Animation Festival sneak peak
After interning at the Ottawa International Animation Festival a few years ago, they asked me this year to cover a bunch of the events that have been going on since Wednesday. I’m sick sick sick now but it has been a good week and I’ve met a lot of interesting people. Tomorrow’s awards gala at the Museum of Civilization should be pretty amazing. The winning films will also be shown at Ottawa’s Bytowne Cinema at 8pm.
Here are three photos from the last few days.
Seth Green (Robot Chicken)
Animation party people.
Richard Williams (Who Framed Roger Rabbit)
Seriously, the screenings at the Bytowne and at the Museum of Civilization tomorrow will be awesome.
Icebreaker slideshows online
Sometimes I tell people I spent 17 days on an icebreaker and their first question is “What’s an icebreaker?”
This is a good question because it is pretty much an invitation to tell, in more detail, about my time on the CCGS Louis S. St. Laurent in the summer of 2007. Since 1969 and until 2017 (when it is decommissioned and replaced by the CCGS John G. Diefenbaker), it has been, and will be the largest icebreaker in Canada.
How does someone describe this massive ship?
“It’s the icebreaker that rescues other icebreakers.”
What happens when it gets stuck?
“You gotta call the Russians.”
I’ve had some photos I shot on the ship online here and at CBSNews.com for a while but I’m happy to announce that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans have published some slideshows I produced in June (in addition to using some of the images in the Science division’s 2006-07 annual report).
My gratitude to have had the chance to spend time on the Louis is endless. Risking frostbite while sampling water is nothing compared to the sight of a polar bear and her cub chomping on a seal.
So few people get to experience something like this that I fail to see how anyone could refuse to appreciate the opportunity.
Seriously, I’m tempted to make a thank you list of all the people that continue to enrich my memory of those days but I hope they already know they are appreciated.
Without further ado, three slideshows.
Ottawa music photography
So, I’m included in a feature Matt Harrison wrote about music photographers from Ottawa in the Summer edition of Dharma Arts. It’s neat to be part of this sort of thing and to also see that I’m in good company. This city’s got some talented people that know how to make guys holding microphones seem different every time.
I submitted a number of images. They ran this one of I Refuse that I shot in 2006.
Check out the rest of the article at dharmaarts.ca.
This weekend, I also went to a secret show at Sounds Unlikely record store on Arlington. From Brooklyn, Japanther made a quick afternoon stop in Ottawa before driving to Toronto to play Sneaky Dee’s. I’ve seen this band four times and it always gets me excited. I know for a fact that some people were so inspired by the show that they ran back to their apartments and started jamming out songs.
Ottawa Pride 2008
For me, it started with a day at Camp Ten Oaks, a camp dedicated to queer-identifying youth and children of gay couples. Then I went on to a debaucherous party called Get Real Queer at Babylon. Get Real Queer was a pretty fun jam and also a benefit for the AIDS Committee of Ottawa/Venus Envy Bursary Fund. Things culminated at the Pride Parade last Sunday with one of Capital Xtra’s tightest deadlines ever.
You can see a gallery of photos I shot over the week over on my Flickr.
Links to other photos posted on xtra.ca are below!
Parade and party photos on xtra.ca
I also continued covering construction on Bank Street which is getting insane. Personally, I wish they’d have already started fixing Bank Street between Catherine and Gilmour but this is for completely selfish reasons that have everything to do with my biking and skateboarding habits than what I suppose is most logical for the city.
More Israel photos & World Press Photo in Ottawa
An article I wrote along with a series of photos I took during my time in Israel last year ran in the July 2008 issue of Maximumrocknroll. Some people may have already seen it but I’ve been waiting to put it online. The wait is over. There’s also another collection of images I shot in Israel which have been up for a while.
Last night, I visited the Canadian War Museum where this year’s winning images of the World Press Photo contest are on display. It was neat to see photos from Israel and Kenya, two countries I’ve seen a decent amount of in the last 12 months. What stuck out most for me though, were the Sport Feature Stories by Erik Refner, Erika Larsen and Travis Dove. Each were so bizarre and so far removed from sport that I found it sort of hard to imagine them as relevant to the category. But still, it worked. It made obvious an essence of each sport (marathon, hunting and skateboarding, respectively) that most people tend to ignore and each story, I think, stands as a cultural monument to these pasttimes.
The Nature Stories by David Liittschwager and Paul Nicklen were also rather striking and spoke to my own experiences in the Arctic. What’s amazing is that Paul Nicklen won both 2nd and 3rd prizes in this category. This guy’s physical limits are nearly unnatural to do the things he does.
Finally, I wish I could find a copy online but perhaps it is only available at as part of the travelling exhibit. Gary Knight, the chair of the World Press Photo 08 jury, had a written statement of introduction walking into the exhibit that was refreshingly honest and offered great advice to photographers. Essentially, he called out to those who entered the contest using photos that resembled winners from previous years and how taking photos with a contest in mind is exactly the worst thing to do. Again, unless it is already and I haven’t found it, his statement should be online so everyone can read it.
If you’re in Ottawa, do not miss this. It’s only the second time it comes here and it’s one of only four North American dates (the others being Montréal, NYC and Mexico City).
World Press Photo 2008 winners gallery
Returned from Kenya and constructing Ottawa
It has been a week since I landed in Toronto. The five weeks I spent in Kisumu were unforgettable – right down to the last night when a truck filled with M-16 wielding cops lectured me about why I shouldn’t climb their garbage cans. Surprisingly or not, the two Kenyan friends I was with announced afterwards that if I was African, I might have expected to be thrown in jail for such a stunt.
Our last Saturday in Kenya was not met with police intervention. Instead the kids’ had a photography exhibit in the orphanage compound. They really enjoyed themselves and I think it was a good way to mark the end of our project. The Canadian High Commission in Kenya even published an article about it! As always, you can follow us on our blog too…the work isn’t over
Here are two photos from that day… More photos from Kisumu on Flickr.
Now in Canada, I’ll be presenting at a youth conference called Zoom in on the World in Pembroke on Saturday and two others are in Québec City right now at the World Youth Conference doing the same. Exhibitions of the kids’ photos are being lined up for the next few months as well. Busy times.
In other news, I’m freelancing for Capital Xtra some more this month which, to date, has been pretty fun. A few months ago, I was assigned to cover the construction on Bank Street, one of the main commercial streets in Ottawa and an area people are trying hard to get recognized as a gay village. It was one of those things where you spend days covering something and you wonder if it will turn out to be completely boring or at least marginally interesting. I think it turned out OK. Here are a few examples. More on Flickr.
Next week, I’ll be shooting an assignment at Camp Ten Oaks. Should be cool.
À la prochaine! xo.
Blogged in Israel
Haoneg.com, the most popular blog in Israel, posted about my time there. It’s in Hebrew though so I don’t exactly know what they wrote. They seem to cover other cool stuff but I’m saying this judging from the images.
Link (item 46 – scroll down!)
Interview with the NYT picture editor
This is fairly old, circa July 2006, but I couldn’t pass up sharing this collection of great reader questions fielded by New York Times’ Assistant Managing Editor for Photography, Michele McNally. There are several questions, asked by people with varying degree in photography or simply, people curious about what the professional culture at the New York Times is like.
For people working within photojournalism, there are a lot of questions are worthreading. A lot of the answers are quite long so I will post a short one that tilts its hat at Denmark.
Q. Is there any publication abroad that you really like for the quality of its pictures?
– Giovanni Carozzi
A. The best are the Danish newspapers, with Politiken leading the way. I look to Stern and Paris Match after big news; they will publish 25 double-pages of great photography if the news warrants it. German Geo usually has something and photographers love working for Mare.
Fires in Denmark.
My old Danish neighbourhood is being burnt to the ground…sort of.
Those yellow bricks on the right? My old apartment. Foto: Emil Ryge Christoffersen
Foto: Lars Skov
Foto: Susan Thygesen
This has already made international headlines but essentially, what prompted these arsons and other riot acts was the arrest of three men who were suspected to be conspiring to assassinate Kurt Westergaard, one of the cartoonists responsible for the Mohammed illustrations that got all eyes on Denmark in 2006. The big deal is that these suspects lived minutes from my Danish apartment, in what is officially considered to be the largest ghetto in the country.
When I was still there, It was common to see burnt scooters in pedestrian underpasses, there were fireworks on a nearly nightly basis (great to watch from my bedroom window) and after a local arab man joined the Danish police, others decided to bomb his car.
Now, I heard that after buses were pelted with stones in the area of the city, they are refusing to provide service there.
My European experienced exposed me to a continent that, with the exception of Germany who is very careful about how it openly views immigrants, is new to the idea of immigrant populations and perhaps has some difficulty dealing with the newcomers. We saw it in France in the Parisian suburbs in 2005 and now we’re seeing it for a second time in Denmark.
Europe does a lot of stuff better than North America…bread, chocolate, cars, public transit, cell phones… It needs to start figuring out newcomers though.
Here’s a Danish rap video shot in Copenhagen.
Videos about a Latvian and a Greenlandic
My friend Kalvis.
A while ago, I posted about Soundslides, linking to one I made about my Latvian friend. Since making it, he’s become a bit of an international celebrity and girls around the world are fawning over this baltic boy.
With another person from my school, I’ve since made another one about a Greenlandic woman living in Århus that you might want to watch.
As I have spent decent amounts of time in the Canadian arctic, it was interesting for me to compare the general opinion on Canadian Inuit with public perceptions about Greenlandic people living in Denmark. Likewise, it was a nice opportunity to listen to someone openly share her experiences.
Both are online for your viewing pleasure.
Kalvis from Latvia (one minute, nine seconds long)
Ane Marie from Greenland (three minutes long)
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