Extras

Vancouver Comic Arts Festival // Yaletown-Roundhouse

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May 24, 2016 - Reblog from Vancity Buzz.  Article written by Vanessa Tam.

"Over the weekend, the fourth annual Vancouver Comic Arts Festival returned to the Roundhouse Community Centre for two full days of readings, panels, workshops, as well as an exhibition for cartoonists from across the country. With a wide variety of programming that anyone from a comic professional to a die-hard fan or casual reader could enjoy, the event provides a much needed platform for Vancouver comics and artists to both meet their fans and showcase their work.

Check out some of the amazing exhibition art from the 2016 Vancouver Comic Arts Festival."

420 Vancouver 2016 // Sunset Beach

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April 20, 2016 - Perhaps one of the most controversial and infamous events in Vancouver is the annual 420 protest, a peaceful congregation of marijuana reformists and supporters.  The event itself has moved from the Vancouver Art Gallery to Sunset beach due to its open-nature and lesser proximity to major downtown roads.  Peak estimates ranged from a conservative 25,000 as quoted by the VPD to 50,000 as noted by SensibleBC spokesman, Dana Larsen.

An estimated 25,000 - 50,000 people ended up showing for Vancouver's annual 420 event.

187 booths lined the seawall providing a plethora of cannabis products including but not limited to flowers, plants, joints, edibles, dabs and other paraphernalia.  Unsurprisingly, many psychedelics which are often associated with stoner culture were present including LSD, psilocybin, salvia and DMT.  Free joints and dabs were also abundant, especially when 4:20PM hit.  Many of the vendors were encouraged by Vancouver Coastal Health's chief medical officer, Patricia Daly to not sell edibles to minors due to the slow onset of effects and easy over-consumption, something that many of the organizers had agreed with.

Weed edibles including brownies, cookies and rice krispies were available for purchase.

Despite this, medical incidents were bound to happen - especially with the high April temperatures and lack of public water fountains.  A mere 16 participants were admitted to St. Paul's Hospital, located downtown for the usual symptoms: dizziness, nausea and paranoia. A total of 25 incidents were reported by the VPD by 8PM (a major decrease from 100+ in 2015). Firefighters and police officers were on the scene as well - not making arrests due to the large scale, but rather for public safety and coordinating traffic at nearby intersections.  The City of Vancouver stated that last year, taxpayer costs for these services cost an approximate $93,000.

Many police officers, among paramedics and firefighters spent the day promoting public safety.

Another major concern of the public was the abundance of youth who had skipped school to attend the event, even prompting the Vancouver School Board to make a PSA to faculty, students and parents.  Concurrently, the current Minister of Health, Jane Philpott had announced in the House of Commons that legalization bills would be announced in the Spring of next year.  She had stated that she is "proud to stand up for our drug policy that is informed by solid scientific evidence and uses a lens of public health to maximize education and minimize harm."  Where the industry will take its course after legalization remains up in the air - will it become regulated by the state or will the private sector prevail?  Regardless, tax dollars are to be made as illustrated by earlier examples in states like Colorado, which was on track to make $125 million in 2015 - which could be sent to harm reduction, education and other public services.

Rest of the footage below:

 

 

JOVIAN // Season ZERO by Michael Loder

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October 9, 2015 - So one of my closest friends growing up (and now), Michael Loder, has always had an appreciation for fashion, particularly street fashion.  He's currently now attending Kwantlen Polytechnic University for Fashion Design & Technology where he is looking to make contacts, learn the business aspect as well as the technical parts of fashion and design.

When he was unable to schedule a shoot with one of his photographers, he obviously asked his photographer friend if they could help (that's me!)  I'm sure most of you know I don't really shoot fashion but I figured I'd help a friend out until they could get what they wanted/needed.  

Anyway, we set off to Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver near the ferry terminal to get some of the shots.  Here are some of them:

Mike also brought along a friend who also attended high school with us: Anna-Angela Shishmanov.  I'm usually preparing myself to direct people for posing due to my lack of shooting models, and more of the general populous for portrait work but my god, was she a natural!  It's always such a breath of fresh air when you get a surprise like that!  

I figured since it was a relatively lax shoot that I would try playing with different editing styles that I took note from popular "natural-light" photographer extraordinaire, Dani Diamond.  This means shooting only to have the highlights properly exposed and then dodging and burning the rest accordingly, making sure that you have particularly your facial lighting on point before continuing.  Although I'm by no means near his calibre, I found this to be quite useful as you can see in the images of Anna and Mike below:

All-in-all, the shoot was a lot of fun - obviously with a few beers and mountaineering through rocky terrain!  It made me come to realize that I do miss shooting people which I hope you all won't mind as I hope to eventually hone in on people and music photography.  I look forward to working with him again in the future and of course, getting some sick threads!

In the mean time, if you're interested, you can check out Jovian here, and Mike's instagram here.

 

Quadra Island

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Hello all!  Thanks for bearing with no blog posts for a month as planning for Aaron & Kait's wedding has been absolutely craaaaaazy.  As per usual, us men were running around with our heads cut off last minute trying to get everything together from our clothing, our rides and our accommodations.  Aaron, if you're reading this, I'm sorry.

Being part of the wedding party is kinda weird and not my usual schtick as I'm usually the one on the other side of the camera, but it was definitely nice to catch up on bro-time (sorry, Carmen!)  My dear brotographer and friend, Jesse Yuen, was shooting the wedding which I am more than stoked to see.  I'm sure he won't mind me posting a quick edit of one of shots solely for this blog post, so here it is:

The wedding itself went down at sunrise, so we were all up and about by 5 and at the beach for the ceremony at around 645 or so.  Although Starbucks has prepared me for mornings over the last month, it was still hard until we got to see the look on Aaron's and Kait's faces as they embraced just as the sun popped over the horizon.  The timing couldn't be more immaculate.  Following the ceremony, we embarked on a hike on the south peak of the Chinese Mountains where I did bring my camera for some pictures.  Unfortunately we were all busy partying and having a grand ol' time, so no other pictures of the wedding.  Regardless, enjoy!