bout 55 years ago, I took up photography. This is my very first photograph: a portrait of my parents, Donna and Baz. (Kodak Brownie Hawkeye 620 roll film camera. It was made of bakelite and smelled weird. The print still exists.) Not bad for a kid who could barely sit up. Anyway, I've had many cameras since then, of all kinds. View cameras, rangefinders, box cameras, spy cameras... well all kinds. But my favourite has always been the 35mm SLR. These days the equivelent is a digital SLR, but it can never be the same. The best was the old Canon F1. It was a heavy brass bodied camera with an even heavier motor drive that took ten AA batteries and roared through film at the blistering rate of about 2 frames per second--you kids today live in a dream world. By today's standards it was bulky, angular and ugly, but you could drive nails with it it was that tough and it had a very bright viewfinder and generally was a joy to use.

In the 70's amd 80's I did a lot of documentary-type work of the arts community in St. John's and also in Vancouver BC where I shot a lot of fashion stuff. I've done everything from newspaper work to (shudder) school photography. I've done vast ammounts of darkroom work and used to teach it at the Memorial University Extension Arts in St. John's. I've done copy work in printing shops and learned 19th century techniques like gum-bichromate, carbon and iron printing. These days I work with 21st century techniques. I shoot digitally, edit digitally and print with a Seiko/Epson using M.I.S. pigmented inks. Tomorrow, who knows?

It all comes down to the image. That's all I ever really cared about. Here on this site you'll find some of what I consider my best images. I hope you enjoy them.

 

y Contemporary Prints are made with the best digital technology available. Currently they are made with archival pigmented inks from Mediastreet on Illuminata Photo Cotton 300 gsm 100% cotton rag paper.

• M.I.S Generations Ink Colour Gamut Data
• M.I.S Generations Ink Delta E Data

The term "giclée" is basically a made-up French-ish word originally used by artists who had started making prints on an Iris inkjet machine and didn't want to tell people it was computerized output on a drafting plotter (which it was).

The name has stuck and now is a generic term for inkjet printed artwork. It has in some places become associated with reproductions of paintings done on canvas. Some say it only refers to high-end output of this criteria or that, but there is no authority on this at all. The digital printing universe has evolved tremendously since those first Iris printers and it continues to evolve.

My prints are made with high resolution Seiko/Epson printers which have a unique piezoeletric ink ejection system which does not subject the inks to high temperatures. These prints may be referred to as "giclée/piezograph" with "giclee" meaning the general method and "piezograph" the specific type. Or you could simply call them digital prints.

Whatever you prefer to call them, in my estimation the system I use produces the best colour quality and simply outstanding B&W prints and the pigmented inks ensure a museum/archive quality artwork that you can display with confidence.

That said, I am not married to these particular machines and materials. My objective is to provide the best prints that I can. When a superior process becomes available and I am satisfied of its quality and longevity, I will use it. In this way I will always have the best print possible and, over time, the quality of my output will actually improve. Come back in ten years and see what I'm using then!

Silver/gelatin printing is something I did a lot of in the past. Occasionally I will sell one of my silver prints, but not often as they are rare--I lost a lot of my work in a flood a few years back--and I am not currently making them.

I am predicting (you read it here first) that 19th century non-silver printing (gum bichromate, carbon, cyanotype, etc.) will make a comeback! Oddly enough, it is 21st century technology that makes this possible. Because of digital printers, it is easy to make seperations and enlargments onto the substrates required to make the contact prints that the old methods require. What's old is new, what's new is old. And thus it ever was.

The store will have prints by other artists as well, and they will be working in whatever medium pleases them of course, so if you're a big silver print fan, check back often or subscribe to the newsletter to be advised when some arrive.

 

his site was designed on a Mac using BBEdit for the code, CSSEdit for layout and styling and Photoshop for image creation. It is deployed on a unix server running Apache, php and mySQL. The e-commerce system employs the open source Zen Cart framework, with Image Handler 2 and Fuel Slimbox. The font I'm using for my menus is Still Time from Larabie Fonts.

The site is built to XHTML 1.0 standards (transitional because I'm still using targets in the < a > tag. Sigh. I will miss those.) I'm using MooTools and as well I have the scriptaculous library for the cool accordion effect on this page.

If you care about such trivia, you probably know or are learning about website design. A wonderful, authoratative and completely free resource for learning these things, or keeping up-to-date with the latest web standards is available at W3C Schools online.

Website design is something I also do professionally so if you like my work and need a site designed or an online store built, you can reach me me via the contact link.