Tag: <span>colour</span>

Toronto streets in colour, Toronto In Colour: the 1980s,
Yonge and Dundas, Toronto, 1982 – © Avard Woolaver

I thought I’d post some Toronto streets in colour for a change, as most of my output in the 1980s was in black and white. There is another reason, too. Shortly, I’ll be releasing a new book titled, Toronto In Colour: the 1980s that features a collection of colour photographs not seen in the previous three Toronto books; many of these images, in fact, haven’t ever been posted or published at all.

These decades old photos have been saved for the future. At 1/60 of a second per photo, there is only a few seconds worth of time in the entire book. Yet the photographs are so full of history and information, with stories both obvious, and unknown; both real and imagined. For me having the ability to stop time for an instant still seems magical.

Corey Rice writes about Roland Barthes’s analysis of a photograph: “When we look at a photograph, we are confronted with what Barthes labels the “having-been-there” quality of its contents. It is a testament to the existence of a specific thing in a specific place at a specific time. I can paint your portrait from anywhere in the world, but I can photograph you only when you are in front of my camera. Similarly, a photograph offers a view of the world that you will never have access to except through the photo. You can look but you cannot touch. A photograph can only show the past—but it represents it in such a way that it appears in the present. This paradox lends every photograph a touch of nostalgia or longing.” 

The older I get, it seems the more my nostalgia grows for those days in my twenties, walking around the streets of Toronto with my camera.  I hope you enjoy this small selection from my upcoming book. Stay tuned!

Toronto streets in colour, Toronto In Colour: the 1980s,
Queen Street West, Toronto, 1982 – © Avard Woolaver

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Toronto streets in colour, Toronto In Colour: the 1980s,
Yonge Street, Toronto, 1982 – © Avard Woolaver

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Toronto streets in colour, Toronto In Colour: the 1980s,
Watching Chess, Yonge and Gould, Toronto, 1983 – © Avard Woolaver

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Toronto,
Rio Theatre, Yonge Street, Toronto, 1982 – © Avard Woolaver

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Toronto streets in colour, Toronto In Colour: the 1980s,
Bloor Street West, Toronto, 1982 – © Avard Woolaver

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Toronto streets in colour, Toronto In Colour: the 1980s,
Yonge Street, Toronto, 1982 – © Avard Woolaver

Photography Toronto

colour, Colourville, photobook,
Bedford, Nova Scotia, 2017 – © Avard Woolaver

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Colourville, photobook, colour,
Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, 2018 – © Avard Woolaver

I’ve always been amazed at how images, like words, can convey so much emotion. I have always thought of black and white photography as an abstract medium and colour photography as a psychological medium. American photographer Elliot Erwitt said, “With colour you describe; with black and white you interpret.” If it’s true that colour appeals to our emotion and leaves less to our imagination, then it makes sense for us to be judicious in using it.

This can have a lot to do with how the photo is framed—how much of a particular colour, or colours to leave in or crop out.  When I view a scene, then, I look for ways to combine colours–for me, it’s about balance. Sometimes a tiny splash of red is enough to counteract a sea of green, or a little orange goes well with a lot of blue. There are no hard and fast rules here, but the conscious combining of colour is something I keep in mind when I’m out with my camera.

The photos in this post are from my new book Colourville. In this book I take a visual trek across the colour spectrum following the colours on the rainbow flag seen above. Violet to indigo, to blue, green, yellow, orange, red, pink, and finally grey. It is my hope that the photos are interesting on their own, without the colour connections. They are a glimpse into Colourville—a marvellous place.

Violet:

colour, Colourville, photobook, violet,
Newport, Nova Scotia, 2010 – © Avard Woolaver

Indigo:

colour, Colourville, photobook, indigo,
Newport, Nova Scotia, 2015 – © Avard Woolaver

Blue:

colour, Colourville, photobook, blue,
Newport, Nova Scotia, 2018 – © Avard Woolaver

Green:

colour, Colourville, photobook, green,
Elmsdale, Nova Scotia, 2018 – © Avard Woolaver

Yellow:

colour, Colourville, photobook, yellow,
Wolfville, Nova Scotia, 2018 – © Avard Woolaver

Orange:

colour, Colourville, photobook, orange,
Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, 2018 – © Avard Woolaver

Red:

colour, Colourville, photobook, red,
Scotch Village, Nova Scotia, 2018 – © Avard Woolaver

Pink:

colour, Colourville, photobook, pink,
Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, 2018 – © Avard Woolaver

Grey:

colour, Colourville, photobook, grey,
Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia, 2016 – © Avard Woolaver

Colourville is available through Blurb Books.

Colour Photography

Colourville, photo book, 2019,

Colourville is a place in my mind where colour lives, the part of my brain where colours meet and mingle. It’s what propels me to record colour scenes with my camera. But it wasn’t always this way.

For a long time, my photos were almost all black and white. I paid a great deal of attention to lines and form and the abstract qualities that monochrome provided. My influences had been Robert Frank and Lee Friedlander who were all about documenting the social landscape. It seemed that this type of photography was so much better suited to black and white, or as Frank called it, “the colours of hope and despair.” The price was another big reason to use black and white. A darkroom could be set up anywhere, and it wasn’t so difficult or expensive to process and print black and white film. I had almost no access to a colour darkroom. It was 90% black and white and 10% colour.

While attending Ryerson in Toronto, I did learn how to process and print colour film. Thanks to a wonderful professor named Don Snyder, I became quite proficient at colour printing but didn’t get use the skill for several years.

In the 1990s, when I co-owned and operated a custom photo lab in Toronto, the hundreds of hours spent balancing prints, dialling in the cyan, magenta, and yellow, taught me so much. I learned more about colour photography doing this, than in the previous decades of photography.

One client was a designer whose understanding of colour astonished me. She created a line of elegant women’s fashion, and our lab printed catalogues for her annual shows. Not only could she identify and choose from among subtle differences in colour on a print, she could even remember shades without looking at them—the way some people have an uncanny gift for recalling the characteristics of a wine they tasted years earlier, or a music performance heard in childhood. Working with clients like her helped me understand colour precision, and relationships between colours. It made me appreciate the photographic potential of the world around me in a new way.

When I began using a digital camera in 2006, I began shooting almost entirely in colour. Living in the country, I became more aware of light temperature and natural colour casts in the sky. And I no longer needed a colour darkroom. The magic that I felt in my early days of photography had returned.

In this book I take a trek across the colour spectrum following the colours on the rainbow flag seen on page 2. Violet to indigo, to blue, green, yellow, orange, red, pink, and finally gray. I also have included images that serve as a transition between two colours. It is my hope that the photos are interesting on their own, without the colour connections. They are a glimpse into Colourville—a marvellous place.

Colourville is available through Blurb Books.

Colourville, photobook, colour,
Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia, 2018 – © Avard Woolaver


photo book Photography

Yonge Street, Toronto, 1982, emotion,
Yonge Street, Toronto, 1982 – © Avard Woolaver

I’ve always been amazed at how images, like words, can convey so much emotion. I have always thought of black and white photography as an abstract medium and colour photography as a psychological medium. American photographer Elliot Erwitt said, “With colour you describe; with black and white you interpret.” If it’s true that colour appeals to our emotion and leaves less to our imagination, then it makes sense for us to be judicious in using it.

This can have a lot to do with how the photo is framed—how much of a particular colour, or colours to leave in or crop out.  When I view a scene, then, I look for ways to combine colours–for me, it’s about balance. Sometimes a tiny splash of red is enough to counteract a sea of green, or a little orange goes well with a lot of blue. There are no hard and fast rules here, but the conscious combining of colour is something to keep in mind when you’re out taking photos.

On Instagram there are dozens of filters to choose from, each giving the image a certain look, but it seems the most-used Instagram filter is “normal”–that is, roughly the colours our eye sees. And that’s good news for an old-school guy (like me) who believes that colour is something to be observed, not added with a filter.

Blogging Film Photography Photography Toronto

Halifax, Nova Scotia, high angle photography,
Spring Garden and Queen, Halifax, 2019 © Avard Woolaver

High angle photography has always interested me. You get a different perspective with a bird’s eye view of the world. High angle shots have been used as a technique in cinema to create drama and make the subject seem weak or vulnerable. Or, as a wide shot to establish the scene.

In my younger days living in Toronto, I used to climb fire escapes to get a different view of the streets and architecture. These days, I take fewer risks, but I still look for high angle locations. The photo above was taken from the reading room at the Halifax Central Library. It’s a fifth floor cantilever that juts out over the entrance and provides and great view of the nearby intersection.

It brings to mind the song Gift Shop by the Tragically Hip where Gord Downie sings “we get to feel small from high up above.”

Blogging Photography