I think it's safe to say that all the hard work we put into preparing for and putting on the Made in China art show at the cre8ery earlier this month paid off. The opening night and exhibit week was a success and our hearts were warmed by all those who stopped by to visit the gallery. Also, a big thanks to Jordan Miller for such a great venue and all her hard work.

Now that the show is down, I've had time to think about what I will do with the remainder of my prints. (one sold - but the rest are sitting in a heap in my office). I have big plans for framing and hanging them in my house, but until then, I thought I'd "hang" them in a blog post.

Hope to see you all at our next exhibit at the Cre8ery - slated for April 2011!

Posted by f/action member, Gabrielle Touchette.

'MADE IN CHINA' exhibition on now!

A great big THANK YOU to those of you who came out to Opening Night of f/action's exhibition "MADE IN CHINA" last night! We had a great turn-out and tons of positive feedback.  But fear not, you can still check it all out! It's at the Cre8ery Gallery, 2nd flr, 125 Adelaide st, Winnipeg.

Duncan is showing an uber-cool multi-layer installation piece, Ailsa has created beautiful pieces in graphic series, Gabrielle is showing a rainbow of colour with a personal installation piece, and I (Dallas) have 55 images from China on display and would love it if you came to check them out!

If you would still like to see the show, it is open:

Friday (today) - 12 noon to 5 pm

Saturday, June 5 - 12 noon to 5 pm

Sunday, June 6 - 12 noon to 5 pm

Monday, June 7 - 6 pm to 10 pm

Tuesday, June 8 - 12 noon to 5 pm

Hope to see you soon!

Posted by f/action member, Dallas Ludwick. Photos by Gabrielle Touchette, Duncan McNairnay and Chad Kroeker.

photos in your feed

Looking at photographs is one of the most important things you can do to advance your talent in photography. So since I waste a lot of time maintaining my social presence on the internet with certain networking sites starting with a lower case f, I thought it best to try to incorporate this as much as I can into my hours of useless perusement. Online galleries tapped into this valuable resource long ago and use the 'news feed' to send out updates on works they are exhibiting or featuring. What I see is in between my friends sometimes-interesting-but-mostly-benign status updates a barrage of images show up. Some so-so, some not my bag, some fantastic. Depends on the sites. For my interest I have found the following:

these are great;

Flak Photo

American Suburb X

these are ok;

seen.by photography

the photography post

urbanautica

I'm always on the lookout so if anyone knows any good ones, please comment.

posted by f/action member Duncan McNairnay

Bokeh of Stars!

I saw this once on another blog and wanted to try it out.

Using this...

To create this....

Simple, but took a few tries:

-I needed to use a 100mm lens to avoid vignetting

-also I had to shoot on shutter priority, and my meter only sort of worked.

-then I had to focus in manual and hold the cap up in front of my lens, not very practical in most situations, still with a little patience....

posted by f/action member Duncan McNairnay

World Pinhole Day

On April 24 f/action members embarked on Winnipeg's Exchange District for some much overdue gallery hopping, which included Nathalie Daoust's controversial 'Frozen In Time, Switzerland' at Ace Art gallery, Susy Oliveira's inspiring 'Your face, like a lone nocturnal garden in Worlds where Suns spin round!' at Platform gallery, and a very special camera obscura installation created by Andrew Milne and Sarah Anne Johnson housed temporarily in the lobby of 286 McDermot ave. The life sized camera obscura was created for World Pinhole Day which took place on April 25, 2010. It was pitch black when we first walked through the doors but once our eyes adjusted we were introduced to the magic. Reflecting on all the walls and floor space were the surrounding buildings outside. "A camera obscura (Latin for "dark room") projects an image from the outside onto a flat surface inside, through a pinhole. The external scene is reproduced, upside-down, with color and perspective preserved." We spent a good 30 minutes in there reveling at the wonder of it all. Shown below are some long exposures of our visit along with some shots from Susy Oliveira's exhibit at Platform Gallery.






Posted by Ailsa Dyson

How the hell do you spell dyptich anyway?....

Two separate nights, one involving hookah smoking and the other involving Touch The Universe science museum, happened to be on the same memory card. Instead of posting them online separately I thought I'd pair them up.

Also check out these rad diptychs by Michael Schmelling while you're in the mood.

posted by f/action member Duncan McNairnay

Jason Collett, Bahamas and Zeus, all under one roof. Yes!

Winnipeg's West End Cultural Centre was alive with music this past Saturday (as they often are) with amazing talent and great music. This weekend's show-goers were treated to some awesome musicianship: a mélange of talented artists blending music, songwriting and singing all in one. Jason Collett headed up the show with his friends and (I believe?) former bandmates: Bahamas and Zeus. An all-around great night at a venue I never get tired of going to.

Exploring large format

Large format cameras are kind of in a league of their own.

Not a better league than, say medium format or digital photography, just different.

I have noticed that, after a grasp of how a 35mm SLR works, I was able to basically figure out how to operate

most other cameras out there... except for this one.

Sure the basic concepts of photography still apply, but this is a different machine, with a different interface, operating system and, most importantly, different capabilities.

Looking at ground glass is one of the most enchanting moments I have exper

ienced as a photographer.... like a live still photo. Its hard to go back to looking through a viewfinder after experiencing this.

All those dials and shafts and knobs in the photo up top are the reason I bought the camera. Each one controls the lens plain and the film plain independently. This allows for in-camera distorting of the image (like to correct converging lines, or to exaggerate a shape) known as 'tilt-shift'.

The effect that I love is a 3D control of the focal plain axis. I can control the angle at which the depth of field cuts through the frame. Add this to the fact that dof can get a lot shallower on such a large format with such long focal lengths and there is a whole new world of dof.

The trouble is with so many possible creative

effects in-camera, it takes a good 5 minutes for me to set up a picture. This slows down the work pace and leads to a deliberate, methodic way of photographing. Completely opposite to SLR shooting.

In coming posts I will show what I've come up with as I try to get a handle on this type of photography.

post by f/action member Duncan McNairnay