Endless Complexity of Being and Witness

Back in June, it was time to have a birthday. That morning I hadn’t much idea what to do but I knew there was an independant music festival in the city and my friend Tyr was participating by playing a solo show at a book store just off East Hastings, an area known for its charisma and the Godspeed You! Black Emperor track of the same name.

One of my favourite aspects of this performance was Tyr’s capitalization on his cramped quarters as he coaxed spastic sounds from the keyboard up against the window by smacking the headstock of his guitar down against.

When you’re sitting on the floor in an overcrowded bookstore there’s not much you can do to vary what frames you can get aside from getting your finger in there.

I kept my birthday a secret but I let it out afterwards when we were standing infront of the shop. He conducted a singing of happy birthday with random people who wondered who the fuck is this guy anyway.

We decided we were going to travel back up Main Street to catch the Japandroids spot for the festival. I’m tired of moderating so I’m just going to post every bad shot I made that night. You can go to www.japandroids.com and stream the video of a previous live show while you read this entry, if you are cool.

Japandroids is a band I’d heard of but made a conscious decision to avoid (reading about or listening) until I got a chance to see them play a live show. Sometimes it’s great to introduce yourself to a band that way and fortunately Japandroids are from Vancouver making that effort a little easier.

It was an idea I didn’t regret.

That one might be my favourite just for the expressions of the listener and drummer. That’s what is called juxtaposition.

After Japandroids Chris and Holly and I spent a while chasing Tyr around the city as he schizophrenically decided that ne needed to be at every venue. It was kind of fun, and we made some nice walks.

These guys were outside the Funky Winkerbean.

And him. Everywhere you go there’s always someone who wants to make sure you realize that you’re shooting a Leica. It’s nice to have a reminder sometimes, but I’m always at loss for what to say besides make a photo. Leica shooters? What do you say to those people?

Actually that dude there was pretty cool and he made good conversation with me beyond the obvious so cheers to you, random Leica appreciating brother.

Around that time I also made some camera porn with the Beard.

So Tyr and Japandroids weren’t all I enjoyed in June. Only a few days later Isis was playing with Mamiffer and Helms Alee.

This is Mamiffer, who radiates beauty in multiple senses.

Gosh, heh.

I had a poor spot to see Helms Alee so I didn’t shoot much.

Isis.

.

I don’t know if I’ve ever actually been so pleased with concert shots. The Isis stuff turned out exactly the way I saw what I was shooting that night.

The crops from neg scans are not ideal though unfortunately.

Wanted at least one shot of him even though I didn’t really have the angle.

I think that’s a good way to end a blog. Next entry will have a just slightly less ancient history factor.

If you take a dollar every day and put it in a jar it will just take 20 years, kids.

In February Tenant played at the Anza Club with Bridges Out, Ninja Spy and Callahan. I didn’t get up to much shooting that night but thanks to the alcohol factor it seems I became somewhat artistically inspired.

I ran into some dA gallery admin at the show. We recognized eachother and nodded but it was way too loud to have a conversation. In lieu of verbal conversation I decided to play a game with him to anticipate his shots. He was running around shooting with a remote off camera flash and so I went to bulb mode.

It was a silly idea because the venue was really well lit unlike most places but I guess I could a couple cute results. A lot of them became more esoteric in nature…

I guess it wasn’t long before we’re getting some 1am fast food at Wendy’s.

Looks like Andrew also found some timbits. I’m trying to remember if that was the night where there was this disturbing old man in a wife beater, shorts, a baseball cap but with the most prolific body hair and all of it was white. It was so dense that it puffed his undershirt up from his chest and back. He had some odd behavior and seemed to be harassing customers or the staff from time to time and always returning to the counter to ask for more of something useless. He was also the guardian of the front door which was not swinging shut automatically and so every time someone walked in or out of the place through that door he would adopt an exasperated look and stand up to close the door again. When at last we stood up to leave we walked past his table and he was eating from 4 tins of  sardines. We walked out the door that didn’t shut properly.

Yeah, it wasn’t the same night but oh well.

Tenant was also playing at the Media Club. That might be the Media Club. If it isn’t the Media Club then it is the Biltmore but I think it is the Media Club.

Over the winter there were a number of these Denny’s trips. Usually after clearing Naxxramas.

Visiting at my fathers with my sister and my nephew.

One of my favourites.

For reading break Kevin came back to Vancouver.

Somehow ending up back at Denny’s again with John.

One day someone was playing with cards in the window seat at Slickity Jims.

Difficult to determine at this size I guess but the cards are of Hooters and feature the female body.

Inside Slickity Jims it looks like this.

The mens room at Foundation.

One morning that came with beautiful light, someone was sleepy.

And eventually awake, for my dads birthday party we made Super Mario Brothers power-up mushroom cookies.

We ground fine sugar with this mortar and pestle that Kevin once gave me as part of a greater  joke. I bet he never imagined I’d find a practical use for it. It felt like some kind of profound victory.

He thought to put out the candles on his birthday cake with the dust buster.

But he was forced to do it like the rest of us.

The Vancouver Darkroom Co-op where I used to print held a gallery show next door at this space. It was interesting to see what other members were printing in there.

I guess I’m getting in trouble here.

But I’ve always been a very smooth talker.

He’s kind of like a horse here but his snout is a beer glass. More about horses in a later entry…

Eventually Tenant played another show where I again I didn’t make much use of the camera.

But that weekend we celebrated Norms birthday and played some Beer Frisbee League in the back yard. It was dumb we didn’t start sooner because he was difficult to see the frisbee. As dusk passed I think I made that one at f/2 1/8th.

Teaching pool.

We spent most of the night outside where I enjoyed some Laphroaig and we passed around the hookah and cigars.

This one is going to be all Leica and once again all Tri-X +1.

I don’t eat out so often as any time when Kevin is visiting.

You kind of have to set aside a budget for it all together.

Once again beauty is known entirely only in its defeat.

Man plays thing, waits for bus.

Battles at Richards on Richards, September 2008.

One evening I was relaxing at home when I received a text message from Norm. He said come down to Richards and see this band called Battles, I think you’d like it. I spent about 28 seconds consulting the internet and left immediately because it was already close to show time and I had to reach downtown. As you can see it was pretty full when I got there and it is about as close as I got to the stage. But he was right, I did like it.

I remember at one point Craig came around to bring beers amongst his colleages. He had several bottles in his hands/arms and he was trying to offer an item to me but I didn’t know which one he meant to give so when I reached out I used both hands. I wanted to make sure that nothing was going to be dropped in this exchange but I quickly felt awkward as I imagined he was going to think that I was trying to take more than 1 of his offered beers. I felt pretty terrible and it was so loud at the time I couldn’t explain this to him properly. Still I never brought it up afterwards. Thank you for that beer, Craig. It was a bittersweet moment for me.

Mogwai played at the Commodore soon after.

Sometimes when you want intensely to make a photograph you will make your best effort with all of your knowledge and experience behind you but you will still fail. If you choose to show your failure anyway there will be people that say it is still good no matter what. Be glad that someone liked it but don’t listen to them because they are both wrong and right at the same time and how can you trust people like that?

I just spent half an hour looking for it without success but I read a review for this show somewhere which gave it a pretty bad rap. The author even went on to say that as he looked around the venue his sense of disappointment was mirrored in the faces of his peers! Well isn’t it pleasant when your feelings are justified by insignificant strangers.

One of my favourite moments was during the song Tracy which featured also the telephone samples like on the record and I think a couple members were caught by surprise as it almost seemed like they thought a mistake was going through the speakers for just a few seconds before they realized what it was. I couldn’t fight off the smile a lot of us shared in that moment.

At the end of the show the stage lost power and confusion began to spread. It was clear that the band wanted to play one more song. In the end they got everything running again and I was incredibly glad because as encore they played ithica 27 o 9 which sounded just amazing.

This is what Vancouvers olympic village looked like a year ago today as seen from Main St station. McDonalds in the foreground and city hall in the very distant background.

When my father decided to buy this car we assembled the following day in the back yard to stare at it but also to bolt a seat belt in the passenger side to drive more with the comfort of modern safety features.

I drove it later to the train station and it was the first time I ever drove something so powerful without power steering and I felt like an uncoordinated weakling.

Some guys opened for Grady at the Plaza on Granville street. It was evident that they came from the suburbs, perhaps because they still had passion.

There was no real way to get a nice exposure here. Maybe my next Leica will have HDR.

God, I love that epic double-neck.

Y U So Shady, Grady?

Towards the end of the evening, in response to an article in the weekly Georgia Strait which challenged the condition of hair hidden underneath that southern hat (Mr. Johnson defected to Texas from Canada lately), Gordy lifted his hat from his head triumphantly to demonstrate a full head of healthy grown hair and then launched into another blues-rock anthem. It is actually funny I come to this roll now because I have been listening to a lot of Grady lately. There is just no substitute for those greasy fingers.

Back in June I was fortunate to wake up one morning, log on to the internet with my PPP dial-up TRUMPET WinSOCK pipe and find a Nikon Coolscan V ED on eBay for a decent price from a seller I’d dealt with a number of times in the past. I have been using it for a bit now and it only has one minor issue but, specifics aside, I have scanned at least 300 or so frames with it wondering why I bought it at all since I’ve scarely transmitted any of these bits to this wonderful and festive environment and by that I guess I mean the webernet, not just this bloggery. Somehow I have not been as enthusiastic about it all as I expected to be. Some of this is probably due to the usual fun (;wackel) factors of gear problems none of which I can afford to fix properly (promise I won’t whine long) and seeing the varying results of my attempts to compensate for focus and shutter problems does not always give me the encourangement I might like. Then I post a stupid thing to test my blog and in response people say nice things and it totally changes everything.

So I have been working up the courage and playing with the devices a bit, dropping things on dA, Facebook, and flickr in some random ways. But also, I kind of want to ramble. So let’s get to it.

Let’s pretend it is the summer of 2008 and ladies are nice.

In the backyard of my grandparents home we sat in the grass for a while. It was Canada day.

Yep.

Some good scratching going on. In this shot actually you can see the problem with the scanner. Guess it was too much to ask that one thing I bought ever worked properly.

My nephew and his grandma. Figure that one out, right?

I think that is the longest I’ve seen his hair before. He has gotten this under control recently, I am happy to report.

I’m still not sure what I was doing here. I think I just really like bricks.

We should build more castles.

Sorry, kids. I am self-taught at photography but one day I will get to college and learn how to focus. This is the balcony outside my apartment. Actually, to ruin my amazing sense of humor, the focus is bang on (at least where I wanted it) but the Zeiss 50/1.4 is a little soft wide open, the contrast drops off significantly below 2.8 although hey try doing this with an ASPH…

His shirt ended up looking so strange here. I’m lovin’ it. ;]

When I make my portfolio I won’t neglect to mention that I specialize in shoulder photography.

I don’t know what it is but I still find scooters the most irresistible subjects to be personified.

Somewhere inside I want to be good at these. Practise makes perfect.

It looks like this when I take my glasses off.

Geez, dust your elbow off, Beardy.

The beers are good as ever.

Erotic beer photography. Beerotica. And Leica straps.

It seems there may have been some dispute as to the contents of that glass. Odds are that Kevin was putting something like salt and pepper, hot sauce and french fries into someones nearly empty beer and then challenging everyone to drink it. In these scenarios it is impossible to convince anyone to actually drink that horrible shit and he ends up drinking it himself once he feels guilty enough for having ruined the remains of a beer. Pretty sure that’s exactly what happened this time. He manages to pretend that it tasted just great too.

Beardy is congratulating me. I suggested that we complain about the length of time it took for our food to arrive. Not always the most noble suggestion. The manager visited the table to apologize. He seemed very sincere and as recompense he brought us a massive plate with samples of every dessert on the menu.

The elevator at work.  We went back to finish some work still waiting.

Randy likes to point out that he has Leica glass too. This has to be the focus assist because I figure the flash would be way too bright but I’m really not sure. Caught some flare. Too cute.

Later that week we went to Las Margaritas to enjoy the authentic Mexican cuisine. After dinner we asked for a round of tequila but didn’t know what to order. The waitress asked her husband and she brought his favourite. I have never been a tequila drinker and don’t know how to appreciate it well but I was surprised by how good it was.

Looks like it also affected Kevin well.

Okay, that covers one roll that happened over a year ago. It was Tri-X +1. Fortunately (or not) between then and now I didn’t shoot much because the absence of a darkroom from my life took its toll. That was kind of fun. I think I will do this again.