Multitasking While Marching With Women

Saturday was an important day to show solidarity and try to capture the moments of the Women's March movement. I was glad to be a part of it but I had no idea just how much energy this would require until I actually got there...

It's one thing to be a part of the demonstration and to stand with those with a significant message to say, it's another to do so while walking and trying to capture the event using both stills and video.

Imagine a photographer having to capture his own wedding and try to take part in all the festivities, while trying to use Facebook live to share the event with those who want to see it as it happens. I mean, it's not too hard to fathom as our insatiable lust for media consumption is just that real these days folks.

I wasn't on assignment, but to be honest, when you're at something like this, it's hard to shut off your mind from always being in documentation mode.

I mean just because you're not being paid to do something, doesn't mean that you shouldn't use available opportunities to learn more about yourself, hone your craft, and improve problem-solving skills. This is why, even though it was such an exhausting event, I still felt that I was able to come away with something that was both beneficial to myself and to others.
 

My takeaway from documenting the event:
Judging from what I think is underwhelming stills and footage (because I know that I can shoot better than this,) I learned that splitting your focus between two mediums can split the quality you come away with. If you decide to shoot video, then just shoot video. If you decide to shoot stills then just shoot stills.

If you are overly ambitious (stubborn) as I am and decide to do both anyway, at least go in with an idea of what you want to accomplish. I usually don't do this as sometimes inspiration happens on the spot, but don't risk it if you know you have to deliver. Understand when you've got enough images and frames to tell the story you want to tell and use the rest of the time to enjoy the moment.

Get more than 3hrs of sleep the night before an event.
 

I wanted this post to be simply about my experience at an event, but as I kept writing it went from simply sharing images to sharing a message that surpasses the actual media itself. A fine example of how you can go into something with one set of ideas but completely come out the other side with a new understanding. Hopefully this theme of adaptation and openness to new ideas as they present themselves will go beyond this page and rub off on places in the world where it could really be beneficial.

Above are the snaps I took from the event and below is the video I managed to put together with the random clips I captured throughout the day.

Scenes from the Toronto Women's March on January 21, 2017. 12:00 pm at Queen's Park.
A peaceful march in solidarity with the Women's March on Washington.

Music by:
Dyalla - Fight For You

Shot on:
Fuji X70
Fuji XT2
Samsung S7
GoPro Session 5

Starting A YouTube Channel: "A Phraction Of A Second"

With a new year starts a new experiment and there’s no better way to really see what you’re made of than to try something you have absolutely no experience in and see how well you do. For me that’s video.  I’ve always known that this medium has always been at the top and up until the last few years or so, it’s become so increasingly accessible for the general public to be able to create high-quality content that rivals what we see coming out of professional studios. I mean, for the longest time that’s been the case for photography - just ask any grumpy pro photog and the phrase ‘undercutting the industry’ and ‘weekend warriors’ will be said a few times or ten.

I guess I’ve decided to jump on the bandwagon and start kind of a vlog-esque web series focused on street photography because up until 2 months ago, I had no idea what kind of stuff was circulating around YouTube and I honestly found myself really captivated by it. I was curious to see if I could somehow merge this style of filming, along with point-of-view street photography, and post-production screen capture editing tutorials into one. Very ambitious for someone who didn’t know the differences between frame rates or even how to use any editing programs. Good thing iMovie is so intuitive otherwise it would’ve been super frustrating and I would’ve never gotten anything off the ground.

I’m still trying to figure out the best way to shoot video and stills all in one outing because honestly, it’s tough as it is to get a good shot if I’m not focused. While videography may seem to be a sibling of photography, it’s really more like the distant cousin, twice removed (whatever that means). It’s SO different you guys. What Im trying to say is that, getting my video work to match my photo level is something that will take some time and I embrace the challenge.

With any divergence from the path of stills and more specifically street photography, I feel that I will take a bit of a step back when it comes to the quality of work I’m doing with my shots. I look at it as a "1 step back, 2 steps forward" situation where hopefully the skills I learn from shooting motion pictures will somehow strengthen my still images.

I know one day I’ll look back on this video and see all the cliches, rookie mistakes, and the hack job I did on the audio, but if I consider something like this cringe-worthy in the near future, that just means that at that point in time, I’m at a much better place than when I started. To me, this is one New Year’s resolution that I hope to keep.

Anyways, enough talk (there’s enough of that in the video below) so here it is, enjoy!  

Critiques From The Cutting Room Floor 004

Here's the next image up for critique. You might have seen a variation of this shot that did make the cut but this version did not and I'd like to hear why you guys think that's the case. Again, I'll refrain from sharing my reasons for not posting this version but will update the post after 24hrs with the answers - once you guys had a chance to come up with your own assessments.

2016-09-11 9:02pm 24mm (eqv) 1/6s f2.8 800 ISO

Below is the one that I ultimately did select (just for comparison) 

2016-09-11 9:02pm 24mm (eqv) 1/9s f2.8 800 ISO

*Update*
I've received a bunch of great feedback on both my instagram feed and below in the comments section and am delighted to see that many of you guys are on the same page as I was regarding my deciding factors in choosing one image over the other.

In the top (rejected) shot, there's too much overlap with the characters near the middle of the frame which creates a two-headed man. The man standing at the foot of the staircase and in the foreground were there for a while which gave me a greater opportunity to be picky and to try and time the other people coming down the stairs to be more evenly staggered.

The other thing that caught my eye or rather the eye of the hero in this shot is the glare in his glasses. What a difference a slight tilt of the head can make in removing a distracting element like that but of course I just got lucky that he did so in the frame where better things were happening in the background. Also, what might have been causing the glare may have been a bright screen that turned on just outside of the frame which explains a bit of why his shirt is a bit more blown out than the other frame. 

The other thing that the better shot had was a bit more breathing room at the top of the frame. While some may say that the balance between the bottom of the foreground guy's shirt and the space between his head and the edge of the frame is equal and thus more balanced, I see the ceiling fan being cut off and wanted more emphasis on where the people were entering the frame.

One last thing that was mentioned is the motion blur. I actually don't mind it and in some cases, prefer it in the right places as it conveys movement and activity within the scene. I'm ok with it just as long as it's not too distracting, which in this case here since it's only found on the supporting characters.

I guess that's a wrap for now - thanks again for participating in these critiques. It's great to hear your input and share your thoughts with all those wanting to learn more. Stay tuned for the next installment!

A visual mark-up of what I was talking about above.

Critiques From The Cutting Room Floor 003

Here's the next image up for critique. Right now I'll refrain from sharing my reasons for not posting this image but will update the post after 24hrs with the answers - once you guys had a chance to come up with your own assessments. You guys offered such great feedback with DM's on my instagram accounts that I felt that instead of keeping all this fabulous information for myself, that it would be better served to have everyone's thoughts in one place and use it as a collective learning tool for all. Feel free to leave your comments below on what you liked/didn't like about it, what could've been done better, and why you think I rejected this shot in the first place.

Cutting room floor image 003: : 2014-09-06 5:40pm 41mm (eqv) 1/500s f6.4 iso 200

*update* What I primarily disliked about this image is that ultimately it's just a picture of people eating. I remember being once told that the most unflattering shots of people you could take is of them either eating or caught in mid-sentence making a weird gesture with their mouths. Street photography to me is about respecting your subjects and not making them either a spectacle or exploiting a moment of vulnerability. While this isn't the most embarrassing image you can take of someone in mid-chew, it also has nothing else going for it.

The tree shadow, while it fills the right side of the frame, doesn't fill it with anything that relates to the human subjects. On the top left corner, it's pretty dead and those sliver of elements also don't add to the scene.

Just because the light may be good, doesn't necessarily mean the subject matter or the scene is worth capturing. I was attracted to the light and how it hit the people but when you really break it down, that's all it's really got going for it.

Critiques From The Cutting Room Floor 001-002

I decided to try something new with images that I never ended up posting for whatever reason. I'm going to use them for critique analysis and share my thoughts on why they just didn't cut it for me. I hope to use this as a tool to help others as well as myself. By sharing my process, perhaps future work will not suffer the same fate and overall growth can happen for everyone!

Featured below are the previous images I shared on my instagram stories from my @phraction_street page and here's what I had to say about each:

Cutting room floor image 001: 2015-04-26 6:50pm 28mm (eqv) 1/500s f8 iso800

In this shot I felt, that the entire right side was empty, the characters weren't all that interesting nor did the foreground or background elements connect in any way.

A lot of people commented that I could crop the entire right side out but I'm a stickler for keeping the original aspect ratio I shot in and extreme cropping will only make me a lazier photographer knowing that I can just fix things in post. I'm a professional photo retoucher and though I know I can do a lot of things but I'd rather spend my time enjoying photography instead of working ;)

Also check out Eric Kim's blog entitled: "10 Things Henri Cartier-Bresson Can Teach You About Street Photography"and pay attention to the section about cropping.   

Here's the next image I put up for critique:

Cutting room floor image 002: 2015-04-29 5:45pm 28mm (eqv) 1/500s f8 iso200

In this one I rejected it from consideration because there were too many objects sticking out of the guys' head, there were only 2 points of interest (and they're not even that interesting). I usually go for at least 3 if possible, and the red car overlap simply bugs me.

And that's where we're at so far. I wanted to put this up and future posts on something that doesn't disappear after 24hrs because I think this is something that can be useful and can be built upon even after the fact. If there are any additions or comments to any of the images you see above, please comment and share your thoughts so others may learn as well!

Montreal B-Sides:

These are a small sample of images I didn’t post to my instagram feed ‘cause at the rate that I was posting, it would’ve taken another month to get stuff online. So here’s some imagery, sans captions for the sake of sharing. Enjoy!

Portrait Posing With Phraction: (that’s a terrible title..)

There’s a common misconception that because I shoot people on the street, that taking portraits would be a piece of cake. If by cake you mean something like making an 18 layer Baumkuchen (look it up, it’s super hard you guys), then yes, it’s exactly like that. When push comes to shove though you do what you gotta do. Luckily Karyn is very patient actor/model that I had the pleasure of shooting for the streetvogs project about a month ago

Wanting to mix things up a bit from the usual candid street stuff, I figured shooting a portrait of someone who owned a pair of fluevogs would be the key. Going outside of my comfort zone and challenging myself to make mistakes is something that people do sometimes do for fun for growth and stuff. Seeing that I’m pretty much done physically growing, I might as well you know, do it for creativity. Because skillz.

I suppose that when your primary objective is to feature the shoes, one should probably do that. I decided to unintentionally be a rebel and… not. Because I forgot.. SO that happened and my only saving grace was to see if I had a full-length shot that I could crop into to get a decent shot. In this day and age where “megapixels don’t matter” has found it’s way into the average conversation, I found one time when it actually does. Albeit 16MP is somewhat low apparently, for web, it’s perfectly fine. Grainy and unsharp? You bet. But what I’ve come to realize is that the details we see in our own images (or lack thereof) are sometimes illusions compared to what the majority of people actual see - the big picture.

So here’s to refining some skills, silly mistakes, and shooting enough material to save yourself when your brain suddenly decides to exit stage right.

Oh and I almost forgot to mention… after all the effort in working on that shoe shot - I never ended up using it. I was reminded that the project was about the ‘unique souls’ more than the 'unique soles’ so all that work retouching it, kinda went out the window. But for anyone curious, here’s what the original shot, the cropped shot, and the retouched version ultimately looked like…

(click here to see it larger)

Shooting Assignment - Fluevog/@streetvogs: 
A Wrap-Up Review

About a month ago I was asked if I wanted to be a part of a project put together by Fluevog. Naturally interested and always skeptical, I figured I’d see what the catch was. Turns out they were starting a new instagram account called @Streetvogs to showcase street photography from each city their stores were located in. With the theme of “Unique Soles for Unique Souls” one representative of each of the 16 cities would have to post daily to the black and white feed as well as the main colour feed.

If you shoot street, you’ll know that having a daily deadline is super stressful. There’s no telling if you’ll get any shots that day, especially when you’re shooting candids. It’s not like you can say, “hey man can you do that thing again where you look ominous and menacing, but do it naturally, it’s for Fluevog” Yeah, doesn’t quite work that way.

On top of me subscribing to the practice of letting my images ‘marinate’ (as spoken about in my last post) I also caption most of my images because, entertainment. Seeing that I had enough on my plate as it was, I figured I’d add to my workload and limit myself further by choosing to feature 1 of the 140 neighbourhoods in Toronto daily to give a balanced overview of the city. Clearly balancing everything else going on in my life wasn’t enough.. 

So I said yes. Whatev, challenge accepted. fml.

I was actually the 2nd photographer in line with the project, as this idea was brought to life by Take @bigheadtaco and Stephen of Fluevog while in Gastown, Vancouver. Since Take was still shooting at the time of contacting me, I had a bit of a head start to organize what neighbourhoods I wanted to do and what kind of shots I needed to get. I “#latergram” everything anyways so I don’t feel bad for not sharing the images the day I take them. Besides, the more time I have to edit my images, the better the quality of my postings.

Not gonna lie, I had a few images in my archives that worked with some neighbourhoods I wanted to feature so I used them. They would’ve collected virtual dust anyways had I not posted them because they were just sitting there waiting to see the light of day. This project actually brought life to some images that I couldn’t have fit into my feed because they either looked meh, as colour or they just didn’t fit aesthetically with the rest of the stuff on my feed. I’m that picky folks. My OCD mixed with indecisiveness knows no bounds when it comes to image selection. Honestly, they actually looked better in the streetvogs feed considering how Take was shooting his stuff so it kinda worked out.
"Sometimes you go out to shoot street and have nothing to show for it”

The first week was brutal. So was the second. It was a lot tougher to come up with 3 posts daily (2 BW + 1 colour) when I normally just post once a day on both my accounts @phraction and @phraction_street. 4 accounts to manage!? Sleep?! I got this. Also trying to post at certain times of days to stagger each post from all accounts was super nuts.

I was am bitching a lot but I actually enjoyed myself. It’s been a while since I’ve been ‘on assignment’ and going out to shoot something specific in mind gave me some much needed direction and focus when out shooting on the street. It made me pick the location properly knowing that not only did I have to get a good street shot, I also had to make sure that it was visible that I was in that part of the neighbourhood I was wanting to feature. So basically no more looming in dark alleys and creepily stalking people without their knowledge… oh wait. I totally did all of that. Like all the time. *no I didn’t…well.. only some of the time..*

On top of doing the candid street stuff, I actually got out of my comfort zone and met a few people who were willing to pose for me. Prior to this project I wouldn’t have called myself a Fluevog connoisseur so spotting their shoes was a huge challenge. Luckily… luck. I met food/lifestyle/travel blogger Annie (Chu On This) and Karyn @karyndejong who actually found me and made my life a bit easier with their great looks and style. I’m no portrait photographer and my art direction was rusty to say the least but I got the shots. I’ll probably have a separate post showcasing the images that didn’t get featured because I think there’s tons of images in each set and I can only post 10 photos here. Besides, I like to mix things up a bit and variety is key to keep everyone interested I guess.*Karyn DeJong in front of Guu restaurant’s cube wall*

What was also neat was that my shots were fed straight from the @fluevog and @streetvogs instagram feed and right onto the official fluevog website. That’s right folks, big leagues ;)
*Screencap of the Fluevog site featuring my posts on their IG feed*

When it was all done, it was obviously bittersweet. The challenge was completed, the ‘deadlines’ to have something up was over, and the ‘need’ to go out and shoot had changed to a ‘want’ once again. It’s not every day that you have full creative control over photo assignments. In the industry with art directors, clients, client’s clients calling the shots, it was an opportunity that I would be stupid to pass up and in the end I actually picked up my first pair of Fluevog shoes:
*My fluevogs are called “Down To Earth - Hadfield”*

Gotta say thanks to everyone who brought me into this and supported me throughout the project, so it’s my time to show support to the next @streetvogs photographer who is currently shooting now and representing Ottawa: Mink Williams @minkwilliams. It was conceived during the time of shooting that the current photographer would have to suggest a suitable candidate for the next city and his quirky style and awesome eye for spotting fluevogs on the street clearly made him a top choice. If you’ve got some time (and I know you do, if you’ve read up this far) why not check out to see what they’re up to over there but be sure to come back ‘cause I’ll miss you guys if you’re gone for too long :)If you feel like sticking around for a bit, feel free to hang up your coat and stay a while - I’ve got some black and white images at the top of the page that you can click onto for a larger view showcasing some stuff that didn’t make the streetvogs feed because I had too many shots from one neighbourhood or couldn’t find a way to fit it in without being fair to the other ‘hoods. Equality and all that stuff right?

#Latergram: Shoot 1st Post l8r

The concept of posting an instagram image way later than when it was taken is a #latergram. I do this. Like all the time. Everything on my feed has been posted days if not weeks from when it was taken. Contrary to instagram being something that’s supposed to display what’s going on currently in the user’s life, I fail to believe that people are all that interested in what I’m doing at this very second. Nor would anyone probably really want to know. flushes toi  uh.. *washes hands*.

I think that being able to post something when I please gives me better control over what I want to share with the world and gives me the time to think whether this is something that people would actually enjoy or if it serves as something that’s shared for the sake of sharing.

I prefer my images to have a flow, to tell a story and to work well from one to the next so I carefully select which shot I want to post to reflect a certain continuity in my feed and make it coincide with whatever it is that I may be feeling at the time. If there’s anything ‘insta’ about my feed, it’s the captions that usually go with the images.

What this also allows me to do is actually enjoy the time I’m out doing something. I can’t be fully experiencing the moment if I’m constantly on my phone posting throughout the day. I like to fully experience the moment and worry about the images later.

By letting my images ‘marinate’ (something I learned from Garry Winogrand in lesson number 6 of Eric Kim’s article) I create an emotional disconnect with my images and this allows me to go back and look at them more objectively to see whether or not it was actually a good shot or if I just thought it was because of how I was feeling at the time of taking it. But of course it’s good… ‘cause I took it pfff… *not really*.

Obviously all this requires more work than needed. Some people can snap a photo, edit it if needed, apply a filter, write something (or not), hasthtag, and post within minutes if not seconds. I’m sure there’s a joke about finishing quickly but I’ll keep this PG-13 (for now). This is great if you don’t want to spend too much time in front of a screen. I however, obviously like making extra work for myself, but clearly it’s for the purpose of making a quality contribution to the world of the internets.

What I’ve noticed is that the more you post, especially of the same angle/subject matter, the less people start to care. What separates you from another person posting pretty pictures? Frankly I find it funny when feeds start to look exactly like one another. Especially from people in the same city shooting the same stuff but that’s another topic in itself. The underlining message here I guess is quality over quantity. *NBC’s “The More You Know” PSA banner suddenly files by*

I do all this because it’s a hobby for me, an outlet to share my images and to an extent, my words. I’m not being paid to do this so the only deadlines I have are the ones I give myself. It’s better this way (at least for me) and perhaps for you as a viewer who can hopefully appreciate that there’s a bit of thought put into each pixel on the screen. Also might renew faith in humanity that we’re not all consumed by the rules of social media - but who am I kidding, we all are, in a way, sucked into it. Maybe by doing things my way, it serves as a method to stick it to the man. What can I say, I’m a rebel that’s bad to the bone and tomorrow, I’m gonna remove all the ‘do not remove’ tags from my couch cushions… *no I’m not..*

I figured some shots of the CNE (Canadian National Exhibiton - for those not from Toronto) would be a perfect pairing for this post given that it ended two weeks ago - Enjoy!