Like many other photographers I regularly share my images through a social media platform. I also sometimes post them on this website. And that’s fine and good. And because it’s so normalized it feels very safe; while I might get positive comments from other users it’s the not the same as sharing my work where it might be assessed or publicly reviewed by people who are far more experienced by me, and where those considerations might she shared with a very large set of viewers.
Over the past year I’ve tried to push myself out of my comfort zone. I’ve been more active in thinking about street photography and sharing it with a part of the photographic community — the Photowalk Show — and then sometimes having those thoughts shared with Neale James’ other listeners. I submitted a few photos to a competition for the first time. I described for the first time the motivations and philosophy that underlie my street photography to a (friendly) group of strangers while also sharing an associated sequence of my photographs. I’ve had one of my photos highlighted in a roundup by Glass. And so on.
The White House, Washington, DC, 2023
But the scariest thing has been associated with my postcards project. To be clear, actually printing those postcards wasn’t scary at all! But actually sending them to people — with the prospect they would look at a cohesive bit of my work and then offer commentary to potentially hundreds or thousands of people — has been intimidating because it constitutes an exposure of my amateur photography to an otherwise unknown set of publics.
Crescent & Cluny, Toronto, 2024
I’m not afraid of publicity or engaging with publics. I’ve been very involved in public life for the past 15 years, and am as comfortable speaking with leaders of government or other senior leaders as I am appearing on television and speaking to tens or hundreds of thousands of people. But the sharing of my photographic hobby is different because it isn’t a domain where I’m a well-credentialed expert: I’m very much a learning amateur when it comes to photography. While I take my hobby very seriously I don’t have the skills or experience that parallel those of a more seasoned or professional photographer.
Yonge & Dundas, Toronto, 2024
I recognize that sharing my work, be it with NealeJamesandhisPhotowalkPodcast, or with Ted Forbes and his Art of Photography YouTube channel, has been a real step for me. It represents my ever deepening appreciation for the art form and my starting to explore ways of more broadly sharing my work, as well as developing increasing confidence in what I’m making. I’ve got an long way to go in deepening my expertise in making the kinds of photos I want to make but I feel more confident in what I’m doing, today, than I did even a year ago.
This is one of my 12 preferred landscape/cityscape images from 2023, which I created (but didn’t print) alongside my 2023 Postcard project.
The photograph has a few things happening to my eyes: there’s the wildness in the foreground and a bit of roughness with the graffiti, that then passes into the rustic fortress that defended Toronto over a century ago, and then the new/under construction parts of Toronto. While it formally lacks any humans in the scene it radiates humanity in each gradation of the image, while also communicating a kind of evolution of Toronto’s emergence over time.
Neale James, host of the Photowalk, put out a call last month where he asked listeners to the podcast to offer some thoughts about social media. The episode that arose from listeners’ considerations is live and I’ve provided my (slightly edited) full response to Neale below.
By way of background, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about social media professionally in a number of ways, used it professionally to affect political change, and have also used it personally now for over 20 years at this point.
How do you use it?
One of my many positive early memories of social media is how, over 10 years ago, I and a series of cybersecurity researchers used Twitter to coordinate an incident response that led us to realise that the government of Iran was intercepting Google traffic being delivered to residents of Iran. That led to the resolution of the issue and stopped that government from conducting surveillance of its residents using the technique in question. So a good thing! Overall, up until about a year ago I used Twitter constantly for professional purposes.
However, the implosion of Twitter under Elon Musk, combined with moving into a privacy regulator’s office, has meant that I’ve stepped back from the same professional presence. I’ve trained the LinkedIn algorithm so it surfaces valuable professional content in my current role, but I don’t really use other social media professionally at this point.
Personally, the only truly valuable social media service that I use, and participate on, is Glass. It’s a small and paid photo sharing site. The community is positive and active, and it features interesting photography from around the world. I’ve also been blogging, now, since the 2002, and continue to keep that up as another outlet.1
Do you engage more, or less, with social media than you once did?
Less than in the past. Some of this is time. Some of it is, as mentioned, due to changes in the networks (e.g., Twitter) or the scattering of the communities (see again: Twitter) and the changing of my job.
I continue to use Glass, however, with a high degree of frequency and visit once or twice a day to see new images and I post one image per day.
What is your favourite platform and why?
For photographic purposes, Glass. It’s not as interactive as some other services which is fine, really, because I can go in and see things/comments, and then leave. There isn’t an algorithm that’s trying to keep me interested in perpetuity. It’s a healthier way for me to interact with other people online.
Explain your feelings about the currency of likes…
They’re…not good? I mean, they give quite the dopamine hit! But it also interferes with why you might create work, or explore producing new kinds of work. We know that certain kinds of images will get more likes due to smaller screens and shorter attention spans as we skim images; removing likes — or at least deprioritizing them in the user interface — can have the effect of encouraging people to explore different kinds of practice and without a sense that the new isn’t less liked.
What has it done for photography?
It’s easy to say that likes have done bad things to photography. But I really don’t know that that’s fair or even necessarily correct.
There are a lot more people making photographs than ever before. And part of the process tends to be learning how other people tried to make images: how many of us spent time to figure out how to make silhouettes? And with the ‘like’ metric you can get a rough guesstimate of whether you’re getting better and better at this kind of classic image. The same is true for lots of other ‘standard’ kinds of images. I think that’s great! People are better photographers on average, today, than ever before. We should celebrate that more often than we tend to.
Where I think that likes can be harmful is that they can stunt photographic growth or exploration. Also, due to how algorithms work, ‘low like’ content might be hidden and thus prevent the artist from receiving feedback on positive areas to improve towards. And, of course, there can be mental health issues when individuals ‘bully’ one another by providing or depriving individuals of likes. All of those aren’t great outcomes.
What would the perfect platform look like?
Utopia and dystopia: both places that don’t exist in reality, and neither of which is a place that you likely ever want to end up in.
All of which is to say, I think there are different characteristics of social media sites and you can dial those characteristics up or down and you create different kinds of sites and experiences. A few ‘dials’:
How ‘chatty’ or conversational is the environment? Does ‘community’ involve direct messages?
How compressed are the images? Is it build for phone screens, tablet screens, monitors, or…?
How effectively are you introduced to/able to discover new photographers?
What is the information density — how much is on the screen at once?
What is/isn’t made public? And how? Do you list numbers of followers, likes, etc?
How much are you appealing to the masses vs dedicated photography enthusiasts?
Monetized by users paying money, or monetizing the users?
Is it a ‘hot’ medium (e.g., sound and video) or a bit ‘colder’ of a medium (e.g., photographs and text)?
How personalized is the experience (i.e., lots of algorithmic engagement vs just find it on your own)?
Is there an assertive and active safety team that blocks certain content from appearing on the site?
When you adjust just some of those dials you affect the nature of the site, the number of users that you need to be revenue neutral, and affect how people will interact with one another. What I think is better will be worse for others, and vice versa.
I actually think that there should, ideally, be a diversity of experiences. And that it’s fine if different little groups form across the Internet that enjoy their parts of the Internet differently. There’s no reason why a half-dozen different photographic social media sites cannot exist, as an example, nor is it really a problem if you aren’t engaging with all of them. Find a site that has the ‘dials’ adjusted to your tastes and you’ll have hopefully found an environment — and user base — that you can enjoy and thrive with.
Tell me about the good bits, the bad bits, and all the bits in between…
I’m sure that I could go on in more depth but won’t drag on. Suffice to say that I think — hell, I know based on my professional experiences — that social media can be powerful and important and enable lots of good things in the world. But, at the same time, it can foster anti-social behaviours, be used to fuel genocide, and just be a depressive hellscape.
This isn’t to say that technology is neutral, however: all technologies as they are designed have particular affordances. Those affordances are linked to how those dials are turned. And there are certainly some ways of turning the dials that are not particularly good for humans, even if we enjoy those sites like sugary food, and other ways that are better, which are more like a banana or apple or something that has a modicum of healthiness.
We shouldn’t demand that everything is digitally healthy — we should be able to enjoy cheeseburgers and poutine now and again!! — but the totality of our dining establishments shouldn’t be fast food and deep fried food. Because we know that it’s really not good for us.
Though all those earlier blogs have long since been scrubbed from the Internet and archived in a place no-one can find in storage. Which is a relief as no-one needs to be reminded of what I was like online in the early 2000s! ↩︎
A couple years ago I posted what I wanted for WWDC 2022. I figured that I’d go through the past list and cross off the items that have arrived over the past two major updates to iOS.
And then I’m going to sketch out how I’d like to see Apple actually adopt more AI/ML into their operating systems.
Photos
This was a low point in iOS and remains so. I really want Apple to improve the Photos application given how regularly I use it.
The ability to search photos by different cameras and/or focal lengths
The ability to select a point on a photo to set the white point for exposure balancing when editing photos
Better/faster sync across devices
Enable ability to edit geolocation
Enable tags in photos
All of these are basically just aiming to have the iOS Photos app getting brought up to the same standards as Photos on MacOS.
Camera
There is so much potential that’s in the Camera application. I look at this from the perspective of a photographer, while recognizing that Apple has done a lot to really improve the state of things for videographers.
Set burst mode to activate by holding the shutter button; this was how things used to be and I want the option to go back to the way things were!
Advanced metering modes, such as the ability to set center, multi-zone, spot, and expose for highlights!
Set and forget auto-focus points in the frame; not focus lock, but focus zones
Zone focusing
Working (virtual) spirit level!
Maps
I actually like Maps. I use it a lot. But I definitely want things to be much more collaborative and less focused on Yelp data. I really do like the privacy aspects associated with Maps over some competing applications.1
Ability to collaborate on a guide
Option to select who’s restaurant data is running underneath the app (I never will install Yelp which is the current app linked in Maps)
Music
Music is fine on the whole. Still want to have something like multiple libraries, though.
Ability to collaborate on a playlist
Have multiple libraries: I want one ‘primary’ or ‘all albums’ and others with selected albums. I do not want to just make playlists
Reminders
While it’s getting better there’s still some things to do, though apparently the second item may be coming this WWDC which would be pretty great.
Speed up sync across shared reminders; this matters for things like shared grocery shopping!
Integrate reminders’ date/time in calendar, as well as with whom reminders are shared
Messages
These are both covered off!
Emoji reactions
Integration with Giphy!
News
I’ll be honest: I’ve given up on the RSS feed idea and just rely on Reeder. But I use News a lot and so it’d be nice to more fully block publications from coming up.
When I block a publication actually block it instead of giving me the option to see stories from publications I’ve blocked
It’d be great to see News updated so I can add my own RSS feeds
Fitness
The number one issue with Fitness is that I can’t log rest days. I’ve actually started to use Streaks to be more forgiving and stopped worrying so much about maintaining my streaks in Fitness. But it’s absurd that Apple hasn’t integrated this feature that’s widely requested by its user base.
Need ability to have off days; when sick or travelling or something it can be impossible to maintain streaks which is incredibly frustrating if you regularly live a semi-active life
Health
This still isn’t great. There is no good year over year data that you can compare against. I don’t understand why the UI isn’t better and I hope that it gets better soon.
Show long-term data (e.g. year vs year vs year) in a user friendly way; currently this requires third-party apps and should be default and native
And one more thing…
There is a lot of time and attention being paid to how Apple will show off artificial intelligence functionality in forthcoming operating systems. I tend to agree with Joe Rosensteel about what Apple shouldn’t do: no spying AI systems and instead a focus on useful AI-enabled functionalities.
For Photos I want to propose a pretty useful option for people that would leverage some existing iPhone capabilities. Imagine if you could take a photo (or use the measurement application built into Apple’s mobile OSes) to determine how large a photo would fit in a frame along with the aspect ratio and, then, prompted you to select photos for the frame. That selection could either automatically select just photos of the right aspect range or could show what an AI-determined best aspect ratio crop would look like.
If something like this were bundled up in a kickass UI I can see this being phenomenally helpful and solving a real world annoyance for anyone who wants to print photos.
We create far too many digital photos and print far too few. Physical photos are part of building longterm and vibrant memories: Apple should lean into enabling its customers to make these kinds of mementos.
Rather than requesting a route from A to B, Apple Maps sends off multiple requests with multiple identifiers that masks where you’re trying to go. The app also converts your precise location to a less-exact one after 24 hours, and Apple itself doesn’t store any information about where you’ve been or what you’ve been searching for. Plus none of the information that reaches an external server is associated with your Apple ID. Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/google-maps-vs-apple-maps↩︎
I went away on vacation last year to Guelph. It’s an hour or so away from Toronto and also happens to be where I spent a lot of time growing up and where I did some of my university degrees. We tend to visit once or twice a year just to get away from the ‘big’ city and enjoy some of the restaurants, distilleries, breweries, and other features of Guelph. It also provides an opportunity to see friends and family.
I made this image while we went on a long walk out to Guelph Lake; it’s an entirely man-made lake, and there are nice trails that track along rivers that you can take from downtown to get to the lake.
There isn’t anything particularly magical about this image: it doesn’t necessarily speak to a deep history of the city, or anything so substantive. But I liked the texture of the wall that the utility pole was pressed against, and the chaotic way that the utility wires were somewhat tangled together. And it’s for that reason that this was my favourite landscape-type photograph I made in April 2023.
Each month Glass has a different featured photographic category. In March, a photograph I took of College Park was amongst the many excellent images that photographers published to the platform throughout the month in the ‘Urban’ category.
A feature of my street photography is to showcase lone humans in busy metropolitan areas. For context, College Park is surrounded by condos and rental apartments, and is located by a major subway stop; I suspect it’s amongst the denser parts of the city. Nevertheless I was able to catch this lone figure and the ever-present pigeons when I was running to a grocery store to get a few things.
I don’t know that I, personally, consider this to be the best image I made in March. But it definitely is very reflective of the types of images I’ve been making and so is representative of a particular body of work that I continue to develop.
For those interested, this was made using a Ricoh GR iiix. I use a custom monochrome jpeg simulation, applied minor edits in Apple Photos, and cropped the image slightly so it is 20 megapixels as displayed.
Toronto is a city of destruction and construction: destruction of the previous era’s architecture (and often industrial buildings) and the construction of housing or glass office towers in their stead. This image by Tecumseth & Niagara shows the destruction of an abattoir that was removed to make room for condos, and the buildings in the background are new rentals in Toronto’s Liberty Village. When I landed in Toronto, in Liberty Village over a decade ago, the land those rentals are on were home to a few artist spaces where the big Toronto samba schools practiced and massive parade puppets were made. Nothing has replaced those artist spaces, to the detriment of artists across the city.
Weirdly I have very intimate memories of the abattoir. Toronto hosts an annual sunset-to-sunrise art festival, Nuit Blanche, and a couple interesting art exhibits were hosted at the abattoir over the years, and I have photos of them that I regularly return to re-experience. After the buildings were designated for destruction a number of community vegetable gardens were maintained on the outside lots. It was always a striking place to come and make images, and was a reminder of the Toronto-that-once-was and was yet-to-become.
For many street photographers, we take images and it is decades later that ‘difference’ is registered because many cities take a long time for major changes to become visible. It’s part of why the habits of the population —what people are wearing, holding, or driving — resonate so strongly with viewers; people and culture change while the built environment persists.
Toronto, by way of contrast, is in a moment of hyper-growth and so an attentive and active street photographer can document things today that may literally be different tomorrow. It turns the street photographer, almost by default, into an urban documentarian. And, also, is one of the many reasons why I think that Toronto offers a subset of street photographers a real opportunity to do novel and rapidly impactful work, as compared to those working in cities that aren’t undergoing the same tempo of destruction and re-construction.
A friend identified a series of photos I’ve made over the past year that they wanted to have as prints. The matte prints all came in yesterday, and I was really pleased at how well Annex Photo made them.
Bathurst Station, Toronto, 2023
I hade three prints made, one from my Ricoh GRiiix (uncropped, 10×15), one from my Fuji X100F (cropped to 17MP, 10×15), and one from the telephoto on my iPhone 14Pro (9MP, 8.5×11). When I’ve shown the prints to others they can’t tell which camera made which image, nor do they see any notable quality difference between the prints.
Spadina & Grange, Toronto, 2023
Now all that’s left is to package and mail the prints to their owner!
This is one of the cityscapes I took last year. It resonates with a number of themes that are often present in my photography: icons of Toronto, construction in the city, and the sense of impermanence and isolation associated with the Toronto streetscape.
The absence of humans along one of Toronto’s many core cross streets also spoke to me. It provided me with a sense of humanity-absent, which is narratively aligned with many of the images that I made throughout the depths of the pandemic.
Thinking should be done beforehand and afterwards—never while actually taking a photograph. Success depends on the extension of one’s culture, on one’s set of values, one’s clarity of mind and vivacity.
Excited Pixels 