phraction_street
I find that the best way to really shake the rust off when you haven’t shot street in a while is to go to these massive public events where everyone has a camera out and just shoot with little possibility of confrontation. I mean, really if someone were to be that pissed that you’re taking their picture at something like a pillow fight, then they’ve obviously need to use their pillow to catch up on their sleep.
Usually when the lighting is as drab as it was today, I just opt to stay home but in these cases, the flat lighting takes one photographic variable out of the equation and gets you to focus on composition and getting your timing down - both of which I felt was still in Winter hibernation mode. (seemingly all the snow indicated that Spring was still in hibernation mode too)
This was also an excuse to stretch my in story-telling and editing muscles as those I feel need a good workout as well. I mean, I hardly look at images the minute I get home from a shoot so it was weird adhering to a false sense of time sensitivity as I gave myself a deadline to work with. I just wanted to see if I could still curate images quickly and narrow down a story to only a few selects.
Given the nature of social media and how I’m terrible at posting on the fly, I knew I’d never keep up with those who tweet and actually ‘insta’gram. Probably another reason why I think I wouldn’t be a good photojournalist.
In any case, trying to narrow things down to 10 images or less was a struggle. Even when narrowing things down in Lightroom with first flagging selects, then colour coding, then again with star ratings, I still ended up with about 17 images. Fail. Might as well share the link to the rest of the 50+ images for the While I’m at it. Click here to view the rest of them on facebook.
Good thing this event is pretty self explanatory because I’d feel pretty bad if you still didn’t get the concept of a pillow fight just by looking at the images. Clearly it’s simply legal assault ;)
Hey, if any of you guys have some solid techniques when it comes down to narrowing down selects for photo essays, feel free to let me know, otherwise enjoy the snaps!
Lately I’ve been taking a step back from my usual way of shooting to embrace/experiment with a form of photography that I’m absolutely unfamiliar with - minimalism. As far as street photography goes, I once never considered anything without people to be “street”. As my definitions for the genre change (along with the incessant need to define everything) I start to realize that the true appeal for this hobby is the art of seeing.. differently.
What I find interesting is that I used to look at images like this and ‘not get it’. I probably still don’t. I’m not even sure if this is what it should be - I’m no art major and I feel like somehow these things follow a formula that was mentioned in page 5 of “Contemporary Art 101" but until I get my degree, I’ll have to fake it until I make it. What I do know is that pictures of banal objects in everyday life isn’t the decisive moment, it’s not full of interesting characters, nor does it necessarily contain the human condition but in a way it’s still surrounds us and often these shapes and forms go unnoticed.
To me, it’s an exercise in seeing. Trying to master something like this isn’t easy. I often even find myself having to look away or simply leave the images alone for an extended period of time because my eyes get numb to the idea and I’m no longer comprehending what I’m looking at. My goal is to be able to quickly identify these forms and incorporate them into my usual photography to give it more depth. It’s not gonna happen overnight, but hopefully in time, something will come out of this.
It’s gonna take some effort and practice but it’s fine ‘cause changing things up and challenging myself in different ways is one way to keep things fresh - even if it’s frustrating to wrap my head around it at first. For now, consider this a snapshot of what’s going on behind the scenes as my winter hibernation comes to a close and the golden light opportunities finally return.
A collection of b-side selects from my 3rd day in Cologne, Germany.
Last month I was interviewed by Jordan Powers for his Hashtagged Podcast where he talks with some influential intagrammers and finds out more about what makes them tick on a personal level. If you haven’t had a listen yet, you can check it out here. Then check out the rest of the post for some more info on that experience…
Far be it for me to consider myself an ‘influencer’ as I simply think that I’m just another street shooter out there trying to get my work seen through a platform like instagram but I guess some people might want to hear what I gotta say. Honestly, I thought I’d be more interesting than what I came across in the podcast but maybe I just think too highly of myself in that regard ;) Talking about one’s self is pretty inorganic and I find it super difficult to come up with responses about why I do the things I do when it comes to street photography because I’m really still trying to figure it all out myself.
You’d imagine that being interviewed for a podcast is as simple as talking to someone on the phone but in this day and age, who really talks anymore without the aid of mashing a bunch of letters on a screen? I learned very quickly that having the luxury of the backspace button and having the ability to rephrase things after the fact is something I took for granted. That said, it was an experience that taught me that I’m not as good a speaker as I thought I was and I probably should stick to writing where run-on sentences and outdated cultural references are hopefully the only cringe-worthy aspects besides thinking back to a time when people thought Queen was ripping off Vanilla Ice…
It’s interesting to hear how much you over-use certain words and it’s certainly an eye-opener (or ear-opener) to hear these certain aspects of your speech become more pronounced even when you’re certain that you’re not being redundant in your phrasing. ‘fo certain.
Either way it was a cool experience and if I ever do this again, I’d better have some better stories to tell :)
Oh and for those who are curious about the puppy (who you might have heard barking in the background of the interview) this is him:
His name is Fritz Schnackenpfefferhausen (based off a Simpsons reference - Renier Wolfcastle’s bratwurst). He’s a long-haired miniature dachshund *insert long hairy wiener joke here*
and yes he’s got his own instagram account 😉
Like all things photo-related, there’s things that hit the cutting room floor and don’t get aired due to time constraints or simply because they’re not that interesting. Luckily, I happened to hit the record button on my side as well just so I could listen to myself have a weird one-sided conversation (I could hear Jordan on my headphones but couldn’t record what he was saying). By doing so I’m able to share with you some of my omitted thoughts on why I write such long-winded captions, what I really think of instagram-esque compositions, and the concept of likes. Feel free to have a listen here.
Lastly, I recommended a few accounts to follow but of course there’s more links I would’ve loved to share with you so below are an extension of these suggestions:
www.streetshootr.com: My friend Karl Edward’s website on things street photography related
@_streetrob: Rob Kubaink aka @spongerob_’s street-focused account
@egonprczybylsky/@alter.egon: Andre, the other kind friend to drop everything and meet up with me in Hannover.
Sakura Love: Ying Tang’s Flickr feed
@tobisaenger: A kind instagrammer who showed me around Cologne.
@trilastiko: Another kind instagrammer who showed me around Cologne.
@shackette: An instagrammer in Dubai who connected me with the German IGers so I had friendly faces to show me around.
Continuing with the selects from the street photography project I set out to do in Germany this past summer, here’s some b-sides from my @phraction instagram feed of the day I visited Iserlohn.
I’ve started to upload some selects from the street photography project I set out to do in Germany this past summer on my main @phraction instagram feed. I’ll be posting other variations of those shots here so as to avoid being overly repetitive. I’m also very indecisive so this takes care of having to decide what goes on the intwebs and what remains to collect virtual dust on my hard drive. I’ll keep updating this entry with new shots as I post to my feed. Enjoy!
wtitten by Emily Pohl-Weary
photography by Ryan Tacay
(A photo essay created with the initiative of the Koffler Arts “X-Neighbourhoods” project in collaboration with Toronto Clicks)
Almost my entire life has been spent within the little box of Toronto’s downtown west-end. Walk out of my childhood home, turn in one direction and skyscrapers bite the sky, turn in the other and a scar-like expressway extends forever, separating the city from the polluted lake and the evils of small-town Ontario.
Parkdale isn’t lovely in any conventional sense. It’s a beautiful mess of neon-bright colours, perpetual gridlock, people from all walks of life and social strata, graffiti art, garbage, crumbling brick, and grey cement. The exorbitant cost of living, condominium developers, and pressure to gentrify may have forced steady change on it, but its heart remains. It’s a layered, intersectional part of the city, and while it may be possible to stay in your own particular layer some of the time, walking from one block to the next, you’ll pass chichi coffee shops, rooming houses, and faltering businesses.
Growing up there in the 1980s—the decade that brought us Pac-Man’s release, Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and the World-Wide Web—I found comfort in the fact that maps were superfluous. I felt my way around with my eyes half-closed—sometimes reading a book or singing along to music. I loved shortcuts and back alleys. Some people preferred fine art galleries, but I would just head to my neighbourhood’s shadowy places to look at the ever-changing murals. Sticky situations were handled by making eye contact, picking my nose, giving someone the finger, ducking into a corner store, or hailing a cab.
I learned to appreciate the things people who fled to the suburbs warned you about: chaos, the ugliness of haphazard growth, and “crazy” people. Given the choice between sterile serenity and hectic density, I always chose the latter. I’d still rather schlep my sorry ass around the city on crowded streetcars, with sweaty businesswomen in polyester suits breathing fishily down my neck, than live an enclosed bubble existence.
In Parkdale, nothing was truly private, and nobody bothered to pretend, because we lived on top of each other, and were forced to witness each other’s private moments and humiliations. Often we pretended not to see. But not always. A few years after my parents divorced, when I was about nine, my father moved to a tiny dead-end street called Virtue that consisted of about twenty houses. Virtue Street was an enclave of gossips who seemed to know and see all.
Every couple weeks, I stuffed all my clothing and school books into big black garbage bags, and lumped them on my back from one parent’s house to the other past the corner where the sex workers did business—they kept an eye on me. On foot seemed like the most hassle-free way to go. Waiting for a drive was intolerable, because I was an empowered, independent sort of girl who thought she was Nancy Drew incarnate. I took action, investigating all potential mysteries, taking people’s fingerprints, examining their handwriting, and poking around abandoned buildings for clues. Only now do I realize that maybe some of those things weren’t so safe.
An insatiable desire to understand the why and what of my universe eventually turned me into a writer. It was either that or an anthropologist. There were so many characters. It was virtually impossible not to interact with someone on the way to the corner store. I remember this one man, an outpatient from the nearby mental health hospital, who sat on our corner, rocking back and forth, with his hands over his face, whispering his traumas. Summer, autumn, winter, and spring came and went, year after year, but he was still there, wearing thin lace-up leather shoes with no socks. We never spoke a single word to each other, and I have no clue whether he even saw me, but I was grateful for the sight of him there by the streetcar stop, because it meant I was home.
He is just one of the memories that follow me around the area. Rita Cox, the local children’s librarian, told the best Anansi the trickster stories. She saved incredible dress-up costumes for all her Parkdale “kids” in the basement of the library and rounded us all up so we could dance in the carnivalesque Children’s Caribana along the waterfront. I fell in love with steel bands, and the fact that gorgeous music could be made from the lid of a garbage can or an empty oil drum. That’s the music in my head when I think of Parkdale.
There was my best friend Sheena, who moved away, but used to live in the duplex unit upstairs from us. She was an amazing dancer and made me practice routines to Madonna’s early oeuvre and the Rocky Horror Picture Show until I pretended to hear my mother calling me for dinner. She was also the best teacher of everything naughty. She showed me how to light cigarette butts with a magnifying glass, how to cut a hole in my screen window so we could escape at night (or let the boys in), how to dress for clubbing, and how to do a strip tease the sexy way.
I once saw a man have a heart attack on Queen Street, within spitting distance of two beat cops, who did nothing until I screamed at them to call an ambulance. A frail Bird Lady lived in a boarding house on my street, and her family consisted solely of the pigeons she fed every afternoon. Her head was injured one day, when her door was busted down during a raid on her building, so I brought her flowers from the lilac bushes in our front yard, and asked why she’d refused to go to the hospital. She was convinced they’d lock her up.
A person’s life was both worthless and priceless at the same time. It just depended on who was doing the measuring. Some people would be there for you no matter what, others would steal the shoes off your feet. Understanding this was the key to how the community functioned. If you were an insider, you were pretty safe, unless you crossed certain lines.
But when I traveled just twenty blocks in any direction, the rules changed. I got disoriented. People became inscrutable. North was no longer up, south wasn’t down. Things were further apart, more uniform, less familiar. If I went just a bit further, and blinked for a moment, when I opened my eyes, I’d shifted into a parallel universe.
In some ways, flying through space would have been more appropriate than taking the subway out to North York. Everything matched: people, houses, box stores. I immediately missed the sound of a thousand different voices, the strains of every kind of music in the world floating down from open windows and out of tricked-out Honda Civics. Parkdale always had its own particular vibe.
So I always returned with a sense of relief. While forays outside the little box were enlightening, nothing beat familiarity. Besides, a mental chasm existed between the urban and the suburban, between hectic chaos and artificial order.
We are all shaped by our environments. I am a child of the city.
*An early version of this piece was published in City of Words edited by Sarah Elton (Cormorant Books, 2009).
