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One of the most important things in life is to know where you do and don't fit.
Kind words , praise and high fives, don't translate to an abundant life. They are great bonuses, but in order to be effective and stable in the long term, the most important factor is positioning. If you find a space in the world, on the internet etc, where people value what you do correctly, and you can deliver to them consistently and at a quality standard that makes their lives better , you'll be set. Ignore what they say, watch what they do. The actions of people show how they value you.
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It's been a long long time since I've gone to a concert.
Happy to be back. Shot on my Google Pixel phone.  Kodak Vision 3 500T
Shot my first music video on these steps.              This is probably one of the last rolls I'll put through this Nikon F3 for a while.
Moving to my own F5 and putting dad's cam to rest for a bit.  Processed / Graded  Original , shot by Jerome Hof on the Kinefinity Mavo Edge This is a key part of how I study :
When learning stuff I usually try to find something to do in the form of drills daily to find new processes and points of failure. Have you found there's anything like this that works for you? Lately I'm just alternating between a few things : taking images and trying to fit them into the world of a movie that I like, or I'm taking shots and trying to solve / build a personal style . (in this reference's case I find there's often a lot of untapped detail and color variation "sleeping" in the image. Density + Luminance channel sharpening + scaling push + monochromatic noise ( creating perceptual sharpness) + pushing more colour separation. Also sometimes I'm drawing workflow charts to make sense of things. (Like mentally splitting overall tonal range from contrast ratio.)    Street photography has always been a point of comfort for me. It's a part of how I got my start as a cinematographer.
I used to spend weekends with friends and we'd just walk around Toronto and go to parties, shooting photos Friday to Sunday. Each week I'd come back with a few thousand shots. Over time that led to the ability to catch and balance compositions more efficiently. Sometimes there's only an instant where everything sits right in the frame. It's the most low stress training ground. Playing professionally. This set is from Chinatown ( Spadina ) . Another stack to the process is Colour Grading. Lately I've been spending a lot of time in classes, learning about the under the hood aspects of post colour. With the right information and the right tools ( sometimes custom tools) , I'm seeing that I can really dig in and enhance images as my understanding develops. It's a little odd looking back realizing how much has changed over the past few years.  Nothing could prepare me for the fact that a single image would represent a 7 year journey of healing and transformation.
My journey started when I'd just moved home from college and my father was dying of cancer. It was the day after I got home and I asked if there was any advice that he could give me. He said," don't let anyone , even my passing stop you. Go out and become what you want to be." That was our last day. I decided soon after that I wanted to travel the world and to be a photographer. I took his lenses with me. After travelling to Japan , Taipei and Shanghai, training my eye, I came home. The journeys gradually let me find myself. 7 years out from that conversation I took this image. Healed and whole, I can now say with confidence that I'm a photographer.  My first time shooting on the Hasselblad XPan thanks to Aidan from Aidan Camera.
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MANIKKOn a journey. Searching for something. Sharing what's found. History
August 2024
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