Welcome to pinkheadedbug.com, a site shamelessly devoted to my own photography.
I'm not a photographer by trade - as a screenwriter and director, my medium is film - but I have always felt that the viewfinder of a camera offered the most direct and unmediated way of showing how I saw the world.
For me, street photography (loosely defined) is the purest form of expression.
At its best, it's visual jazz, carving the world up in new ways and reassembling it. At it's worst it's derivative documentary, or simply incompetent.
Street photography is one of the most personally challenging forms of photography. Unless you want to use hidden cameras, or shoot from the hip, thus sacrificing your control over the frame, you must overcome your natural inhibition about taking photographs of strangers without asking their permission.
It's also technically challenging: there are no second chances in street photography, and often hardly time to get the camera to your eye, never mind focus and expose.
But, as its practitioners will tell you, it's also one of the most rewarding, and even addictive forms of photography.
There are, as far as I am aware, no recorded instances of anyone getting rich through street photography (though a few have managed by aping its style).
28 March 2003
Okay, it's been a while, I admit it. But today I added two galleries (A State of Independence and In-Between Places) both attempts to depict the Canada that I live in. I've also added a link to Work-in-Progress that pulls together some of my 360 degree panoramas and a portrait project I shot using a 4x5 camera.
I'm also linking to Project Hipshot, which is an experiment I carried out in January, shooting nine rolls from the hip and then asking other people to edit them.
Finally I've begun a weblog which I hope will be updated much more frequently than this site!
11 February 2002
Added a portfolio of images from the City of Angels.
21 January 2002
Began a picture-a-week project. Check in regularly for this week's picture.
...seeing an opportunity, moving towards it, juggling the visual elements until... CLICK... you think you have it... then later hardly daring to look at the film as it comes out of the fix in case what you thought was there isn't there... but it is...
...and it's a new fact, a new discovery, a new truth about the world you brought to light through your own resources and your own luck, well...
...that's a great feeling.
John Brownlow
(aka Johnny Deadman)
Toronto, May 2001