The year is almost up, and instead of talking about all the projects I didn't do (cause there's always so many) I want to talk about a project I am starting now. The (un-named) Blindfold Project! Two things made this idea happen: me being ridiculous, and a grant application. The grant application was the reason it became more that just a passing idea - it actually gave me a deadline and goals and shit... me being ridiculous is, well, where most of my ideas come from... Regardless, I am going to share  both the idea and part of the grant application... I give you my artist statement...

The Blindfold Project

In undertaking this project, I will explore the effect of removing the photographer's eye as the dominant creator of photographic imagery. I do this with the hope of accomplishing three main goals: to shift the traditional power dynamic between photographer and subject; to take a series of more instinctually-directed photographs; and, most interesting to me, to capture a [moment, image, beauty, subject] that is less censored than is typical of traditional portraiture. This project is comprised of a series of shoots where I, as the photographer, am blindfolded while shooting. The blindfold acts as an attempt to free the photographic process from some of the inherently oppressive frameworks built into how we, as a society, photograph. Only logistical concerns are addressed prior to the shoots (e.g., lighting, framing, etc.). Shoots take place in a studio to minimize distraction, and lighting will be even and simple for the sake of clarity. The camera acts as a passive recording device in this scenario, but exactly who or what is directing and creating the imagery is unknown, or at least unpredictable. In removing the artist's 'control' from the work, this process draws on a form of neo-automatism.

Early automatism - founded on the idea of creating "uncensored imagery" by not looking at the subjects of your drawing - was said to produce a record of your mind. Photography, unlike drawing, is an art form that cannot be created purely from within oneself; there is always an aspect of documentation, and thus a subject that must be documented. I'm interested in what possibilities exist for the medium of photography with an application of automatist ideologies. Furthermore, I am interested in what emerges when a second force (outside of my own subconscious mind) is added to the dynamic. Will the subject assume control ? Will the interactions and connection between me and them become the impetus for the image creation process? Will the image created be an uncensored look into "us"?

I use "the gaze" to refer to the inherent power imbalance that is created when a "something" is gazed upon. Laura Mulvey introduced this idea to a feminist realm by relating the maleness (or male-dominated reality) of the tools we use to re-create gazes and the seemingly inherent sexual portrayal of women created by those tools. Although Mulvey largely discusses film and does not relate her ideas directly to still photography, similar arguments undoubtedly apply when discussing visual language and the way we, as a society, look at women. Although I do not constitute the traditional patriarchal power often referenced when talking about the gaze in a feminist context, the important idea to note here is that the woman/subject is the thing that is projected upon, she is "the bearer of meaning, not the maker of meaning." With this in mind, I intend to create a space where power and sexuality can be put in the hands of the subject, and the maleness, or masculinity, is stripped from the tools.

...There you have it! If you have any suggestions, for names or otherwise, please let me know! And if it sounds like something you want to be involved in let me know even more!!! I have already started shooting but imagine I will being working on it for the next few months. Updates with pictures from the first couple of shoots will be coming soon! 

so it's official, i'm a big fancy photographer now a.k.a. I and now a part of the group of photographer that do studio work! a while back I was I a bit of a slump, and as an attempt to get myself out of i decided I was going to rent a studio for a day to play and do something different. thus started the great torontonian studio search... the only studio I had shot in that I really loved was the pikto studio, but I wasn't ready to hand out $800 just to pick myself up. I made lists, compared price, features, photos, you name it. 6 or 7 studios entered, one left victorious. enter studio kaizen. studio kaizen is a clean, gorgeous, fully featured studio in the west end of Toronto. shortly after deciding that this was the studio for me, I discovered something magical on craigslist (as I am an addict), I discovered an old studio kaizen posting looking for co-op renters. so i jumped on it. studio kaizen will now be the home of all N Maxwell Lander studio work! here's some stuff from my first two days in there... did i mention the wind machine???

Also, i should note, a large part of why i got involved here was because of the two people who run the studio, Dexter Quinto and Diem Franke. they are both lovely and talented photographers that i encourage you to stalk! expect more updates about the new family soon! 

First things first, if you don't know who Alexia Sinclair is, educate yourself. She's super fucking awesome, and the inspiration for this post. I logged into flickr today to see she had posted something new (this shot) and with it a behind the scenes video. In that video (for those of you who don't watch it...) she runs, very speedily, through her post processing. To me, it felt like a long time, like she was being ridiculously thorough, which I wasn't really surprised with seeing as the shoot was for the New Zealand Opera and her work seems like it would require a lot of finickiness. It made me feel like maybe I wasn't putting the amount of post processing into my shots that I should be, which got me wondering how finicky I would look. Hence, this video:

For further viewing, the finished shot is here. I like this process, and think I will probably start screen recording a lot of my work. Downfall: trying to find good open licensed music. If you know of any, please pass it along, it took forever to find the song in the video, which by the way is called I See by a group named Tryad.

More Soon! 

It's DIY time again! I bought my d300s a while back and it instantly became apparent that hand-holding would suffice only in very rare circumstances... and steadicams are far to expensive for anything hobby-related. Luckily, a lot of people have built DIY steadicams. Unluckily, not a lot of people have built them for DSLRs, the massively unbalanced things that they are. I waded through a whole lot of tutorials, and a whole lot of opinions, and came to the flying camera support. Outside of thinking ahead to how it would apply to a dslr it seemed like the smartest and best of the lot, SO we set out to make it happen! 

There were couple of major issue that needed to be addressed when trying to apply the flying camera support logic to a dslr. First: weight.  A dslr is significantly heavier than a pocket camcorder, and this was solved using metal piping instead of pvc piping. The second issue was od lenses and being able to adapt the rig to to the major weight and balance changes associated with them. Enter the most expensive piece of the project that was only cheap cause we had one laying around: the pano head. We used one of the sliding plates from a manfrotto 303 pano head. As you will see later we didn't do anything destructive to the plates, so it by no means disabled its use as a part of the pano head system, but I dont imagine it to be something a lot of people have lying around. You can find just the sliding plates for about $50, but really anything that would give you the ability to slide the camera forwards and backwards would work. The last issue, which we totally lucked out on, was the onesided weight of the dslr body. Our weights on the side ended up being completely adjustable, which saved our ass. With all the issues discussed, maybe I should just tell you what we did eh? 

Materials (please forgive my not official names for them):

2 x long 1/2" pipes for arms (ours are about 2 feet, but i would suggest something a little shorter so it doesn't end up so wide)
1 x short 1/2" pipe for middle
2 x 1/2" 45 degree angle corners
2 x 1/2" caps
Box of stove bolts (although zeebo recommends stainless steel 'cause we bent ours and had to replace them - they take a lot of the pressure of the rig)
Sliding plate from pano head with quick release plate
No name Ballhead - again, it was lying around...
4 random Weight Collars - they saved us!!
Teflon tape (optional, but totally came in handy)

Step 1

Attach both arms to 45 degree corners and then to the center piece. point of importance - get them lined up and as tight as you can. We used a bunch of Teflon tape to really get it on there hard. We also later on made the mistake of trying 90 degree corners, which I do not recommend. The trouble caused trying to get the arms to line up again was not worth the cost of a second dedicated center piece. Once they are on there, DON'T MOVE THEM! This thing gets really finicky if any of the parts shift with use...

Step 2

Drill 2 holes in the centerpiece to later screw to the bottom of the plate. Our plate already had screw holes, so we just lined them up to the center and drilled away. If you are going to be more forward thinking than us, place them slightly left of center to compensate for the handle of the dslr body being the heavier side. If not, that's ok, we manage with how it is.

Step 3

Screw on the base of the sliding plate with stove bolts (or if you've heeded my warning, stainless steel bolts/screws). Make sure that the plate is facing the right way so that it hangs off the back, if your base is picky and has one way that the plate can be pushed farther forward go with it. Also beware of where your tightening mechanism is, make sure you can easily tighten the plate. 

Step 4

Screw Ballhead into Base. The hole already existed on this plate, but we did need to add threading. I would highly recommend the manfrotto base, if for no other reason than it has a variety of holes, which makes it easy to configure. 

Step 5

Place weight collars on arms and screw on caps! Tada! You are done. Mount the camera on the plate, grease up the ballhead and throw it all on there (oh and you know, throw the ballhead on something... we used a monopod). Adjust the height of the weight collar to adjust the weight distribution. If you didn't place your centerpiece slightly off center, this is how you would compensate. 

SO there you have it! DIY DSLR Steadicam! It only cost me about $20 bucks, but I think if I had to buy all the parts it might be somewhere closer to $100. Still way cheaper than an actual steadicam... And it fucking works, check out the example video below.

Coming Soon: DIY Steadicam for DSLRs take 2 - a post based system that can fit through doorways. Also, for an alternate version of the video go to youtube or vimeo