Photoboy

North American Motel

2011-02-19T10:47:00.003-05:00

Had the opportunity to photograph this motel before it fell to the wrecking ball.

KNITTING FACTORY

2008-10-26T09:31:00.004-04:00

Another Hamilton gem. Three eras all mixed into the same building.

'ULL

2008-09-03T10:19:00.002-04:00

BOWLING

2008-01-21T22:27:00.000-05:00

The O'Connor bowl.

SOME MORE MOTELS

2008-01-21T22:24:00.000-05:00

A little bit more Reno.

PUBLISHED

2008-01-15T19:20:00.000-05:00

One of the motel series published in The Globe And Mail in 1992.

MORE MOTELS

2008-01-15T14:07:00.000-05:00

Speaking of motels, here are some from the same strip that have long since met their maker.

NORTH AMERICAN MOTEL

2008-01-13T20:03:00.001-05:00

Two of the last few remaining motels on the Lakeshore strip are about to be torn down. This is one of them.

A DIFFERENT LANDSCAPE

2007-09-16T08:38:00.000-04:00

Brown.

PEI

2007-08-04T10:09:00.000-04:00

It's that time of the year again to venture out east and spend some time on the gentle island. Here are some PEI landscapes.

HAMILTON CITY HALL

2007-07-14T08:43:00.000-04:00

A beautiful bit of Modernist Architecture. Thankfully they don't tear things down in Hamilton.

NIAGARA FALLS NEW YORK

2007-07-14T08:21:00.000-04:00

The highlight of your visit to Niagara Falls NY. This balloon really needs a cleaning.

T2

2007-06-13T19:48:00.000-04:00

Had the fantastic opportunity to explore Pearson Terminal 2 as they were demolishing it. Very surreal. I shot conventional film as well and will post those shots soon.

RENO MOTELS

2007-05-21T17:18:00.001-04:00

GERRARD STREET IN THE SPRING

2007-05-21T15:47:00.000-04:00

TRANSITION ZONES

2006-11-25T09:46:00.000-05:00

No extras here.

EAST END

2006-10-20T08:11:00.000-04:00

Simplicity and lighting.

NIAGARA FALLS

2006-09-14T12:11:00.000-04:00

I love this photo. It's surreal, detached and oddly sentimental.

FILM

2006-09-06T19:17:00.000-04:00

I'm looking at the digital images I've been posting and I desperately needed a bit of film strictly for the contrast. Digital can't capture this.

CNE

2006-09-06T11:32:00.000-04:00

Went to the CNE for the first time in 10 years. I went to reminisce and take photos.

LESLIE SPIT

2006-09-06T11:29:00.000-04:00

Saw this driving by. It had the right feel.

CAPE BRETON

2006-09-06T11:24:00.002-04:00

I love Cape Breton and Nova Scotia in general. Things here haven't changed much at all. Commercialism is scarce and charm, quaintness and working communities are what you find almost everywhere.

MORE MOTELS

2006-09-06T11:19:00.000-04:00

These are some motel rooms from our East Coast trip (2006). Again it was the essence I was after.

MINIMALIST

2006-08-07T11:14:00.000-04:00

The Lower East Side.

SIGN

2006-08-06T10:43:00.000-04:00

Passed this by accident.

STYLE

2006-08-05T09:45:00.000-04:00

This photograph typifies where I've been going stylistically with my work. The combination of graphic elements with the context of space and location creates a sense of simplicity, reflection and sentimentality for me. This is what I've been exploring for awhile now.

Lately though I've become interested in series and sequences again. Creating movement between the frames or within them. Giving a sense of progression or just allowing for comparison.

This is a mirror image shot in NYC last summer. The effect is completely in camera.

This is a Photoshop created diptych I shot this summer on one of many drives along the Gardiner Expressway.

FAIRGROUND

2006-08-04T07:55:00.000-04:00

Here are two images from the Markham Museum where we were dressing a small town strawberry festival. I like the contrast of these images.

CITY MOTEL

2006-07-08T08:43:00.000-04:00

The City Motel in Hamilton. Faded Glory?

GRAND BEND

2006-06-24T13:03:00.000-04:00

A little motel 20 minutes from town.

NIAGARA

2006-06-24T10:30:00.000-04:00

I'm decorating a roadtrip film that starts in Kentucky and ends in Niagara Falls. We often stayed in the Falls when I was a kid in a motel called The Park Motor Hotel. That was the beginning of my love and fascination with all things roadtrip and motel.

THE HIGHLINE

2006-06-24T09:12:00.000-04:00

I'm fascinated by this above ground railway in the lower west side of Manhattan running up to Chelsea. Tried to find a way on that wasn't covered in razor wire. Would like to photo every inch of it before it is gentrified.

NYC SPRINGTIME 1

2006-05-27T11:00:00.000-04:00

Spent 5 days in NYC visiting RG. Wasn't as fruitful photographically as I wanted, but had lots of fun anyway. I've added the B&W shots to the triptych to further illustrate film vs digital.

NYC SPRINGTIME 2

2006-05-27T10:57:00.000-04:00

Corners and angles instead of straight on.

BACKLANE

2006-05-10T19:14:00.000-04:00

Walking down the backlane on a Sunday morning.

UNDERPASS

2006-05-10T15:20:00.000-04:00

The very over photographed Portlands area. It takes on a new meaning when it's quiet. Forests of concrete with rusting steel canopies.

BUS

2006-04-11T07:44:00.000-04:00

I came across this city bus in a car graveyard in Etobicoke. I don't remember this colour being used on the TTC. I concentrated on the areas you would mindlessly stare at on a boring ride home.

SOUPY'S

2006-04-08T19:06:00.000-04:00

More glimpses into the neglected worlds that film exploits. Soupy's bar now only exists for film shoots and to house some old gentlemen living upstairs. Shot a commercial here and made a depressing old tavern even more so.
Really don't know what this room would have been at one time.

RENO

2006-03-16T19:04:00.000-05:00

We just got back from a little roadtrip from Reno around the Sierra Nevadas. Reno's hard edge is rapidly disappearing only to be replaced by condos. Sad. Here are some shots of Death Valley and a magical road into Bakersfield California. I'll save the motels for another post.

TAKING THE SUBWAY TO CONEY ISLAND

2006-03-14T18:50:00.000-05:00

It's like two different moods.

NEW YORK L-E-S

2006-03-14T18:42:00.000-05:00

Some text, some decay and about 90 degrees in the shade.

GARAGE

2006-02-25T07:51:00.000-05:00

Love the loneliness of this one.

PEI

2006-01-31T23:34:00.000-05:00

This is PEI fifteen years ago. It was the beginning of a style of shooting through car windows. I have had many variations on this theme that I will post in the future. This was basically the beginning. Makes me yearn for summer and roadtrips.

WHAT A BARGAIN

2006-01-31T23:32:00.000-05:00

The Hillcrest Motel is having a sale.

KING SOL

2006-01-31T08:44:00.000-05:00

I shot these in the infamous King Sol sporting goods store in the summer of 2004. They were just getting ready to padlock it. I was taken around by one of the employees hired to deal with the closing. I was pretty rushed as the King himself didn't really want me there. The shots were not quite what I had expected as the lighting was awful and I had to shoot everything on a tripod. I would love to go back as it's just sitting there rotting at Queen and Bathurst.

CANADIAN TIRE

2005-12-11T11:41:00.000-05:00

These are images from the interior of an abandoned Canadian Tire store on Keele Street in Toronto. The space is now being used as a studio for low budget film productions. Again it's a chance to gain access to a space the public doesn't get to see. There isn't that much there except for a few glimpses of decay.

BOOKY'S MARK

2005-12-04T13:38:00.000-05:00

Here are three images from a 1938 period piece I decorated in December. The sets, like the depression era, were sparse and austere. These are three sets in various states of dress.

GEOMETRY

2005-10-08T13:27:00.000-04:00

Here are three very recent B&W shots. The middle image was a test shot that I thought filled out the triptych. I've always been interested with bleakness of this wall. The bottom shot was a combination of good elements and nice lighting. The top shot I think is very good. It has the right feel.

OVERPASS

2005-10-01T08:19:00.000-04:00

I've taken to walking with my (digital) camera. This is something photographers in their biographies say they always do. I never have. I've always made mental notes of images and the emotions they evoked. I would later go on a shooting flurry, trying to recapture that mental note. It made me understand what I was looking at but it creating huge gaps in my body of work. I walked by this overpass yesterday...

SPARSE

2005-10-01T08:14:00.000-04:00

These locations couldn't be further apart socio-economically. The fifth floor of the Museum of Modern Art and the New Edwin Hotel in the east end. They do share a certain bleak geometry. I'm very fond of this so called negative space. Especially when that's all there is.

ROADTRIP: SUMMER 2005

2005-09-24T08:59:00.000-04:00

This was shot with film. Like I said, I love text. Text, contrast, long shadows and ultimately, context.

OUT FOR A WALK

2005-09-01T20:19:00.000-04:00

I shot this digital as I was out strolling. It's a vending machine company on Queen East and I was taken by the whole window display but it didn't quite frame the way I saw it. This is a fragment of how I saw it.

HOSPITAL

2005-08-24T13:28:00.000-04:00

This is another example of the set decorator's ability to get inside. This is a partially decommissioned hospital in Toronto's west end, popular with film companies. Many films shot in Toronto with hospital scenes are done here. I was here last December shooting one of these such films. The hospital is still used for psychiatric care and I'm sure other care that we are not aware of. This hospital is in terrible shape but unfortuneately it's still better than some fully operational ones I've been in. Oh and as for the last image - Merry Christmas...

TEXT

2005-08-16T09:20:00.000-04:00

For some reason I'm drawn to arbitrary text. A single word, words... I think it may have to do with the nature of signs and text defining eras. I'm still working on this one. 'Drugs' is 35mm and 'Jones' is digital. When you look at them together you can see the difference.

MOTELS

2005-08-16T09:09:00.000-04:00

I love motels. These are a few from our roadtrip this summer (2005). I was looking for the essence of each room. Sometimes that's hard to find.

GREASY

2005-08-13T22:30:00.000-04:00

Some of the fringe benefits of being a set decorator is the access you have to places the public doesn't. Sure anyone could go to The Cherry Street Restaurant but to photograph it...let alone eat in it. (Spring 2005)

NYC SUMMER

2005-08-13T11:13:00.000-04:00

These are a couple of digital shots I took in NYC in early August 2005. I've included both a film and digital version of 'Dish'. The film scan wasn't great so the contrast in the B&W version is not very accurate. I like seeing both mediums together. I consider them separate mediums. Again, geometry and decay dictate meaning to me. Aircon feels like a piece of a large complex puzzle. Look between the 'D' and 'I' in Dish and you can see RG.

NYC SUBWAY

2005-08-13T11:01:00.000-04:00

This is a series of images I shot in the NYC subway in February 2005. I was down visiting RG and seeing the Gates. We logged many miles on the subways and by foot. These images appealed to me because of the geometry and decay. I'm also a big fan of shooting into light sources.

NYC WINTER

2005-08-13T10:01:00.000-04:00

This is a triptych I shot in NYC in February. It is 35mm infrared neg scanned and joined in PS. It's the same one in the header. Joining photographs into relatively seamless constructions is beginning to interest me a lot. I've always like series and sequences. It's the moviemaker/ storyteller in me.

WHAT IT IS

2005-08-12T20:10:00.000-04:00

As an admitted Luddite, I swore I would shun digital photography. I likened it to the garishness of video and the mass appeal of point and shoot. People racing about indiscriminately shooting and shooting with endless amounts of film (capacity), calling themselves photographers and thinking themselves artists. Digital I thought was more paint-by-numbers rather than the democratization of photography .

Oh how I've had to eat my words. Digital I've discovered is a fantastic medium for capturing a sketch. A sketch is that momentary revealing of elements that when combined, define space and meaning. it could be lighting, colour, geometry or some resemblance of a faded memory like an old bleached postcard stuck in a storefront window. It is a thumbnail of something you may want to go back and explore further. It is a reminder in a notepad, or perhaps an independent object worthy of it's own scrutiny. Whatever it may be, here are some I would like to share.

Photoboy

North American Motel

KNITTING FACTORY

'ULL

BOWLING

SOME MORE MOTELS

PUBLISHED

MORE MOTELS

NORTH AMERICAN MOTEL

A DIFFERENT LANDSCAPE

PEI

HAMILTON CITY HALL

NIAGARA FALLS NEW YORK

T2

RENO MOTELS

GERRARD STREET IN THE SPRING

TRANSITION ZONES

EAST END

NIAGARA FALLS

FILM

CNE

LESLIE SPIT

CAPE BRETON

MORE MOTELS

MINIMALIST

SIGN

STYLE

FAIRGROUND

CITY MOTEL

GRAND BEND

NIAGARA

THE HIGHLINE

NYC SPRINGTIME 1

NYC SPRINGTIME 2

BACKLANE

UNDERPASS

BUS

SOUPY'S

RENO

TAKING THE SUBWAY TO CONEY ISLAND

NEW YORK L-E-S

GARAGE

PEI

WHAT A BARGAIN

KING SOL

ARCHIVES

CANADIAN TIRE

BOOKY'S MARK

GEOMETRY

OVERPASS

SPARSE

ROADTRIP: SUMMER 2005

OUT FOR A WALK

HOSPITAL

TEXT

MOTELS

GREASY

NYC SUMMER

NYC SUBWAY

NYC WINTER

WHAT IT IS