Matt Feldman Photography
A single shot from my first attempt at a tilt-shift sequence. The idea was to test techniques (intervals, shutter speed, etc.) for what will eventually become a tilt-shift…
Toronto is one of my favourite cities in the world, and one I don’t visit nearly often enough. This shot, part of my ongoing TTC Series, was taken on the northbound platform of the Queen subway station.
After working in the east African country of Malawi for two weeks, an unexpected 30 hours in The Netherlands was a world of nearly polar opposites. A walk around Amsterdam, a train to Maastricht, carnival celebrations and snow. This was taken in Utrecht, in the all-too-brief minutes between changing trains, bound for Schiphol on a Sunday afternoon.
For my first blog post of 2012, a return to familiar and loved subjects: train stations, train travel, Paris and, more broadly, Europe. I’ve returned to Paris after a 6 year absence from the city, and although I now have digital photo gear, I’m resisting temptation to reshoot old favourites. Well, mostly resisting.
Walking just the distance of a few gates in Detroit’s McNamara Terminal, our global connectivity laid bare. Cleveland, Seoul, Amsterdam, Sault Sainte Marie. A few steps but a window to the world. It never stops seeming cool to me. And as a global health practitioner, in the coolness are challenges.
Taken on my amazing Mediterranean trip in 2004, I’ve reprocessed this one to have more contrast and detail from inside the train. I’ve missed the photography of European…
On the platform at the Aldershot GO Train Station.
From the Westbound section of the Toronto’s Sheppard subway line, this is a different take on the tunnel-in-motion look I posted previously.
My previous wanderings around the Toronto transit system had never really included the Spadina-Downsview section of the map. Lots of interesting locations out there, including this from Dupont…
The bouncing and rattling of the older model subway car on the Sheppard line wasn’t conducive to smooth long-exposure photos. In all, it took more than 50 attempts…
The tilt-shift technique of faux-miniaturization has seen a lot of use in the past year, with amazing still subjects and short films like The Sandpit. So while my wheels…
A monstrous day of travel brought me from the Sahara desert oasis town of Tozeur back to the Mediterranean’s capital of apathy and pissedoffedness: Athens, Greece.
In the interest of space and internet cafe time, I’m going to leave this one out. But suffice to say that a train ride aboard a beast called The Red Lizard, into a place where there are no roads, was one of the most amazing rail trips I’ve ever taken.
Things have been, surprisingly, rather free from catastrophe as of late. But there will be much less to say after this email — I’m packing it in and heading home early. Plans for the Czech Republic and Italy have been abandoned and Poland had to be curtailed.
There are no smiles here. There are no families with strollers and balloons and ice cream for the kids. There is nobody selling ornamental models of monuments. No souvenir key chains or fold-out postcard sets or coffee mugs or t-shirts. There are no smiles here. There is horror. There is anguish. There is silence. And death.
Death was imminent. I was sure of it. It was so humid that the word “air” could be used only sparingly. And it was so hot that there may as well have been an onion on my head and a tomato in my mouth: I was being roasted alive. The thermometer pegged the temperature at 72oC (162oF).
The first bombs fell about 10 pm. Their arrival was no surprise — journalists left the city two days prior. Residents gathered in Cold War-era shelters as the air raid sirens wailed and radio reports warned of the need for gas masks. The state-run television station blinked out. Explosions erupted around the city and the lights went black.
Welcome to Cannes, where the idle rich luxuriate and vaporize large sums of their money, all in shocking disregard for struggling backpackers. While beach chairs and umbrellas rent for €30 outside the Cannes Inter-Continental (€400 and above per night), the sand on the free slice of beach, with the backpacking, pasta-and-sauce eating, tap-water-drinking proletariat, is every bit as nice.
From Barcelona, Samy and I head to Perpignan, France, to stay with his aunt and their family. It is an exciting three nights of cultural immersion, culminating in the highly enriching experience of an elegant night of fine French cinema at its intellectual best: The Punisher (in French).
Morocco has been officially rocked. Aboard the ferry to Spain, I spent my last Dirhams on insanely cheap Smirnoff and candy bars. It was quite a way to go out.
I was in the line to visit the ship’s Moroccan immigration officers when I noticed the guy in the line beside me. He looked, well, Moroccan. And in his hand was a Canadian passport. After reading wild tales of hucksters and scam artists, I was keen to know if the ship’s currency exchange rate was decent.
Despite the theft of my wallet and the ensuing hassle that caused, Lisbon (are its residents called “Lisbians”?) was nice. Any city moves up in my rankings when it can offer me an enormous meal of a whole fish, soup, potatoes and vegetables for less than five dollars.
A light drizzle coats the back of the camera hanging around my neck. Released from the steel gray sky, the tiny drops aggregate on the plastic as I stand lingering, idling amidst the ebb and flow of travelers. A stiff, cold breeze abruptly enters the mix and the reaction is instantaneous amongst the crowd: scarves get wrapped tighter and jackets get zipped up higher and gloves are pulled more snug.
Casting off for an extended voyage is a paradigm shift in the experience of usual, brief sojourns. I cherish the basics: Having only beginning and end points to a trip. The freedom to think of time as a minor, abstract detail — able to move in any direction, to capitalize on any moment. Spontaneity. Serendipity. Experience. As for so many travelers, these themes have become my very definition of escape.
