The Portal

Father vs. Son: Ultimate Battle

80 Minutes of Family Nostalgia

This is some hardcore family nostalgia mainlined straight into my heart. Yes, it’s 80 minutes. You’ve been warned. Maybe take this in over a weekend. I mean, if you’re family; it’s likely not of interest unless you know us 🙂. This collection of dozens of 16mm home movies was filmed by my Grandpa Awad and my Dad between the late 1960s and early 70s as far as I can tell (Aunt Dorothy will correct me if I’m wrong).

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10C Epic Party

I had a great time shooting photos at the 10C Epic Party this past weekend. It was amazing to see so many incredible artists, musicians and community advocates come together to support this amazing space. The highlight for me was a beautiful and intimate performance by The Lifers. Check them out if you’re into softly plucked strings, accordion swells and lush harmonies!

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Harlow Turns One

I’m so grateful our friends Rory and Lauren graciously allowed me to photograph their beautiful daughter Harlow’s one year milestone. It was great to see her just starting to walk around and explore their space. We haven’t seen them as much since they moved a few streets away from our neighbourhood, so it was fun to catch up with them as well.

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The Story at the Edges

While visiting my family last year, I was looking through some old photo albums and found a picture of me as a young teenager holding up a pie I was about to put into the oven (I went through a bit of a baking phase). Needless to say, it made me laugh — but something else about the photo struck me. It’s clearly a snapshot and not technically perfect, but I think it’s a great photo (I’m guessing my Mom took it). It made me think about my own photography and, as I’ve started to get more into the craft and process, how I might have approached this same moment.

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Mom’s New Hip

Recently, my mom had hip replacement surgery. Going into this, I had no idea what was involved in the surgery. A bit of research revealed just how amazing this modern medical procedure actually is. The arthritic area is removed and metal and plastic prostheses are put in their place. It really is astounding to me.

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Turn Your Crop Sensor Camera into Full Frame*

*Sort of. When I first discovered that I could easily adapt legacy manual focus lenses to my Sony a6000, I was over the moon. A whole new world opened up to me and I began searching out vintage lenses to try out. But the crop factor was a bit of an issue. Field-of-view and depth-of-field are affected: a 50mm lens becomes a 75mm equivalent on an APS-C sensor. It’s not a huge problem, you just need to account for it. Beyond that, getting the same shallow depth-of-field is trickier unless you use really fast glass.

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