St Mary’s Basilica Church in Neighbouring Building Windows
Halifax, Nova Scotia
November 12 2007

I was out for a photo walk with my camera this day, just looking to see if there were anything interesting to photograph in the Halifax Downtown area when I saw this beautiful reflection of St Mary’s Basilica Church in the church like windows of a building on Barrington Street. This building is a condominium building at the time, but whatever the unit arrangements on the inside, the windows ran continuously up the building, broken so the reflection appeared like a collage.

To get this photo, I had to stake out a very specific spot in the middle of Barrington Street near the corner of Spring Garden Road, two of the busiest streets in Halifax Downtown. I had to find it first, rushing out between traffic breaks to see where I could get the reflection just right for the photo and get the right standing height. Then I had to do it again, with the spot and height in memory because I could not mark the street, and snap a few photos in a hurry, not having to worry about the shot composition this time. I’m sure some drivers were wondering what was so interesting, like maybe if someone were having sex in the window or something. Unfortunately, it was just a saintly church reflection.

But I did get lucky that the windows were practically all closed to give a complete collage. The sun was also nowhere in sight to provide an ideal background in the afternoon when it would normally be in the reflection. No sun also meant fewer more people out and about driving somewhere to make it more difficult for me just to get a less ideal photo.

Screaming Hauler
Hot Wheels Dinky
My apartment
Halifax, Nova Scotia
November 26 2006

For decorative reasons, I had a few dinkies and this was my first still life photography experiment. It’s not the greatest of photographic results, but I no longer have this dinky to redo the shots. I had this Screaming Hauler Hot Wheels dinky for quite a few years prior to 2006 so it was of the good old die cast steel kind. Hot Wheels dinkies haven’t been the same for a few years now since they moved their factories out of Viet Nam. Too bad, cause we (I’m Vietnamese) made spectacular quality dinkies! The heavier weights meant they zipped down toy tracks faster and hurt more if you got hit by them, etc.

I picked dinkies as an object for still life because I thought they had some pretty decent detailing on them that I could make to look like a real car at a fast glance. They were also cheap, had lots of variety and not often seen in large detail. I could print these on 11″ x 17″, you know! How many of those have you seen around? It’s a bit of a trademark idea, if you will, although I’m sure someone’s done it before. I just came up with it on my own.

I hope to have more dinky still lifes in the future. I’m scouting kids in the Halifax area who have good quality dinkies. This isn’t as easy as it sounds since a lot of the current dinkies people have are junk and this type of photography just exposes all their flaws. I wish I knew a dinky collector somewhere around Halifax. Now that would be a dream come true and would yield some photo collection!

Model: Anna
My apartment
Halifax, Nova Scotia
March 22, 2008

This was my first and only shoot, thus far, with my friend Anna. She’s a ballerina and long jumper, and student. Her boyfriend Scott wanted some sexy picture of his girlfriend and his guitar, his #1 and #2 loves in life, respectively.

After playing around with some other shots for Anna, modeling fashion rather than guitar, I came up with this idea seeing the shape of a guitar as being similar to that of the curves on a woman. Anna did a splendid job to hold it in place because it’s not that light in the easiest of places to hold with the arms bent back like that. It gave her a neat posture, too.

Of course, I have to mention that we had to work with the guitar the way its shape was. We could not modify it. I would hope nobody thought the figure behind it was fat, even if fitting exactly to the guitar’s curves, but Anna is far slimmer. She has to be for ballerina and track and field!

From what I heard, Scott was pretty happy with this. Anna and I definitely were. There were a few others to be shared later on this blog, with guitar and other fashions, and notes. Finally, for the record, Anna was actually wearing more clothes here than when she competes in track & field, even if the photo suggests otherwise. But that’s the idea!