‘Photography’ Archive
Cherry Blossom Girl
Today I went to High Park for what is probably the last day of Toronto’s cherry blossom season. In other parts of the world, they bloom earlier and last a bit longer, but because of the climate here, our peak cherry blossom season only lasts for a few days to a week! Tomorrow calls for rain, which will probably wash most of the niceness away. 
But hey, that’s why cameras were invented! And on that note, here are some of my own photos from today.
In conclusion, I’m excited that spring is finally here! I’ve been keeping busy these days with a few freelance web projects, as well as doing some graphic design. I just completed a fairly self-centered project: designing my own business cards. I can’t wait ’til they show up some time next week! I’ll post pictures once they arrive.
Notes:
• The collage above is made with my own pictures, using one of my favourite toys, Poladroid. I know I’ve mentioned Poladroid enough, but it’s so fun (and kitschy) that I can’t help myself.
• Post title is referencing the song — wait for it — Cherry Blossom Girl, by Air. Have a listen. It’s pretty.
Website revamp!
Hello all! Over the past couple of days I’ve been tweaking my site. Most of the changes probably won’t even be noticeable to anyone but myself, but I’m pretty happy about it all. I warn you, the following is all fairly geeky. To reward you in advance for reading, here’s a picture of a pretty field in Paris circa 2007.
Changes:
• My primary domain is now daraskolnick.com instead of openedeyes.net. I started with openedeyes.net back in 2006, and while I still like the name, I didn’t feel like that represented my portfolio website anymore. I used to have daraskolnick.com redirecting to openedeyes.net, but now it’s the other way around. I still own openedeyes.net and I have some plans for how to use it in the future!
• All of my pages run on WordPress now. I used to have a setup where my blog was running on WordPress and all of my other content (Art, Design, Photos, etc.) were static HTML pages. I felt like I wasn’t using WordPress to its fullest potential that way, and to be honest, updating all of the pages manually was annoying. After a bit of coding and tweaking, I now have WordPress running everything. It’s much better this way.
• I’ve replaced some images that were GIFs with PNGs. The transparency support is way better… that is, unless you’re using an old version of Internet Explorer. If that is the case, I have one word for you: Firefox.
• This isn’t brand new, but it’s still worth mentioning: I now have my email running through Google Apps. Basically that means that all email addresses I set up @daraskolnick.com run through Google’s servers, get the Gmail interface, and work with Google Calendars, Google Docs, and other such services. Love!
• I finally made myself a Favicon (the little icon that shows up next to the URL in your browser). I also added some shiny buttons at the side linking to my Twitter and Flickr accounts. I hang around on other social networking sites as well, but I’m the most active on those two. I might add more in the future. Or I might not. We’ll see.
That’s about it, really. To thank you for sticking with me through my nerdfest, here’s another picture that I took. This time it’s of Sacre Coeur.
(By the way, both pictures were made using Poladroid. If you miss polaroid film as much as I do, I encourage you to check this out!)
Hello from Austin!
Because photo posts are my favourite, here are some photos from my very brief visit to Austin, Texas.
Here (or hear), Kitty Kitty!
Ohh, so pretty. Down by the river.
Only 5 cents! Relieves fatigue! If this picture were a bit more zoomed out, you’d see that this is referring to Wrigley’s Spearmint gum.
(I guess people didn’t take the sign too seriously.)
As a Canadian, this was the first time I’d seen The Onion out in the wild like this. I was obviously pretty excited.
Photos: Colours of London
Red: At a café in West Kensington.
Green: A headless horseman! (ha ha 
)
Blue: Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square
As some of you might know, I travelled to Europe (specifically, England, France, Italy, and the Netherlands) this past May and June. I am just starting to process the photos, and what a daunting task it’s proving to be! Digital photography is convenient and cost effective (no more wasted film!), but also opens up the possibility of taking thousands of pictures that you’ll never have time to edit. I’m really enjoying going back over the photos, though, because they remind me of my awesome trip that now feels like a crazy dream. I was only in London for two days (tragic!!!) so that part of the trip really did go by in a whirlwind! More travel pictures are available at my flickr.
♥ Dara.
Photos: High Park Noir
Sometimes, there’s something to be said for imperfection.
Although I get (usually) crisp, clean images out of my digital cameras (except in low lighting situations where I stubbornly refuse to use the flash), there is something to be said for the grain and noise and imperfection of pictures that come out of a film SLR. Now, these images are more speckled and worn-looking because they were developed at home and I’m not exactly the most skilled film developer, having never taken photography in school. My brother and I use a bathroom with no windows to develop our rolls of film, and block off the light coming through the door with a blanket, hoping it keeps light tight. It’s a lot of fun in the end, though it’s a bit time consuming and frustrating when you’re trying to open film canisters and load film onto spools in the dark! After we’ve developed and washed our film, we scan it and then deal with the images on the computer. Somewhere along the way, a bit of dust and scratching made their way into the final product, but I think it adds something to the old look of the photos. These photos look like they could have been taken decades ago, instead of within the year. I love film for totally different reasons than I love digital cameras, in the same way that I enjoy vinyl but mostly listen to MP3s in reality.
Speaking of film, I’m quite sad that Polaroid is stopping production of its film sometime this year… it’s time to stock up! I hope that another company will keep producing the film so that I can freely use my Polaroid camera (a $6 Value Village find!) without wondering if the shot I’m taking will be my last.
♥ Dara.
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