A visual tour through a March wedding in the tropical heat of Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. Huge congratulations to Ainslie and Brendan…beautiful wedding, and had a blast “hanging” with you guys for the week!
It’s been pretty much a month since I lasted posted an image from my series, “Visions of Venus”. All the poses for this series were shot on a single evening with the creative model behind this series, Melanie (who conceptualized the idea of the shoot and then recruited me); this month has been pretty insane so my opportunities for finding the 3-5 hours of Photoshop each on of these requires is pretty limited. But finally, this week, I was able to find a few non-existent hours from the vortex to pull together the third image in Visions of Venus titled “Sleeping Venus”
Title: Sleeping Venue
Original Artist: Artemisia Gentileschi
Assistant: Tara Marchiori
Model: Melanie M.
Sleeping Venus
If you missed the first two in the series, check them out below:
Venus Disarming Cupid
Diana At The Bath
“Wooooooooooooo! Wow. Wow! WOW! Dave, wasn’t that the most awesome rush you’ve ever had? That was amazing!?”
This is my brother-in-law, Melvin, running up to me as my parachute drops down behind me. Despite the hours of training we have had, my landing is far from graceful. My feet hit the ground after falling thousands of feet, and instead of converting my landing into a standing run, like they explained, my feet forget to move under my own power. I hit the ground in a heap, and I’m lucky I don’t bruise my tailbone.
A little shaken, I’m still thrilled with what I just did: I leapt out of a plane on my own. I have skydived. It took everything I had in me to step out of that airplane and to be hit with a Mac Truck of wind power – and then to let go. Total and utter insanity. But I did it. In the moment, I’m truthfully fucking thrilled – and know I’ll be content to tell the story of how I went sky diving “that one time” until my final days.
“Alright. Let’s go again!”
I look at Melvin at disbelief. He’s not joking. He’s just got a wide-eyed, shit-eating smile. He couldn’t be happier, and I know my day is about to get longer.
——————————-
It’s a week or two before Christmas. We sit around the kitchen table of our friends, Mark and Amy, and look at the amazing array of dishes she has laid out. I’m salivating, but force myself to get my two boys, Luke and Liam, properly settled in their own chairs before I break into my Christmas dinner.
Dave Hare, who sits next to me at the table, passes a bowl of rolls, and flashes a smile. “The kids, they love hanging out together, eh?”
Both Dave and Jane (his lovely wife)’s children and our children go to Amy through the weekdays. She’s our collective day home provider. Amy has invited us all over to a celebratory dinner at her beautiful home, and has a special gift for all of us after dinner comes to a close. We watch as Luke stands up in the living room alongside the other older kids, Maddy and Lily (“they’re my good friends, Daddy”) and continue to sing and recite a routine that brings tears of joy to all of our faces. I look over at my wife, Erin. She’s beaming. I look over at Dave. He couldn’t be prouder.
——————————-
‘Why do you have so many bags?”
This is a pretty Inuit girl, Cheyenne, with a huge mischievous smile. She and her sister have followed me to my room as I’m checking in at the South Camp Inn in Resolute Bay, Nunavut, owned by Resolute businessman Aziz Kheriaj. I’m staying the night en route to Arctic Bay, where I will teach a workshop.
I look at the girls. They’re laughing, and quickly ignore my bags to show me the elliptical trainer in the room, each taking a step while they bounce and glide back and forth on the trainer, shrieking in laughter. After five minutes of arranging my bags, ignoring them while I gather my thoughts on the workshop I’m going to teach, I scoot them out of my room, but not before she smiles once again, and says “dinner is very soon – come on down!”
I walk into the dining area about ten minutes later. It’s like stepping back in time. Ten years ago, in 2002, I sat in this kitchen the day I moved north from Nova Scotia. For the first couple of nights, my wife and I were guests in the hotel, and then we moved into a small apartment, also owned by Aziz (known to everyone as Ozzie). I have spent a lot of time in this dining room, and I’m a little surprise, so many years later, to still see some familiar faces.
First, Mike. As he finishes chewing a bite of salad, he looks up from his plate. He recognizes me immediately, and stands to shake my hand. “Dave!, What brings you here”. Mike, a kind Newfoundlander with silver hair, has been coming to Resolute for what seems like forever. One of Ozzie’s workcrew: a collection of mainly Newfoundland men who have been loyal to him for years, and have come back year after year on seasonal stints to do many tasks for Ozzie, who has diverse business interests in the community.
I’m happy to see Mike. I always liked him: a voice of reason and a demeanor of calmness in a place that’s far from ordinary.
I turn to grab my plate and am met by the million-watt smile of Randy, a big, burly man with Bahamian roots (if memory serves me correctly). Randy, like Mike, has been a fixture in Resolute for years and years. He served me my first meal in Resolute a decade prior, and now he’s serving me again.
I shoot the shit with both of them, the girls still giggling in a corner. I left Resolute years earlier with mixed feelings—I both loved and hated the place—but in this moment, as I sat there eating my food and staring out the window at the big snow-swept hill which cradles Resolute in its base (which I would later trek up that afternoon), I thought, “I miss this place”.
——————————-
February 14th, 2002. About 7 months before we would eventually move to Resolute from Nova Scotia, our eastern home. Erin and I were living in Halifax, in an apartment in Clayton Park.
Our phone rings not long after we have finished celebrating Valentine’s Day together as a fairly newlywed couple. It was a great day, and we’re relaxing on our sofa, watching the TV.
I answer it. It’s my father. He wastes no time.
Dave….it’s Melvin. He’s dead. His plane went down….”
——————————-
Summer, 2011.
I’ve been bouncing around Yellowknife on a brilliant, beautiful summer day, photographing the wedding of a great couple that I’ve gotten to know over the past couple of years. I have just finished the last of their “romantic” pictures—the period after the ceremony and after the family shots when I can just head out into the town and photograph the couple, by themselves, away from the madness of their wedding day,
It was successful, and I drive back down to the Explorer Hotel ahead of them, I have earned myself a short 15-minute break in the wedding coverage, and plan on sitting in the air conditioning of my Explorer in the hotel’s parking lot, sitting an ice-cold Diet Pepsi which Erin has lovingly packed me, and reading the news on my iPhone.
A headline grabs me: “First Air Flight downed in Resolute Bay, at least six casualties”. My heart stops.
Fuck.
Resolute. First Air. Both have been so much a part of my experience in the north. One, my former community of two years. The second, an airline that I’ve flown countless times in my decade of working and travelling in the north. I’ve done photoshoots for them. I’ve written and photographed extensively for their in-flight magazine. I know at least three or four dozen members of the First Air family: pilots, flight crew, counter agents. It’s a small town; a small Territory, population-wise, and I know immediately that I’m going to know some of the names.
I log onto Facebook and start reading through the posts, the offers of solitude, and the speculation. And then, in my truck, I start coming across names. For the rest of the wedding, I’m a bit of a mess, fighting tears. I try not to let it show – the wedding couple knows nothing about the crash…I don’t want to be the one to ruin their day.
I later confirm that it’s Dave. Mike. The girl with the smile. Cheyenne. Randy. All gone.
——————————-
I write this now, as the summer that will mark a tear’s passing since these tragedies comes upon us quickly. This year was ten years since Melvin died. My sister has not fared well since his passing; he died on Valentine’s Day.
Yesterday I flew, yet again, aboard a tiny Northern airplane en route to the EKATI Diamond Mine. I picked up a copy of one of my favourite magazines, the Yellowknife-produced Up Here magazine., and after flipping through a few of the articles, came to one called “The Aftermath”, by an acquaintance, Katherine Laidlaw.
The article, about the aftermath of the First Air crash, along with two others that occurred in the Northwest Territories within weeks of the First Air crash, was brilliantly written and poignant. Sensitive. And it shook me. I was glad everyone on the plane was in an early morning, groggy stupor, as they would have seen me chocking back tears.
If you have the chance, read this article (online at http://www.uphere.ca/node/788 ). Katherine, you should be proud for writing something so intimate, and so touching.
——————————-
We’re a small community here in the north. The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon would be reduced to three, or even two, in the North. The people I have mentioned. Friend and fellow photographer Michael Ericsson was in one of the crashes following the First Air crash: he has a smashed femur and a snakelike scar on his forehead. Although I did not know her personally, one of my client’s daughters died, too, in the Resolute Crash. The list, implausibly, goes on and on.
——————————-
My younger brother Stephen, is—at this moment—completing his own flight training as part of the Canadian Forces. He is the prototypical “all-Canadian” guy: handsome, smart (a Rhodes Scholar, he is getting his doctorate from Oxford University), and a dedicated family man, father to two adorable children.
A small part of me has fear: fear for the possibility of something bad happening to him. But as soon as these feelings come up, I am quick to push them away. I believe in him following his dreams, but more so I believe in him.
I’ve always said I believe in things happening for a reason, but try as I might I can’t imagine the reason behind any of the loss mentioned above.
I’m not sure why I’m even writing this now, other than the fact that reading Katherine’s article brought up a wave of emotion. I’m good to take things in stride, but this time, something was lost in my stride. By writing this, I guess I’m trying to come to terms with some of the hurt over the past decade. My brother, Melvin (he was more than an “in law” to me). My northern home. The connectedness of life. To carry on. In memory.
Weddings are a series of moments, and although all weddings share the common thread of a couple officially coming together, the uniqueness of the moments makes shooting each wedding a very different experience for me. I love shooting weddings documentary style, and I love being witness to what comes out of each wedding that I photograph.
Here’s a small glimpse of the many moments in the wedding of Kari and Ben, earlier this March.
This is # in my series of classic nudes redone with a modern twist. This work sees Melanie, my model, merging into the beautiful “Diana At The Bath”, by British artist James Ward (1769-1859). Originally painted in 1830, this is originally an oil on panel.
As I mentioned in my last blog post on the first in this series, “Venus Disarming Cupid“, this project has tested my skills in ways I never would have imagined. These take a lot of Photoshop, but I’m happy to say this one took me about 2 hours less than the previous. I was really helped for this image by the fact that Melanie couldn’t have nailed the pose more accurately, so she fit into the scene with amazing precision.
Here’s the two images: first, my take on the scene….followed by the original painting.
I hope you’re enjoying this series: about 4 or 5 more to come!
PS – Big thanks to my assistant, Tara, for helping on this project.
Diana At The Bath (Click on image to see a larger version)
Alright.
I’m a person always up for a challenge or a great creative idea. Creative ideas are my blood and the air that I breathe. But when Melanie, an artistically-minded Yellowknifer, wrote me to see if I would be able to do a nude shoot of her – I was in for a challenge. Melanie’s idea, or question to me, was brilliant: could I photograph her in a way that would make it look like a classic paintings which she has a strong appreciation for. Although I had absolutely no clue if I could pull it off or not, I said yes.
Last week Tara – one of my talented assistants – and I prepped for the shoot. Pouring over pictures of paintings from masters like Bellini, Bouguereau, and Titian – both images that we found online and images that Melanie sent as her inspirations – we selected some that we thought we could pull off a similar pose without too much difficulty on the post-processing (more on that shortly).
Melanie arrived, and after a few minutes of nerves, she did beautifully, and pulled off some poses that were straight out of a different era. I was careful to match the lighting as close as possible to what I saw in the paintings and Tara concentrated on the set-up of each scene (we photographed 8 or 9, total), and Melanie’s pose.
So after the shoot, it was now my time to panic. I am not much of a Photoshop guy. Lightroom, yes. I spend a lot of time in Adobe Lightroom. But this was something that would require A LOT of Photoshop, to properly have Melanie become a part of the painting. My goal was not to have her 100% become part of the painting, but somewhere just close enough that you have to stare at it for a minute to see where she does and doesn’t fit. Sort of like a 3-D representation. But for a person who really doesn’t know that much in Photoshop, this would definitely be a learning experience for me.
So….after an insane FIVE hours of Photoshop work, here’s the first that I’m going to release in this new series which will be titled, Visions of Venus. The name of this particular work is Venus Disarming Cupid, originally painted by by the Italian artist Alessandro Allori in the Renaissance period. Here’s our updated interpretation of his great work. Watch for more from this series in the near future.
PS – Melanie….you’re a rock star.
Venus Disarming Cupid, Circa 2012 - Click on image to see larger
With the birth of my own third child only six or so weeks away, I thought I would take a moment this morning to display some of my favourite images from my portfolio celebrating the beauty of life.
My Whole World
The Circle of Life
Northern / Earth / Mother
Days Ahead
Life In The Valley Of Death
I, Mother Earth
Seasons
This Waiting Game
Waiting For My Light To Shine
A Parent's Love Is Black and White
Love
Inner Peace
The Best Things In Life
Stages
Winter Baby
That Glow
Photographer, Peter Carroll
In a couple of month’s time, my very first e-book is slated to be released on the oopoomoo label, which means this is a bit of an exciting but very hectic time for me. Concentrating on portraiture techniques – and more specifically environmental portraiture techniques using artificial lighting, my yet-to-be-named book will dive into the process I use to create my portraits, from idea to location to composition to subject placement to lighting techniques to “getting the photo that pops!”. Not a “light” (groan) subject, but it’s been pretty cathartic to actually sit down and think about what it is that I do, and how to do it – and then record it before I get senile and forget.
Below is a very quick example of what will be covered in depth in the book: how to go to a “natural” light photo, the first, through to the third, which balances natural and artificial lighting. Although I was a natural light photographer myself for years, namely because I was too scared and lacked the knowledge on how to use lighting, I’m hoping this book will help people get over their fear of moving to flash and studio lighting. Why? Well, even though the first image is natural, the image is far from what my eye is actually seeing.
When I was out on the prairies photographing portraits Peter Carroll, one of Western Canada’s finest landscape talents, my eye was actually seeing the clouds behind Peter as dark and ominous. But in this image (Image #1 – Natural Light), in order to expose properly for Peter – that is, see the details in Peter so that he’s not just a shadowed blob (see Image #2, Exposing For The Sky), I had to completely overexpose the sky, which makes it lose it’s rich, dramatic feel. Natural light yes. The image I want? Hardly.
Image #2, (Exposing For The Sky) demonstrates how if you expose for the sky, you lose Peter. I don’t want to lose Peter. I like Peter. He buys me beer from time to time. But if I was shooting this completely natural, Peter looks like a Prairie Monster. But, hey, got the sky where I want it!
So this means in order to have the best of both worlds (Image #3, Balancing Natural and Artificial); to be able to expose for both the dramatic sky and still keep detail and meaning on Peter, I have to introduce light into the scene. Unnatural, yes, but can lead to, I think, a better overall balance to your image. To light Peter here, I used a single off-camera flash, placed to my right. I used a Canon 430EX flash, on a light stand, modified by a Lasollite Ezybox softbox, to soften the light and prevent harsh shadows. The softbox is really close to Peter; only inches out of my frame. The result is an image that still keeps the mood of the ominous Prairie sky but still speaks to the character in Peter’s face.
Image #1, Natural Light
Image #2, Exposing For The Sky
Image #3, Balancing Natural and Artificial
I’ll dive way deeper into this process, and how to effectively find the right balance between natural and introduced lighting, in the book. When it gets written. 
Note: This was original published in Up Here Magazine.
“Um, Erin”, I stumbled, not quite sure how to phrase what I was about to say. Erin, my wife, was at home. “Dave?” she replied, curious as to why I was phoning her when I was outside, working. I had run into a small problem.
“Erin”, I repeated. “I’m up a telephone pole. There’s three polar bears underneath me. Do you think you could phone someone?”
**********************************************************************
After moving to Resolute Bay from Nova Scotia, I somehow found myself answering a job posting for Northwestel – the main telco of the north. ‘Community Technician’ is what a man named Rob calls the position when I phone to inquire about the job. “You’ll install a few new telephone lines and fix a few problem lines. Resolute’s not a big community, so it really won’t be that difficult”.
Three months later it’s deep into “dark season”, a murky period of about three or four months where the sun is a passing memory. A daily call into my Northwestel dispatcher, Kim, reveals that all is quiet in the world of telecommunications except that one customer has noise on her line. I silently groan, knowing that in addition to the blackness of the day it has also been in the low minus thirties for about three weeks straight, with wind chills approaching fifty below.
After confirming through a diagnosis that yes, yes there is indeed static on her line, I head towards the telephone pole behind her house and look up to the wires – my objective – above. Normally, they hang about 25 feet above the ground. However, the wind-packed snow has become so deep that this has been reduced to 15 feet.
I reach down and tighten my spurs – cold, sharpened points of steel which allow me to step into a telephone pole – and ensure that I have all my necessary tools strapped to my waist. I start shimmying up the icy stick to my desired point above.
About half way up – a dismal seven feet – something doesn’t feel right. The dark evening, which is usually silent save for the occasional whine of a snowmobile engine or the shout of some bundled child, is suddenly filled with the collective howls of the entirety of the Resolute Bay dog population. The noise isn’t pleasant and I can feel the hair stand up on my arm. A polar bear.
Dogs are the built-in alarm system of the tiny hamlet, and when they start their frenzied chorus, you know what’s coming. I look down, nothing. I scan around at the three or four houses in my line of sight. Nothing. I look back down, and see a flash of white. My heart stops. My heart pounds like a four-stroke engine.
Rounding the corner of the nearest house behind me – about thirty feet away – are three polar bears. One mother and two yearlings, and they look – at least to my blurred perception – as big as any living thing I have ever laid my eyes upon. Seeing them there, walking towards me with frightening speed and agility, their lengthy, powerful limbs cutting through the snow, effortlessly, is as improbable to my own sense of reasoning as if I had seen a pina colada stand – complete with umbrella-covered coconut drinks – in the middle of the Arctic desert.
My mind raced; this was it.
I steal another frightened glance down and realized that this lightless dream I was in was only turning worse. The three bears are now at the base of the pole, looking skyward, and the mother – approximately eight feet of her – is reaching up with her massive arms, complete with massive claw-tipped paws. She rests them about half way up the pole; the same place where I was hanging only moments earlier.
Wow, I think. This isn’t good. This really isn’t good. Your mind doesn’t work in descriptive prose when you’re within seven feet of something that could eat you.
Although I am in complete and utter disbelief, something clicks in my mind and I become a machine of instinct. Ignoring the bears below me and the question of whether or not they could climb (I continue to hear differing opinions), I rotate around the pole into a comfortable position and pry open the latch to the telephone access terminal, hooking up my buttset – a technician’s portable telephone set . Resting the phone’s receiver against my ear, I silently pray and then start randomly listening on various pairs, hoping to stumble across someone’s working phone line. On my third try, I find a free line and blindly dial the only number that jumps to mind: my own.
“Um, Erin”, I stumble. “Dave?” she replies.
“Erin…there’s three polar bears underneath me. Do you think you could phone someone?”
Silence.
“Dave?” she repeats back to me, this time with nervous fear permeating her voice, although she’s still unsure if I’m serious or just joking. She instinctually knows that I’m not joking – not with something like this.
“There’s three polar bears under me. I’m up the pole. I’m behind Sharla’s house.” My sentences are short and shaky. “Can you phone someone? Maybe the cops?” I hang up, and pray again.
As I hang up, I steal a glance down. Eye contact. I am mesmerized and frightened beyond belief. I stay silent, fearing that my thoughts are loud enough. Somewhere in the background of my perception I recognize the dogs screaming at the top of their lungs – Polar Bear! Polar Bear! – but it’s muffled – at least to me. I already know, damn it. Tell someone who can help.
Looking down, the mother bear momentarily shifts her weight back and forth, and I take this as a sign that my legs are about to become breadsticks. Somehow – improbably – she leaves her standing position and returns back to all fours. As she should be. Sniffing, she scurries over to Simon’s the next house and starts digging under a porch. A seal, frozen under the porch. There’s a seal under his back porch!
Dog food! That’s it! The bears have now forgotten about me, clawing at the carcass with frenzy. The whine of a snowmobile hits my ears as it rounds the corner to the house, and then the bears are off, dragging their prize. My lungs – which have held my breath since I hung up with my wife – collapse and I close my eyes.
Ten minutes later I return home. Erin meets me at the door and throws her arms around me. “How are you?” she asks, but words escape me. My legs are jelly, I can’t speak.
I first received word about two weeks ago that something was amiss.
Tom Smitheringale, Australian adventurer, inspirational giant, charity fundraiser, an – most importantly – friend, went missing….in Libya of all places. Tom had just successfully completed his One Man Epic: Mission Sahara expedition (see more expedition details on his Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/OneManEpic ), a stage that saw me travel to Egypt twice to document. He had pushed on into Libya, with the hope and dream of crossing the whole of North Africa to eventually emerge in Morocco, where the plan was for me to head back and document his final week or two.
Crossing into Libya, I knew Tom’s opportunities to communicate with the outside world would be much more limited than crossing Egypt, where you can basically have a 3G connection in the most remote of locations (I sent a few live updates to my wife from the middle of the Sahara Desert). Still, after I noticed his posts and updates abruptly stop, I had a pit in my stomach that something was wrong. Now, don’t get me wrong: if there’s one person on this planet that I deem capable of handling himself in a hostile country or the brute physical strength to overcome any potential “problem”, it’s Tom. This is a 6″ 7″ chunk of granite, with a British military background. Still, this is Libya. And as anyone who has followed the news over the past year knows, that place is basically as fucked as any country on earth right now.
So for the past couple weeks it’s been nerve-wracking. Friends of mine have been in trouble before. Not in the middle of one of the worst countries on earth, however, and without communication. Helpless is so weak a word, but that’s what I felt – wondering and waiting for word.
Well, word finally came in a couple of days ago and I don’t think I’ve ever breathed such a giant sigh of relief: Tom was being held in a Libyan Militia prison. In normal situations, that would have made me frightened beyond belief. Prison….Libya. Yeah, not the best of worlds. But all I could think was “hell yeah, he’s alive!!!”, because although you stay as positive as possible, and think nothing but the best, you don’t 100% know. Then, a couple days later, word that he managed to be “released”. Still tonnes of details that Tom will talk about in due time, and the rest is speculation, but these words, straight from Tom:
