Absolute Photo

The Fine Art of Black & White Photography

I'm excited to share with you that myself, along with two other Canadian photographers, are featured in the April 2014 issue of Absolute Photo. This well written piece by Kingsley Singleton goes beyond the how and digs deeper into why. Sharing some of our philosophies and motivations for choosing black and white in a colour dominated world. The innovative magazine is made for the iPad, available only at the iTunes store. Defiantly worth picking up.

A huge thanks to Kingsley for inviting me to be apart of this. It was an honour and a great experience. Also check out the great work from the other photographers in the feature. Dave MacVicar and my friend Grant Murray

The Arrival

Well, here we are, finally. After talking about this for way too long, due to good mixture of procrastination and somewhat poor excuses, I have finally shipped. This is my new site and I'm quite happy with it and the way it has turned out. If you were at all familiar with my old site you'll probably notice some definite changes. Changes like a more focused approach to my portfolios. You may also notice a lack of colour with my photographs. It's not that I am against colour,actually I quite enjoy it. Black and White however, is the medium that I am currently most comfortable with and I feel that it works best with the photos I am making.

So why a new site? What was wrong with your old one?

Those were some of the questions and or responses I would get when mentioning I was building one. So here are a few answers:

I was really wanted a cleaner, fresher look and the software (www.squarespace.com) I use had come out with their new version (yes I know that was in 2012) that had a lot of new, highly customizable templates to choose from. I took my time learning the ins and outs of most of the templates and just how to get the look and feel I was wanting. More on the nerd side of why, is when squarespace launched their new software, it was more than just new templates. It had been rewritten from the ground up. They changed everything and the way you now add content and edit your site is so much nicer and intuitive then previously, the nerd in me couldn't pass it up.

A second reason is I have been wanting a way to sell prints from my website, without you needing to jump through hoops to do so. Along with the slew of new templates, along came the ability to do just that. I am excited to implement that into the site, I just haven't set that part in motions just yet but it will be coming soon.

There is a handful of people I would like to thank that have helped me with this project. Either with giving an objective view on the basic look of the site. With the curation of photographs and proofreading /editing through portions of the writing and just overall encouragement. To save myself and possibly the ones who I am thanking from embarrassment, I'll just say; you know who you are. Without your help this may have never been completed.

Thank you.

-Kris Schofield

Sunsets

I've seen a lot of them. Some have been blah or so-so. Most have been stereotypical but rarely over the top.

On Saturday Jan 18 my wife and I went out for a drive. We went down to Nanton, Ab. Then headed west to Black Diamond and Turner Valley. While walking around Black Diamond after a visit to the Blue Rock Gallery, there was a really nice chinook arc just to the west of us. Time to head back home. We went through Turner Valley and the curiosity of flood damage got the better of me. That's when it happened. The blanket of red. Not just the sky, but everything.

This sunset fell into the category of over the top. Well over. The photos of this I tried with my SLR I haven't taken a look at just yet. But I am extremely happy I had my phone with me to at least record what we were seeing. And that's where these photos are from. My phone. Unedited. Enjoy. I sure did.

The Parks (maybe…)

Back in the summer my wife and I had a an awesome trip to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. This was the second time we had gone here. Our first visit to the park was only for a day and a half, kinda silly sounding I know. It was apart of a 3 week, roughly 8000km road trip we took for our 10th anniversary.

After being there for just a few hours we quickly knew our allotted time was not nearly enough. We had to keep in mind we were treating it more as a recon trip to see of where we would like to go for longer in the future. Other than Yellowstone we went to Zion, Death Valley, Sequoia, Yosemite, Kings Canyon, San Francisco, Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park, and continued up the coast to Astoria, Or, Seattle then home. They are all amazing places and want to go back to each one some time and spend some proper time at each. In the end, it seems that Yellowstone had topped the list for both of us.

With that trip, along with some other shorter ones and with living relatively close to a good selection of National, Provincial and State parks. I have collected a good amount of photographs for a series I will be sharing soon. I'm still tossing a name around but leaning towards something simple like

The Parks - where man communes with the maker

I am equally excited with this one as I am about my Abandoned Alberta series. Here is a teaser for the upcoming series: Wild Goose Island, Glacier National Park, MT

Wild Goose Island, Glacier National Park, MT

The results of deep and forward

In my last post I mentioned about being stuck in waist deep snow while people drive on past. This week I would like to share what I was making while getting both legs cemented in the deep.

This photo was again born of 3 photographs taken vertically and stitched together. All were regular exposures. It's a bit if an experiment I am trying to get more from less (possibly more on the experiment in a later post). It's also photo I am considering for my Abandoned Alberta series:

a series documenting the old and decrepit farms, houses, barns, etc, that are spread across the rural landscape of Alberta. If only these walls could speak…

A number of years ago I started that series, but with a lack of direction it quickly became stagnant . Unsure how to move forward I let it sit for a while, maybe too long. Over the past two years I have been fine tuning how I would like to show these "forgotten" areas that litter the Albertan landscape and after countless hours and thousands of kilometres I am almost ready.

Those who see me know I've been talking about the update to my site for far far too long. And probably have given up on me actually doing it (I was close to one of them). But I am happy to say that in the coming weeks there will be a new site, with new portfolios and a new overall look to it. I'm quite excited about it.

Thats all for now. Thanks for reading.

-Kris