Liquid Tests

I'm busy finishing off a few projects, tying off loose ends before leaving for Cuba next week for a personal matter. I'll be there eight days and I'm hoping to get at least one story out of it, although I have no idea how mobile I'll actually be over there.

I've also been busy working on a revamp of the Kage Collective website with the guys. Visual changes will be part of it but our motivation is mostly about backend functionality and an easier way to each manage our own material. The goal is to be able to publish more stories, more frequently and without as much overhead. We'll be launching with a spectacular new essay from Flemming Bo Jensen and Derek Clark is on fire these days with fantastic stories waiting in the wings.

Last week Fujifilm Canada organized a phone conference with canadian X Photographers. I'm hoping we'll eventually get to be in the same room together but it was nice to hear everyone's ideas, get a chance to learn a bit more about each other. Fuji has done a great job assembling a roster of seriously talented photographers with very distinct personalities, something that could perhaps eventually lead to common projects. 

I had planned to finally blog about a couple of shoots this week but frankly, I just don't have the time. So I'll just leave you with some experimental stuff I've been working on involving water, submersed speedlights and radio triggers. These are basically tests for an eventual project.

Later.

4 x 5 | A weekend with the Fujinon 55-200mm

This weekend we fled to the country, trying to escape another dreary, drizzle/cloud fest. Don’t get me started… I sometimes feel this blog is becoming some sort of weather watch (!). I brought the X-Pro1 and X100 with me but spent most of my time shooting the Pro with the Fujinon 55–200mm zoom. In fact it pretty much stayed glued to the camera. This is still the same pre-production unit Fujifilm sent me a few weeks ago, but I feel perfectly confident in its abilities to provide great image quality so I’m not at all concerned about using it.

No stories today, no semi-poetics… Just four sequences, each one comprised of five images. Four sequences to illustrate four moments. All shot with the 55–200 zoom. 

Later

A New Essay and Fellow X Photographer

Two quick things this morning: my KAGE COLLECTIVE comrade Paul Pride is now also an official Fujifilm X Photographer! I remember Paul before the X100. To say this camera changed everything would be the understatement of the year. Very, very well deserved. To celebrate he's giving away a 12x16 print of his work — your choice. Check out his website for more details. And again: mucho congratulations :)

Speaking of Kage: I have a new essay on the website entitled A Hard Controlled Freedom, something I shot back in March with the X100S. You may recognize some of the images from the interview I gave to VSCO a while ago. The number of images I brought back from that shoot made the story a very tough one to edit — so I hope I did it justice. I may post a few other stories from the unpublished material eventually. The machinery and installations alone could make an interesting piece.

Below are two images that wouldn't fit anywhere but that I wanted to share with you, if only for their strangeness factor. When we left the barn Linda saw something large in the snow, laying perfectly still. It was an owl... Beautiful, but also quite dead. Not a mark, not a wound anywhere on its body. As if it had simply dropped from the sky.

It's times like these you're glad you don't believe in omens (!)

Tempest Fugit

I've spent a few hours with friends I haven't seen in decades. The air hangs thick as freshly poured asphalt — Montreal can get as hot as it can be cold. I walk back to the car amidst throngs of tourists, under an impending storm, the sky flickering and flashing nervously, a low menacing rumble in the distance.

I barely make it. 
I pick up the camera and aim haphazardly at the world outside my bubble — a hand on the wheel, an eye on the screen.

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Shot with the Fujifilm X100.

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Howl

I had a moment of grace this morning, a moment of absolute clarity and beauty. I was driving the kids to school, following this bright yellow school bus. For about 4 fleeting seconds it all made complete sense: the bus, the hazy blue sky and wispy clouds, the suburban houses in early morning light… The image was there for the taking but I didn’t have a camera and it didn’t matter. I felt it. A giant print hanging across my windshield, perfectly realized and processed.

I saw the movie Howl last week. At some point Ginsberg — played by James Franco — describes how poems begin, how they’re borne of this very physical, visceral longing in the pit of the stomach and rise slowly, becoming a scream that needs to get out, no matter what. I understand this completely; I feel the same way about photography.

These past few days I’ve been doing nothing but organizing and processing thousands of images, something I do once a year for my kid’s daycare centre. I don’t usually do that kind of work and honestly I couldn’t… It’s the tediousness but also the fact that I can’t work based on the least amount of time spent on each shot. I can’t put the camera on a tripod, say “smile!” and ask the next kid to sit — or stand next to a fake tree or something. I don’t do assembly lines. So I spend time with each child, and then I spend time editing the shots. Doing this as my day job would either bankrupt me or make me settle for less and send me into some form of deep depression.

All of this just to say I hadn’t touched the camera this week; and was reeling from the burning effects of the craving. So before glueing my face to the screen yet again, I stepped outside — that school bus print still hovering in my mind. I didn’t care what I shot… I just needed to press my eye against the camera, to frame that infinitely small portion of reality and make it my own.

And just to thumb my nose at the world, I used my good old X100.

Namaste.