Concert Photos I Barely Remember Taking | The Kathedral

Posted on September 14, 2008 by Gabriel

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When I moved to Toronto I, totally by accident, moved within eight or ten blocks of a pack of people from my hometown. Most of us drank really, really heavily, so we had that in common… plus four of them had started a punk band, so we had that to bond over as well. I started chronicling their hijinks just as the band took off, so I’ve got shots from most of the downtown venues. Due to cost issues I only took photos of bands with my friends in them… like the pack of slacker weed addicts from Montreal in this shot.

Technical Stuff: If you want to shoot in a bar or club be very careful who you’re aiming the camera at, and be prepared to be kicked out if the management or bartender get any complaints. However, the law is clear that once you get managements permission to shoot on site you can do anything you want with your camera… oh yeah baby, even that.

I drank a lot of alcohol while I was chronicling my friends and their adventures, but never when I was shooting. So thank God I only shot one or two nights a week and then only for a couple of hours… once that was out of the way it was White Russians, Cuba Libra’s and Labatt’s Blue until I passed out. And, on the good nights, while I was passed out.

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Posted in Black And White, Concerts, Entertainment, Favourites, Humor, Humour, Photography, Pre 2004 | 1 Comment

Self Portraits I Can Barely Tolerate 001

Posted on September 10, 2008 by Gabriel

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I’ve noticed not many people smile in self-portraits… at least not in a true self-portrait. I think that’s because, deep deep down inside, none of us feel like we’re worth smiling for. Each of us are broken and when there’s no one around except ourselves holding a camera towards our Self it’s safe for us to express… wait… oh, that is me smiling. Oh.

Technical Stuff: There is actually some motion in this photo. I’m moving my body forward as I snap the shot, so that’s why I’m slightly out of focus. The reason there seems to be a significant chunk of my skull missing around my left eye is the shot is just slightly overexposed because my neighbour left his 100W bulb turned on and the tiny hallway is all white and reflective. Which was the point of me doing this… that and ‘the incident’.

As long as you aren’t taking them in public self portraits are the easiest photos to take, but they’re also the hardest to explain. And where are we supposed to put them once they’re developed? It’s not like we can fill our living room walls up with self portraits and not use the word “narcissist” when visitors ask “WTF’s up with the self loving?”… turns out that’s what walk-in closets are for.

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Posted in Entertainment, Experiments, Favourites, Humor, Humour, Photography, Self Portraits, Vankleek Hill Photos | 4 Comments

Almost Like Art | Yellow Flower Purple Ground

Posted on September 5, 2008 by Gabriel

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Occasionally I manage to take a photo with some artistic value… surely if the concept of “art” can be stretched to include paint thrown onto a canvass by an elephant, it can apply to some of my photography.

Technical Stuff: Mostly I looked down… at some point I must have moved my feet out of the way. I honestly do not remember the ground being that purple. I know it wasn’t a topsoil kind of black, but this off-colour thing is more accident than anything else. Which is totally cool, I think most of those elephant artists accomplish their work the same way and I’d definitely hang their stuff on my wall.

I like the little dash of red on the left hand side and the patterns in the purple soil. I think it’s actually that little purple half-smile swirl around the flower that gives the photo a little more energy than it otherwise would have had… look at me going on like I was an artistic elephant. I did do a pretty good job at centring the big fluffy yellow thing against the huge dark background. That’s a step up.

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Posted in Almost Like Art, Entertainment, Favourites, From My Wall, Humor, Humour, Nature, Photography | Leave a comment

Lilly The Robot Has A Huge Thumb

Posted on September 3, 2008 by Gabriel

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Mostly this picture is cool because her thumb is screwing up my light meter. She was following the beeping sound my camera makes when I have it set on multiple exposures. Either children are naturally attracted to electronic beeps or Lilly’s a robot looking for a friend. Sorry… that’s all I’ve got, it’s really hot and I’m messed up on Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi. I think it’s the sodium benzoate that makes my palms numb.

Technical Stuff: Lilly is actually the first baby I’ve ever had as a subject. I took semi-professional photos of Lilly and her parents a few months before I took this shot, one of which they used as a Christmas card… which they never sent me. Did you hear me sob right there? I think her name is spelled with two L’s… if they had sent me a card I’d have it in writing so I’d know for sure.

The worst type of photo is the shot of a kid not doing anything. Get them doing stuff, then take the photo and please, please, immediately store it away in a giant box with all the other photos that look exactly like it and never, ever, take that box out to show your friends or family.

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Posted in Entertainment, Favourites, Friends, From My Wall, Humor, Humour, Photography, Vankleek Hill Photos | 1 Comment

That Morning The Aliens Came

Posted on August 31, 2008 by Gabriel

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If you’ve ever seen the excellent documentary called Close Encounters Of The Third Kind you’ll know most of the time a spacecraft flies off, or drops down, the clouds roll and expand around it, kind of like how this cloud looks. Independence Day with Will Smith (based on a true story) had the same effect but with a little more oomphf.

Technical Stuff: I think I had the camera closed one stop, but this was like a year ago and there was a lot of crazy stuff going on… I had just switched conditioners, there was the thing with the monkey and I was still leaning pretty heavily on the Diet Pepsi. I was really in no shape to be logging my settings. I do know I used my little Kodak EasyShare C533, it was really early and this is from my balcony.

Pretty close to the end of “Close Encounters”, when the Mother Ship finally appears, there are two things you should watch for: 1. R2-D2 hanging off the spacecraft, and; 2. the massive space-city doesn’t descend from the clouds, it rises from behind the mountain… like it was hiding back there with Richard Dreyfus and Melinda Dillon the whole time.

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Posted in Entertainment, Favourites, From My Wall, Humor, Humour, Photography, Vankleek Hill Photos | 2 Comments

Murder Suicide

Posted on August 28, 2008 by Gabriel

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Sure, you can believe flowers are all joy and sunshine and fizzy pop, but that’s what Big Floral wants you to think. That’s what the Floral Industrial Complex has brainwashed us to believe. But here’s the photo that proves flowers are not the friendly harmless gift FTD wants you to think they are.

Technical Stuff: Unless you’re doing something crazy-cool with the lighting, flowers are not really a very interesting subject. The idea is to find something out of place, like an odd colour or two dead flowers connected like one’s sucking the life out of the other. At least they’re fairly easy to find and set up, all you need to do is walk onto some old lady’s property and hope she doesn’t have a gun. Most of them don’t.

I took this photo last year… this was pretty much when I started carrying my pocket digital around with me everywhere I went. I can’t really think of anything else to say… it’s two flowers in a cool state of disintegration and the photo pretty much captures the relationship I have with my mother. Other than that, no big deal.

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Posted in Entertainment, Favourites, Nature, Photography, Vankleek Hill Photos | 4 Comments