Four Black Cars.

To celebrate Glass's birthday, and being here for two weeks myself, I'm breaking my only rule by posting a colour photo.

But wait! This was actually taken on black and white film, so it's technically still okay. It's three individual frames, recorded on Ilford HP5 with green, blue, and red contrast filters. Each is then put on its own layer as the appropriate colour channel, and ta-da: colour, with artifacts, that's more work and more expensive than just using colour film in the first place.

(I wrote a bit about this process, which I learned through the generosity of others, on my blog: https://www.matthewpiers.com/B/220527)

Matthew

Leaves.

Some days you painstakingly compose each frame, making sure everything works *just so*, and then your favourite photo turns out to be the one where you just stuck the camera in some random plant. 

This was one of those days. Recorded on Ilford HP5 with a 6x6 pinhole camera. 

Cars in a different light. (series)

Using an infrared camera and flash at a car show strips away the pervasive branding, leaving only small traces of the experiential cacophony behind. 

Every year I go to the Auto Show, but as a lifelong urban pedestrian my relationship to these vehicles is very different from what the vendors expect. Each year I try to capture some of that difference, with varying degrees of success. 

This concludes this little series of photos; thank you to everyone who has taken time with it. More photos, and sets from other years, are also online: https://www.matthewpiers.com/P/Cars

Cars in a different light. (series)

Using an infrared camera and flash at a car show changes how the product is spotlighted. 

The presenters at auto show deserve enormous respect. They must deliver pitch-perfect performances of marketing phrases that no human would ever naturally say, again and again. 

For a previous Auto Show project I recorded and remixed these wordings, but never lost – or gained – any particular meaning. 
https://www.matthewpiers.com/P/Cars/Cars-2016


Cars in a different light. (series)

Using an infrared camera and flash at a car show reveals the objects, but removes ambient light and pervasive marketing. 

Cars in a different light. (series)

An accidental moment of truth in advertising. This sign, promoting a “free gas” contest held by an automotive lobbyist group, speaks to the collective costs to society incurred on behalf of individualistic car ownership. 

The only visible-light image in this series: we don’t need a special camera to see in a different light. 

Cars in a different light. (series)

Using a camera that only sees in infrared at a car show removes context and information, leaving us wondering what could possibly be so compelling about this strange contraption. 

Cars in a different light. (series)

Using a camera that only sees in infrared at a car show removes the veneer of eco-marketing from the walls, and blackens the LCD screens that loop incessantly. 

Cars in a different light. (series)

Using a camera that only sees in infrared at a car show strips away most of the marketing displays, revealing the experience as stark and empty. 

The difference between letting go and giving up. (series)

Stationary bike.

Recorded on Ilford Pan F with a 6x9 pinhole, developed in Perceptol. This film & developer is my favourite for summer, but needs too much light for the winter.

Remembering a city-stranding snowstorm on a too-hot day.

Recorded six months ago on Ilford FP4 with a 6x9 pinhole camera. 

Misplaced commitment. 

Recorded on Fujifilm Acros II with a Nikon F6 and Sigma 25-35/2.

Parking garage.

This is an old photo that I’ve liked for years, without a solid reason, and never done anything with. Taken with a Ricoh GRDiv, one of the best of its series, and a lovely camera for monochrome. 

Seascape with line. (series)

Recorded on Ilford FP4 with a 35mm pinhole camera. 

Convolution 215. (series)

(convolution.ca)

Convolution 214. (series)

(convolution.ca)

Riding the subway, December 2021, when there was still a token effort to mitigate the ongoing pandemic. 

Recorded as a fifteen minute exposure on Ilford FP4 with a 6x9 pinhole camera. 

Cloud Over Half Dome. 

Recorded on Ilford FP4 with a red filter using a 35mm rangefinder. 

Prevailing winds. 

Art installation, Downsview Park. Recorded on Ilford FP4 with a 6x9 pinhole camera. 

This is what we thought the future would look like.

Cinesphere, Ontario Place.

Recorded on Ilford Pan F with a 6x12 Ondu pinhole camera.

Cinesphere, Ontario Place. 

Recorded on Fujifilm Acros II with a Nikon F6 and Sigma 24-35 lens. 

Toronto seen from a slightly different angle. 

Recorded on Ilford FP4 with a Nikon F6 and Sigma 24-35 from Tommy Thompson Park, almost two years ago.

Free Education. 

Digital in-camera multiple exposure. It’s a simpler technique, but still has a bit of the vibe from my Convolution project that’s shot on film with toy cameras. (convolution.ca) 

Food Trucks.

Digital in-camera multiple exposure. It’s a simpler technique, but still has a bit of the vibe from my Convolution project that’s shot on film with toy cameras. (convolution.ca) 

Stay Safe. 

Digital in-camera multiple exposure. It’s a simpler technique, but still has a bit of the vibe from my Convolution project that’s shot on film with toy cameras. (convolution.ca) 

HMCS Glace Bay visiting Toronto.

Recorded in digital infrared (830nm) with a modified Nikon Coolpix A.

Single Use. A photo of plastic bags.

Sometimes I enjoy images that have such a light touch that the viewer’s eyes need to adjust to be able to see them. This is one photo out of a series of seven.

Recorded on Ilford Delta 100 with a 35mm SLR. 

Single Use. A photo series of plastic bags.

Sometimes I enjoy images that have such a light touch that the viewer’s eyes need to adjust to be able to see them. These are six individual photos presented as a mosaic.

Recorded on Ilford Delta 100 with a 35mm SLR. 

Transit, Shelter.

I've learned not to put the camera away just because I think I'm finished and am going home. That time, after deciding that there's no more creative pressure but still some creative energy, is often my best. Here I'm just waiting for the right streetcar, as one on a different route passes in a blur as I hold the shutter open, with the camera propped up next to a damaged transit shelter. As one does.

Recorded on Kentmere Pan 100 with a 35mm pinhole camera.

Twisted rebar in a construction landfill, one of my favourite places in the city.

Recorded on Ilford FP4 using a blue filter with a 6x9 pinhole camera at Toronto’s Leslie Street Spit.

The Leslie Street Spit. An artificial land of jumbled concrete, steel, and water. Ruins of the city, accidentally made into something new.

Double exposure recorded on Ilford FP4 with a 6x9 pinhole camera.

Toronto housing.

Recorded on Ilford Ortho 80 with a 6x6 pinhole as a stretched exposure – rolling the film with the shutter open. I'm so much more experimental during my first month with a new camera.

The warehouse. 

I used to live here, intermittently, decades ago. Back then it was run down, used for movie shoots and storing unsold copies of Scientology books, and the steam plant on the left was condemned. Now it’s a coffee shop and high-tech offices, in a new neighborhood with a new name.

Recorded on Ilford FP4 and a 6x9 pinhole.

Night at the museum.

This is actually early morning – sometimes when I can’t get back to sleep I’ll take a tripod and a camera for a walk. I enjoy the quiet, so I stay out until the people who the morning rightfully belongs to come out to claim it. Then I’m home again and back to bed.

Recorded on cinestill-xx with a Nikon F6 and 50/1.8.

Rebar.
(series)

When I first met my stepmother, forty years ago, she was sculpting evocative abstracts out of giant sheets of corten steel. No wonder I have such a fascination with the accidental curves and twists of discarded steel rebar.

Recorded on Ilford FP4 with a 6x9 pinhole.

Grocery shopping.

I worry that I'll get picked up for shoplifting when I'm taking my camera out of the cart and tucking it back in my pocket, but it hasn't happened yet.

Multi-minute exposure recorded on Ilford HP5 with a 6x6 pinhole.

Nothing.
(series)

I have an ongoing fascination with subtle variations in tone on an almost-white field. 

Recorded on Ilford HP5 with a 35mm pinhole.

The Bathurst Street Bridge. Toronto, Canada.

One of my favourite views of the city skyline. I'd get a glimpse of it out the windows of the streetcar when I was going somewhere else, but occasionally I'd come back on foot to photograph it.

Two merged frames recorded on Ilford Pan F 50 with an Ondu 6x12 Rise pinhole camera.

The difference between letting go and giving up. 
(series)

Sentinels. 

A vacant parking lot on the downtown fairgrounds, Toronto, Canada.

Recorded on Ilford Pan F 50 with an Ondu 6x12 Rise camera, using the upper pinhole, September 2021.