Group show à La Petite Mort
Ce soir (le samedi 29 novembre 2008) à la gallerie La Petite Mort (306, rue Cumberland, Ottawa), une de mes photos sera en exposition parmi une collection de photos capturées par un groupe de photographes professionnels et amateurs avec des appareils jetables. L’expo, présentée par La Petite Mort en collaboration avec Amnistie Internationale, s’appel “Urban Eyes” est une célébration du 60e anniversaire de la Déclaration universelle des droits de l’homme.
Come check it if you are around! It’ll be up until December 4.
PS: Remember when I was talking about bearded shirts? En voici un autre! It wins, I think.
Radio Radio & Jackson 2Bears
This was the closing party for Electric Fields in Ottawa. Radio Radio are sort of like the French-Canadian Beastie Boys. Serious in music but laying thick the sense of humour. First time I saw someone (band members) smoke pot at an indoor show in a longtime (if not ever).
Jackson 2Bears is a mohawk DJ from Victoria. Super ill. He uses different laptops to control both music and video. Tonnes of amazing samples from old western films (see video at the bottom).
Guns n Bombs fashion party
Suits and dresses.
Electronic Evangelicals Photos
What happens when you throw some of Canada’s most interesting live video and experimental artists in a decommissioned church? Find out!
There were a good have dozen video cameras present that night as well. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of these.
Electric Fields is still on for a few more days. Don’t miss!
Photography portfolio advice
Here are some questions/advice about comparing past portfolios to a new one. The points were put together by the photo editor of a North American newspaper. Good reading for anyone coming up in this profession.
- Have you grown visually?
- Is your currently portfolio vastly different in tone and style? (I’ve had experienced photojournalists change only one image from one portfolio to the next – what does that tell me?)
- Have you been learning how to do multimedia?
- We expect our journalists to be competent in a variety of styles encompassing sports, news, features, and portraits. Does anyone think twenty images from a trip to Africa represents their ability to do local breaking news?
- Is your only contact with the newspaper when you submit a job application? Try following up with your latest work to initiate a continuing dialogue. This shows me that you’re busting your butt to get into a very difficult profession.
- How are you self-promoting? Do you have a website I can look at? Do you change the images often?
I might have already talked about this book but Photo Portfolio Success by John Kaplan is also another essential read. I’ve read it cover to cover and while it isn’t necessary to adopt every method as your own, it is helpful in offering ideas about how to organize portfolio content and tailoring it to those looking at it.
On a related note, the winners of the College Photographer of the Year awards were announced this weekend. I’m pretty into this photo by Jake Stevens who got bronze in the Sports Action category.
Disorganized November & Matt and Kim forever!
Here are some photos from two different parties I went to a week ago. Click Click Click!
Things really have been bananas lately. Speaking of bananas, Sammy Bananas is the guest DJ at Disorganized December on Friday, December 5! This edition of Disorganized will be taped for a TV show that will air in the USA in January. I’ve also got a few tricks up my sleeve. DO NOT MISS.
Electronic Evangelicals
Super busy two weeks. Shooting. Editing. Shooting. Editing. Shooting. Editing. C’est amusant.
On Friday, I covered a super interesting performance by three groups of electronic media artists working with various forms of audio-visual experimentation. The projections were shown on a trio of huge screens in a decommissioned church on Cumberland in Ottawa. This was part of the Electric Fields festival that I mentioned in my last post. As described in the festival program “In electrovideoacoustics, the audio and video are not simply synchronized to each other, but are two indistinguishable mediums emerging as one: the video is the sound.”
More photos to come but here’s a snap from a supreme performance by Squelchbox (Ottawa) and Carrie Gates (somewhere in Saskatchewan). Great venue.
For the last performance, offered by Tvestroy from Montreal, was not only on the huge screens but also on a collection of 6 TV screens. Watching the audience sit still in the church pews as though they were listening to a sermon. Seriously, most people were so still and well behaved.
Somewhat surprising if you watch this video I took on my phone. Epileptics and people easily frustrated by noise and flashing lights should think twice before hitting “play”. My hope is that your second thought will be to in fact hit play. Do it!
Art and Fashion happenings in Ottawa
October was indeed Rocktober with a slew of musical happenings I couldn’t even keep up with. November changes channels but not the tempo. Two items of business here.
First…November 13 – 23 is the Electric Fields festival which describes itself as “a biennial festival dedicated to the presentation of new and significant performance and installation works created at the crossroads of art, science and technology.”
The program is pretty packed over the 10 days and you can check out the whole schedule at electricfields.ca. Hats off to Ryan Stec at artengine for pulling this together.
I’m most excited about the Electric Evangelicals night on Friday, November 14 at St. Brigid’s (ex-church, now cultural centre). Some cool musicians and performers will be present on this night. If yr into DIY electronics and circuit-bending and generally bizarre things, this might be for you! Anyway, I’ll be covering this event so if you see me, come say hello!
Also, on Saturday, November 22, the closing party has a pretty solid line up of DJs and performers including Radio Radio, this sort of funny acadien/francophone electro/hiphop outfit from Moncton/Montréal and some other places perhaps…
Good festival. Oh…most of this festival is FREE too. Unbelievable.
Second item on the agenda…Capital Fashion Week!
I’m happy that people are getting together in Ottawa to work on this. It’ll be very exciting to see where things progress from here. There are a lot of pretty interesting lines being shown on November 21 & 22. None from Ottawa but all Canadian nonetheless.
Also, Ottawa Fashion Week is happening November 13-15! This is their second time doing this and while I’m not sure if there is a friendly rivalry between CFW and OFW, I say, the more the merrier! Does lead to a bit of confusion though. There seems to be at least two designers being shown as part of OFW that use fur in their creations. Maybe people think this is OK since we’re in Canada and it gets cold but in my view, unless you’re camping on the outskirts of Iqaluit in March, no this is not OK.
Overall, it’s also too bad that very little seems geared towards men but I can’t blame them…there isn’t really much going on here in that department. I am actually quite interested in jewelry, however. Victoire, represent! Magpie too!
Competing with the Electric Fields closing party and also the Redbull Shoot To Thrill/Top of the World video premiere on November 22 is Capital Fashion Week’s own closing party. Basically, it’s going to be a rave like it’s 1997 again. Except, it’s in a legit venue and we already know where it is and you don’t have to take a 40-minute shuttle bus to a remote location to get there. OK…not really like a rave. Long story short, Guns n Bombs from Los Angeles are going to be performing with Ottawa’s Jokers of the Scene and some others. It’s going to be bananas.
PS: Images from my Active Absence series will be up at Wurm Gallery this December. Some stuff people have already seen. Other things that haven’t been shown yet. More news later about this. Stay tuned…
U.S. Election
On November 4, 2008, residents of Ottawa, Canada celebrated Barack Obama’s victory in the United States presidential election at the East Africa Restaurant. Here are some photos from that.
Halloween!
Local night. Fright night.
Halloween Hardcore: Ten Year Anniversary featuring Buried Inside, Fuck the Facts, The Creeps, Brights, Today I Caught the Plague and Alaskan. So heavy.
Later on, the annual Top of the World party with Stylusts, Drastik & Illo.
Here’s a video of Buried Inside that I took on my cell phone (sound is terrible).
Thanks to everyone that made this night awesome!
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