Joshua Halfkenny

These images are all pretty old to me and my flickr viewers, but they should be new to you! These are all people I’ve met in my time as a “photographer”

Yes, I recognize that the some of these people are either homeless or rough looking, and that’s seen as being trite by today’s standards. Though It doesn’t really matter to me because I like to talk and listen to these people, so that others may possibly see these photos as just a portrait of a person.

Kevin:

This is Kevin. I met him in 2008 when he was having trouble getting his shopping cart down some stairs. He asked a friend of mine and I to help him, so we walked on over. He thanked us and then introduced himself as Kevin of “Kevin’s happy window washing service”, and asked if we’d like to take a few pictures of him. I can’t quite recall how long he had been doing this at that point in time, but it was nice to see it wasn’t long enough to rob him of his upbeat and personable character.

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Ras Bagga:

It took me quite a while to muster up the courage to talk to this guy. He seemed to be just getting off from work, and usually people don’t really want to be disturbed by a guy with a camera after a hard days work, haha. Things seemed to be going in my favor because he got off at the same train station that I was. I finally told myself that I wont get the shot unless I just go ahead and do it, so I stopped him and asked him if I could take his portrait, and to my surprise he said yeah. I quickly pulled out my camera and snapped a few photos, and showed him. He said he liked them and then we parted ways. When I got home and uploaded to my Facebook I quickly learned that he was a local Reggae artist, and that his stage name was Ras Bagga.

If anyone would like to hear his music it can be found here www.myspace.com/rasbagga. Forgive me I’m not sure how to link url’s

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George:

This is George. He’s a long time friend of my mothers, and I’ve knew him since I was a kid, as he used to babysit me time to time. He used to do a ton of Martial Arts before his epilepsy took hold, and from what I hear from other people he was quite good. He has had his ups and downs dealing with it, but for the most part he’s pretty self controlled. This was taken while he was living with us in 2008.

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Rob:

Rob is a local street vendor here in Calgary for a CUPS run program called “Street Talk”. If I remember correctly Street Talk is a program that CUPS Community Health Center runs in order to help people gain the skill set to get off the street. People get these papers for a donation from these vendors who pay .60 cents a copy. So don’t think they just get these things for free. Each paper is marked with their name and vendor # should a problem ever arise.

Rob had his own column in the paper called “Robs Corner” where he would put his thoughts, and ask the kinds of questions that you would have to think about. This photo came about after he stopped a friend of mine to tell us about the paper. We thought it was pretty cool, and we bought an issue from him for about 3 dollars each. Before we left he asked if we would like to take a portrait of him.

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Finally we have

Avril:

This is my mother.

With out her I wouldn’t be where I am now. For those of you who may come to enjoy my blog, you can thank her.