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Archive for category: Splorpist

Photos in the genre of Grant Hutchinson’s Splorp.com

   (2006.02.15)

Now you know where they get their fuel. SOYLENT ZAMBONI IS PEOPLE!

Profile view of white Zamboni levered open in a three-piece zigzag, with two people visible behind it at the wall of a skating rink

I initially missed this shot (and you know how I hate that), but the firefightron, who was, sadly, not Chris the Fireman, obligingly reënacted this news story for me, just like on network television.

Red Toronto fire engine’s cab rotates away from the wheels along the axis of the front bumper, with an open service panel on the main body behind it
   (2006.02.11)

This THRILL-CAM shot depicts a full-sized Lande Rovère with Ontario and (apparently) British plates (front plate is one row, black type on white) and what I thought were ill-rendered numerals on its spare-tire cover. After I noticed the bumper sticker, I decided I was looking at Hebrew.

The left rear seat (the one behind the steering wheel, another oddity) contained a child restraint; the driver, évidemment, was busy talking on a shoephone.

If I had to drive from Brighton to Toronto I’m not sure I’d start out in Tel Aviv, but that’s just me, innit?

   (2006.02.08)
Aluminum ductwork seated on a sidewalk resembles a numeral 1
   (2006.02.02)

Everyone’s favourite even-keeled, superhirsute Iranian-Canadian photobloggeur, Sam Javanrouh (q.v.), addressed a capacity crowd at Hart House last night. He walked us through various of his photos and slideshows and demonstrated, in a just-barely-comprehensible fashion, what he does in Photoshop to turn sow’s ears into purses. Sam also recapitulated a Spacer-style autobiography by telling us he hated Toronto when he moved here. I guess that problem’s been solved.

And this is what he looked like.

Balding man in red plaid shirt faces away and stands in a bay window between empty wooden easels

Actually, I walked smartly up to the podium the minute Q&A ended, surprising the much-beloved émigré in the process. I all but forced the man with the notoriously thick lens to stand between the nearby denuded easels for another back-on shot, which I described as “schtick by now.” Sam gamely complied, if with some almost-fully-concealed bewilderment and annoyance.

He claims to be shy, but this is clearly situational, as he has no trouble addressing a crowd. Mostly he claims to be shy to ask his infrequent human subjects for permission to be photographed. Often he compensates by publishing photos in which people are unidentifiable.

But look at the shot James Tilberg got. There seems to be a trend of shooting the shooter from behind even as that same shooter also tries to shoot human subjects in an unidentifiable way. If splorpist photographs are ambiguous, seemingly timeless street photos à la Splorp.com, are javanrouhist photographs carefully composed so that no faces are visible?

Well, I think they are, but then again my nonce words scarcely ever catch on (save for standardista).

   (2006.01.27)
Truck fender has illustrations of six green-and-yellow grasshoppers in workboots and shades striking different poses, with the last two seated and stretched out on its back
   (2006.01.25)

The portable inventory system for this store is indeed a suitcase-mounted computer running DOS attached to an Epson dot-matrix printer with tractor-feed paper.

Case holds large keyboard and, in lid, a colour computer screen, with printer sitting alongside on another closed case

They can’t upgrade to letter-quality?

And does it run WordPerfect 3.1?

   (2006.01.20)

At least this one wasn’t seen during the blazing heat of summer.

Illustrated warning label on back of bright-red snowplow blade has the number 22 in large Helvetica type
   (2006.01.12)

Where exactly do you get a pickup body made of corrugated steel?

Rear of rain-spattered pickup truck is made of stubbly corrugated steel, with black walls extending upward from the sides of its bed
   (2006.01.07)

“Metropolis” nail sculpture, City Hall.

Angled view of a sea of silver and brass nails forming undulating patterns like fortresses around a coliseum

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