Photography & the Arts

Site's under construction- most of the key parts are here, but check back soon for more!

Photography is my visual art of choice when I'm away from the drawing board. I tend to experiment a lot, manipulating light and colour in unusual ways in the hunt for interesting visual effects.

If you're in or near Kingston, Ontario and are interested in a unique portrait, personal or commercial shoot, I might be the photographer you're looking for. (This section of the site is still under construction, so it might look a bit sparse for now- and please contact me if something's missing or broken.)

If you see something here that would look good on your wall, ask about ordering a print.

Photography: Articles & Ramblings

Snowdrifts

Submitted by Matthew on

The calendar may say it's Naw-Ruz (and therefore spring), but here in Kingston we're not quite free of the snow.

What's left on the lawns now isn't too pretty, but there were a few nice snow days earlier in the winter. Drifting snow plus the wind off the lake can result in some intriguing natural sculptures- and a near complete loss of any sense of scale.

Canoeing on a dead-calm lake at sunrise

Submitted by Matthew on

Canoes are simply amazing little boats. They have no systems, no motors, no sails, none of the usual trappings of maritime life. The boat is really nothing more than a hull, a thwart or two, and a place to sit.

And yet this simple boat is a veritable magic carpet, taking you to an unfathomable number of secret, hidden places where no other vessel can travel.

Construction site foibles

Submitted by Matthew on

This is not the correct way to use a dumpster.

'Nuff said.

Cute puppies for New Year's

Submitted by Matthew on

It has been a busy, crazy, roller-coaster week. So here's a cute puppy to end it with.

Canoe at sunrise

Submitted by Matthew on

If you own (or borrow) one of these amazing little boats, this will surely be a welcome sight for the first day of winter.

DNG: The solution to proprietary RAW files

Submitted by Matthew on

Almost every new camera seems to bring a new, proprietary file format that nothing else can work with at first. It's quite likely that, 25 years from now, software capable of reading today's proprietary formats will be difficult or impossible to find- in which case your gigabytes of old photos would be unreadable. Is there a solution to this problem?

TL;DR: When shooting RAW, convert the camera raw files to DNG format, and save the DNGs instead of the original raw files.

Freezing a campfire

Submitted by Matthew on

Fire can be really fascinating stuff. Trying to freeze it in an image is tricky- it is not in the nature of fire to stay still

Kiteboarders being crazy

Submitted by Matthew on

Halfway through November, with the thermometer hovering near zero at night, it's far too easy to dream of summer.

Nothing says summer quite like watersports, so let's take a quick break from November to look back at this summer's kiteboarding action.

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