photography

I started a photography blog this year. It was provoked by my friend Lauren, who has recently taken to photography (and is great at it!) You can check out her Project 365 here. I told Lauren I'd do a photo a weekly project, although that's sort of a lie since I don't always have time to get out every week. Sometimes I post extra photos to make up for it. The main reason why I started the photo blog was because I had fallen off the photography bandwagon for a while.

Photography has been a hobby of mine for about 10 years. My first camera was a Canon point and shoot, it was clunky and and cost about $450 (which, would get you a pretty decent entry level DSLR these days- also remember when digital cameras used floppy disks with 1.44 MB of storage??). I requested it for my 15th birthday and my lovely parents obliged. This camera allowed me to experiment with photo composition. Otherwise, the picture quality was terrible and I was confined to a fixed focus. The screen broke on me in 2006.

Portrait of Nichola, taken on some sort of Canon Powershot A Series camera (check that over-saturation and thick black border).

Shortly after this time, I inherited a Canon F1, which apparently cost as much as university tuition when it was purchased back in the 70's (this camera was also dropped down Grand Canyon once upon a time). The Canon F1 started my obsession with film photography, which led to me enrolling in NSCAD University's black and white darkroom photography course. This was where I began to understand what aperture, ISO, film speed, contrast filters, mixing fluids, etc. meant.

Portrait of my dad, taken with the Canon F1, processed & printed in a darkroom.

During this time, I also became obsessed with Lomography and instant photography. A lot of my money was going towards cameras, print costs, and film. My main squeezes were my Lomo LC-A, Holga, and Polaroid One Step Express. I actually lugged around my Lomo LC-A and Holga when I went backpacking around Europe for two months with a bag full of film in 2010. I was pretty dedicated. Before there was Instagram, there was slide film and cross processing.

Poppies in Lisbon, taken with a Lomo LC-A, slide film and cross-processed.

Florence, Italy. Taken with a Holga, Kodak Portra VC 120mm. 

After this trip, I took a year off to work between university degrees. This meant disposable income. This meant the purchasing of my Polaroid 180. Around this time was the death of Polaroid and square format Polaroid film. All of a sudden, Polaroid film was in high demand, costing $20-30 for a box of 10 exposures. Luckily Fujifilm was still making affordable type 100 film. However, this was also when film photography suddenly became very expensive.

Portrait of my friend Katharine, taken with the Polaroid 180.

I then remembered that my lovely friend Candace, gave me a Canon XSi DLSR (yeah, she gave it to me for free- I have been pretty lucky with inherited free Canon cameras). I was pretty reluctant to shoot digital because it was lacking that film vibe; the colours, the contrast, that grain. I wasn't that familiar with all the digital settings and didn't really want to be. It wasn't until I assisted on a couple wedding shoots with with pro photographers that I learned how to use the various settings on my DSLR. This was also when I learned that I never want to shoot wedding photography for a living. 

Candace and her son Solomon, taken with the Canon XSi.

These days, I primarily shoot digital because film costs are high, processing and printing costs have doubled/tripled in the last several years. Sometimes I'll treat myself to some Impossible Project film and pull out my Polaroid SX-70 or the Polaroid 180. My favourite lenses are my Sigma 17-70mm and Canon 35mm and I like to shoot with a wide aperture.  I really dig Parker Fitzgerald, Scott Schuman, and Vivian Maier. And I still aspire to have a Hasselblad 500 CM and my own dark room one day. Oh, and a Canon Mark 5D III and the Canon 24-70 mm & Canon 10-22 mm lenses.

But in the meantime, you can check out my photography blog here (and older photos here).

Favourite photo, taken with the Lomo LC-A