In praise of crappy snapshots

When it came to photographing Jake Richler’s story on cooking with different flours, the obvious choice was to shoot at the Arva Flour Mills, in Arva, Ontario, Canada’s oldest water powered flour mill. The mill is a museum piece of belt-driven grinders and wooden shutes, and the building shakes under the perpetual earthquake of the century old machinery. Despite using high quality digital cameras for the majority of photographs that run in the magazine, this location called for a more lo-fi approach to the visuals. I’ve been in love with the Hipstamatic app for the iPhone since it came out last year, which renders the photos with a nostalgic sometimes washed out and grainy look. The irony is not lost on me that despite using some of the world’s finest photographic technology, sometimes crappy snapshots are the best way to tell a story.

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