FAQ Update and Booking Dates

I recently updated my Photo FAQ and now am in the midst of preparing photo booking dates for this spring and summer 2009. If you are organizing a family event, book launch, engagement, or even a wedding, please consider contacting me to discuss your photographic needs to cover your special occasion and event.

The Kids

Let's Dance

David Bowie

Some nights Matthew (2 1/2 years old now) and I dance to YouTube. This one is usually on the play list. Let's Dance? Yeah!

Iris

I recently upgraded my printer to an Epson R2880. It prints phenomenally well. The quality is much more awesome, so much so that I am no longer going to my favourite lab that may or may not be calibrated to my specifications.

Since I mainly photograph for the blog blog.johnwmacdonald.com and of course, provide customers digital files for books and magazines, printing has taken a back seat unfortunately. The new printer is a tool which flex the creative muscles. Taking a photo and printing the photo are two very different skill sets.

Having the printer at my side instead of driving downtown to deliver the CD and pick up the prints is a bonus. Colour management is now much easier to master. I can quickly test all the printer colour files at my disposal; test different kinds of paper; decide whether printing with a black point compensation is better; and knowing that, for me, relative colorimetric intent provides the best print possible. All in all printing my photos has increased my enjoyment of photography that much more.

Jason "Blackbird" Selman

Blackbird plays his trumpet at Scribology in Ottawa.

Bio via www.kalmunity.com/play.htm
A graduate of Concordia University with a BFA (specialization in Jazz Studies), Jason Selman has been performing on the Montreal Arts scene as both Performance Poet and Musician for the last 10 years. In addition using these talents in the service of Montreal’s Black Theatre Workshop “Youth Works” youth theatre program and releasing his first self-published collection of poems, Psychological, in 2003, he is currently working on a collection of jazz poems entitled The Freedom I Stole. In May 2005 he began producing Intimate Sky , a poetry, music and song series and a branch of Kalmunity.

Arar and Mazigh Event

(Ottawa, March 13, 2009)--Maher Arar and Monia Mazigh, the Ottawa couple whose personal ordeal resulting from a botched security investigation became an international scandal, will join a panel of distinguished journalists at Carleton University to discuss media ethics and coverage of Muslims in a time of terror.

The event is open to the public. It takes place at 7 p.m. Monday, March 23 in Porter Hall, second floor of the University Centre on the Carleton campus.

Ian MacLeod, national security correspondent for The Ottawa Citizen, and Evan Dyer, a CBC Radio News correspondent who covered the Arar case, will appear on the panel along with Faiza Hirji, a Carleton instructor whose research includes communications issues related to Muslims. Jeff Sallot, a Carleton journalism professor and former Globe and Mail correspondent, will moderate the panel.

Kat Von D

Tattoo artist and TV celebrity, Kat Von D, www.katvond.net appeared in Ottawa this week to sign copies of her book "High Voltage Tattoo".

Tom Hanson - RIP

I read the very sad news on Blair Gable's blog that CP photographer, Tom Hanson, died recently. http://blairgable.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/tom-hanson-1967-2009. I did not know Tom personally but knew of his brilliant news photography and photographed alongside him on several occasions in Ottawa in the last couple of years. More info (and his photos) here: http://www.ctv.ca/gallery/html/Hanson_20090311/photo_0.html

Scribology Prep

Free Will and Sergio of the Young Griot Collective go over the set list prior to the evening's Scribology event.

Kat Von D in Ottawa

Tattoo artist and TV celebrity, Kat Von D, www.katvond.net appeared in Ottawa this week to sign copies of her book "High Voltage Tattoo".