FLASH Waterloo Region

A few months ago some photographer friends of mine started planning a new photography show. FLASH Waterloo Region was born thanks to the massive efforts of Anthony Reinhart, Catherine Bischoff, Gordon Hatt of CAFKA, Mark Walton, George Tsintzouras, Charles Fraresso, and Darin White.

There was a call to submit your best photo and well over 300 images from beginner to professional were entered, with 97 making the final cut. I’m happy to say my shot was accepted. It’s a photo I took in 2008 in Berlin. It has always been a personal favourite of mine and has gotten good reception from those that had seen it before so it seemed like an obvious choice to submit. Each of these 97 photos were shown on the 10 foot high screens at The Tannery Event Centre by some pretty high-tech projectors from Christie Digital.

The show also featured three local photographers; Mina Ao, Karl Griffiths-Fulton, and Andrew Wright. Each of these three photographers had a brief video with them speaking about their life and career as well as showing a slideshow of some of their own work.

The headliner for the event was Barbara Davidson, a Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist with the Los Angeles Times. Barbara was born in Montreal and actually started her career at the Waterloo Region Record. From there she moved on to Washington DC, Dallas, and then Los Angeles. Similar to the three featured photographers, Barbara also spoke about her career as a photojournalist and showed a large number of photographs from her impossibly impressive catalogue and explained the story behind many of them. Hearing her speak was incredibly inspiring. I actually found it a bit difficult to concentrate on her words while keeping my eyes glued to her images on the screens behind her.

The show itself was promoted like crazy over the last few months so the anticipation was huge. It sold out completely a few weeks ago so a waiting list had to be created for people that weren’t able to get tickets. The show certainly didn’t disappoint, and neither did the donut bar that fed those of us that attended. Almost everything I heard from people afterwards was immensely positive. Many people, myself included, didn’t realize how much photographic talent lives in this region. It was definitely one of the most motivating events I’ve ever attended.