It’s finally here! Tomorrow starts the second edition of Montreal Meets. Big thanks to Aoiro Studio/François Hoang for organizing the event. This year, speakers include Shelby White of Designspiration and contributor of the ISO50 blog, James White mastermind behind Signalnoise, Fabio Sasso founder of Abduzeedo, Radim Malinic and Rik Oostenboerk.
If you’re attending to MMTWO and you see me, don’t hesitate to say hi.
In a recent academic project in my Illustration course, we had the task of presenting the work of an illustrator of your choice. For me, my artist choice was clear: Chris Bishop. I’ve been a fan of his work for quite some time. His use of bold colors an minimalist compositions make for an extremely interesting work. In his case, he favours acrylic paintings and vector artwork.
For my university project, I was lucky enough to get in contact with Chris himself and ask him a few questions about his life and his profession. You can read my interview with Chris Bishop after the bump. Continue reading »
I’ve recently decided to do a type of weekly showcase of photographs that inspire me, to get a bit more content on the blog. Also, who doesn’t like a bit of free publicity when they deserve it!
We’ll start with this awesome black & white film photograph by areoplaneclinic shot on Fuji Neopan with an Olympus OM-1. You can almost see a high contrast style being developed if you look at the rest of his black & white shots. Really nice stuff
Here’s another black & white film shot by Tom Raworth. From the look of it, I think it’s shot on Ilford XP2 400, a C41 B&W film, hence the slight greenish colour tint. I really like this shot for several reasons. There’s a ton of stuff to look at. The van’s open door seems to direct the eye towards what looks to be an abandoned shack. Contrary to the last photograph, this one has a slightly lower contrast because of the sun’s glare. I find that it gives the photo a semi warm & cosy feel. Good work.
Here’s the last one for this week, a generally low key shot by Isaac Brownbridge, this time digital. Shot on a Canon EOS 1000D using what I think is the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 lens allowing for faster shutter speeds in the dark. The reason I really like this shot is the reflection of the lights on the rails fade to black at the bottom of the photograph. Same goes with the top. It makes the rails look like if they were infinite. It’s a really visually interesting photograph.
That’s all for this week. I hope you enjoyed my ramblings about what I find inspiring!
I’ve been doing quite a bit of film photography these days using a borrowed Nikon F3. Since it’s been loaned to me, I didn’t want to lose it, even less with an unfinished 35mm roll. I didn’t own a 35mm camera.
I went on a few forums and asked around about what would a good film camera be for a photographer of my calibre. The folks over at /r/photography on Reddit were extremely helpful. Some suggested an EOS 35mm camera, some recommended me to go straight to a Mamiya medium format camera. That would be an interesting alternative, but not now. Some people recommended the Olympus OM 1 digit series for being lightweight and good quality. I did some research and it seemed like a really interesting camera system. It wasn’t too expensive, the equipment had generally positive reviews, however it has quite limited availability.
I was able to find a good deal at Vintage Visuals Photographic on a Olympus OM-2n camera body and a Olympus Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 lens, located in Calgary, Alberta. I purchased the OM-2n from them and got the camera within a week. Vintage Visuals’ service was impeccable and when they said the camera was in good condition, they really weren’t kidding. I was stunned at the quality of the camera and lens, considering they were manufactured in the ’80s. Check out their website, they have tons of vintage camera equipment. It’s pretty amazing.
I’m really happy with the purchase. It’s a big contrast from my usual Canon EOS 7D. It’s a nice change.
As you may have noticed, I don’t update this blog very often. Just to keep it a bit alive, I’m making a minor blog post on what’s going to happen in the next few months or so.
First of all I have a few modifications to the current site to make. For startes, the home page will be changed from the “Hi my name is Paul” to a simple jQuery slider showcasing my work.
I’ll also redesign the comment section so it doesn’t look botched. I think it’s partly because of the lack of avatars.
Another item on my list is rethinking my meta data bar on the right of the posts. The problem with that section is that it takes a lot of space, but it displays little to no content. Moving his section to the bottom of the post is a way smarter way to display the information. I’ll either use the new extra space to add relevant blog information like tags or categories, or simply widen the blog post containers.
I’d also really like to use this blog for more or less microblogging. Like posting excerpts of works in progress, behind the scenes of photo projects, stuff that inspires me, stuff like that. I really need write more.
I’ve also been thinking of separating my photography from the web development and design. Set up a second blog, portfolio, page. A sub domain dedicated to photography. These days my photography is a lot more active than my web development. Mostly because I have less time for web, and sometimes require photographs for University projects. Oh, did I mention I was in University doing a B.A. in Graphic Design? Yeah, I am! Anyway, one of my favorite aspects of photography blogs are the occasional behind the scenes photographs and the very seldom lighting diagrams. That’s the kind of thing I’d like to post on this possible future blog. I’m still not sure about it though. Like I said, I should fix this one first, then possibly migrate to another.
I also have quite a few personal projects I’d like to share, but I don’t have time to work on them, even less write about them.
One of them is my personal bookmarking site that I’d like to develop for myself called Inspire. I’ve tried to use similar sites such as ZooTool, which was beautifully made and worked extemely well, but felt a bit too bulky. I love FFFFound, but since I lack an account, I can’t use it the way I would like. I think making my own would solve both problems!
I also have a few other blogs posts in the making worth mentioning, I have been reading A Book Apart’s HTML5 for Web Designers, CSS3 for Web Designers and The Elements of Content Strategy and I’m planning to review them, so stay tuned for that.
Last, but not least, writing blog posts is a great way to practice my English and my general typing speed and accuracy, so I should definitely do it more.
I’ll keep in touch on Twitter (and sometimes Google+). Have a good one!
After a month of getting developed, I just got back my first roll of black & white film. The results are amazing. Black & white film has a type of quality that you just can’t find in digital photography.
However, It’s extremely inconvenient. My local photo store only develops colour negatives in-house. Anything that isn’t C-41 process needs to be sent to Montreal and processed over there. It took a total of 23 days and $20 to get my roll of Ilford HP5 Plus back.
I really need to check out my options in Ottawa.
Recently, I’ve been experimenting with film photography. I got my hands on a Nikon F3 not too long ago and I ordered 6 rolls of 35mm film from B&H last month. I just got back one of my first rolls of film fully developed, a roll of Kodak Portra 400VC. The colours look really nice in overcast weather.
Today I started a roll of Ilford HP5 400 and it’s already almost completely gone.
Expect some new photographs on my Flickr Photostream!
When I originally thought out my website concept, I was sure I would be able to at very least write something worthwhile every week. I had already planned ahead a few blog posts for the future, but I never got around to writing them. What I didn’t plan was having a full time job on top of developing my website.
Believe me, when you arrive home after a doing web design and development for 8 hours, you don’t feel like writing about web or design.
Same goes with a bunch of little fixes I’ve been wanting to do around my website. Everything is planned, I just have to find the time and motivation to do them.
My question to you, (if anyone reads this that is) what would be a better workflow for me to write the articles that need to be written on this very blog?
If you read my last post, you probably noticed that I went to FITC with Marie-Michelle Daigle a month ago from May 2 to May 4. I know it’s a bit late to post a recap, but it was such an interesting experience that I absolutely had to write about it. I got to see and connect with a bunch of professionals from different fields. Here’s a quick recap for you guys.
May 2, we packed our backs and prepared ourselves for a 5 hour long train ride. 8am sharp at the Ottawa train station, we boarded the train outbound to Toronto. During the ride we got to see some interesting sights of Lake Ontario.
We wanted to get to Toronto before 11 o’clock, because one of our main attractions to FITC was James White‘s presentation Back to the Future: Part II. However, we were never able to make it in time.
We arrived at Toronto Union Station at around 1:30pm. We pretty much walked straight from Union Station to the Guvernment and arrived just in time for MK12‘s showcase.
MK12 presented some really amazing and awesome motion graphics work and short films. I specially liked their demo reel and their latest short film called TELEPHONEME. It was a very inspiring and very eerie piece. MK12′s crew was a fun bunch too. They were both interesting and funny to listen on stage. Interesting fact: MK12 made most of the artwork revolving around FITC Toronto 2011. The signage had a nice retro feel to it.
Afterwards we saw Design I/O with Emily Gobeille and Theodore Watson. Yet another very impressive and inspiring presentation. This presentation revolved around interactive installations. The two main projects they presented were Funky Forest and Rise & Fall. Funky Forest was a interactive ecosystem for the Singapore Art Museum for children that involved the development of a forest/ecosystem depending on how the children would interact with the installation. For example, if you would stay still next to the wall, a tree would grow at that position. Furthermore, you had to water your trees for them to grow and stay alive. You had to interact and direct the water towards your tree for it to survive. It also had a lot of neat little features such a dynamically generated bugs & animals.
Their other project, Rise & Fall was very impressive interactive work for the Boards Magazine. It was a type of interactive adventure, written in C++ I believe, that was controlled using the magazine’s front and back cover. By tracking the angle of rotation of the magazine’s front cover with a webcam, it would either make the the scene rise or fall. Go take a look on their website, it’s really impressive work.
May 3 started out with Grant Skinner‘s presentation called “ADHD FTW, LOL!”. It featured a lot of small projects built in small bursts of inspiration and motivation. The one project that stood out the most was a slot car set controlled by both volume & pitch of the voice via Flash. Not only was it amazingly clever, but it was hilarious to watch. Check it out for yourself.
At 12:30pm we caught Robert L. Peters‘ presentation “Cause an Effect”. Strangely enough, I had not heard about Robert L. Peters before. After seeing his presentation and who he was, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard of him or his award-winning design firm Circle. They design Canada Post’s stamps for god’s sake. That’s a huge achievement in my books.
His presentation focused a lot on why we do the things that we do and the way we do it. One of the most interesting points of the presentation was “Do more with less”. This is something I try to work by and I try to teach others as well. It also goes very well with K.I.S.S. – Keep it simple stupid. Another of the both funny but very true statements during the presentation was “Stay safe, use a contract”
After grabbing lunch, at 2:45pm we went to see “Tron GFX” presented by Bradley Munkowitz, the man behind GMUNK. Himself and a team of 5 graphic geniuses worked on a hand full of motion graphics and 3D for Tron Legacy. You can take a look at the work itself on the GMUNK website. Thankfully, I had watched Tron Legacy a week before, so it was still fresh in my memory. I love these kinds of presentations, Munkowitz presented work in progress versions of some of the effects and scenes in the movie. It was really amazing seeing him dissect a simple 10 second effect into something much more complex. I had no idea that Cinema 4D could be such an amazing motion graphics beast. It was some quite amazing work.
Finally, May 4 started out at 12:30pm with “From Design to Development For Devices” by Stacey Mulcahy. I’m not really a mobile or tablet designer or developer, but the presentation was a good insight on some good design practices for different kind of devices. The information that I found most useful was the main thinking process behind making the use of a touch screen as accessible and comprehensible as a more traditional mouse and keyboard setup. Stacey was a fun presenter. The presentation was both informative, technical and amusing.
At 2:45pm, we checked out the Source & Imagination panel featuring, Mc Bess, Robert L. Peters, Jason Thedor, James White and Owen Brierley as moderator. It was inspiring hearing these artists speaking about their inspirations and some of their methods of working with clients. If there’s one thing that I have to remember from that whole panel, it’s that James White has kick ass boots.
Sadly, that was the last event we could attend, because we had to run back to Union Station to take the train back home. One thing’s for certain, I’d love to go back next year.
I just added a new set on Flickr of the Festival Outaouais Émergent 2010. Photographs taken in September 2010. It was about time I uploaded it.
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