Posts in category "Video"

Baby Scary Party

Leave it to Fédéric and Misun to host an awe­some cos­tume par­ty, even though Halloween was over two weeks ago. They decid­ed to have a par­ty any­way, in a part of town where they only had two trick-or-treaters. There was quite a decent turnout (about 40 chil­dren) with­out hav­ing done any adver­tis­ing, save for a fli­er on their door, and I’m sure they all left tired and full from numer­ous sweets.

Of note is the wood­en cas­tle in the back­yard, which Fédéric built for the kids, and which they quite appro­pri­ate­ly adored.

Europe 2010 travel diaries

House Show II

I’m still catch­ing my breath from the awe­some­ness that was the sec­ond House Show. So much plan­ning, prepa­ra­tion, and prac­tice went into one night that I felt like I’d giv­en birth when it was over; I did­n’t know how to feel, or what to think.

Darren came up the day before to hang out, and along with Shane, Blais (his son), and Chris, stayed until Sunday. After the show we stayed up talk­ing, pick­ing Shane’s brain about his com­po­si­tion process and influ­ences. Everything went bet­ter than I could have planned, and I’m thank­ful that so many of my friends were there to share the expe­ri­ence with me.

cupcakes

Meet the cupcakes (from left to right):

Black and White (Belgian dark choco­late cake with vanil­la frost­ing and choco­late sprin­kles), straw­ber­ry (pure straw­ber­ry cake with sweet cream cheese frost­ing and red sug­ar flower on top), hazel­nut choco­late (hazel­nut-choco­late cake with Belgian dark choco­late frost­ing dec­o­rat­ed with a toast­ed hazel­nut on top), vanil­la (vanil­la cake and frost­ing, flavoured with Madagascar bour­bon vanil­la with sprin­kles), and key lime pie (lime-infused cake and cream cheese frost­ing with lime zest).

Continue read­ing “House Show II”…

Crystal + Jae-In Wedding Day

Shot with a Canon 5D Mk II, most­ly using my new 70–200mm f/2.8 IS II. Be sure to watch in high def­i­n­i­tion, and let the video load com­plete­ly before play­ing because the pac­ing and momen­tum are cru­cial.

Editing took about 25 hours, and I’m super hap­py with the way it turned out. There were so many great moments, and the footage has a won­der­ful­ly vis­cer­al feel to it. The most chal­leng­ing part of post-pro­cess­ing was colour bal­anc­ing all the footage, which I had to do shot-by-shot. When you’re film­ing for an entire day, you tend to get a huge vari­ety of light sources and tem­per­a­tures.

A note about the tea cer­e­monies. The first one was the Chinese ver­sion, which allows rel­a­tives to hand red pock­ets or jew­el­ery (usu­al­ly gold and jade) to the new cou­ple. The sec­ond one was Korean, named Paebaek, and is much more elab­o­rate. Relatives line up for a for­mal bow, tea serv­ing, then throw a hand­ful of dates (rep­re­sent­ing girls) and chest­nuts (rep­re­sent­ing boys) to be caught by the bride and groom with a blan­ket. The num­ber of dates and chest­nuts caught sig­ni­fies how many chil­dren they’ll have. No sur­prise that grand­pa only grabbed chest­nuts.

Then the bride is giv­en one of the dates they caught, and the groom has to take a bite out of it from her mouth. The per­son who ends up with the big­ger piece is the one who will wear the pants (which is why you see the bride tena­cious­ly try­ing to keep the big­ger piece for her­self). At the end, the groom has to car­ry his moth­er and moth­er-in-law around the cer­e­mo­ny table, then car­ry his new bride out of the hall.

Also, this:

dad at wedding

 

August ending

August passed me by.

My Tai Chi stu­dio closed at the begin­ning of the month due to the new provin­cial tax pol­i­cy. I was going to look for anoth­er stu­dio, but I haven’t had a chance. Instead, I took up singing lessons. It did­n’t help that Starcraft 2 came out, and the fact that most of my friends pur­chased it too so there’s always at least one per­son online and ready to play with me.

greeting Audra

 

Continue read­ing “August end­ing”…

Transplant

I got the chance to work with Team Emily to doc­u­ment their lat­est artist vision, titled Transplant. The bril­liant con­cept:

This sum­mer, Emily Comeau (a fibre artist from Quebec) and Emily Cook (a book and paper artist from Ontario) will be col­lab­o­rat­ing to cre­ate an immense and inter­ac­tive tun­nel book made from local plant mate­ri­als to install in a bar­ren patch of city.

Transplant is an out­door liv­ing book instal­la­tion. Constructed from found nat­ur­al mate­ri­als both liv­ing and dead, this instal­la­tion is sub­ject to the whims of nature and the designs of man. Each page of this book resem­bles an arch invit­ing the audi­ence to enter the immense tun­nel book. Within the pages are paper pock­ets where seeds will begin to sprout as the struc­ture is grad­u­al­ly beat­en down by the weath­er. Additional arches/pages will be added through­out the exhi­bi­tion as the evo­lu­tion of decay and growth take over. This evo­lu­tion speaks to the ebb and flow of con­struc­tion and decay as the man­made world inter­acts with the nat­ur­al one. The sto­ry of this project is one of trans­for­ma­tion and recla­ma­tion of the urban land­scape by nature. It is the sto­ry of a cycle of decay and rebirth and of a bal­ance that can be achieved when nature’s col­lab­o­ra­tion is desired rather than fought

The sun­light com­ing through the seed­ed paper is such a won­der­ful­ly strik­ing image. This is just the first arch­way, con­struct­ed on the lawn at the Ottawa Arts Court, which is a very high-pro­file place (you can see the Rideau Centre right across the street). More details and orna­ments are planned as the project con­tin­ues over the next year.

My desire to record things comes from the fact that most things in this world are so ephemer­al. This being a struc­ture that can dis­solve in the rain, as well as being an area fre­quent­ed by drunks1 and home­less peo­ple, meant I was pret­ty adamant about doc­u­ment­ing the whole process.

  1. As we were leav­ing the area at the end of the day, some guy just up and peed into the bush­es next to us. [↩]