Where are you from/based now?
I was born here, in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada. I moved to downtown
Toronto about 10 years ago where I live and work.
What is your background in Photography? How did you get into it?
The only proper education I got was back in highschool. They still had a darkroom and all that so we did all our own B&W developing and processing. I later volunteered by building computers for my art
teacher so I could come and use the darkroom after school. Back then all I used was my fathers Minolta SLR. I can't remember a time when I wasn't framing things, I've always just been extremely visual.
What equipment do you use?
I have a rack of old cameras. I try each one out once, and usually that's it unless it really stood out. My main squeezes at the moment are my Bronica RF645 medium format rangefinder, my Yashica FX3 2000
Super, and then I always, always make sure I carry a film point and shoot. Used to be my trusty Yashica T4/5 but the door broke, a buddy gave me his Leica Mini 3 to use for the time being. With these three
cameras I have everything I need.
I used to lug around an umbrella and speedflashes for my portrait work, lately though I have been experimenting with soft soap-opera type lighting with a huge ringlight rig I build for $20 of shit from
the hardware store.
What is your creative process?
Oh it's very haphazard. I rarely like to start a shoot with little more than a vague idea of a mood, or look. I tell the models to come over and bring a bag of outfits and makeup and we come up with a look
together. The shoot finds itself. I find if you have such a specific image you picture and want, you constantly let yourself down trying to get it. I'd rather be loose, let the shoot find itself and the
person's character can shine through and be captured. My other photos are just daily scenes that I felt the need to capture, some variation of texture, pattern or just the way the light fell in a particular
moment.
What drives you to keep taking pictures?
It makes me happy. Also, when you carry around a camera you see the world differently. You look up and around at everything, noticing nuance. Boring trips to nowhere become photo adventures. I like seeing the world this way.
Who or what inspires you?
I just try to keep myself self-inspired and interested. I mean, people and situations always pop up where I just want to capture them. But day to day all I've got is myself to actually be productive. When I
find myself down or bummed about photography, something else kicks in and I'll start writing or making music. It all vents out somewhere.
Could you tell us a little about FOES and how it came about?
FOES is a magazine I have been "starting" for about a year and a half now. Originally it was to be just another photo zine, but the world has plenty of those. Also I had started with a Canadian collective of
photographers that were to help me with it, but people get busy.
In it's current iteration it's mostly back to just myself working on it with my sister who is a writer. We want to make it more or less a quarterly literary reader, short stories, poems, essays, splashed with
some small and thoughtful photo content. Collecting great photo work is easy, but finding great poets and writers is proving a lot harder.
Are you working on a particular project at the moment?
I suppose my latest stints at portraiture could count as a project. Come winter here nobody wants to shoot outside and it's dark when I get home from work so shooting people becomes difficult. I gutted my
kitchen and built that light rig I'd mentioned and have been doing a series of plain portraits. How visually interesting can I make a waist up classic sitting portrait? I play with the body's natural geometry
on each subject and try to lead the viewer into the eyes. It's all
about the eyes on these:
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