#eye weekly

[nightowlerco-blog]

Eye Weekly cover design and art direction. Photography by David Waldman. More here.

[fuckyeahsarahslean]

Sarah Slean on the cover of Eye Weekly.

[polishmylens-blog]

drew

[vickylam-blog]

So here is the very much delayed behind the scenes from my cover story for Eye Weekly.  It's been pretty busy in the last few weeks so I've finally managed to catch my breath and file my taxes (only 5 days late!). 

With most of my shoots, I tend to do thumbnail sketches beforehand, it really helps me visualize my process.  Especially with this Eye Weekly story, since there were so many elements involved, I had to have a really good idea of my composition from the beginning.  Shelbie, the PE at Eye Weekly had given me a run down of the items that were to be featured in each shot and told me where they wanted me to shoot.  I knew I had to go somewhere downtown to portray an urban scene and also the airport. So, it was definitely a busy weekend and I knew I wasn't going to be sleeping much!

I was a little concerned about the tight deadline as there are so many steps involved in my painstaking collage approach, but with the help of my great friends, I was able to pull it all off in time.   Here is a rundown of my process:

sketch and compose each shot beforehand 

shoot on location - downtown and at the airport 

process all those images, print, and cutout the different elements in varying sizes 

shoot the product in studio

process, print and cut out the product shots

combine the cutout products and location shots to create a 3d collage 

photograph the collage!

Phew~ Thats one hefty process to accomplish in a mere 2 days! Did I mention I photographed all the accompanying product shots in the article as well?  And the cover shot too which was a layered silhouette of Toronto's skyline?  Many thanks again to Nick, Scott, Jason and Anna for their help! 

It was a bit crazy, but fun and at the end of the day, I'm really happy to see it turned out how I envisioned.  Even happier that Eye Weekly would give me the opportunity to try something so different!  

[jaimehogge-blog]

EYE JUST WANNA

This may be a blog intensive week as I try to get caught up. Just another quick update with a recent publishing: I shot Toronto based poet Ken Babstock for this week's issue of Eye, in and around his 'hood in the east end. Super exciting to be outside again!

[jaimehogge-blog]

LITTLE SPARROW

I'm exactly one week late on this, but maybe you can still find a copy of last week's issue of Eye still? Sure you can. This time around I was tasked with shooting portraits of local Toronto musician Kevan Byrne (King Cobb Steelie) and his son Sparrow for an interview piece they did with Eye. Sparrow was born deaf and had a cochlear-implant operation when he was 10 months old. Now 3 years old, you'd never know he was born deaf. We had lots of good conversations about my camera and trains. He also gave me a guitar pick, nice kid.

[jennycharlesworth]

The sound of silence

Toronto punks-about-town Fucked Up lend their sound to a 1928 classic at the Images film festival

The scene is strangely civilized: tacked to the wall is a pristine takeout menu advertising calzones, not one empty beer can litters the tiny room and the blue Rubbermaid containers packed with miscellaneous gear are safely stowed overhead. Add in the 1928 silent film West of Zanzibar playing on a laptop, and anyone would be shocked to discover that this is the practice space of Fucked Up. And, yes, the hardcore art-punks are indeed jamming in time to Lionel Barrymore’s silver screen portrayal of a loathsome ivory trader.   The band never expected to spend a Friday afternoon working on a score for the black-and-white classic by Freaks director Tod Browning—a film starring Lon Chaney as a cuckolded (and paralyzed from the chest down) magician who seeks revenge for his wife’s death. But here they are, just after 5pm, scribbling down notes and retooling riffs in preparation for their live soundtrack performance during a screening of West of Zanzibar, on closing night of the Images Festival of Experimental Film and Video.  “There’ve been instrumentals on [all of our] records. So a lot of people have said, ‘Wow, this sounds like a soundtrack, when are you going to do a score?’” says guitarist Ben Cook, giving a bit of context for why the Images organizers pitched them on the project. As for why they signed on, he says, “Band life can be extremely monotonous—the same clubs, the same jokes, the same people all the time. This is something we have never done before, and we always jump on things like that.” From the mini-epics heard on Year of the Pig and Year of the Ox to their forthcoming rock opera David Comes to Life, Fucked Up’s CV details a decade of adventurous output and high-minded pursuits. To find them moonlighting as composers in the realm of silent films seems par for the course for the industrious group—even if in this instance it means that gregarious frontman Damian Abraham is voluntarily benched, given the instrumental nature of the project.  Despite their eagerness to try their hand at an art form traditionally reserved for nimble pianists and jazz quartets, the first time they watched West of Zanzibar they were still jet-lagged from their recent tour of Australia—hardly an exhilarating experience. Only weeks later, the members of Fucked Up can now recite the film’s dramatic title cards from memory. The band seems ready to join the ranks of No Age, Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and Toronto’s own Do Make Say Think, acts who have similarly offered their own sonic spin on a tradition that dates back as far as 1895, when the Lumière brothers of Paris hired a pianist for the public projection of one of their films. And while Fucked Up is primed to flip the script on the historic silent movie experience, they still have their doubts. “We have no idea how to write a score to a movie,” guitarist Josh Zucker confesses, with Cook and bassist Sandy Miranda nodding in agreement. “We’ve never written, you know, 65 minutes of music and then had to play it all at once, in a row,” adds Miranda, while perched on the edge of one of a dozen amps packed into the jam space. “I’m a little anxious about that point: how we’re going to remember it at all. The difference with, for instance, Year of the Pig—which has long songs, but which we generally didn’t play from start to finish before we recorded them—is we don’t have the luxury of time in the studio. We’re going to be in front of an audience for this.” So what will a silent-film score by Fucked Up sound like?  “There are ambient parts, there are rock parts, and there are trippy parts … and some catchy licks,” says Cook. “It all sounds like a Fucked Up record to me. Also, it’s along the lines of what we’ve been doing with the new LP, which is a musical. So it was kind of strange and cool that we got this [opportunity] right after we finished putting all the final touches on the new record.” Though they agree it was rather apropos, the trio fall silent, shifting their gaze to the well-worn carpeted floor, when asked to draw more parallels between the two projects. “They both have kind of a twisted, love-focused story arc,” Zucker eventually offers up.  Cook, predictably, dodges the question in his own way. “There’s a bald guy,” he says, smirking at the likeness between Fucked Up’s absentee leader and West of Zanzibar’s balding villain.

-Published April 8 in Eye Weekly

[jaimehogge-blog]

MORE EYE

I'm back from the dead and things are picking up once again. Not that I enjoy being sick at all, but the timing worked out perfect as I didn't miss any hockey games and only had one shoot whilst in a snot and Tylenol induced haze. Anyways, just a quick post about a recent publishing in Eye Weekly. I guess this is going to be considered last week's issue by the time you read this, but using the power of the innernette, I'm sure the article can be found. This time around I was shooting portraits of Rupinder Gill, a local author whose first book "On The Outside Looking Indian" was just released about two weeks ago. It's a memoir with an interesting concept: getting to be a kid for the first time at the age of 30. Be sure to check out her site for more info, and if interested, her book can be found at all the usual suspects.