makebright | making stuff in waterloo

FLASH traffic—stamp of approval

Posted on January 14, 2015 by dw

Photo: James Bastow Hand Model: Darin White

Subtitle: The delightful Venn diagram intersections of my life here in Waterloo Region

I’m working on the big photo extravaganza FLASH while at the same time serving as artist-in-residence at the ever-awesome makerspace kwartzlab. In a meeting this week we discussed stamping hands as people enter FLASH and at the same time I was thinking I needed to arrange to be trained on the kwartzlab laser cutter. You put those two things together and –boom shaka laka (as we say at my house)—I decided to raster FLASH hand stamps for my laser training. Lasers, photography, community meetup… that’s a big bag of awesome.

FLASH thoughts for today, before a relatively small number of pics:

• Ticket holders have until this Friday Jan 16 at 7pm to get refunds on unneeded tix. No refunds after that time. Reclaim your cash + share some love with those on our waitlist.
• Notifications for the open call were all sent out yesterday morning. Please check your email/spam filter for subject line “FLASH Jury Selections” sent the evening of Jan 12 and morning of Jan 13. If you’re stuck, please email us at info@flashwr.ca
• Even if you are an open call selected photographer, you still need a ticket. I work here and bought three tickets myself.

Now back to the lasers…

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Posted in event | Tagged FLASH, kwartzlab, laser | Comments Off

FLASH traffic—radio check

Posted on January 13, 2015 by dw

Last night Tony Reinhart and I headed down King Street to chat about FLASH with Jen Gough (say “off” with a ‘g’, here sporting her new red rig) for this week’s New Art Radio show on CKWR 98.5FM. Tune in Thursday at 8pm to hear how we did. Big thanks to Jen, Heather, and CKWR for helping us spread the word on our big photography gig.

And since we’re talking about FLASH, a few notes:
• To get into the show on Jan 23 you absolutely must have a ticket, either printed or PDF’d on your phone. You can really help us at the door by having your ticket ready to show to our friendly volunteer-ninjas
• Didn’t get a ticket to our sold out show? Please get on the waitlist here
• Not gonna use your ticket? Please relinquish it back to Eventbrite for a full refund up until Friday so we can make that available to waitlisters. And I rarely use the word “relinquish”.
• If you want to buy/sell images from the night, we encourage you to join the FLASH Waterloo Region facebook group so you can connect. We won’t have the images after the show, but we love it when photographers get paid. Direct-to-audience model, yo!
• Planning on drinking at the cash bar? Then please plan on not driving. Seriously.
• Was my photo accepted? Notifications either way are going out over the next two days

Whew! Ok, that was more than a few notes. How about an utterly reasonable number of photos from our fieldtrip?

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Posted in event | Tagged FLASH, media | Comments Off

1shot #210-church clothes

Posted on January 12, 2015 by dw

At the bottom of Bramm Street is the Ukrainian Catholic Church of the Transfiguration. I walk down this road every week day from my parking spot in the municipal lot. I’m more a man of science, but I enjoy how light hits steeples at different times of the year. And I like how in some neighbourhoods the steeples are still tall enough to be waypoints for human-scale navigation.

Hey, it’s 3rdThur photo review this week. Check here for deets, send your one selected image to Mark, and then come hang out with us at George Briggs Media and talk about photographs.

Posted in photography | Tagged 1shot, church, Kitchener, snow | Comments Off

FLASH traffic—pics picked

Posted on January 11, 2015 by dw

Hard at work, I found our FLASH 2015 curation panel reviewing open call submissions on a very frosty Wednesday night last week. From left, Catherine Bischoff, Shirley Madill, Gordon Hatt, and Mark Walton were camped out in the boardroom of Whiting Design in Uptown Waterloo. Notifications are coming out very soon.

I dropped in after hitting another meeting around the corner, so I only caught the last third of the photos, but a couple of things struck me. Firstly, it is frigging awesome that so many people submitted work. You get points in my book for engaging. Bravo! The second thing is that I can learn a lot by listening to others discuss the merits of a whack of photos. It really made me reflect on my work and inspired me to keep pushing to improve.

I’m fielding a lot of questions this week about tickets from those who didn’t believe me when I said back in December that this show would sell out. Get yourself on the wait-list by clicking “Add Me to the Waitlist” if you’re in that boat. We’re going to be prompting ticket holders leading up to the show to relinquish their tickets if they’re not able to attend, and that may open up a seat for you. But only if you’re on the wait-list.

A little heads-up for the big night: you absolutely must have a ticket to get into the event. Showing up sans-billet because you know one of the organizers or hope to snag a ticket at the door will lead to disappointment. Gonna be a great show.

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Posted in event | Tagged FLASH, Kitchener | Comments Off

1shot #209-evidence of human life

Posted on January 9, 2015 by dw

On my photo walks, I often give myself a challenge to help focus (ahem) the work. The Saturday I shot this image, my self-direction was “What accumulates.” Statement. Not a question. I roamed my usual stretch of UTW King Street finding accumulations of snow, water, graffiti, posters, people. I found this grotesquely intriguing image out front of Beta. It was a bucketful of spit, lipstick, fingerprints, and brand selection. Evidence of human life.

This is Waterloo.

Posted in photography | Tagged 1shot, King Street, waterloo | Comments Off

1shot #208-riding backwards

Posted on January 8, 2015 by dw

Yeah, more bus. The real trick to shooting these is to not permanently lose the use of your hands due to extreme cold. –23C windchill. Buses arrive about every 12 minutes and dwell for about 9 seconds.

At King and Erb, this is Waterloo.

Posted in photography | Tagged 1shot, King Street, waterloo, window | Comments Off

1shot #207-more dirty bus

Posted on January 6, 2015 by dw

I can’t tell if ballcap dude is looking at me or out the window. This ambiguity is intriguing. Especially because I’m only about four feet from the bus. I reckon there’s some analogy to be made between bus grime and modern isolationism. A ha, I’ve got it. Regular readers and those in earshot know I’ve been anguishing for a good year now over anything that is anonymous (*not* Anonymous). You know: anonymous blog posts by anonymous authors featuring anonymous photos. Anonymous twitter feeds. Anonymous events. Anonymous plans and studies. That anonymity is the bus grime limiting our human connections. We’re gonna wash the bus this year.

Name tags for everyone.

Posted in photography | Tagged 1shot, King Street, waterloo, window | Comments Off

FLASH traffic—300+ photos received from open call

Posted on January 5, 2015 by dw

Well, we threw it down and you picked it up! Over 300 photographs were received by the time the gate dropped on our open call deadline yesterday at midnight. We created this FLASH photography event with a belief that there are people right here who are passionate about making and sharing great images. You affirmed that and affirmed with gusto.

Our curatorial panel has their work cut out for them now.

Only 17 days until the big show. If you’re new here, deets at http://flashwr.ca/

Posted in event | Tagged FLASH, Kitchener | Comments Off

FLASH traffic—last chance for romance

Posted on January 4, 2015 by dw

A little less than 10 hours left to submit your best image to our kick-ass FLASH photo event. I posted the countdown timer yesterday along with links for submitting. Get some skin in the game. And then grab a ticket to join us on Jan 23 for the big gig.

I was shooting photos through dirty bus windows at the corner of King and Erb in UTW. There is some great backlighting there on the east side around 4:30 in the afternoon. My friend James Nye paints some terrific reflection/overlays in his work and another friend David McCammon has been doing an interesting series of photos of reflections in shop windows. Both inspired me to pay attention to windows a bit more. I’m digging high contrast silhouettes right now and particularly like how even with the sun blasting through the window, the faces are obscured by the winter grime on the bus. I find these wobbling figures so unsettling and intriguing. Makes me think of the Saticons that scared the living bejesus out of me as a kid watching Lost in Space. Those featureless faces and sparkly bowler hats, oie!

This is Waterloo.

Posted in event | Tagged FLASH, King Street, waterloo | 1 Comment

1shot #206-never quit

Posted on January 3, 2015 by dw

Caught this fellow while on a random walkabout shoot. Ride on, brother!

I hope you all are pulling together your best photograph and submitting it to the FLASH photography show right here http://flashwr.ca/submissions/. The open call deadline is Sunday at 11:59PM. Here is a countdown timer here for you procrastinators.

[tminus t=”2015-01-04 23:59:59″ id=”FLASH2015_opencall” omitweeks=”true” style=”carbonite”]Time is up. The FLASH 2015 deadline has passed.[/tminus]

Had a number of questions on submissions which I will answer by saying: it doesn’t matter if you’re pro or am, doesn’t matter where you live, doesn’t matter if you shoot with a smartphone, doesn’t matter how old you are, doesn’t matter what the subject matter. All that matters is that you shot the image and that it is a good one. As for the use and disposition of submitted images: we’re deleting all submitted images immediately after the show. If your image is selected by the panel, we’re going to show a digital version of it during the event on Jan 23 at the Tannery on the screens big and small. That’s the extent of our use of your photo. Selected open call photogs will be paid $34 each for rental of their image for the evening. Tickets are $10 so get ‘em before they’re gone. Everybody buys a ticket, including me, and I work here.

Alright, now please get busy either submitting your photo or bugging your talented friends to submit theirs. As always, it’s more fun to participate than simply spectate.

From King Street, this is Kitchener.

Posted in photography | Tagged bicycle, King Street, Kitchener | Comments Off