Took this photo of my little sister, Katherine in El Mirage when she came to visit me in February. It was a brutally cold day in the desert; The lake bed was pretty much abandoned and we could barely get out of the car due to the high winds […]
Tag Archives: johnston
Do you ever try to substitute the fake thing for the real thing? Every now and then in my life, when I’ve grown tired of the struggle, I try and see what it would feel like to settle for a little while […]
I will be exhibiting 4 of my canvases at Gallery Godo’s opening this Friday and the downtown art walk July 12. Please feel free to stop by and say hello!
Took this photo in Death Valley at the same time as my last photo. I had always wanted to see the dunes so it was a real thrill to shoot them! When we arrived it was so late, I despaired that I wouldn’t be able to get the photo […]
Took this in Badwater Basin in Death Valley last week. I had such an incredible experience being in the desert. I’ve wanted to go for almost 2 years now, so this trip was long overdue. I shot this at dawn with the help of my friend Dan holding the […]
Recently, I was asked to do an interview with the blog Lights n’ Colours about my photography. We talked about how I got into conceptual photography and how I go about executing my pictures […]
This image is very personal to me. The idea here is that in spite of the beauty of the world, many of us will never truly be free to enjoy it because we are trapped- trapped by dogma, trapped by routine, trapped by our inability to escape their own emotions. I often feel that way myself […]
This was shot around the same time as this image and was intended to be a kind of sister image. I wanted to imply a story of a woman whose body is washed ashore after some kind of shipwreck, whose soul then arises and returns to the sea […]
I had been staring at these beautiful masks in my mother’s hallway every time I come home, begging her to let me use them. They are quite precious to her, and thus, she didn’t want me taking them down off the wall and using them for my artistic exploits, (which I can sort of understand). Unfortunately for her, I could only be respectful so long […]
Took this video at my cottage this weekend with the help of my dad and my neighbors, including their daughter Erin who agreed to play the lonely drifter for me. This is sort of an expansion on the idea I had previously created in this photo, but in video version. I’ve been trying to transition into video these past few months, and I’ve been reading a lot and learning a bunch of new programs […]
This will most definitely go down in history as my most dangerous shoot ever. I was so scared to crawl across the melting ice caps at my cottage to get this, I almost didn’t do it! But I knew I’d regret it if I didn’t, and I was right. So thankful not to have fallen through to that ice water below!
I am so pleased to announce that I have released my first collection of photo-poems in a book entitled, ‘Poetic Portraits’ which is now available for purchase through Blurb. This book features my best work as taken from my poetry series, as well as a brand new introduction on how this series and concept came to be.
The American Dollhouse is a series of photographs and poems centered around a masked family co-inhabiting a miniature dollhouse. The concept of shooting in a dollhouse originally arose as an alternative to creating expensive large-scale sets. I came to the realization that by shooting in miniature, I could capture the […]
Originally we were going to wrap me up in duct tape, which I thought would be rather painful in contact with my skin, so I geared up head to toe in this dorky out: Upon beginning the mummification process, we realized this would look too shiny, so we went back […]
I was inspired to create this image when I was driving through Pictou, Nova Scotia and I came upon this 1940’s fighter jet mounted in the middle of an intersection. I wanted to create something noir-ish and I think it turned out somewhat in the vein of Sky Captan and the World of Tomorrow, which is cool. It was surprisingly simple to create- thank you to my new green screen!
Jacob’s Ladder (on top of being a biblical reference) is a real staircase in the park in my hometown. I composited the photo I took of the ladder and the clouds on vacation, with a photo of myself on my apartment building staircase in NY. Then just toyed with hue/sat, curves, filters afterwards. For extra drama, I added a spotlight to the right hand side of the clouds.