fresh fixer

vancouver. photography. life.

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Took the wrong train, got this nice sunset! . . . #oakland #eastbay #sunset #california #bart

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Photo Assignment #1 is in the books (literally har har har). Veronica had left this bowl of cream out from the wedding cake she was making, and I started making photos. Obviously I put on the close up filters and it turned into an experiment with high key images. Tons of fun! 

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Went to get more darkroom paper today and also check if they had any used Macro lenses. They got me these cheap close up filters instead, probably going to use them for "The Art of Photography" assignment 1. I'm really, really excited to have these filters. At this point I'm kind of bummed that I'm not sure how to get in touch with the other members doing this assignment. I think I was hoping to make some friends through this but maybe I should just focus on shooting first.

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“The Art of Photography”

Ted Forbes is the guy behind “The Art of Photography” youtube channel. Yes, the name of the channel is pretentious, and yes, he talks more than Hannibal trying to get in through the pearly gates, but I guess it’s cos he really loves what he’s talking about. 

Mr. Forbes is a super knowledgeable art historian who quit his job at a museum to educate us plebs through Youtube, and he is to be commended for that. I mostly watch him for his videos breaking down the work of past great photographers. His style is medium length (10-15 min) videos coming out once a week or so, but in each video about half of it is him talking about how much he loves that artist, so for my tastes it’s a bit short on content. Personally I would prefer longer (maybe 30-60 minute) lectures on each photographer, but that’s obviously a lot more work. I think he feels it’s less conducive to Youtube and social media today, but look at the success of channels like “In the Lab”, where Devin at one point was making hour long videos, often with months of delay in between. My feeling is that with Mr. Forbes style, his channel could also work in the longer video, more in depth style.

I first found the channel a couple of weeks ago, and since then I’ve had his videos on in the background whenever I have a few moments to myself. It’s not on purpose that he’s in the background, it’s just that I tend to tune out for the first and last three-ish minutes of each video. Anyways, the channel has been around for I think almost a decade, but recently he started putting out photo assignments. Since I’ve recently finished my PhD and my interest in photography has sort of rekindled, so in the interest of using my new photo notebook, I’m going to start doing them. They are only at #4 right now so I’m going to start from #1 and try to catch up. I’m going into this blind so I don’t know what any of the assignments are except the first one, which is to take 10 variations of a subject. Not an arts student but I would guess this is a basic creative writing/drawing/anything exercise. It’ll be worthwhile for me since I don’t usually get the chance to do this kind of thing. I like that he’s giving me “permission to fail”, which could basically be the name of the story of my life lol.

Apparently he first suggested using Tumblr to “submit” assignments, but he got a lot of backlash hahahaha. I get the feeling that Mr. Forbes’ subscribers are similar demographically to Redditors and Imgurites, which makes me a little bit uneasy... 

Anyways, stay tuned for the first photo assignment.

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A roll of medium format Ektar I shot to see what it looked like. The scan of the guitar turned out really blue for some reason. 

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The one good shot I got from the Chinese New Year’s parade wasn’t even of the parade... Vancouver, 2017. It was wetter than the seats at 50 shades of grey. 

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This was at a rest stop on the way back to Vancouver. My mom can be adorable sometimes :)

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Before we left Seattle, we spent a couple hours at the Pike Place Market to have lunch. We had BBQ pork sandwiches that were saucier than Satan’s asshole after eating Taco Bell (disclaimer: I love Taco Bell). 

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My parents made us reservations at a private club in downtown Seattle with an amazing view of the city. This must be what Kanye feels like when he goes out to eat on a Tuesday. No, unfortunately my parents aren’t ballers (and even if they were, they spend money like Ghandi eats). They just happened to have some golf membership that for some reason allowed us to have lunch here.

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The morning after my PhD defence, Ronnie and I took the bus to Marpole, and got in a rental car with my folks to drive to Seattle. Since my dad is a dad and assumes that everyone wakes up at 0600 every morning, we had to be there at exactly 0845 so that we could make it to downtown Seattle for a lunch appointment. So of course, the dealership messed up the car reservation and we didn’t actually start driving until about 1015.

I had the Fuji XE2 with me, and my favourite walkaround lens for that system, the 27mm F/2. On the drive down, I fiddled with the XE2′s built-in double exposure mode for the first time. 

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Finished my PhD

On Wednesday, March 1st, 2017 at 1500 I had my final PhD examination/defence. I was super nervous in the hours leading up to it... I passed and will need to make a few changes to the thesis before it’s ready to go, but it’s basically over! It hasn’t really sunk in yet... I don’t really feel very different. 

The bathroom mirror was gross and I had to spend a bunch of time in Lightroom with the spot remover to clean up the picture so this selfie would be acceptable LMAO

A few people from the lab came with me to celebrate, and we ate and had some dinner. We went to Koerner’s, the traditional post-graduation beer place on campus. I was a bit nervous cos I don’t really drink anymore. I had half a pint anyways, and we all had some good laughs before heading home.

My parents were in town to watch the defence and somehow decided that the morning after the exam, at 0800, it would be a good idea to drive to Seattle to visit my grand-uncle. So after the exam, and after the drinks, me and Rons went home to pack our suitcases and set our alarm for 0630 the next morning. We spent the next night in Seattle and drove back to Van the next day. Last night my parents and Ronnie’s met for the first time. Today I had lunch with my parents before they headed to the airport, and I’m finally kind of free right now... I’ve had a few moments on my own where I played some 2K, or worked on photos or went shopping online and didn’t feel guilty, but other than that it doesn’t really feel much different... 

Tomorrow I’ll wake up with no real responsibilities, and Ronnie will be at work. Maybe I’ll feel it then...

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R.I.P REN HANG

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This morning I heard that Ren Hang passed away. He was the first modern photographer who’s work grabbed me immediately the first time I saw it. As a Chinese Canadian, seeing a Chinese photographer doing work so incredible also inspired me. Through his Instagram feed I saw more Chinese male models than I have in the entirety of my life before then, and most of his models were nude. None of the photographers I’d admired were of Chinese descent, and here was one with a point and shoot, inspiring an entire generation of young Chinese photographers. 

He inspired me to experiment with direct flash for a while. Here is one of the experiments I liked, taken around Feb 2015. I’ve never shown this before. 

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Out and about in Mount Pleasant, Vancouver, around May 2016

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I’ve been going through old photos with a different eye, these are from when we visited the Lee Bul exhibit at the Van Art Gallery, January 2016

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After about 6 months off, I am back taking photos, so I figured I may as well start making blog posts again. 

The time off wasn’t really planned. I was already shooting less once my 365 project was over, but there was an event in my personal life in October that sort of sucked the photographic will out of me for a while. The thought of documenting it crossed my mind briefly but it just seemed so stupid. I’d seen photo and writing projects documenting all kinds of horrible life events, like people’s mothers getting sick, funerals, etc. In my own moment it just seemed so exploitative that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It made me feel sick just thinking about it. So I took a break from photography for a while, but now I’m back.

Here’s two rolls of colour film that I put through the TLR to see which I like better, Ektar 100 or Portra 160. Going to drop them off at the lab tonight or tomorrow.

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Valentine’s day 2017