A few events collided this week to make me finally get around to a time sucking chore I have been trying to ignore like a cheque presentation news conference. It's winter, my traditional time to clean up the previous years work, do a final edit and get the the stuff archived and indexed, and I am surrounded by boxes of old slides and negatives ...that stuff we used to make photos on before these new fangled digital thingies. Also, someone pointed out I have been doing photojournalism and documentary photography in Newfoundland and internationally for 30 years now and suggested that, just maybe, I should be assembling a retrospective exhibition.
...great, just great...

So, the task has begun. The scanning of more than 30 years of 35mm slides, negatives and prints where the original negs have been lost. Indeed, a darkroom fire in 1986 destroyed a lot of personal work from the late 1970's through 1982. Thankfully, the valuable stuff was on file with the agencies I worked with. ...that reminds me, I need to do my offsite backup of my digital files.

I can't remember not having a camera so I can't say when I first started making photos, certainly my pre-teen years and I was the geek who worked on school yearbooks in Jr. High and high school. The camera was another tool in some obsessive need to document the people around me, their culture and tell their stories. I eventually got evolved with the student newspaper, The Muse, (now online but then hot wax halftones and paste up) at Memorial University. While at university I turned "Pro" doing piece work for United Press International (UPI), The Newfoundland Herald, The Evening Telegram and anyone willing to pay ...fun yes, but always a business first.

But the 1984 Papal Tour of Canada by Pope John Paul II was what I consider the big turning point in deciding to move from writing and documentary film to photojournalism and documentary photography solely. It was my first major international news event and I got to see how the serious pros worked. ...when not getting the picture was not a option. Which can't be said without giving heaps of thanks to legendary photo editor Bob Carroll and his team at UPC/UPI in the 1980's for letting me into their world and passing along the skills (Thank, Bob ...and Andy! ...if you're reading)

With the late 80's financial problems of UPI and the closure of its Canadian offices this team would be picked up by Reuters when they built their international news picture division.

It's just a coincidence that this photo of Pope John Paul II came out of the box first.
As stuff gets scanned I'll add it to the 30 Years of Photojournalism folder over there in the left side column. It won't be in any particular order, just my favourites as they come out of the boxes and binders.  ....maybe my favourite photo of Frank Moores will be next.

...hmmm, I wonder if I can train my 9 year old to run the scanners?

I worked pretty exclusively with 35mm slide film. Fujichrome 100, 400,  Ektachrome 64 and Kodachrome 25, 64, 200, for magazine work. The early days of the wire services it was Kodak Tri-X and Ilford HP5. In the mid 1980's colour neg was the standard for newspapers and wire services. It's sad that the young photographers today never got to use and know these films and their different characteristics. The decision of which film to use on a magazine assignment was a critial decision and could decide the tone and feel of the final published work.

For this project we'll be using a Canon film scanner and an Agfa flatbed scanner for fine work. For bulk scanning we have welding some old and new technologies. We will be coupling a Nikon D2x to an old school Bessler slide duplicator!!

Camera RAW files will be processed with Adobe Raw. Processing software will be Adobe Photoshop PS3 with Bridge handling the IPTC, captioning and archiving. A bunch of plug-ins, utilities and scripts/actions to speed up the agonizing process, yet ensure best quality.

So, let's begin with a Pope!

(NOTE: These photos will be available for purchase and licensing through NL Press.)

Well, I guess its time to clean up the mess and get back to work. Not that we stopped working. Looking at the blog I notice it has been a month since we’ve posted anything. Hope you weren’t holding your breath! 

December was lots of small jobs on the photo side, some upgrades to the NL PRESS and Sound Symposium websites to better handle and display photos. They will appear over the next few days and a couple of new websites for clients. And, of course, the talk and scheming (dreaming) of new projects for the coming year. Books, films, web projects, exhibitions all tied together …it seems the options and projects wish lists are endless these days. Like everything, all it takes is time …and money! If you have one, there is a good chance you don’t have the other.

On the journalism front in 2009 I covered the constant low level hum of manufactured news for various clients but the one real story that will mark 2009 for people in Newfoundland will be the Cougar helicopter crash. Like the sinking of the Ocean Ranger and the many schooners and fishing boats in Newfoundland’s marine history the loss of lives at sea is felt through the entire population. This one, too, will be marked in our history books. The tragedy also captured the national news attention and the photo of crash victim Alison Maher’s funeral in Fermeuse was used on the front page of the National Post and Globe and Mail. It’s rare that the two competing national newspapers in the country will have the same front page images. 

Over the holidays as we met with friends and family I have been asked by some what my favorite, best or important photo was of the year.  This is a hard one for any working professional photographer, especially on the photojournalism side, because we are taught (no, beaten in to us) to not have any emotional attachment to our photos and to objectively edit (judge) them solely on their communications value. They have to tell a story to someone who wasn’t there, what I “like” is irrelevant because what I like is often based on my experience of making the photo, not what the photo actually contains for the viewer. But, sometimes, if we are lucky, they are one and the same.

So, what were my “favorite” photos I made in 2009?  I made some good photos for some great clients, almost all on location portrait work. There was Pat Thompson, Diamond Design for Canadian Jeweler magazine, Mark MacLeod, Chevron, for Alberta Oil, portraits of immigrants for the Association for New Canadians, Prince Charles Royal Tour for Reuters and many of the people involved in the offshore oil industry. Oil being the only bright spot in the provincial economy during the past year of global recession that has all but wiped out the other resource industries that were once the backbone of the local economy.

But my best assignment and favorite photo came from shooting Brad and Courtney’s wedding in Grey River on the south coast of Newfoundland. …thanks guys!

My second most favorite photo is this. On Musgrave Harbour beach as we criss-crossed the island on a camping trip trying to avoid Hurricane Bill. As my daughter, Erinn said, "Gee dad, you look a little relaxed."

There are just too many photos to consider when you are shooting with such great people and clients on an almost daily basis.. Just go check out our galleries here and at NL PRESS. Thanks to all our friends, fans, clients and colleagues who made 2009 a great year for us.

That’s it! Hopefully it won’t be a month before the next blog post.

Now its time to clean up the mess and get out there and make the most of 2010. Remember, if you’re not living on the edge, you are taking up too much room. ....and 2010 is a SOUND SYMPOSIUM YEAR!! YIPPEE!

…and if you have any time or money laying around and would like to spend it on a great documentary or multi-media project do check in!

Aaron Johnson's What The Duck has a great new website. A must read for anyone in the photography business be it news, wedding, portraits or commercial.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I had the pleasure of doing a series of casual portraits at the Association For New Canadians. They, along with more of my photos from around the St. John's area, were used in a video produced by Mark Smith at Lingo Creative to promote the association's new website that matches up employers and potential employees from among the many diverse and skilled immigrants who are new Canadians in Newfoundland and Labrador. If you have a job opening you should check out www.axiscareers.net. Look for a story on this project at NLPress.ca ...and here is the video!!

WHEW! ...we've finally finished the redesign of the Sound Symposium website. It's been rebuilt from scratch with a new content management system, on a new server, that will allow for online presentations and performances as well has house the the massive audio, image, video and artwork archives that Sound Symposium has collected over the past 25 years. The digitizing of this analogue collection has been going on since last summer (I think we are up to S and T now) and with any luck it will start appearing online by the end of this year.

Special thinks to Kathy Clark-Wherry and Jean Donelson at Sound Symposium, the Tech Elves at NL PRESS and the wizard himself, David Schmidt at Fusix.