Category: Photography
I am a Calgary photographer and much of what I write about will come back to my greatest passion. I have twenty years of experience in various iterations of capturing images and hope to impart some of my experience in a fun and entertaining way.
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Inglewood’s Gresham Block: A Tale of Neglect and Change
The Gresham Block was a late Edwardian style commercial structure built in 1911 and stood on the corner of 9th avenue and 13th Street, in the heart of Inglewood. Built by brothers John and Henry Dismorr after purchasing the lot in 1910, Gresham Block cost $30,000 to build (about a million in today’s money). The Continue Reading
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The Minolta X-700: A History
The Minolta X-700 is a 35mm SLR introduced in 1981 and represents the last manual focus SLR by Minolta before the release of the Maxxum 7000 in 1985. Minolta’s brochure called it a “state of the art quartz-control electronic 35mm SLR” They boasted a first ever “shutter weighted system” meaning the camera is programmed to Continue Reading
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The Super Accurate Darkroom in Spider-Man 2 For the PS5
I broke the bank and got Spider-Man 2 on launch day when I said I wouldn’t, maybe I saw one too many clips on YouTube but none the less I pulled out the ‘ol Master Card and when I got home spent the next few days glued to the set. Early on in the game, Continue Reading
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Capturing the Beauty of Alberta’s Grain Elevators 2025
I’ve been working on capturing every grain elevator I can find here in Alberta fore the past few years now. I’m getting close to completing my project, with only about a dozen left to shoot now. The trip journal below doubles as a dress rehearsal for another project. You can learn about what I mean Continue Reading
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Why a Dress Rehearsal is Crucial for Your Trip
At the time of this writing, I am T-Minus thirty-nine days until I leave on a sixty-day road trip across Canada and back. From Calgary, Alberta to St. John’s, Newfoundland and so much in between. The road trip prep has been extensive. Going from zero to sixty as it were, is quite the leap. Especially Continue Reading
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A Quick Film Developer From 1950: Ethol 90
While some of you love the process of developing your own negatives, I’ve found it boring sometimes. Some of the developers out there take a long time. So, when I came across a seventy-four year old article talking about a 90 second quick film developer in production, I was intrigued. Then, when I went to Continue Reading
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6 Essential Landscape Photography Tips from the 90s
In August 1997, both Popular Photography and Outdoor Photographer Magazines released landscape tips and advice curated from professional photographers. From this coincidence, one can only assume each had a mole in their respective editing rooms. I was curious if the advice given regarding landscape photography was much different in the 1990s than it is today. Continue Reading
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Popular Photography’s First Issue
Time Capsules I love looking at old magazines. They feel like little time capsules, as they are a mix of pop culture and bite sized info that publications thought the general public wanted at any given time. I also find it fascinating what used to be considered acceptable and seeing the wax and wane of Continue Reading
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Is Stop Bath Necessary? The Final Answer
When it comes to film developing, it seems like everyone has their own way of doing it. Especially when it comes to some very specific techniques. Almost nothing is more controversial than the debate of stop bath vs water. Once, on a forum, I asked people how they used photo flo, and I must have Continue Reading
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Photography In the 1990s: Resources From 1997
Every so often, while I am indexing photography’s historical materials, I come across something I have to stop and smile at, in this case: a list of websites about photography in the 1990s. This was an interesting time because like this, much of the time you’d get a list of sites like this on paper. Continue Reading
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