out, out, out!

i'm out! high school, it's over! also, picked up my $500 scholarship check. awww yeeeeh. well not totally over. still have french + bio provincials. but that's nothing. i'm out now. photowalks galor--- nope. working all weekend, goddamn. but otherwise.

anyways, the second i did my math final, when i was really quite done, went to downtown. to see the aftermath, the cleanup effort post-riot. god the riot was retarded. but, what really represented vancouver imo, was the cleanup. not 12 hours after downtown was trashed, thousands of people were out there cleaning it up. by the time i got there (about 4something), most of it was pretty cleaned up. but it was an amazing sight to behold. very poignant - the words on the boards were quite something to read....enough spam, here're some shots i took of the cleanup:

this is probably my favorite shot of the cleanup. FA limited classic 3D-ness, in spades here

this was pretty damn sad. the mannequin was burned to a crisp.

m-m-m-matttang!

shit, it was good to get out with the k-5/fa43. i'm starting to quite love this combo. it's only been my 2nd photowalk with this thing yet i'm at 5k + shutter activations now, wow. but man, it's great to hold my camera in hand. and it works amazingly well as a street camera. just footsteps are probably loud enough to drown out the shutter sound, and focussing is quite nice and rapid. i don't know what it is though, but after post, a lot of my shots seem to be a bit underexposed...it's not the originals, which are fine, but something in my editing process....hm.....

"My God, what's happened here?"

I think this shot has a lot of potential but I'm not totally pleased with it yet..

I love this shot. It begs for a B&W, but the hair and book just give it such a nice colour shock I had to leave it like this.

this photo is something of proof that I'm getting more confident in street photography now. Like in this shot, I waited for him to look up  at me before I snapped - usually I try to avoid being spotted, sniper style.

this and "my god, what's happened here" are examples of this new thing I'm trying out. focusing on the background, which normally wouldn't be as prominent in the shot, so as to better tell a story. like in both cases, if i focused on the men, then the backgrounds would become irrelevant and you wouldn't even look at that on first glance. however, like this, i think it's like your eye goes between what's sharp - the broken glass, the poster - and what's recognizable, what's human and sympathize-able - the men. and so there's more correlation between the two elements, and thus, more of a story.

imo, anyways. ^__^