A Colborne Street panorama
As I mentioned in here I've been stitching together photos of every building facade on Brantford's downtown Colborne Street. Its south side, anyway. Instead of making a traditional panorama, though, I cut and pasted each facade and then "distorted" them to make the perspective lines parallel (read more).
I haven't finished the east side of the street yet, but I've used Photoshop's handy "Export as Zoomify" feature to make an easily navigable user interface. Give it a shot:
http://nickwarzin.com/blog/custom/colborne.html
I already want to print this BIG... 10" high, by 130" long? Yes. I'm a little crazy.
Where do they all come from
I'm a taciturn son of a bitch and won't go into the details of the phenomenon (increasingly mainstream coverage: 1, 2, 3), but someone left a comment in an early blog entry about Chatroulette suggesting an 'ilarious combination of a user slideshow and the Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby", and while that might be too needlessly cruel even for me I will happily present a small collection of screenshots taken over the past couple weeks accompanied by whatever you happen to be listening to at the moment. As long as it's not anything off Revolver.
Under the cut, and generally SFW...
Sitting on top of the world
On my lunch break today, I took a quick trip to the corner of Wellington and Simcoe to explore the new RBC Dexia building (pictured right). My, er, feelings toward the building aside, I had heard the top floors were still unoccupied and easy to explore and I had been looking forward to visiting it for weeks. So, today, I had an excellent view whilst I sat cross-legged and ate my sandwich:
This is the corner of Front and University
There's more under the cut, if'n y'like...
Looking Down Sacramento Street, San Francisco, April 18, 1906
A fascinating story from Wikipedia:
Looking Down Sacramento Street, San Francisco, April 18, 1906 is a black and white photograph taken by Arnold Genthe in San Francisco, California on the morning of April 18, 1906 in the wake of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Looking Down Sacramento St., 1906. [verso:] "San Francisco: April 18, 1906." From As I Remember by Arnold Genthe: This photograph shows "the results of the earth quake, the beginning of the fire and the attitude of the people." It was taken the morning of the first day of the fire. Shows Sacramento St. at Miles Place (now Miller Place) near Powell St.
"I found that my hand cameras had been so damaged by the falling plaster as to be rendered useless. I went to Montgomery Street to the shop of George Kahn, my dealer, and asked him to lend me a camera. 'Take anything you want. This place is going to burn up anyway.' I selected the best small camera, a 3A Kodak Special. I stuffed my pockets with films and started out.... Of the pictures I had made during the fire, there are several, I believe, that will be of lasting interest. There is particularly the one scene that I recorded the morning of the first day of the fire [along Sacramento Street, looking toward the Bay] which shows, in a pictorially effective composition, the results of the earthquake, the beginning of the fire and the attitude of the people. On the right is a house, the front of which had collapsed into the street. The occupants are sitting on chairs calmly watching the approach of the fire. Groups of people are standing in the street, motionless, gazing at the clouds of smoke. When the fire crept up close, they would just move up a block. It is hard to believe that such a scene actually occurred in the way the photograph represents it. Several people upon seeing it have exclaimed, "Oh, is that a still from a Cecil De Mille picture?" To which the answer has been, "No. the director of this scene was the Lord himself." A few months ago an interview about my work--I had told the story of that fire picture--appeared in a New York paper with the headline, "His pictures posed by the Lord, says photographer.""
Arnold Genthe, "As I Remember" Reynal & Hitchcock : New York, 1936; Chapter 10: Earthquake and Fire
"On 18 April 1906, the morning of the great San Francisco earthquake, Genthe, with his cameras and studio destroyed, borrowed a hand-held camera and photographed the destruction across the city. Of his over 180 surviving, sharp-focus photographs of San Francisco, probably his most famous image is "San Francisco, April 18th, 1906," which shows a view from Nob Hill, down Sacramento Street. Enormous clouds of smoke ominously approach, buildings' facades have collapse from the quake, and residents stand and sit in the street, in a stupor, calmly watching the approaching fire."
Mel Byars, N. Elizabeth Schlatter. "Genthe, Arnold"; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.
And here's the photo, along with a Street View showing the same location now. Click on the image for a high-res version.
I <3 transit & infrastructure & photos
Hello!
I've wanted to have one of my better Diana shots blown up for some time now, but huge. And I didn't want a digital enlargement either -- I could do that -- I wanted light to pass through my negative at varying degrees of intensity and fall on light-sensitive paper, to put it most literally. And I wanted the Tri-X grain to be the size of breakfast cereal. This kind of thing is much harder to find these days than you'd expect, though a chat with my photog uncle has led me to Silvano Imaging, a place that takes great pride in its old-school photo lab. Let's see if they'll follow me down the treacherous rabbit-hole of insanely blurry and chunky photo enlargements without insisting that I'm crazy and don't know what I'm asking for and that the results won't please me and would-I-please-pay-in-advance-kthxbye.
I'm having troubles deciding between the following two photos, though. I can already guess which would look better on a living room wall, but my favourite is the other one, the more striking one. Any input would be great.
My Dundas St East photo is probably in the running, too, but I was leaning towards one of the monochrome shots. Thoughts?
Two new cameras (sort of?)
Hi!
Work is stressful and sleep is hard to find, but I have two new cameras to play with. The first was given to me by my boss's boss, who found he hadn't touched it in twenty or more years and figured I might have some fun with it. It's a Canon T70:
As you can see, it's one of the most special looking cameras Canon has made. As the Camerapedia link above mentions, it won design awards in 1984, which is not a good thing. However, it has good glass, a self-timer and an auto-winder so I imagine I'll have plenty of fun with it. It's also my first 35mm in 8 or 9 years, meaning I can finally use up all the expired film that has been collecting and that I have been carrying around from apartment to apartment over the past decade. I'm going to try to catch the first snowfall on it. Or, rather, with it.
I found Camera #2 at Value Village while looking for an awful Christmas sweater. It's a Kodak disposable, w/ flash:
This camera is not remarkable in any way, except in one way: the film is half exposed. Some curious person took 15-20 photos with this thing before giving it to Value Village for some curiouser person to find. Is it full of vacation photos? Is it part of an Urban Prankster project? Is it simply broken? Is it, well, incriminating? I suppose I'll find out. The folks at West Camera are patient and understanding, and I'm confident I can explain to them the circumstances surrounding this camera and why I must have it developed and that I'm only truly responsible for exposures twenty through thirty-six. As long as cops aren't surrounding the place when I go to pick up the scans I'll post the results on Flickr. I'll also give some sort of special Christmas present to anyone with a guess that's even vaguely correct.
That's all.