I’ve created a series of recipes for my Fuji X100F and it’s been immensely satisfying to capture images and they look exactly the way I want, with no editing required aside from minor crops. Definitely check out Fuji X Weekly if you want to get started yourself!
Tag: Photography
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2021.6.7
Not going to lie: the most useful feature for me, personally, that has been announced at WWDC this year (thus far…) is that the Photos app will now display full EXIF data. I really want Apple to enable advanced search in Photos so I can then sort based on EXIF information, to filter by camera/device and by lens.
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A Place That Grew
Toronto is home to Ontario Place, which was once a park that had splash pads, rides, a Legoland, and more. It was opened in 1971 and hugs Lake Ontario. It was closed in 2012 for redevelopment and, since then, has largely languished as successive governments have suggested ideas but none have come to fruition. Ontario’s official motto is “A Place to Grow”, and by extension Ontario Place itself is a place that has since grown up and is now slowly wasting away due to government neglect.
It’s also one of my favourite places in the city to visit and photograph, and especially during the pandemic when it has been relatively quiet and free of people. It’s both a very calming location and one that has very interesting buildings and urban ruins to photograph.
It’s getting warmer in Toronto which means that people are inclined to be outdoors; there are more cyclists and skateboarders in Toronto than I think ever before, and they’re all using the paths that are typically used predominantly by people who are walking or jogging.
Each year, I’ve managed to find or access or photograph a new part of the park that’s succumbed to lack of upkeep, and this year is no exception. An enterprising soul laid down some boards to cross over into part of the flume ride which meant I could see it for the first time! I suspect that it’ll only be a matter of time until a provincial government finally gets its way and tears down these ruins.
I’m sure that more and more people will be using the park this year it’s limited attractions, and especially as more Torontonians get vaccinated. While I’ll miss feeling like the park is my own, it’ll be terrific to have another part of the city return to normality.
(All photos shot using an iPhone 12 Pro and Fuji x100f, and edited using my presets in Darkroom.)
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One Year Later
This long form photoessay showcases the absences that have been wrought by the pandemic in my city of Toronto, Ontario. The essay provides a meditation on a world of social isolation and distancing, and how the spaces that have historically united and bound Toronto’s residents have been left empty or made safe in response to being associated with risk and disease. Throughout, people are represented as separate from one another in their efforts to socially and physically distance, with individuals, pairs, or very small groups standing in juxtaposition to the much larger built world they inhabit.
All of the images were created using a combination of a Fuji X100f, Sony rx100ii, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro. Images were edited to taste using Apple Photos (for cropping) and Darkroom; two images had some healing applied using Snapseed.
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The End of Blogs
I’d been deliberately putting off reading Ming Thein’s last several blog posts. Not because I wasn’t excited but because they seemed to have stopped being published. I feared that either something had happened to him, or that the blog had reached an end.
Fortunately he continues to do well. Sadly, his blog is done.
Ming has been writing for a whole lotta years, and has focused his blog on photography writ large. There’s some gear reviews but the real thing I learned, and still learn, from his work is how to think more deeply about making images, about telling stories with them, and letting narratives emerge as years of images are collected, edited, and set aside until a time they should be made public.
His explanation for ending the blog is, well, that he’d written everything. There was no topic he hadn’t covered, and he stated that:
… I’ve done enough thinking and dissection about how and why I shoot that the whole enormous mass has become intuitive – and I want to go back to applying that and shooting the things that interest me, for me, without feeling the need to create content for the entertainment of somebody else.
His blog isn’t alone—I was inspired to blog more than two decades ago by blogs and bloggers that are long-lost to the link rot of the Internet—but is the most recent of the sites that are just over. He plans to keep it alive and running for the foreseeable future but, as the Internet has taught us, it’ll eventually fade away from sight.
On the one hand I’m a bit morose about this state of affairs, and feel like maybe our digital artifacts should just operate this way: as present, delightful, and ephemeral. But, on a more positive note, I guess I see it as an author hanging up their keyboard because a given work is concluded. As a professional writer I can appreciate and respect, and deeply understand, why that happens even as I wish the writing would just continue ad infinitum.
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Pre-Snowfall Hike
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Closing Time
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Hard(ly) at Work
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Diamond in the Rough
Welcome to this edition of The Roundup! Enjoy the collection of interesting, informative, and entertaining links. Brew a fresh cup of coffee or grab yourself a drink, find a comfortable place, and relax.
For the past several weeks I’ve been sorting through all of the hundreds of photographs I’ve taken during the current state of pandemic we’re all living within. My photography is often a reflection—often unbeknownst to myself—of my thoughts and attitudes. The earliest weeks of the pandemic saw me making images of the city as though it were empty, grey, or isolated. And while those moods still pervade through later photos, there are increasingly also bursts of colour and joy, though still mixed with an emptiness to the city that calls into question what things will be like in six, twelve, or twenty-four month’s time. Many of the shots I’m taking, now, still feel almost documentary in nature, but at what point does the documentation end, and it simply becomes contemporary street photography?
Inspiring Quotation
More simply, real change only happens when the thing that white supremacists fear becomes true: that the mainstream increasingly becomes rather than simply appropriates the “ethnic.”
-Navneet Alang
Personal Photography Shots
I’ve been going out, once a week or so, to get a walk and make photos while walking around my city. Unlike past months, I’ve contributed a set of these rather than other artists’ images.
Music I’m Digging
- Neisha Neshae-Never Know (Single) // I remain entranced by Neisha’s voice, though have to admit that this lacks the potency of her EP, Queenin’.
- ZHU & Tinashe-Only (Single) // Beats by ZHU and vocals by him and Tinashe make for a very danceable track. I’m really hoping that they do more work together or, failing that, that we at least get more work from ZHU for the summer.
- Yiruma-Room With A View (EP) // Without a doubt, Yiruma has created some of the most beautiful classical piano work that I’ve heard this year.
- Kenlani-It Was Good Until It Wasn’t // The tracks “Can I” and “Everybody Business” are, for me, the real standouts on this album. I admit that I was hopeful that “Grieving”, with James Blake would be really awesome, but their styles just didn’t quite seem to come together. Her work with Tory Lanez, as well as Jhené Aiko, are far more balanced given how their styles compliment Kehlani’s own.
Good Reads
- Barton Gellman—Dark Mirror // Gellman was one of three reporters who were directly entrusted with the Snowden archives, and spent years reporting out of the documents. His assessment of what it was like to report on what he learned, the nature of the surveillance apparatus, working with Ed Snowden, and his broader thoughts on the relationship between public government and national security are erudite and fantastically interesting. I’ve just devoured this book and cannot recommend it highly enough.
- How Should Biden Handle China? // This piece is less useful, to be honest, in thinking through what policy the United States or its allies should adopt than is assessing engagement strategies that aren’t working. Setting aside the irregularities and chaos associated with the Trump administration’s approach, the assessment of how European efforts have been equally unhelpful are informative for guiding policy makers on what hasn’t worked even when policy activities have been carried out by governments with comparatively competent foreign policy bodies. While an understanding of what doesn’t work isn’t inherently useful in knowing what does work, it at least provides a set of strategies that seem to be unproductive to take up in a new administration.
- 1989-1996 Canadian Housing Collapse Looks Eerily Similar to Today // Economists around the world have been warning of a Canadian housing bubble for a very long time. But Canadians have ignored the warning and dove into the market on the dual fear that they would otherwise never be able to buy a home, and the notion that renting amounts to throwing money away. The result has been a lot of Canadians owning homes they can’t afford. As the bubble pops, we’re going to see just how much economic havoc is going to follow from these decisions for the housing market as well as the economy more broadly (housing, in Canada, constitutes one of the largest sectors in the economy).
- The Jungle Prince of Delhi // I’ve had this article open to read for months and months, but kept not getting to it. That’s a shame, as it is (and remains) a terrific story filled with past dynasties, the histories of British colonialism, the hard task of journalism, and the capability of truth to be creatively imagined into being. I can’t recommend this detective piece highly enough.
Excited Pixels 