Bugs in a spotlight

Snaps in black and white

I've been carrying my old 35mm film camera around the past couple weekends loaded with a roll of Ilford XP2 Super, and it blows me away how great that film is. XP2S is really the only thing I miss about film. It takes an artist to coax a really fantastic image out of real B&W film, and colour negative film is so unpredictable when it's lab processed it's basically a joke, but any monkey can run a roll of XP2 Super through a battered Noritsu and voila, fucking gorgeous.

If you think New York is so cool why don't you fucking move there

Regent Park demolition

I don't do as much street photography as I used to but I'm still a bit obsessed with photographing buildings in the process of being demolished. I'd been meaning to get to Regent to get some pictures before the demolition was complete, and I finally managed to do it the other week while I was across town at the lab.

This is the elevator shaft from one of the central blocks on Parliament, one of the only things left of the western part of what was, when I was growing up, Toronto's most infamous housing project. What I love most about this shot is that you can still see bits of bright pink and blue walls from inside someone's apartment (you know who you are!) clinging to the rebar.

The blocks of Regent Park were built after WWII to house returning GIs and their families, but the craziest thing is that when the original project was built the land was the site of a pasteboard shanty town which housed the poorest of the poor of Toronto's original Cabbagetown which, obviously, had to be demolished.

NXNE 2005

I finally took the time to pull a bunch of my favourite photos from the Rawk Skool North by Northeast project and make a proper portfolio out of them. In case you don't know, I have a fairly low opinion of live music photography, especially these days when it's basically a bunch of bored fat guys with $20,000 worth of digital gear flashing and chimping their way through the assignment looking for the "clear face" shot. These images were all shot on film on a 20 year old camera and a single 50mm lens. I'm not saying this is how I'd want to do this every time -- the frustration and expense of trying to get film push-processed alone these days is enough to make you want to pour acetic acid in your eyes. But the point of the project for me was to produce something like old black & white concert photos from the 60s and 70s -- vital, exciting, messy pictures that made you wish you were there.

Rashmi Varma in Peace Magazine

I have a picture of Toronto fashion designer Rashmi Varma that I love in the current issue of Peace Magazine. I recently shot Sook-Yin Lee for the next issue, so look for more from me there in the future.

The studio

For those times you're forced to have client meetings in a cafe, here's a stitch-pan of the studio.