[Kilgore Trout]

These photos were taken last February.

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[urbandreamer]

i slept in the cobalt....

...and never got eaten by bedbugs!

Love the "orange" photo. Also the amc eagle--that car was so far ahead of its time no wonder it sank the company's fortunes!

Oh that sign by the ivanhoe: ha! I stayed@the 'hoe for 5 months what fun times!

Did you make it to north van? Interesting little residential nabes around grand boulevard.

There's a few things that bug me about van: so little respect for its architectural history being my main beef with that burg.

 

[ganjavih]

Great photos. So many pics of Vancouver are of its shiny new condos. Nice to see the real gritty urban side.

 

[Pep'rJack]

Great photos. So many pics of Vancouver are of its shiny new condos. Nice to see the real gritty urban side.

Funny you should say that. This is the most intriguing photo series of Vancouver that I've ever seen, but not for obvious reasons. I know the city pretty well and (unfortunately) have been living here for about a year now - the depiction of Van as seen above is nearly unrecognizable to me. I've been repeatedly looking at this thread for a little while now, trying to figure out what the hell DeWolf has done to create this highly idiosyncratic impression of the city. He's taken shots of many familiar downtown streets, but they 'feel' completely different in the images than they do in person. The light and saturation are 'all wrong' - Van just never actually looks that way in 'tone'. I'm really not quite sure what creates this effect - Ganjavih has apparently assumed that it's the choice of subjects (the grittier side of town), which seems reasonable, but actually doesn't account for it in most cases: Broadway and Robson, for instance, are simply not gritty, yet they appear to be in this spread. My guess is that the 'culprit' is the obvious thick post effect applied to seemingly all the shots in this and the other recently posted threads. You could take a large number of the shots above and randomly insert them into almost any one of his typical Montreal threads, and someone who wasn't familiar with either city would not be able to tell the difference - the same absolutely cannot be said about actually walking the depicted streets in both cities: they are very different in appearance and 'feel'. It's quite fascinating how the heavy imposition of a personal photographic style can so dramatically alter 'reality'. Yeah, I know that everyone 'sees' differently, but some pov's are more removed from the 'objective' reality of a place than others. It's enough to make me begin to reconsider what the nature of "great photos" actually is.

Sometime over the next couple o' months I'm gonna do a Van series in order to present a completely different impression of this city. (Anyone have any requests for infrequently seen areas of town they'd like to see?)

 

[urbandreamer]

suggestions for photos of...

1st avenue; west broadway (greektown and near dunbar/ubc 10ave)

Victoria Drive.

East hastings Sunshine village and the residential streets off of Commercial Drive (between the drive and victoria drive--those wooden homes juxtaposed with those ugly stucco apt buildings in Spring.)

The City Hall Residential and apt building area. Oak ST, Cambie Mall area; Mount Pleasant/Main St corridor.

Basically any nabes not in the downtown area--i'm sick of downtown i've seen so many photos of that area (having walked those streets hundreds of times as well) that i could build a lego model of downtown in my living room!

Old Burnaby residential.

From my pov, Main/Hastings/Chinatown was really depressing scummy area. Nice old buildings that looked great just after a rainfall in winter when all the drunks were either indoors drunk or asleep. By day: really crummy.

Vancouver: somethings wrong with the place, eh? (I understand your "unfortunately" in vancouver phrase.)

Yeah Van is nice if you're a jetsetting yuppie. As a working class stiff or just-graduated-from uni-bottom of the ladder type--terrible. A very small-minded town that while amazingly beautiful (setting and landscaping) and laid back, feels too isolated to those who grew up east of lake huron.

 

[officedweller]

Pic 70 - I'm not at home...

... - the same absolutely cannot be said about actually walking the depicted streets in both cities: they are very different in appearance and 'feel'.

Could be the cropping and the wide angle view of shots. When walking down the street, you rarely do so with a wide focus - you're usually focussed on the space directly in front of you. If you stop at a spot and, say, focus at infinity or look up and around you take in more or get a broader sense of what is around you than you ordinarily would if you were just walking through. I think that's what a camera does, versus what you normally see when walking down a street trying to avoid other pedestrians.

 

[Mr.Tang]

picture #28 - did they ever make Grace into an ugly building with that paint job. That used to be such a cool looking building. Too bad.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Did you make it to north van? Interesting little residential nabes around grand boulevard.

I've been to North Van many times but the last time I actually took photos there was in the summer of 2004. Lonsdale is a surprising commercial strip.

Broadway and Robson, for instance, are simply not gritty, yet they appear to be in this spread.

robson certainly isn't gritty and i can't fathom how you see it as such in this thread. as for broadway, well, i actually find it to be a very gritty street, especially around main. i only have one or two photos of broadway in this thread and they were taken in mount pleasant.

as for my "heavy imposition" of "a personal photographic style" i'm not entirely sure i see what you mean. yes, every photographer sees things differently and the simple act of focusing on one thing over another involves a certain amount of bias. but you have to consider that my photos are snapshots: i didn't alter them in any way.

in any case, i have photos of glassy condos and i have photos the downtown eastside. i don't really see how i've misrepresented vancouver.