Biography
Michael Barnes is an Ottawa based photographer whose primary photographic equipment consists of a simple plastic toy camera, the Diana. Michael uses traditional film and darkroom techniques to create fine art prints in very limited editions.
Prints
All prints are created on fiber-based papers using traditional darkroom techniques to enlarge and develop paper in chemicals. Prints are available in various sizes, editions, and as “straight” prints or “fine art” prints. “Straight” prints are printed on multigrade FB paper using a consistent, desirable exposure setting across the whole print. Fine art prints undergo a series of darkroom refinements, including paper matching, dodging, burning, multiple baths, and selenium toning. Fine art prints are much more time consuming to create, and are of superior quality, visually, and in archival quality.
The following represents standard pricing. Please contact me for details on bulk pricing, samples, and availabilities (not all photos on display on this web site may be available for sale)
5×5 straight print, edition of 25 …… $50
8×8 straight print, edition of 25 …… $75
12×12 straight print, edition of 25 …… $125
8×8 fine art print, edition of 25 …… $200
12×12 fine art print, edition of 25 …… $300
Please note that all images on this site are digital scans of negatives and actual prints will vary slightly and are subject to change as per the discretion of Michael Barnes.
Publications
Le LOMO
A comprehensive book on LOMO cameras. LOMO cameras are considered to be in the genre of the “toy” camera. The book describes other cameras that are in this same genre. This book contains a 2 page description on the Diana camera and contains a photograph by Michael Barnes.
Technology vs. Art
“There is no purely technical solution to better photography. You can’t “engineer” your way to a better picture. The very best photographs gain their power from the world of ideas, not from the hardware used to capture the image.”
This article contains one photo by Michael Barnes.
Toycamera Calendar 2005
“Instead of clamoring for faster lenses, bigger flashguns and more mega-pixels, the toycamera photographer revels in the serendipity of simple tools…’ Diana, Future Scientist, Flocon, Holga, Eura,; these are some of the toy plastic cameras used by toycamera photographers. This calendar is a collection of twenty-four toycamera photographs, some of our favorites from toycamera.com in the last year.”
Featured in January is 1 photograph by Michael Barnes.
Toycamera
“‘toycamera’ contains 104 photographs from 26 photographers living in 7 different countries around the world. The book also contains introductory words, biographies of the photographers, photos of the toy cameras used, an informal ‘tongue and cheek’ interview with the co-founders of www.toycamera.com as well as other interesting facts about this book.”
This book contains four photographs by Michael Barnes.
Representation
HotelArtGallery
Limited edition fine art prints for Hotel rooms. Prints available from Michael Barnes can be found at this link and entering keyword “Barnes” in the search field at the bottom of the page.