There are just some things you can’t learn from a book. Leading into the holidays, Karin and I simultaneously noticed a Groupon promotion for an Alberta-based photography school called FotoScool (www.fotoscool.ca) where they were offering their introductory “basic” workshop for about one-third of their list value. I told her. She told me. And… Well, guess what I got for Christmas. When I attended last Saturday I found myself sitting at a table with three other guys who’s wives had also bought them the same gift for Christmas. It was like a club, or something. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into that early weekend morning, driving over with my music blasting on the car stereo, half-way round the city to [...]

This is a cross-post from my photo blog: Pixelated. At some point later this year we’re going to Disneyland. I won’t say exactly when or for how long, but rather simply that it presented an interesting technological problem. See, I’ve always been a big advocate of the philosophy: “Why buy a big, fancy SLR camera if you’re afraid to take it on vacation?” But then, along came the question of Disneyland. I’m going there to have fun, not take photos. But I want photos. And maybe some video clips, too. And, I don’t feel like lugging a backpack with eight pounds of camera and lenses around in the warm California amusement park sprawl for a whole week. Don’t get me wrong. I’m taking the SLR. [...]

Admittedly, my efforts in keeping my photo gallery up to date over the last month have been weak at best. Considering the lingering promise of new daily photos and a busy holiday season just passed, the sad reality remained: I just never got around to posting pictures. Well, I never got around to it until last night, that is… The Holidays Two collections await your curious eyes. We split our festive celebrations down the middle, spending the days leading up to Santa’s arrival with Karin’s family, while spending the days leading away from the occasion with mine. Those days all seemed to have blurred together into one big chocolate-coated smudge of fun and food, but the photo collections are discretely split down the middle for [...]

I’ve been reading through Scott McCleod’s Understanding Comics, a kind-of non-fiction graphic-novel-esque work that deconstructs the art of comics in the form of a comic. It is an aging work, originally published in 1993, and thus has little to say about the advent of web comics and such (topics I assume are covered in his newer books written in a similar style.) But this is largely inconsequential because the perspective McCleod takes is easily translatable to newer and (likely) future mediums. What struck me however — at least enough to slog out a blog-entry opinion on the subject — was the chapter I read most recently wherein McCleod explains his thoughts on the progression of the artists themselves. He covers this topic as The Six [...]

A “reloaded” post is a quick-clipped summary of a bunch of small things from the past few days. I want to write them down, but I am either lacking in (a) details or (b) time. That’s just how it goes sometimes. Enjoy. Tree & Cold The downtown business association last weekend held it’s annual tree-lighting celebration, where the forty-one foot spruce that will adorn the pedestrian strip in front of City Hall was set to power and all ten-thousand-ish (or so they claim) lights were turned on. Santa rolled the countdown and it was quickly followed by a sparkling fireworks display. Karin was sick, but Claire and I braved the bitter, bitter cold — a chilly and windy minus twenty-five Celsius below zero — and [...]

This is a cross-post with my photo-per-day blog: Pixlated. I’ve pretty much decided I don’t like photo themes. On the very last day of my second attempt at a “themed week” for my photo-per-day project, I’m feeling decidedly stifled by my chosen collection of pics. Here’s four reasons why: 4. Too much focus on an unknown. I mean, call me out on my original assumption that a theme would narrow the focus in a good way. Albeit I’ve only got two theme experiences as a reference, but my new perception of this narrowed focus is decidedly negative. Look at it this way: I had started on the assumption — the positive assumption — that knowing what I needed to shoot each day would let my [...]