted colours of the grass and leafless branches had something about them that I can’t quantify.