There are a few projects that I plan to continue or start up this quarter across the board in web, film and photography.

Web

There’s a massive number of improvements and new features that Ryan and I plan to incorporate into tiffr.com, to hopefully one day turn it into the de facto standard for simple event scheduling. We’ll also be looking into priming the pipeline on several of the hundreds of ideas we’ve brainstormed over the past few years, in the hopes of bringing more simple and clean solutions that save people time and frustration. We want to incite curiosity and unlock potential in our audience.

Film

I currently have two short scripts in the draft stage that I hope to produce in the coming year or so, and I’m building collaborations with a lot of amazing people in an effort to assemble a powerful team of creative professionals to ensure that these productions are realised to their full potential.

I’m also going to be working toward finally getting the footage from Jamaica edited into several pieces, probably some short teasers and a short documentary based around our visits to Nine Mile and the people who live in that community.

Photography

On this front, I’m keeping things simple, planning to organize and share more of my backlog of photos, as well as finally making prints of the better shots in my archives. I think that through the pre-production stages of the film projects I will be producing some amazing images that I’ve dreamt up over the past few years.

Montage

This probably could have gone under film, but it’s big enough to be on its own as well. We’re going to start planning a fall & winter slate of Montage events, showcasing more local filmmakers, with fresh, new art installations and potentially a newer, bigger venue.

Stay tuned.

This party happening on Friday features the inexhaustibly talented Che Kothari, photographer, director of The Manifesto Festival, and positive force of nature. His work will be featured alongside two of his photographic mentors, Jamel Shabazz and Steve Carty.

The event is hosted by Jerome Jenner Fine Art at Smash in the Junction as part of the Contact Photography Festival and will probably be a really good party.

If you’re interested in seeing what it’s all about, the info is in the flyer above and by following the links in this post.

May Truong and I did a photoshoot with Ravi Jain of Theatre Why Not last week at Alison Milne’s new studio space. We were originally hoping to do it at the Theatre Centre as part of our “people in their environments” series, but things didn’t quite work out that way.

This shoot was a lot of fun, and once we were done with the portraits, Ravi and I worked on some stop motion ideas I’ve been thinking about recently and am hoping to employ in my next film, Houndstooth. The session was really productive and left me with a lot to think about and more experiments to try out in the coming weeks and months.

More shots from the shoot with Ravi

We recently returned to Jamaica for Bob Marley’s Earthday to continue building Project Nine Mile. We hoped that the celebrations on and around February 6th would provide a good opportunity for us to meet many people and spread the word about what we were trying to do up in Nine Mile.

Our goals for the trip were to learn more about the needs of the community in Nine Mile, to determine what is currently being done within Jamaica for the community and the school at Stepney, and to see how we could fit into the mix. We shot a lot of video and stills with the aim of creating a documentary to assist in creating more awareness about Nine Mile and to assist in future fundraising endeavours.

The trip was amazing, we had a great time and built relationships with many wonderful people who are invested in working in the community, and developed a deeper appreciation of the needs of the people in Nine Mile and Stepney Primary and Junior High School. We’re still trying to sift through all of the materials and the knowledge we gathered now that we’re back in Toronto, so check back soon to see more photos and thoughts about the experience, and our plans for next steps.

Visit the Project Nine Mile website

View the photos from the trip!

Click here to view the embedded video.

I drove down to Washington DC with my friend Gordon to witness the historical moment when Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States of America. We stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the crowd of millions on that crisp afternoon and were swept up in the tide of hope and goodwill.

After the speech, we were essentially held hostage in the city by the local security forces, as subways closed and streets were cordoned off for the parade. With nothing else to do, we walked around the core of the city for hours trying to find a way out or, at the very least, somewhere to warm up and eat. That proved to be a considerable challenge.

The upside is that on our impromptu tour of the city I took many photos and made this timelapse video, which required us to stand outside, not moving, in the cold January wind for a good twenty minutes, a sacrifice I’m grateful to Gordon for making, however reluctantly.

The pomp and ceremony is over; it’s time for the work to begin. Show us what you can do, President Obama.

A picture from my recent trip to NYC, where I visited my friend Saira and had lots of fun. My memory is dying today so I can’t remember the name of their band (EDIT: Their band is The Wooden Sky), but these guys are friends of Saira’s and their names are Gavin and Colin, I think, although don’t hold it against me if I’m wrong (EDIT: I was right, thankfully). I’ll update this thing when I find out for sure, because no one likes to be forgotten (EDIT: This is still true).

One of a handful of interesting shots from my recent trip to New York City. I was walking along Fifth Avenue on a Monday evening, just before I headed over to Rockefeller Center, people watching and looking for the MOMA.

There’s a strangeness to this image that I really like. You can see more photos from NYC on flickr.

Last spring I was working near the court house and one afternoon, as I was walking past this spot, I was inspired to make this photo. I was by myself at the time and I don’t think I had my camera but I made a mental note and moved on.

Flash forward to early September, and I was in the same area with Scott and JD, and my camera, and knew I had to make the most of the opportunity. I coaxed them into going along with my plan, and this was the result, after only two tries.

The original idea was a bit different, and tweaked by a Richard Avedon exhibit I saw in Paris this summer, that involved a girl, a dress and a wind machine (or just plain wind). Perhaps it’s still in the cards.

Gotta love the fact that he didn’t even put down his cigarette.

This is one of the shots from a photoshoot I did with Alison for her new interior design company Alison Milne Designs Inc. The shoot was super simple, relaxed and a lot of fun to do. Hopefully it’s going to pay off by getting Alison a gig on TV.

A few more of the images from the photoshoot can be found on fightingtheboss’ flickr.

There has been a bit of discussion recently about the continuation of Project Nine Mile sometime early next year. The tentative idea is to revisit Stepney and do a short photo/video workshop with interested students with a focus on literacy and numeracy, two big problems with youth at Stepney and across Jamaica. There are still a lot of logistics to be worked out before anything becomes concrete but there are a lot of good people with great intentions working on it, so we’ll see how things progress.

For the uninitiated, the initial phase of Project Nine Mile involved me going to Jamaica for six weeks this past summer to start a computer education program at Stepney Primary and Junior High School, near Nine Mile, Jamaica, the boyhood home of reggae legend Bob Marley. The experience was incredible and was documented as Internet became available over at the official Project Nine Mile website.