When you write the history of Canada in the 60s, it will be written with Ted Grant photographs. — Joan Schwartz of Queen’s’ University. I was recently at a screening of The Art of Observation, a documentary on the life and work of Ted Grant, known at the father of Canadian photojournalism. It was written, […]
photo as object, image, memory, icon
October 18, 2010 – 11:51 am
This is the first in a series of posts exploring what, exactly, a photograph is and what it means to us, individually and culturally. Photo as object, image, memory, icon…this phrase has been rolling around in my brain for years. It is the foundation of the work I do creating digital archives, recording snippets of […]
tell your life story with 20 pictures
September 30, 2010 – 6:06 pm
Well, maybe it’s more like a collection of very short stories. My point is, it’s easy to get started. Pull out 20 – or 12 or 37 – photos. [How about 17 for a haiku?] Write down the who-what-where and -when of each one. Then write a little more. Give it some context. What happened […]
photos and art and memory and books: this is personal history
July 30, 2010 – 9:23 am
It’s the end of a busy couple of weeks where I have been focused on a lot of things–training and financials and marketing–everything except what I love the most: making books from photos and memories. I came across this fabulous project in my Facebook stream late last night and just had to share it with […]
scanning tips
April 13, 2010 – 8:11 pm
With good quality scanners available for a few hundred dollars and services advertising pennies per scan, it seems like this is a commodity service. But to get from a faded photograph to a handsome photo printed in a book involves both aesthetic judgment and technical expertise. Here are some tips for making your scanning process […]
bringing order to digital photo collections
April 9, 2010 – 10:59 am
In the 170+ years since Louis Daguerre announced the invention of the daguerreotype process for fixing an image on a silver plate, people around the world have developed a workable system of storing their photographic prints and developed film. That system might involve placing the photos in an album or tossing them in a drawer, […]
photo editor: an unappreciated job
August 14, 2009 – 3:51 pm
“How did you find so many photos with exactly the same sepia tone?” This question was recently asked of my client Suzanne Fox, author of Grief Country: a meditation on the landscape of loss. The answer was, she didn’t. The images in the book were licensed from a range of photographer’s work on istockphoto.com and […]
