Clear To Soft
Unnamed Sixty Three — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
This image more than the recent others reminds me most of my childhood fever dream and also of staring out the side window while driving past fields and trees.
Before I began wearing contact lenses I could relax my vision until it was blurry and I used ...
New Idea
Unnamed Sixty Two — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
Completing these Sidelong images has given me some ideas on things to experiment with for the next body. I went out in the snow yesterday and shot a small test to check it's validity. It worked quite well and gave an interesting result, but I will ...
Transport
Unnamed Sixty One — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
I'm mostly concerned with the category of motion called transport - which is motion in everyday life, like walking, falling, playing, change of position, orientation of objects or water or the behaviour of people. Traffic is a derivative of people's behaviour.
"All Motion is relative. It's perceived ...
Motion
Unnamed Sixty — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
"Motion is the most fundamental observation about nature at large. It turns out that everything that happens in the universe is some type of motion. There are no exceptions. The study of motion was given the name physics in the fifth century BCE in Ancient Greece." I've ...
Invisible Structure
Unnamed Fifty Nine, 2020 — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
Working backward in time through the collection of material for Sidelong it feels like the images have less visible structure and recognizable elements in them. Not sure if this is good or bad. But definitely more painterly and some of them look like colourfields ...
Orbital Velocity
Unnamed Fifty Eight — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
I've been thinking more about my dream and the relative speeds of close versus distant objects. The closer an object the faster it appears to be moving. Despite my dream fear, this idea of proximity and velocity are somehow visually appealing. In my dream the ...
Interesting Rhythms
Unnmamed Fifty Seven — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
Interesting patterns and rhythms are on occasion surfacing as I progress through the stockpiled Sidelong images. Means I have to move slowly and not make premature assumptions about the material. But it's bringing out some pretty cool results - more of my dream geometry.
Fearsome Dream
Unnamed Fifty Six — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
When I was much younger I used to have this incredibly frightening dream – usually when I was ill. It would begin with me safe and disembodied in an all-white detail-less world – calm and enticing. An impending sense of doom would gradually creep over ...
Simplify
Unnamed Fifty Five — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
Had a dream the other night in which I was explaining my work to somebody – don’t know who. I was of course using all the usual adjectives which were - somehow unsatisfying, when trying to explain why movement is so important to me in ...
Ethereal by Nature
Unnamed Fifty Four — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
These latest Sidelong images are much more delicate and dream like - showing ghostly outlines countered with intense saturated smears. This is a new direction for this body of work. Almost similar to something I happened upon some time ago with an image in the Convergent ...
Riding In Traffic
Unnamed Fifty Three — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
For the past 9 years and 3 bodies of work - Light Signatures, Convergent and now Sidelong, I have captured all the source material while peddling my bicycle in Toronto traffic. When I tell people this they are mostly surprised - and afraid.
Doing this places ...
Smear
Unnamed Fifty Two — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
Working more on Sidelong this past week I remembered in the mid 90's shooting my pal Andrew cycling fast through the woods in a massive smearing green panning shot which I later worked into something similar to these pieces. That and the Drive Me I - ...
A Moment
Unnamed Fifty One — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
And what is a moment then? What is the length? There is much beauty in a moment, in drawing out a moment, in smearing out a moment into a wafer thin layer of sight and sound. In doing so, we see a moment’s true composition, it’s ...
Fleeting – Ephemeral
unnamed forty six b — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
This is all so fleeting and ephemeral – so temporary. Everything we are, everything we do is so transient. Time is a series of events - all temporary. All moments. None permanent. They only remain as memory if they even make it that far and ...
Isolate
Unnamed Fifty — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
Had a dream last night in which… I think, I was speaking with someone about my early black and white images. How even then I was focused on eliminating distracting elements in my compositions. The word I remember saying was isolate. The details are hazy now and ...
Logical Conclusion
Unnamed Forty Seven — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
Been quite a while since I last posted. Working hard to complete this Sidelong series because I’ve begun another body of work in addition to the China studies on Instagram and have yet another idea which I want to get out and begin test shooting for.
In ...
Old Notes
Unnamed Forty Eight — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
A couple days ago I reviewed some project notes from ten years ago which brought me right back to how I felt at the time - confused and struggling. I sat and calmed myself because it really put me back in the old mindset ...
Barriers
Unnamed Forty Seven — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
Just had a great conversation with another artist and in it mentioned the idea of self erected barriers. I confess, I am the king of barriers - if there is such a thing as a kingdom for this behavior. I too readily erect internal ...
Unexpected Results
Unnamed Forty Six — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
Working intuitively and iteratively will often lead down a rabbit hole I hadn't considered but will also result in something I take for granted in a - well that result makes sense kind of way. But when someone else marvels at this result I'm ...
Emotional Motivation
Unnamed Forty Five — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
A couple days ago, I reconsidered how I see the world completely differently from other people - it seems like the only logical explanation. When we think of someone - visualize them in our minds, it's not a snapshot in time, instead we've constructed ...
Filter
Unnamed Forty Four — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
When I photographed with film there was a disconnect between when I made the image and when I made the print. I work iteratively so I update and revise my idea trying new things on the fly as I shoot ... and then I ...
Exploring A New Branch
Unnamed Forty Three — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
Looks like I'm finding a another branch off the trunk to explore in the Sidelong Series - one that's colorful and saturated this time - sometimes possibly recognizable yet dreamlike. This happens when my interpretation of the raw material shifts - when I see ...
Stream of Time
Unnamed Forty Two — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
The more I think about the work I make, the more I realize scale is a factor. Not in the size but rather in the relationship between the moment and the stream of time. The images I make all have a long duration, to capture ...
The Performance
Unnamed Forty One — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
When I first began to seriously shoot black and white in University, my parents gave me the three Ansel Adams books - The Camera, The Negative and The Print. In them Ansel says something like the negative is the musical score and the print ...
Something Interesting
Unnamed Forty — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
There's an element of chance or accident to what I do that I welcome and embrace. I'll have an idea for a project and work out the parameters and methodology to execute it, but during the execution I'm open to chance and accidental happenings that might ...
Shadows On Our Eyes
Unnamed Thirty Nine — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
As with all the other things I do, when I make images I don't think too much while I do it - or maybe I adopt a benign neglect as I perform it and perhaps that helps the images work out. The problems begin, ...
Memory – Of The Moment
Unnamed Thirty Eight — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
I find it really difficult to keep my perspective - I'm perpetually in the moment, so it's really difficult to see growth and change. It's good to be in the moment for creativity but it leads me to despair when I can't see improvement - ...
Still Struggling Along
Unnamed Thirty Seven — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
That about sums it up - nothing special, just struggling along. It's what we're all doing.
Funky Feeling
Unnamed Thirty Six — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
I was feeling a little bored with this series but yesterday while completing some images I felt renewed interest. It seemed less of a struggle to get what I want which felt good - so I'm continuing on. Surprisingly I've shot a lot of material so far ...
Bike Clamped Camera
Unnamed Thirty Five — Sidelong :: (click image to see more)
Lately I've had several people stop and ask me about the somewhat crazy looking rig I've got clamped to my bike for making these images - even in traffic while riding. It always surprises me that anyone would notice but how could you miss ...