Repulsion (2010) - by Yours Truly. This is the first photo composite I created for exhibition purposes. It's a scene reconstructed from memory (or research), staged with actors and digitally post-produced, an approach inspired by the Jeff Walls, Stan Douglases and Rodney Grahams of the world. There are only two photos in this composite whereas there are more than thirty photos that make up 'Dispossession', the photograph I created specifically for Kizuna.

I did two composites earlier this year (not knowing I would use, nay stretch, the technique into this one made up of three locations, 17 people, and 30-plus photos). Cake, right? My computer didn’t think so. (Warning: I’m going to geek out once more for a bit here) Before this project I thought Macs and Photoshop (a legit CS4 version on an 8-month new 27” iMac i7 with 8GB RAM) were fast and stable systems. That is until Photoshop starts saving your files automatically into the “.psb” format (not .psd for those who know what I mean). That means you’ve gone past the maximum file size that .psd can handle into this other realm known as “Large File Format”. It begins to happen around 2GB. When it gets up to 5 or 6GB, that’s when your (my) previously stable system begins to crash and reboots to reduce crashes are the norm. Saving your progress takes 5-10 minutes when you’re working with a 6GB file. Opening a 6GB file takes 5-10 minutes. Then there’s visually inspecting 200 million pixels to make sure there aren’t any defects… and fixing the defects you find (I hope I found them all). Let’s just say it took a whole lot of time to do the post production on this image.

Quinton, Wendy, Doug, Kasey, Nikolina, Me, Donna, Rachel - only a few of the dedicated bunch who made 'Dispossession' possible!

If you can’t make the party it will be on display in the museum until November 27. Hope you can make it out to see it! Oh did I mention the title of the photograph is ‘Dispossession’?

Oh, you want to see it here? Well, maybe I’ll post something after the 10th.

A final plug for the show where you can see the completed photograph in all of its 9.5 feet of glory. Opening Party 7pm Sept 10 at the JCNM at 6688 Southoaks Crescent, Burnaby. Tix $10.

Donna, Sayaka, Derek, and Rempel - Rempel styled Donna and Sayaka's hair for the shoot.

The other, very important person I needed to recruit was a Stylist to create the wardrobe for the ghosts. Authenticity was key, so I needed someone who I believed could do the job. Fortunately, my roommate Nikolina Suric is in the biz. She had just finished heading up the costuming department on a TV pilot and was available and interested. Unfortunately, her wardrobe at Capilano University wasn’t accessible until the fall so she would have to purchase and/or make all of the costumes for the shoot, cutting deeper into my production budget. The most difficult costume to find wasn’t a costume at all – we needed a 1942-era RCMP uniform like the one that appears in the JCNM’s photo, leading the families along the tracks.

Photographing Ty in the elusive RCMP uniform. Ty was the first person I cast and the last costume we found.

I contacted my MP, Libby Davies, for help and they referred me to a local RCMP office. I wrote a letter to the RCMP explaining the project and the context in which the uniform would be used – and then waited… with no response (and still have not received one). In the meantime, just less than a week before the shoot, Nikolina found us the real thing at a movie service company, with King’s Crown badges, brown surge, striped jodhpurs, belt, cross strap, hat – everything! The only problem was – as we discovered after battling a few hours of Trans Canada construction traffic between Vancouver and Aldergrove – they wouldn’t rent it to us until we had written permission from the RCMP Intellectual Property Office in Ottawa! And there were only 3 days left until the shoot! (The RCMP uniform is trademarked you see, and after some abuse of these rights by commercial clients (which I learned includes some Olympic clients), the RCMP was coming down hard on anyone with access to RCMP marks.) I sent all of my correspondence to Ottawa and begged for their permission! To my surprise they were extremely responsive – I was shocked when the Sergeant in charge actually answered his phone on the first ring! But, as I learned after two days of back and forth, their response was negative. Permission needed approval from some higher-ups. I lost faith but wrote one more email trying to explain my case further – even if they did approve, there was no way I would get their approval in time for the shoot. An hour later, an email arrived while I was wondering what I would do. It was a yes! They had given me permission to use it for Kizuna! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I happily camped my butt in bumper to bumper traffic on the trip to Aldergrove to get the uniform. Costumes – check!

An early test shot from location scouting - note the crane is to the EAST of Woodwards - it's a luxury condo development. There is also a trendy new cafe at street level in the building directly to the left of the crane where the DTES locals line up for the smoked salmon panini... not.

Where to shoot it? Powell Street? Gentrification is marching east but it hadn’t reached Japantown quite yet (it probably will). I needed a place that demonstrated the real-estate steamroller effect on the Downtown Eastside community. The Woodward’s development was an obvious choice but I needed to check some facts first. I met with some community leaders I knew and began to do some fact checking. Woodward’s was ‘ground zero’ for the Woodsquat of 2002, where promises were made that eventually led to the end of the squat. While the community was invited to the table for extensive brainstorming of how the space would look and benefit the Downtown Eastside (most of which was ignored), and while some low income housing was included (75 family units, 125 single person units), the development of commercial and common spaces and over 500 market-rate condominiums (which sold out in hours at an average of $380,000), has proven also to be a vehicle for middle class outsiders, corporate tenants, and real-estate speculators to displace the poor. Today, Woodward’s is seen by Downtown Eastsiders as a literal reminder (two condo towers cast large shadows over the neighbourhood) and an iconic green light for gentrification east of Main. My choice for the location subtly shows the Woodwards building in the background, to the west (left), with community people (and the ghosts) symbolically walking away from it, eastward (right) – the direction which they are actually being displaced, and the direction that Japanese Canadians were also forced to move, 68 years ago. Location 1 of 3 – Check.

My early concept photograph for 'Dispossession' that decided the march would be "Ghosts" from the past. I also decided to place Woodward's more subtly in the background.

Initially my plan was that the Japanese Canadians would not appear as ghosts at all – they would be marching in the flesh, in costume right down Hastings with the present day neighbourhood people. That was the way it was going to be – until one day I pieced together a concept photo from my Hastings test shoot and the JCNM original. When I dropped these figures into the background, the idea for ghosts was decided. In addition to the symbolic meaning of something from the past, this approach would solve a number of other logistical and technical issues I was struggling with. I didn’t think I would have an authentic 1942 RCMP uniform and I didn’t know how authentic the other costumes would be (all were quite authentic in the end). I also fretted over the nightmare of arranging 10-15 people to hit their marks simultaneously, not to mention drawing a crowd of passers-by, and perhaps the Vancouver Police Department. On my budget, coordinating this safely and effectively was a major risk. But if I did ghosts… that brings us to location #2: the Greenscreen Shoot. This was easy. On my third call looking for a space, the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House offered both to manage traffic at the Day 1 Hastings shoot AND open up their space (AND provide healthy snacks!) for my makeshift greenscreen studio for the Day 2 Shoot. Location 2 of 3 – Check.

Kaylen and Tyler melting under the lights. It was a very hot day in very warm clothes under very hot lights. I think Nikolina, my wardrobe stylist, was just plain evil for making them wear scrarves!

The third location was the one I was less sure of. Somehow I needed to represent the first, and largest dispossession – that of the Coast Salish First Nations. I initially thought about including old-growth trees in the photo but my second choice was to place First Nations art strategically in the photo. But all of my calls to First Nations artists (Musqueam and Squamish I tried) were coming up empty. Trees it would be. Where are there trees that could represent those that once stood in the area now known as the Downtown Eastside? Stanley Park. Off I went. Location 3 of 3 – Check.

Wendy Charbonneau, a Squamish Junior Elder, in her regalia. She wore a cedar bark headband, an eagle feather and jewelry that was 900 years old!!

But were trees enough? The main contacts for First Nations leaders were away on vacation. Robert Bonner is Cree, and represents today’s aboriginal population in the Hastings scene, but Cree is not a First Nation of this area. Then, two days before the Greenscreen Shoot, Gary Johnston of the Native Education College returned my call to let me know his sister, Wendy Charbonneau, a Squamish Junior Elder, would be happy to appear in the photograph in full regalia. Wendy was the last piece in this complex puzzle of pre-production.
So three distinct and related communities had responded and were ready to go. Costumes were ready, locations selected. Then came the (relatively) easy part. Actually taking the photograph(s)…

My brother, Dr. Jeff Masuda, at the Vancouver Archives while we were researching the location of our grandparent's confectionery store.

The idea for this photograph was not mine. It was my brother’s. My brother, Dr. Jeff Masuda is a professor of human geography at the University of Manitoba now, but three years ago, we both coincidentally ended up moving to Vancouver within a month of each other.

He was doing a post-doc at UBC, researching the effect of environment on health, specifically in the inner city of Toronto, and the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. He brought me onto his project to teach his subjects how to take better photos with disposable cameras. That was my first real exposure to the Downtown Eastside. Another thing we both had in common was our family of course – in the 1920’s our grandparents worked in the confectionery store in New World Hotel across from Oppenheimer Park, right in the heart of Japantown, the Downtown Eastside. My Dad’s family joked that they had to quit that business because the kids were eating all of their profits. The family moved to Shawnigan Lake in the 1930’s where my Dad was born in 1941. In 1942 they were forced to move again, and they chose the Alberta sugar beet fields over internment camps, in order to keep the family from being split 3 ways.

My family in the sugar beet fields - my Dad is second from the left.

Last year I produced a documentary film about a research project that my brother was supervising and it was a successful collaboration – it’s still doing fairly well for both of us. Jeff subsequently suggested a topic for another film we would collaborate on, this time about the history of dispossessed communities in the area of the Downtown Eastside… First Nations, the Japanese Canadians, and the present-day Downtown Eastside.

In the meantime, I had been doing some volunteer work with the JCNM, the Downtown Eastside Neighbourhood House, the Powell Street Festival Society, and PIVOT Legal’s Hope In Shadows. In one project for SPARC BC I was lucky to find myself working with Rika Uto, Donna Nakamoto, and Scott Graham. It was there that I also met Lily Shinde who is on the Human Rights Committee of the Japanese Canadian Citizen’s Association – she and I spoke at length about the importance of remembering the internment, and frankly, until that conversation, I hadn’t thought a lot about it since my high school days. She inspired me to always remember and to think critically about that period in our history. I filed our conversation near the front of my mind to come back to later…

Lily Shinde and I at the Greenscreen shoot. Lily is my official community consultant for Kizuna, and a new friend!

In parallel with Kizuna, I began to do some research at the JCNM for this film. The first photograph I looked at in the collection struck me – the conversation with Lily surfaced – and I began to research more. My brother was visiting from Manitoba for this summer’s Powell Street Festival and I arranged a meeting with him, Lily and myself.

This photograph (circa 1942) from the JCNM collection, the very first one I saw during my research, inspired the aesthetic and the subject for Dispossession.

I proposed the idea for the photograph – and they were both enthusiastically on board. That was the green light I needed – I merged my research for the film and the Kizuna photograph and began to plan my August – this was an ambitious photograph – with only one month until the Kizuna show could this possibly be completed in time?

Not so long ago, I left the comfort and security of a well-paying glass tower office career to go to film school. Excuse me? Pardon? You did what? Long story short, besides the financial sacrifices that this decision brought, it was a very good one for my soul’s sake. A few months from graduating I was hired onto a documentary production called Vancouver Rising (airs this fall on Bravo and Knowledge), which tells the story of Vancouver’s world famous fine art photographers the likes of Jeff Wall, Rodney Graham, Ian Wallace, Christos Dikeakos and others.

Dead Troops Talk (1992) - Jeff Wall. An fictional scene of dead troops speaking and joking is staged with actors.

This job was a dream come true, but I just didn’t know it then. At the time fine art photography was pretty foreign to me and talking about fine art photography went right over my head. All of my work for previous decade had been Cartier-Bresson/documentary/decisive moment inspired, and it was this approach I assumed I would be taking or my Kizuna assignment. As I witnessed these photographers at work, listened to their interviews, attended their exhibitions with them, and was even offered a job on one of their productions (which I had to turn down not once but twice!! Due to prior commitments. Arrrgh!), I began to appreciate their approach. Rather than being the observer in the moment, with a camera in hand, most of their work was pre-visualized, planned, then shot and constructed meticulously over a period of months, sometimes years – for one photograph. It was a film production-like approach in many ways with extensive pre-production and post-production stages. The shooting itself occupies a relatively short amount of time (assuming it’s well-planned and goes smoothly).

Gastown Riot (2009) - Stan Douglas. You can see the real thing in the atrium of the Woodward's building. The scene was recreated, including the buildings, at location outside of Vancouver

May I bring to your attention the Stan Douglas photo of the Gastown Riots in the atrium of the Woodward’s building as an example (if you can’t find it, just look up). You can also view the work of any of these photographers at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Anyhow, as my idea for my subject finally began to gel only 10 months after being commissioned by the JCNM (with only one month remaining to do it!) it was this meticulously planned and constructed approach in creating a single image that I chose. Next… the idea.

The last week and a day has been superbly, crazily hectic. The actual shoot for this photograph occurred over three days, with several days before that going out for location scouting, test shooting and experimenting. When I wasn’t on a shoot I’ve been hunched over my computer 12-18 hours per day clicking and tapping, blending and masking. I definitely pushed the limits of my ability in this photo not to mention the limits of my equipment – in every way, this is my most ambitious and complex piece ever. I squeezed every pixel out of my 22 megapixel camera (the final photograph’s native resolution is a gnat’s breath over 200 megapixels – well how do you get a 200 Megapixel photo from a 22 Megapixel camera you ask? That’s no big secret but if you want to know you’ll have to come to show and ask me!). That file, at its largest, was pushing 8 Gigabytes (yes that’s 8 Gigabytes with a capital G) and brought my nearly-new i7 Mac to a crawl – THAT has never happened before. Whew. Okay, well thank you for letting me express my inner geek… now that that’s out of the way, let me tell you all of this was cake compared to the real work that happened BEFORE the last week and day, before any of the shooting began… in my next post.

Almost a year ago, I was asked by Beth Carter at the Japanese Canadian National Museum if I would create some original photography for a group exhibition, along with Mark Takeshi McGregor, Natalie Purschwitz and Miyuki Shinkai. This was quite an honour so naturally I accepted her invitation. I have created a new photograph called Dispossession that will be unveiled along with the works of three other artists of Japanese Canadian heritage.

Part of the project was to document our creative process. I will be posting a 5-part verbosity of the creative process behind Dispossession here on my blog. It also is viewable at the Kizuna blogsite.

The opening party is Friday, September 10 at 7pm at the Japanese Canadian National Museum, 6688 Southoaks Crescent in Burnaby, BC. The she party is open to everyone and tickets are $10.

I will also be doing an artist’s talk at the museum on Thursday, September 16 at 7pm where I will talk about the creation of this photo.

Stay tuned for my blog Part 1 of the creative process.

DOC BC will be hosting a live event at W2 Storyeum. You can attend the workshop in person or watch vie webcast from the DOC BC website – I do recommend watching from the UStream URL however as the video player is better quality than the one we are able to embed on the DOC BC site. The URL for this webcast is http://www.ustream.tv/channel/doc-bc-presents-countdown-to-storyville.

Last year I actually applied to pitch Surviving In The Cracks at Storyville and, after witnessing what really goes down (at Storyville VIFF and similarly at the Toronto Documentary Forum at Hot Docs), I admit I was a little relieved it wasn’t selected. It would be quite nerve racking to get up in front of a full house at the Vancity Theatre and tell a bunch of global industry professionals (with many many more years experience than I) why they should support/fund your film. This workshop is a great idea for people to practice their pitches in preparation for the real Storyville that will be taking place at VIFF in the fall. It should be an interesting evening indeed.

Here is DOC BC’s official blurb about the event:

The DOC BC Professional Development Committee is excited to introduce a unique opportunity for DOC members to test-drive Storyville pitches under the guidance of the esteemed RUDY BUTTIGNOL.

On Aug 9th, at W2 Storyeum, 151 West Cordova, Vancouver, starting at 6 PM, Rudy will join us in an interactive session to analyze and workshop project pitches. With the focus being on how to strengthen demos and improve oral presentations, this will be a valuable experience for participants and observers alike. Anyone is welcome to observe.

And a blurb about the live stream:

DOC BC will be streaming the workshop on Monday, AUGUST 9th, starting at 6 pm!

Are you a DOC member interested in volunteering?
Please email us at docbc@docbc.org

So here’s a second attempt at a timelapse and I’m still learning so please forgive the imperfections.

The biggest bother in this one are the jumps in the image 4 or 5 times in the sequence. I was shooting with a much longer focal length, about 110-120mm vs about 16mm before and I believe I also had the lens on Image Stabilization – the combination of these two were probably the cause of the jumps in the image you see. Even walking by the camera with these settings (on the second floor of wood and brick apartment building where the ground isn’t super stable like the concrete floor of my last apartment) would also explain where the jumps came from… shouldn’t IS keep the image from doing that? Fine vibrations are dampened by IS yes. Bumps or moves near the camera can set off the IS to adjust the image slightly that will appear as vibrations in this timelapse. That’s just a theory at this point – but I’ve worked with this lens long enough that I’m pretty confident that IS should have been off.

Other changes – I shot on large jpeg rather than raw (so I could get more images onto the card for a longer timelapse) – and had the intervalometer set to fire every 5 seconds rather than 15. This smooths out the motion and slows it down compared to my first timelapse but you can still see the trees in the foreground moving around erratically, which I understand can be smoothed out if I use a longer shutter speed to let the motion blur a bit. Next time.

BTW, this was shot through the bedroom window of my new apartment. Nice view huh?

Music is Joga by Bjork.

Oh and don’t forget to hit the fullscreen button to view it in 1080p!

I have been a professional photographer now for over a decade, but until last fall, I had not considered making photographs for the purpose of exhibiting them – besides a small amount of personal work, my photographs were made strictly for clients.

Then last November I was hired to work on a documentary film about photographers that began their rise to worldwide fame in the 1970′s. Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace, Rodney Graham, and others… and my ignorant presumption of the fine art world was that it was pretentious and self-important… but the more I was witness to their work, the more galleries I visited, and the more I heard these artists speak, the more my presumptions were shattered. My perceptions of the fine art world are now more of respect and appreciation. I was greatly inspired.

That inspiration has reignited my passion for photography. That passion has culminated in the creation of my own for-exhibition photographic piece – one that I will be unveiling at a group exhibition next Wednesday, July 7th, 7pm at the Mainspace Gallery, 350 East 2nd Ave in Vancouver. This is a one-night only show, so don’t miss it.

Hope In Shadows news short from 24Hrs Vancouver

Yesterday I was pleased to volunteer as the documentary photographer for the camera handout at Hope In Shadows photography contest. Hope In Shadows is produced by Pivot Legal Society, and provides residents of Vancouver’s Downtown East Side an opportunity to photograph their neighbourhood from their perspective – showing the lighter side of an area that most outsiders mistakenly dismiss as a dark and dangerous place. Contestants lined up outside the Interurban Gallery at 1 East Hastings to register for one of 200 single use cameras. With only 26 exposures each to capture their vision, some 4000 photos will be narrowed down to 30 winners, and then further reduced to the 12 that are then published in next year’s calendar. It’s quite amazing the emotional and aesthetic qualities in the photographs that result.

A Hope In Shadows contestant showing off his winning photo at the InterUrban Gallery

Some people might challenge what the net benefit of a contest like this is. I think that some of the more privileged residents of this city may believe that purchasing a Hope In Shadows calendar somehow excuses their ignorance of the oft-shunned ‘bad cousin’ of Vancouver’s family of communities. Knowingly or unknowingly they might even be contributing to the oppression of the Downtown East Side neighbourhood simply by going about their daily lives. Yes, I do believe that buying a calendar does provide some people and some organizations that vehicle. But on another level, I think about what the contest has brought to the neighbourhood – one, an uncommon opportunity for the contest’s participants to have a little creative fun with the excitement of pretty decent prizes and recognition. Two, the official vendors who sell the calendar on the street pocket 50% of the $20 price for every calendar they sell – this can provide a substantial income to some people for a portion of the year. Third, and perhaps the biggest impact is that the calendar may actually reach some people and change their perceptions… perhaps some of those people living a more privileged life are moved enough to ask themselves whether that community should be walked on, ignored, and misrepresented as it so often is. Case in point – myself. The first time I saw a Hope In Shadows calendar three years ago, it piqued my curiosity just enough to take a closer look at a neighbourhood that I was once afraid to enter (because of its portrayal in the media). Now, I’ve been volunteering there for over two years, and while I wouldn’t quite call myself an advocate, I could certainly be considered a conduit for advocates of the neighbourhood.

A Hope In Shadows volunteer shows a contestant how to operate the flash

In addition to photographing the camera handout this year (my photos have been published by Hope In Shadows by clicking on the photo above or here), I was also on the panel at the photo workshop (where contestants learn how to take better photos with a single use camera) and I just received the good news that I will also be one of four jurors in the selection of this year’s photos.

This is Hope In Shadows’ 8th annual contest and my second year volunteering – it’s quite an honour indeed. I’ve also embedded at the top a short news clip from 24Hrs Vancouver, who were on site to cover the event along with CBC, CTV, 1130AM Radio, and other media.