Granular Band

Some Ungood Photography: I suspect I shot this with my old Kodak 110 camera, and that the flash didn't go off, resulting in this incredibly noisy picture. Battle of the Bands in Leduc, February 1986. 

Unhappier Accidents

Here's another collection of photos that went wrong. Poor lighting, bad focus, bad composition, underexposed, overexposed...how many photographic sins can you spot? 

The Thrill of Collaboration

The first time a visual artist interpreted my written work occurred way back in high school, when Russell Wiesener illustrated the "Sever Heroes," superheroes I created based on our garage band personas. A few years later, Mike Gushue drew the "Earl's Amazing Mad Science Adventures" comic strip, which I scripted.

In each case I was delighted and fascinated by how other creative minds interpreted my words.  Each artist seemed to have a near-telepathic ability to capture the visions I'd imagined while adding their own distinctive stamp to the work, little details that turned my poor prose into something greater.

That's never been more true than of my friend Jeff Shyluk, who over the years has illustrated, using a variety of techniques, several of my comic strips, short stories and random ideas. His latest is called Woods Hole, based on the short story I submitted to CBC's Canada Writes competition. Jeff's vision doesn't exactly match my own, but that's not the point - I think he's improved on it with shadings and textures and, again, significant details that inform and reinterpret my original intent. I think it's marvellous, and I'm very moved that Jeff chose to do this. Frankly, I'm more excited by this than I would be if I had won the contest! I hope my readers will check it out at Jeff Shyluk's Visual Blog.