Panoptikal*: Blue Sky, Highway (March 6, 2007)

Monday, August 10, 2009

Blue Sky, Highway (March 6, 2007)

Taken on the GO Transit bus from Hamilton to York University (407 Highway), probably in the early morning.

I include this in a series of photos that was jokingly nick-named "Development!", and which I started shooting in 2002 on colour film (I'll post some of those eventually). There are now two sets of images belonging to that group, and the above is drawn from the second set (taken with my Cybershot). Both sets focused on the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), but the initial series was focused on "cookie-cutter" housing developments around Hamilton, Oakville and Burlington, while the follow-up set was shot along the 407 Highway that also passes through Missisauga, Brampton, and the northernmost part of Toronto.

The latter were inspired by my commute between Hamilton and North York (York University) during my Master's degree in 2006-2007. I usually took the bus three or four times a week, and after I bought a digital camera in October 2006, I started using it during the long (1h 45m) rides to and from campus.

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More about...

The pictures I post here were taken between 1994 and today. There are some breaks during that period, generally because I had no working camera, or because I processed many negatives and made few prints (generally this is the case for 1994 to 2000 or so). I also have many prints from that time that have not yet been digitised.

The reason I call this a "photojournal" is that I tend to document my life with images, where possible, rather than words. I find it much easier to remember moments, and then events, when I have some kind of picture with which I can associate them. This is probably why I've always taken pictures when I could--even when there was "nothing" to photograph--and why I have such a difficult time keeping up a written diary or journal of any sort.

Technicalities

I've used a number of cameras over the past 15 years or so. The bulk of these were SLR, manual or semi-automatic, and of course non-digital (35mm film) cameras (photos shot from 1994 to 2004, roughly), though for a period I used both (low-quality) digital and film (around 2002-2003).

I first used a fully manual camera when I was 14, which was borrowed; the first SLR that I owned was a Vivitar, which rapidly deteriorated. It was followed by a Pentax, and after that, the Minolta XD-11 that I have used for film ever since. I use it with a 35mm or a 28-70mm lens with telephoto and macro. In addition to these, I also used Mamiya 220 and 330 medium-format (120 film) cameras while at NSCAD in 1997-8, and very occasionally, I used an old Agfa range-finder (from roughly the 1940s) which produced 6x9cm negatives on 120 film.

The first digital camera I used would probably have been in 2002, and I used it periodically over about a year (it was borrowed). In 2004-05 I again used a digital camera (also borrowed; specs not available); I stopped shooting on film beyond 2004 because of the expense. Finally in October 2006 I bought a Sony CyberShot, 7.2 megapixels, a very small camera (not an SLR) that I used for almost 4 years before replacing it with a CyberShot DSC-TX5, in July 2010. This camera now travels with me almost everywhere and is the only camera I use regularly.