Saturday, February 28, 2009

Stuff...old stuff


Remember George Carlin's shtick about "stuff"?

There was a great estate sale in town today, in a small "vet home" brimming with goodies. (Vet homes, as they're known, were little red brick houses built after WWII by the Canadian government for the returning servicemen and their families; a sort of leg-up after the war)
This one was bursting at the seams with an incredible assortment of goodies, and it was obvious the same people had lived in it since it was built. Even picked up a set of Lawn Darts, happily never banned in Canada.
But what really struck me was the range of interests of the former owners. There was a sewing machine, tons of patterns and doo-dads, knitting stuff, a darkroom, electronics workbench, old radios, tons of camera gear (yes, I went to town!), tools of all types, movie cameras, reel-to-reel tape recorders, gardening stuff...it was amazing. And it got me thinking about how the word "hobby" has really become a sort of quaint notion in recent years, which I think is a shame. People watch more TV now, and they certainly spend (waste? :) ) a lot of time online as well. But these folks, well, you could tell how well-rounded they were by what they did with their spare time.

I fully intend for my house to be just like that some day, a big, happy mess of stuff. Oh wait, it already is...

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Inspired by Dania, I posted this photo of my, ahem, workspace (more like mess space) on Flickr, and others soon followed. This what I think of as the white collar workspace, where I work on photos and repairing old cameras. The real he-man woodworking stuff is in the basement.

It's a constant battle keeping it tidy and organized, but I'm usually working on about 3 things at once, and since space is not unlimited, they do tend to overlap.


Yesterday was one of those perfect late winter days where you can feel the onset of Spring in the air. It was unseasonably warm, brilliantly sunny, and icicles were falling off roofs left and right. Wandering around Plateau Mont-Royal, textures and shadows were exploding everywhere.


Friday, February 20, 2009

Coming Soon

...to a virtual store near you. In my collaboration with the charming Lisa of ItsAllAboutThePrint, we have created these funky and fun Scrabble tile and glass pendants, which will be going on sale next week in her Etsy store.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Yet Another Roll

When will it end?

Buried Treasure


Everyone does it. You go through boxes and binders, trying in vain to get some semblance of organization into your life, and you stumble upon something you didn't even realize you had. Happens to me with photos all the time. I reckon there must be 20,000 slides on "the shelf", which is actually a very large bookcase I made for holding the binders. Let's see..20 binders, 80 pages per binder, 20 slides per page...32,000. No, it can't be!

Anyway, among all the boxes and binders are a thousand or so prints, but hidden in pockets and sleeves all over the place are the negatives. And every so often up pops a sheet of negatives that have never been printed, and thus, forgotten. That's where the above image comes from. A whole roll shot in Sukhothai, Thailand in 1996, languishing in obscurity for years. Until last night.
It happened a while ago with these negatives from Nepal.




Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Memories of Barcelona

The 100X100 PHOTO exhibit at Barcelona's Gallery Espai[b] has come to an end. However, that means that the "publication ban" (doesn't that sound just oh so cloak-and-dagger?) is lifted, so I'm now allowed to do whatever I like with my photos. So here they are...

"You're The One"

"1212"

and "Star"

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Friday, February 13, 2009

From etail to retail


As of today, my photos will be for sale at the 3 funky Boutique Onze stores in Montreal. They're going to start off displaying a selection of 10 photos in each of the stores, and we'll see where it goes from there.

boutique onze

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Holxproscanspain-5

Iconic sculpture on the beach in Barcelona

Monday, February 2, 2009

Another Ruiter Valley Sunday



Despite being stuck for an hour in a non-moving traffic jam on the Eastern Townships autoroute...we finally made it to the idyll of the Ruiter Valley, truly the best-kept secret in Quebec. The snow was waist deep in the fields, much deeper on the forest slopes. Worth every minute of delay.

About Me

My photo
A blog mostly about my photography, my etsy shop, travel, and other assorted addictions and predilections. I've been passionate about photography for just about as long as I can remember, right from that very first 1960s Kodak Brownie around my wrist at Upper Canada Village... A great deal of my adult life has been spent travelling the world for extended periods, always with cameras in tow. My photographic interests run the gamut from intimate portraits to landscapes to ephemera to street life. Although firmly entrenched in the digital age, I have a weakness for film and for old cameras.