Tag: Street

The Injury Chronicles – Part Two: Assembling The Watchers

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We have all felt fear – that sense that something is wrong even when we can’t put our finger on it.  Perhaps it is a gut feeling that tells us not to walk down a certain street one evening, despite it being on our usual route home.  Maybe you have felt unsettled in a lonely parking lot, your eyes constantly scanning while you hurriedly unlock the car door.  I know that I felt unsettled many times as a paramedic, such as when we would approach pitch black houses at 3am or when we were surrounded by a crowd that was turning angry on a scene.  Fear is an intrinsic thing, primal in nature, and because of that it is used by many creatives in their work (I’m looking at you Stephen King).  

When I am out shooting I will occasionally use an emotion as a source of inspiration for my photography (happiness, surprise, fear, etc).  Over the last year I have had the idea of “The Watchers” in the back of my mind… a feeling that maybe there is something dark and foreboding following us that might be a threat.  As an exercise in creativity I have been working with composition, darkness and silhouettes to try to create this feeling in some of my photographs.

This is the first time I have put some of these images together in a series.  I am definitely still exploring this idea of shooting to a specific emotion, but I thought I would share these first steps with all of you.

Cheers,

Ian

Note:  The Injury Chronicles is a series of photo essays, with minimal text, that I am posting while I rehabilitate a hand injury.

Twenty More | The Streets of Vancouver – Part Two

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“Don’t think about making art, just get it done.  Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it.  While they are deciding, make even more art.”

Andy Warhol

I love this quote.  Don’t spend all of your time consuming when you could be out there creating instead.  Don’t crowd source your self esteem by worrying about what others think of your work.  Just get out there and be an artist, doing the work that you love.

Here are another twenty images from the streets of Vancouver, taken at various times over the last six months.

Cheers,

Ian

I’ve lost my voice | The streets of Vancouver

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“Most artists have experienced the creative block.  We get stuck in our work.  We beat our head against the wall: nothing.  Sometimes, it is just because we are trying something at the wrong time.”

– Lukas Foss

I can’t make the words come out.  I start a new post, write paragraph after paragraph, then delete it all and start over.  I have stared endlessly at this damn flashing cursor, trying to tease an idea out of my head that I want to share with you, but it just won’t take shape.  Not yet, anyway.  

Does this ever happen to you?

What is interesting, however, is how otherwise productive this week has been:  I have created new photographs, played a lot of guitar, delivered another photography presentation to a wonderful group of people and invested time in my book.  For some reason though, the words just won’t come out for the post that I have been trying to write.

Creative slumps happen to everybody of course, they are an inevitable and inescapable part of the process.  Sometimes I feel like the key is to buckle down and push through them, while other times I find success by changing my focus for a bit and working on something else.  Such is the case this week I think, so I have been working on a few other projects instead.

While doing so, I ended up in a Lightroom folder called “Vancouver Street Photography – Unpublished” and was surprised to find it full of images that have never been shared (other than the odd Instagram post).  Some were taken while teaching workshops, some during days of dedicated shooting, some in between meetings and appointments and others at completely random times.  It was interesting to look at these images from the streets of Vancouver, taken between trips to Toronto, Amsterdam, Seattle and Paris this past summer, and see a body of work that I had completely forgotten about.  

So, while I wait for my muse to return, I’d like to share some of these images with you over the next few posts.  I hope you like them.

Cheers,

Ian