Wallace Koopmans Artlog

There is an enormous tailing pond at the Highland Valley Copper  mine  and I want to try to create an image that gives a sense of the scale.  At this point I’m just exploring the relationship of the elements: the sky, mountains, water and the tailings.  I did a small watercolour sketch to start but I think I will need to work some more and decide if it would work better as a print or a painting.  The sketch itself doesn’t really convey the scale or clearly define the tailings but that is the point of working through these issues before embarking on a larger piece.

When I recently saw stacks of logs waiting to be processed I knew that I wanted to create an image that linked the raw materials together.  These two images are merely an intermediate state for these trees and it is for the viewer to envisage a time before and after for them.  Either as trees or the end products that surround us.

I have just returned from a trip which required driving through half of British Columbia.  There are nearly endless opportunities to photograph on a trip like this so  I brought several cameras with me.  I took some photographs with the intent of applying the miniature filter of the Pentax K-7 and while stopped at a restaurant and waiting for my meal this is the results I came up with.

Like many people I love repeating patterns and am awed by things where scale is outside the norm.  I noticed this log sorting yard while driving past on the highway but it wasn’t until I drove around on some back roads that the scale of it became clear.

It was raining quite heavily and I had limited time but I hope the images convey some of the scale.

Living Room Zoom

Here is another attempt at dealing with images that require a scale greater than what a web browser generally affords.  By clicking on the thumbnail you can navagate into the image and pan and zoom.

This was taken with my Yashica setup to create the distortion. http://wkoopmans.ca/notebook/?p=200

The imagery I think is clear even if the image isn’t.  The steps in the cemetery look like a ladder which seems to be there to help achieve some form of ascension, even a tree has been removed to clear the  path.

I haven’t had the time to do much photography lately and my studio isn’t ready for me to paint in yet so I thought I would take a moment to look at some older images that haven’t been published yet.

I thought it was interesting how this image came to be posted.  I took a Polaroid of this sign and because my main computer and scanner are still in boxes as I write this I took a picture of the picture with my camera phone and then uploaded it to Flickr so that it would be automatically re-sized.  I then copied the resulting image to my children’s laptop where I now sit typing on it’s tiny keyboard and uploading the image to this blog.

In order to see the world  in new ways, well for me at least that is a desirable thing, it’s necessary to look at little things.  This can mean going back to look closer at something as happened with this image.  It would have been very easy to ignore this but the contrast of colour caught my eye and by careful framing with my Nokia N95 I was able to produce an image I like that is both about something and about the design of the image at the same time.

I have been very busy lately and the reason is that I have moved and will need to set up my new studio space.  This picture is from the brief period of time before all the disorder of delivery.   I’m really looking forward to getting it set up to my liking but there will be many pressures that will take away from my creative time.