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In: 1812:Revisited
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Lieutenant-General George Prevost, Governor-General of British North America, was displeased with his subordinate, Major-General Sir Isaac Brock. General Brock had disobeyed his orders, and instead of sticking to defence, he had gone on an offence and captured both Mackinac Island and Detroit from the Americans. President James Madison was unhappy with the results of the first months of the war, especially the surrender with little to no fight by the defenders. But what got Prevost was that Brock had received high praise for his actions and a knighthood. And with news that the Orders-In-Council were being repealed and the main complaint and the source ofRead More →

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In: Musings
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Developing your film at home is both rewarding and frustrating at the same time and to add on an extra layer of complexity there is a lot of developers out there that you can use, especially in the black & white field. While certainly not as much as there used to be, there is still an excellent selection of developers to suit almost every person’s need, without having to dive deep into building your developers from base chemicals. Ultimately every photographer has a different taste but if you’re starting out with home development the choices may seem a little overwhelming so I’ll be breaking downRead More →

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In: Between Darkness & Light
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I know that place, I muttered to myself while watching season 2 of Star Trek Discovery. The tell-tale support pillars were instantly familiar to me, as I had seen them many times before; there was no doubt that those were the generator supports from the massive Richard L. Hearn Thermal Generating Station in Toronto’s Portlands. I knew that Discovery filmed in Ontario and the GTHA (Greater Toronto-Hamilton Area), having seen the white church from Balls Falls and the Niagara Escarpment near Milton, all featured in both Season 1 and 2 of the then-latest Star Trek series. Hearn was my first extensive exploration and one thatRead More →

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In: Film Review Blogs
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This is only the second time I’ve reached a significant milestone in my ongoing reviews, the magic number of one hundred. And to be clear, I’ve done one hundred film reviews, not reviewed one hundred separate film stocks. And that’s because I’ve reviewed some rebadged films; sometimes, I knew it was a rebadge and then made a point not to go after that film stock again, notability ORWO films. I reviewed the four motion picture-specific films from ORWO as their Lomography rebadge. But in the case of Fomapan 100, I reviewed that first as KosmoFoto Mono 100 and then again as Fomapan 100. Agfa AviFotoRead More →

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When it comes to magic in photography, nothing can compare to watching a wet plate develop and clear or printing in the darkroom. But a close second is developing your slide film at home. After fretting about ruining slide film by developing it at home, I decided to go for it and put in some crucial rolls from Europe. If you force yourself to do it right the first time, develop something that matters! And when I pulled off those first two rolls, I was blown away! And while they looked ugly when wet, when dried, it was magic. The Unicolor Rapid E-6 kits makeRead More →

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In: Photography
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It’s hard to believe it’s been five years today since I married my best friend. I don’t often put a lot of my personal life here on my blog, but today is a special day so it deserves something special. And since photography has always intertwined in my relationship with my wife it only makes sense to put it here on our fifth wedding anniversary. I guess it all started on a rainy day in Arras. So today I present a set of photos from the past five years of our marriage and the adventures we have had together! And while we haven’t been ableRead More →

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I had to go back into my archives to see if I ever posted anything directly related to my 2015 trip to Europe. And yes, the images did appear in several review posts, but I never made a great post about the trip. I don’t understand why! But it probably got caught up in my poorly managed posting schedule, which I only in the past couple of years got onto the right track and had some semblance of order. But either way, I think for this Friday, I get things in order and revisit a special trip of mine with some insights into that tripRead More →

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In: Developer Review Blogs
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The year was 2013, a new voice had recently joined the Film Photography Podcast, one Mat Marrash. Mat had dived headfirst into the world of film photography and had not looked back and begun speaking about a type of developer I had never heard of before, Pyro developers. Well, I was instantly interested, having myself dived headfirst into the wonderful world of home B&W development. I was also looking for something outside the normal D-76, HC-110, and Rodinal developers. Well, this Pyrocat-HD stuff seemed interesting, but getting it shipped to Canada proved difficult at the time, so with a trip to New York City inRead More →

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In: Developer Review Blogs
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These days I will rarely work with Ilfosol 3, but it remains a developer that I always keep in the back of my mind. After learning how to develop my own black & white film from my good friend Julie using Kodak D-76, it would be a few more years before I started taking on the process full time. When I went into Burlington Camera to get all the equipment I needed to take on the daunting task some eight years ago, Joan pointed me towards Ilfosol 3 as a good starting point when you didn’t want to keep a large quantity of developer mixedRead More →

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In: Project:1867
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When it comes to the names of the Fathers of Confederation, those men who attended the conferences at Charlottetown and Quebec, most Canadians can only list a handful, or just one. That name is Sir John A. MacDonald. And while MacDonald certainly made a name for himself in his roll in what could almost be seen as bullying the other Provinces into Confederation, we often will overshadow the man who could almost be considered the architect of Confederation, George Brown. The eldest son of six, born to Peter and Marianne Brown on the 29th of November 1819 in Clackmannan, Scotland. George grew up among theRead More →