Hanging with the Hip
By Andrew Tolson - Wednesday, February 29, 2012 - 0 Comments
When Joseph Boyden said he was heading up to the Arctic basin to write a story for us, I was anxious to join him and photograph that part of the country. When he said the Tragically Hip were coming along too, I had visions of the legendary rock band playing on an ice floe while polar bears nipped at their guitar cords. As it turns out, the Hip and Boyden were in Fort Albany, Ontario to attend The Great Moon Gathering, an annual conference that brings together teachers from all of the eight Omushkego Education Authorities and surrounding communities.
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A tale of two pigs (or three, actually)
By Andrew Tolson - Friday, January 13, 2012 at 8:03 AM - 0 Comments
What I love about my job is the variety of people, and sometimes animals, I get to meet and photograph. For Rebecca Eckler’s story on domesticated pigs, I photographed two families with two different circumstances. Julie Chen and her family have ‘Henry’, a micro-mini pig who, along with their dog Betty, is considered a pet. Young Henry moves fast, so half the time I was running flat out to keep up with him. (And the thing with animals of this size is you have to get down to their perspective, otherwise you’re always shooting their backs.) Susan Morris runs ‘Snooters’ an animal sanctuary an hour outside of Toronto. Morris has a number of rescued pigs that roam both her hobby farm and her house. The pigs from Snooters are older and it was difficult getting them to do anything other than lie on the floor and sleep, which I can understand because in human years these two would be positively geriatric.
Henry is a micro mini pig who lives with Jill Chen and her family in Toronto.
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Our 10 favourite news photos of 2011
By Andrew Tolson - Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 6:43 PM - 0 Comments
Every year, thousands of photographs are viewed, edited argued over, and finally selected by Maclean’s photo department for the pages of the magazine. For the Year in Pictures issue, we were looking for the best images that told the story of 2011. A great news photograph must do many things besides record a moment, the most important of which is to create an emotional response in the reader. Joy, outrage, sympathy, laughter; you know it when you see it. Below are our 10 favourite news photos of 2011.
Anti-Mubarak demonstrators clash with Mubarak supporters on the outer edge of Tahrir Square in Cairo for a second day. Most of the conflict involved throwing stones though the occasional molotov cocktail was also used. (Photograph by Roger Lemoyne)
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Shooting stars at TIFF
By Andrew Tolson - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 1:20 PM - 2 Comments
Movie stars don’t have a lot of time.
When you’re photographing them, there’s no asking about their Aunt Phyllis or how their golf swing is progressing. Yes, there’s small talk of the ‘How are you liking Toronto?’ variety, but really, they just want you to get the shot and move on. They have a red carpet to walk, scripts to read, multi-million dollar deals to sign, and, presumably, eating and sleeping to do. For the Movie Star, this is all part of their job; the promoting, the glad-handing and the quickie hotel room portraits. It’s all business.
Which is why you only have one minute to take the photograph.
For the Movie Star, there are varying degrees of involvement in the shoot. Most endure it like a grumpy kid having their picture taken with Santa Claus. Some enjoy the exercise, such as David Cronenberg, who cordially offered me his very effective Death Stare. Sarah Silverman had fun posing as if she were cramped into a photo booth. For some Movie Stars of a certain vintage, it’s about controlling their image: Juliette Binoche insisted on critiquing every frame and pronounced I “had the shot,” when I wasn’t sure I did.
(She was right. I did.)
But during that single minute I have with the Movie Star, it’s always an odd sensation, being so close to someone who is normally forty feet tall. Because after you’ve been face to face with them, in some anonymous hotel room or bland boardroom, you can’t help but feel the Movie Star seems, well, kind of normal.
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Shooting Ralph Fiennes
Ralph Fiennes
Emily Blunt
Juliette Binoche
David Thewlis
Sarah Gadon
Scott Speedman
John Lydon, AKA Johnny Rotten
Sarah Polley
David Cronenberg
Sarah Silverman
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In praise of crappy snapshots
By Andrew Tolson - Thursday, September 1, 2011 at 4:09 PM - 3 Comments
When it came to photographing Jake Richler’s story on cooking with different flours, the obvious choice was to shoot at the Arva Flour Mills, in Arva, Ontario, Canada’s oldest water powered flour mill. The mill is a museum piece of belt-driven grinders and wooden shutes, and the building shakes under the perpetual earthquake of the century old machinery. Despite using high quality digital cameras for the majority of photographs that run in the magazine, this location called for a more lo-fi approach to the visuals. I’ve been in love with the Hipstamatic app for the iPhone since it came out last year, which renders the photos with a nostalgic sometimes washed out and grainy look. The irony is not lost on me that despite using some of the world’s finest photographic technology, sometimes crappy snapshots are the best way to tell a story.
