After seeing mini moo cards around for the last few months, I have decided to give them a try myself. After sorting through dozens and dozens of images I was able to choose several that I thought would work. Will report on feedback in a future post. They look pretty good, and though there are some images that don’t lend them self to the format, there are several that do, and these are the ones I am most happy with.

The quality looks good, and I love the feel, texture and finish of the cards, though there are a few printing/cutting errors in the form of slivers of white around the edges on a couple of the cards. The errors are random and don’t affect one specific card. Overall I am pretty happy with the way they look. I have had a love hate relationship with business cards over the years, from my first professionally printed cards which I received some jolly ridicule for their lack of graphic quality “for a photographer,” to my first issued card with a huge copy editing error on the office toll free number. It was taking callers to an adult hot line and when I & other colleagues pointed out the error, we were told to fix it in pen.

These are my first cards with photos, and I will likely order more in the future. Plus, it’s always fun to find little parcels in the mailbox!

Just a few pics from last Saturday’s 12X12 Photo Marathon. Not too sure how my pics turned out, but it’s been so long since I shot film that I am a little short on hope. Here are a couple of outtake images. Looking though my digital outtakes I see pictures that I would have liked to have captured on film, alas.

Nonetheless it was great fun to spend the day with so many photo geeks. It was truly a marathon with tired feet, blisters and cat naps in Blenz. Will look forward to next year when I’ve committed myself to not over thinking the event and tracking down equipment with a little less technology behind it. I have just the camera in mind, a little Rollei automatic with light leaks.

Thanks to all who made 12X12 happen, it was a great event and I am looking forward to the next!

Oh, two more:

How I looked near the end.                How I felt near the end.

Emme Rogers puckers for the camera and for some calendar kissing. I didn’t stay quite as long as I wanted to and I didn’t nearly get enough pics of all the cool people at the table. Thanks for the support, contact me for a copy of the Reading is Sexy Calendar.

In the end I shot eight of the twelve months of Emme Rogers’ Reading is Sexy Calendar, it was great fun and I got to work with a number of true characters all playing it up in front of my lens. Check my recent work gallery for more from Reading Is Sexy.

From Movieset.com

‘We Live In Public’ – Rob Reports from VIFF

Posted: October 20th, 2009 

‘We Live In Public‘

Screened at Granville 7, Vancouver International Film Festival on October 14, 2009
Director: Ondi Timoner

By Robert Shaer

I made a quick moment for Twitter minutes before the Vancouver International Film Festival screening of Ondi Timoner’s award winning documentary of lesser-known internet pioneer Josh Harris;

#VIFF #WeLiveInPublic.

21 quick characters shared with those who follow my Twitter and FaceBook feeds to let them know where I was at that moment, regardless of their interest. The telltale reflection of smartphone screens on other faces in the audience suggested I wasn’t the only one taking a moment to broadcast with others what we were up to.

Described as ‘the greatest internet pioneer you’ve never heard of’, Josh Harris’ path through the 90’s, from .com millionaire to web-casting visionary to financial refugee, hiding in Ethiopia from US creditors, is painted across Ondi Timoner’s film with great candor and remarkable fairness for Harris, who left a wake of alienated and estranged relationships when he left the map at the end of his fall.

Though the curious madness of Harris owns the spotlight of ‘We Live In Public’, the film charts the rise and fall of the wild financial speculation that surrounded the internet in the 1990’s and serves as a portrait of this era. Harris, like so many others experienced an Icarus-like fall after meteoric growth. Though he remains an obscure figure among many better-known names from that era, Harris’ experience is unique owning to his wild curiosity for human relationships caught on camera and a tremendous archive of footage from projects Pseudo.com, Quiet and ‘We Live Public‘ from which Timoner found the name for her film.

With intimate and long term access Timoner draws on footage culled from Harris’ personal archive and almost a decade of her own footage for her 90 minute exploration of the early days of user-generated content years before FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube started to broadcast our lives via broad band connections. Timoner presents for her audience a vision of Harris as a social pioneer and an early adopter of technology driven by creativity and vanity desperate for personal validation through virtual relationships.

Running from the financial success of Jupiter Communications with a net worth of nearly 80 million dollars, Harris went on to launch Pseudo.com in 1993, a webcasting network and competitor to traditional TV. Offering streaming programming on any variety of subjects, Harris attracted presenters cast from the guest lists of his notorious parties which enjoyed a reputation for bringing together nearly naked supermodels and Doom-playing computer nerds and everyone in between.

With a reputation for providing carte blanche for presenters Harris created a creative environment often compared to Andy Warhol’s Factory. Pushed to the technological limits of dial up internet access, Timorer portrays Harris as growing bored and frustrated with the limitations that hampered the continued growth of Pseudo.com. Increasingly restless, Harris’ bizarre behavior and appearances as Luvvy the Clown served as an impetus for his next project and his departure from Pseudo.com. Quiet would bring together more than one hundred participants under the supervision of hundreds of video cameras for a thirty day experiment ending prophetically with the arrival of the New York City Police on New Year’s Day 2000.

Quiet emerged from the depths of a Soho basement a combination of the Stanford Experiment, Survivor, Big Brother and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. With her own camera rolling, Quiet participant Ondi Timoner captured what would become among the most compelling chapters of her film ‘We Live in Public‘. Quiet would go on to cost Harris millions of dollars, descend in to social chaos and end with the controversy of police involvement.

On the heels of Quiet, Harris and his new found girlfriend, former Pseudo presenter and Quiet participant Tanya Corrin turned the cameras on themselves in a New York loft wired for 24 hour broadcast. Unlike Quiet, there was no creation of a community, only the slow and painful to watch collapse of their relationship played out for a dwindling number of viewers. Corrin leaves and Harris’ search for validation through this latest project comes to an end on the toilet with a phone call from a banker to tell him he was broke, having lost all that he had left following the burst of the .com bubble.

In the mid 90’s Harris emerged from the .com crowd with a vision for the future of not only the internet and what it would be capable of, but also of human interaction and what it would become. He envisioned then what would be commonplace a decade later, but unfortunately he lacked the technology that was years away and the discipline to find a lasting foothold after the collapse of the Nasdaq in 2000. Without the language to describe it, Harris laid the ground work for the network of social media that has become so a part of our daily lives.

With ‘We Live in Public‘, Director Ondi Timoner succeeds in being provocative without being a provocateur like so many of her documentary contemporaries, a role she rightly preserves for her subject, Josh Harris, self professed to be one of the “first great artists of the 21st century. Armed with the conviction that everyone’s window for fame would grow from 15 minutes to 15 minutes a day Harris was driven by creativity, vanity and his search for validation, and perhaps his experience, writ large should be the watchword for our individual experiences writ small. Timoner brings her film to a close with warnings about how FaceBook, MySpace and Twitter have created public forums for our private lives.

A couple of super creative folks are coming over this Sunday for a little experiment. We would love to put our creative products and hand made cool stuff into your hands ahead of Christmas. Some cool gifts will be on offer, there will also be some wine, cheese and bread. Cheers!

I‘ve been fortunate lately to have had the opportunity to spend some time with iconic Vancouver photographer Fred Herzog. After an unexpected phone call yesterday afternoon, Fred and I spent a couple of hours wandering the streets and alleys of Strathcona, finishing in Chinatown as the sun set. Watching Fred work is fascinating, he sees so much that I miss at first glance and remains so interested in his craft.  Fred’s work has developed an international following and many consider his work akin to that of Henri Cartier-Bresson, his most recognized images represent Vancouver as it once was. He is currently showing at the Equinox Gallery on Granville street, http://www.equinoxgallery.com/, you should check it out.

Pilot Renny Price in his Sukhoi SU-29 aerobatic plane thrills spectators with loops, swoops and fly bys at the fourth annual Boundary Bay Air Show, Saturday, June 21st.
Photo by Robert Shaer/The Delta Optimist

Last weekend I had the chance to feel like a kid again… I guess I should explain this… Both my grandfathers served with the RCAF in various capacities and one still lives near the base where he retired in Trenton, Ontario. In a sense I feel like I grew up close to one of the busiest RCAF bases in Canada, and summers were often spent listening for the roar of jets and the CF-130 Hercules taking off and landing a few blocks from my grandparents back yard.

Years later I returned to live with my grandparents in Trenton when I returned to school to study photojournalism at Loyalist College. Every day my route to school took me past the north runway where I could, over the fences and bushes, see and hear the roar of those same airplanes that fascinated me as a child. I’ve spent a lot of time, during my five years as a commercial photographer, on airplanes and though the romance of traveling via air for work has long since lost it’s draw, there remains a soft spot in my heart for military aircraft vintage and contemporary, so I was excited to get the assignment from the Delta Optimist to cover Last Saturday’s air show.

Please see my Recent Work Gallery for more images.

A Royal Canadian Air Force CF18 Hornet of the 409 Cold Lake Squadron sits on the tarmac at Boundary Bay Airport on display for the Fourth Annual Boundary Bay Air Show on Saturday, June 21st while a Russian Sukhoi SU-29 Hammerhead performs aerobatics above.
Photo by Robert Shaer/The Delta Optimist

Last night I had the treat to attend the Media Preview for this season’s Playland in Vancouver, complete with coupons for free popcorn or cotton candy, a hot dog and a soda. The park was crowded with people in local media apparel and the smell of cinnamon mini-donuts was everywhere. The donuts were very hard to resist, but the queue for them proved too significant for my resolve to wait.

Skee ball was played, tickets were redeemed and free hot dogs were consumed and washed down with lukewarm sodas. When I finished my free hot dog I was struck by the question: “how many free hot dogs would it take to be sick on a ride that spins?” It’s a question that may be better left unanswered, though…

After a few days of computer issues, mostly software combined with a buggy Mac, and scores of editing I am now in the process of editing images from the Elite Divisions of the BG World Championship Triathlon in Vancouver last weekend. While I didn’t have press credentials I still managed to get a couple of reasonable shots and will post them in the next day or two as I find time around other more pending issues. I did find this on the beach at English Bay on Sunday afternoon and thought: ‘How Vancouver.’