rick forgo
make It happen
This is another shot I pulled from the discard pile of the the past two years or so. I like this one very much now, maybe partially because I rarely make photos like this these days. In the last year or so my artistic preferences seem to have changed along with my lifestyle. When I shot this I was living in the (relative) isolation of a small town in interior BC near the tail end of winter. There wasn't much else to do but get out and walk around town with my camera. Mind you I had lived in Vancouver the year previous and didn't do much aside from that either. I've made a great many photos in the same vein as this one in the seven years or so that I've owned a camera, but they seem to be coming to me less and less these days.
This is the kind of shot that got me into photography in the first place. Night, long exposures, solitude in the middle of an (temporarily) abandoned town, colours and forms laid bare by and (paradoxically) exposed by the lack of light, patience to wait for the shutter, the challenge of finding a flat place for the camera, the question of what lurks in the shadows, and so on and on.
What I've been compelled to portray has changed greatly since I last left Vernon and returned to Vancouver. Rather than being a time filler, my work is now more a byproduct of things I am otherwise doing. I shoot with less purpose now, but I am somehow more satisfied with what I'm creating. Maybe I've become more comfortable with my work becoming more personal.
And, like it or not, I've been using Instagram extensively. I believe this has enabled me to rediscover spontanaiety and joy in photography, to loosen up about technical proficiency and to just shoot. That said, using my phone for personal snaps and as a chronicle of life has freed up my camera for slower, more purposeful work, allowing me to explore deeper the possibilities that that more spontaneous attitude opens up.
I do really like this photo. And I still enjoy getting out at night and shooting long exposures of my environs. But I am not so driven to do it anymore. The loss though, is commensurate with the gain, and so long as I am happy with what I'm doing (as long as I follow my instincts (my muse?)) I'm not too bothered.
(If you've read all the way to this point, thanks. I didn't plan on this becoming a retrospective diatribe, but I figured I'd see where it went. It's probably not very cohesive, and may even seem contradictory, but hopefully it's a bit interesting or insightful)
make It happen
This is another shot I pulled from the discard pile of the the past two years or so. I like this one very much now, maybe partially because I rarely make photos like this these days. In the last year or so my artistic preferences seem to have changed along with my lifestyle. When I shot this I was living in the (relative) isolation of a small town in interior BC near the tail end of winter. There wasn't much else to do but get out and walk around town with my camera. Mind you I had lived in Vancouver the year previous and didn't do much aside from that either. I've made a great many photos in the same vein as this one in the seven years or so that I've owned a camera, but they seem to be coming to me less and less these days.
This is the kind of shot that got me into photography in the first place. Night, long exposures, solitude in the middle of an (temporarily) abandoned town, colours and forms laid bare by and (paradoxically) exposed by the lack of light, patience to wait for the shutter, the challenge of finding a flat place for the camera, the question of what lurks in the shadows, and so on and on.
What I've been compelled to portray has changed greatly since I last left Vernon and returned to Vancouver. Rather than being a time filler, my work is now more a byproduct of things I am otherwise doing. I shoot with less purpose now, but I am somehow more satisfied with what I'm creating. Maybe I've become more comfortable with my work becoming more personal.
And, like it or not, I've been using Instagram extensively. I believe this has enabled me to rediscover spontanaiety and joy in photography, to loosen up about technical proficiency and to just shoot. That said, using my phone for personal snaps and as a chronicle of life has freed up my camera for slower, more purposeful work, allowing me to explore deeper the possibilities that that more spontaneous attitude opens up.
I do really like this photo. And I still enjoy getting out at night and shooting long exposures of my environs. But I am not so driven to do it anymore. The loss though, is commensurate with the gain, and so long as I am happy with what I'm doing (as long as I follow my instincts (my muse?)) I'm not too bothered.
(If you've read all the way to this point, thanks. I didn't plan on this becoming a retrospective diatribe, but I figured I'd see where it went. It's probably not very cohesive, and may even seem contradictory, but hopefully it's a bit interesting or insightful)