Sad Mag’s Family: Daniel Elstone

This week in my blog about Van­cou­ver artists, I bring you Daniel Elstone.  You can get a small taste of his fine work in our pre­miere issue; Dan pho­tographed the Radio Sta­tion Cafe at 101 East Hast­ings.

Dan grad­u­ated from Langara’s Pro­fes­sional Photo Pro­gram and is cur­rently get­ting his BFA at UBC. He is a killer surfer and he spends some of his sum­mer nights rock climb­ing, pho­tograph­ing Van­cou­ver at night, feed­ing rac­coons, and jump­ing into Lynn Canyon.

His work speaks both very high and low of the west coast. He doc­u­ments the green beauty around around him and his eye is dead on.

I chat­ted him about his work, sum­mer 2009, and his take on pho­tog­ra­phy today.

Sad Mag: Why are trees such a promi­nent sub­ject in your photos?

Daniel Elstone: I shoot trees because there are end­less vari­a­tions of shapes, forms, pat­terns and sizes, even between the same types of trees. I don’t shoot exclu­sively tree’s though, I’ve been shoot­ing more shrubs and thick­ets lately. I can get bored fairly quickly shoot­ing the same type of things, but I always go back to trees.

Sad: What’s it like to make a name for your­self as a pho­tog­ra­pher today?

DE: I have mixed feel­ings about it. In com­mer­cial pho­tog­ra­phy, dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy is mak­ing it harder to make a liv­ing as a pho­tog­ra­pher. The cost of equip­ment, work­load, and image stan­dards are going up dis­pro­por­tion­ately to income, but at the same time dig­i­tal cam­eras make life a lot eas­ier. Pho­tog­ra­phy as an art is pos­si­bly bet­ter than ever. There are so many great pho­tog­ra­phers out there, so many mag­a­zines and ‘zines, so much on the internet—it’s almost too much. Some of my favourite pho­tog­ra­phers are just peo­ple from flickr. (You can find Dan on flickr here)

Sad: What’s do you think is miss­ing from Vancouver’s art scene right now?

DE: There’s a short­age of stu­dio space in Van­cou­ver. I think the city is also lack­ing gal­leries that are will­ing to dis­play inter­est­ing photography.

Sad: What drew you to work­ing with Sad Mag?

DE: The pho­tog­ra­phy scene in Van­cou­ver is fairly close minded, many gal­leries just seem to focus on fine art work, which usu­ally isn’t very inno­v­a­tive. Sad Mag is a good way to get your work out there, dis­cover local artists, and find out what’s going on around the city.

Sad: Who are some of your favourite visual artists?

DE: Some of my favourite pho­tog­ra­phers are Jeff Wall, Stephen Shore, Matthew Gen­itempo, Tok­i­hiro Sato, there are too many to list. My favourite artists are William Schaff, Eric Fis­chl, Mar­tin Creed, and who­ever did the Roxy Music Covers.

Car by Daniel Elstone

Sad:  Sum­mer has escaped us. What are you look­ing for­ward to this sea­son in the arts?

DE: I’m look­ing for­ward to the Where the Wild Things Are movie and The Mal­colm­son Col­lec­tion, which is a bunch of 19th– and early 20th-century pho­tographs to be shown at The Pre­sen­ta­tion House [Gallery in North Vancouver].

Sad:  What’s next from Dan Elstone?

DE: I have a cou­ple series which I’ve been putting together, both of them ten­ta­tively named. I hope to com­plete those by next sum­mer, although they’ll never really be com­plete. I’ll tell you later.

——BG

Check out Daniel Elstone’s online port­fo­lio here.
Keep com­ing back to sadmag.ca for inter­views, blog posts and sneak peaks at our Win­ter Issue.