Hello! I’m Dara, and I made this site so that I could stop telling people that I did photography, design, and art; I wanted to be able to show them instead. This is my portfolio site.

About me

If you came here to find out more about me, I have provided some Very Juicy And Exciting Details for your reading pleasure. It’s more interesting than a CV, isn’t it?

Name: Dara Skolnick
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Occupation:Web & graphic designer, gallery intern, event planner… I’m fairly versatile.
Education: In June 2008, I graduated from the University of Toronto with an Honours BA in History & Fine Art History. In the fall of 2009, I took Graphic Design courses at George Brown College.
Favourite music: Chopin, Debussy, Depeche Mode, Massive Attack, Bjork, Air, Jeff Buckley, The White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand, etc.
Favourite authors: P.G. Wodehouse, Stephen Fry, Robertson Davies, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe
Favourite artists: Alphonse Mucha, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, Turner, Renoir, Monet, Manet, Hiroshige, various Pre-Raphaelites, and Andy Warhol.
Favourite philosophers: Aristotle (because he codified logic), John Stuart Mill (because he was a liberal and a feminist), Nietzsche (because he was just so wonderfully angsty), and Charles Fourier (because he was insane and prophesied that the oceans would eventually turn to lemonade).

About this site

My domain is hand coded by myself with valid XHTML and CSS. I do my best to validate my code and test my site in many different browsers, because I’d like everyone to able to see my website! (Even those using IE6!) If something looks awry, please let me know. I use Espresso to code, and Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to create and edit graphics. I do all of my work on my very lovely 15″ MacBook Pro. Also, quite importantly, my galleries are powered by the fantastic Lightbox JS v2.0 and my site is run with the magic of Wordpress.

About my photography

If you’re one of those people who likes to know about equipment, I own six cameras: a Nikon D70s (digital), a Fuji Finepix F31fd (digital), a Nikon F801 (film) an Olympus XA (film), a Polaroid camera and a Holga. Most of the pictures on this site were taken with my digital cameras. When it comes down to it, though, I’m of the opinion that equipment isn’t an all-important factor in photography, and that someone with a good eye can take a good picture with almost anything (well, except for my camera phone). However, different cameras and different media will of course colour any work with a distinct flavour!