Check out some photos from the week below.

Saturday, March 13

Rich Aucoin @ Rivoli

The Balconies @ Horseshoe Tavern

Yukon Blonde @ Horseshoe Tavern

Thursday, March 11

Diamond Rings @ The Garrison

Wednesday, March 10

Jason Collet/Zeus/Bahamas @ Lee’s Palace

So the first-ever Medium Magazine came out this week, and let me tell you, am I ever happy that its out. It’s been a long two month production period, and it’s really great to finally see it off of the confines of my little macbook screen and out onto campus newsstands.

We went through the possibility of having no magazine at all after putting in so much work because we had no money to produce it, to the reassuring (and financially secure) feeling after the first round of press approvals.

And we didn’t get paid for this project either, we did it out of our own personal drive to put out a magazine for UTM—a campus that always gets knocked for not having enough culture, or history, or character. Well, now we have something that no other U of T campus has, or any other campus for that matter, Medium Magazine.

This magazine is going to come out once a year. At least that’s the plan. As like every new season at The Medium, there will be an entirely new editorial team next year, and thus, the future of Medium Magazine rests on their shoulders. We laid the seed for future Medium-ites, now it’s their choice if they want to continue producing a magazine or not.

We also only have a very limited quantity of the magazine. If you didn’t get one this week, its not because we ran out, or because Medium Magazine has turned into some mythic creature that only comes out on full moons, its because we can only put out a certain number of copies a week—read our “Keep it Green” note on the front cover.

This magazine needs to last for the rest of this year, and for as long as possible next year. Remember that part about it being a yearly thing? We don’t want the magazine to explode on campus for a week, then disappear from everyone’s memory the next. It’s now apart of the history of UTM, and it needs to stick around for as long as possible. We want students to see it on newsstands everyday. We want students to look forward to next one. If it comes out and only lasts for a week, it will be forgotten. If it comes out and lasts for a year, it will be remembered, and anticipated.

And that’s why we—Alain Latour, Editor-in-Chief, Michael Di Leo, Managing Editor and Advertising Manager, and myself, Creative Director, Designer, and Photography Editor—put together and founded this magazine. We want it to be remembered and anticipated. So much of what happens on this campus is either ignored by the apathy of the student population, or disregarded because we’re all too busy and focused on trying to graduate, to write that paper, or to pass that mid term. Medium Magazine does not fall—we hope atleast—into either the apathy or disregard category. It’s a break from what goes on at UTM.

Take for example a conversation I had today when I was putting out some more copies of the magazine at the Student Centre info booth. A girl asked what I was doing, and what Medium Magazine was all about. She picked it up somewhat hesitantly and told me about what she thought about The Medium this year, and how she wasn’t impressed with our coverage of the Student Union. I then explained to her what I said above, adding that, at The Medium, we don’t get paid half as much as other paid positions on campus and that I once worked out my hourly rate to approximately $3 or $4 an hour—clearly it wasn’t about the money, but for giving something back to the campus.

After this conversation, she seemingly forgot about her displeasure with The Medium’s latest coverage. For her, and I hope for everyone else on campus, Medium Magazine can breathe a breath of fresh air into a more often then not indifferent and unconcerned student body, something students can pick up and say “cool, a magazine.”

And that brings me back to why we did it. We did it for the students.

The entire magazine is content directed at students. Do you need to cook a dinner party for your friends? We’ve got you covered. Need a stellar reason for why you’re watching hours of online-streaming Modern Family? It’s obviously because you’re trying to study for sociology. What about if you’re an international student? We’ve got you covered too. There’s plenty more excellent articles in Medium Magazine but I’m not going to give them all away here, I’ll leave that for you to discover.

And at the end of the day, looking back, I don’t think there is anything about this project I would change. If there is one thing I can admit though, was that it was one hell of a learning experience.

Its amazing what you can learn on a project like this, like from what font size to use, to the pre-press processes you apparently didn’t know about that drive your incredibly patient printer crazy. You also learn how you might go from walking into a bookstore on Queen Street and asking the cashier where Dr.Seuss’ How The Grich Stole Christmas is, to busting out a camera, umbrella, and strobes, and executing an entire cover shoot in less then 5 minutes in said store.

We fought, we laughed, and if you read Alain’s editorial, we got rushed to the hospital and cut our fingers slicing onions. But we did it because we wanted to put out a magazine so badly. And at the end of the day, as cheesey, corny, and lame as this might sound, if you really want something, you go get it. I’m going to quote Alain’s editorial once more, because he said it so well: “Let this magazine be proof that you can use UTM to showcase you, rather than the other way around.”

Here’s some of my photographs from Medium Magazine. You can check out the online site here, designed by yours truly, or download a pdf of the magazine, also designed by yours truly here.

And finally, some steel bananas.

I did the photoshoot at The Cookbook Store in Toronto just off of Yonge and Bloor. I thought it would interesting to put Mother Mother in a situation that was sort of ‘Motherly.’ What better than a Cookbook store with aprons, and other cooking utensils? Here’s the article, written by Kjartan Hewitt in The Medium.

I know its a bit late, but here’s the November Issue of Steel Bananas – Number 13. I’ve been pretty swamped with school. But now its all finished for the term, so I can breathe a sigh of relief. T’was a great Issue.

I think this is one of our best covers. It was such a fluke too:

I had to meet Curran and Ken from Gravity Wave at a little cafe downtown somewhere on a rainy Tuesday night a few weeks back. Every time Curran and I interview a band it rains. Diamond Rings, Hopeful Monster, Schomberg Fair, and now Gravity Wave. I think its our thing. Anyways, I think the cafe was on Delaware street, by the TTC yard on King. There was construction and the bus had to take a detour. Some random old drunk man started getting upset we were taking a detour, and how it was the immigrants fault that we were not following the typical route. How they come to Canada and take all the jobs. Some weird shit like that. Anyways, I got off a stop early because I got disoriented and had to walk to the cafe. On the way up to the cafe I noticed an empty laundr-o-mat. Perfect. I met Curran and Ken at the cafe and told them about the laundr-o-mat. So we walked to the landr-o-mat, except it wasn’t empty – there were the old Portugeuse owners there. I asked them politely if we could take a couple of photos for a magazine, and they were really cool about it. As I was setting up my lights, a man came in and put in a load of laundry, which worked out perfectly – his laundry is in the cover. I took some photos of Ken sitting on a chair in front of the washing machine – the cover photo -  then Curran commented on how much he loved Ken’s shirt. So Ken took off his jacket and posed without his jacket – our lead in title shot. Then I thought it would be cool to shoot from the street into the laundr-o-mat through the big front windows. So we brought Ken to the front, and I kindly asked him to start unbuttoning his shirt like he was about to take it off to put it in the wash. I know it sounds weird, but he obliged, and it turned out pretty cool. All in all a good shoot. Curran: we’ll see if it rains in this month’s interview adventure. Read the article by Curran Folkers here.

I also shot The Wilderness of Manitoba for an article written by Mr. Patrick Grant of Body Electric. That was a fun shoot. We had to get to their band-practice house somewhere by a subway station that I cannot remember the name of at the moment. Again, it was a rainy night. When I got to the house, I noticed they had a really cool front porch. I’ve never shot a front porch, so we were set. But I didn’t have an umbrella to defuse my flash – so, no word of a lie, I used the carved halloween pumpkin that was on their porch. Weird – definitely. Successful – for sure. I set up a little stool on their front lawn to give me some height and shot over the porch railing. it was a little hard to focus because it was dark, but everything turned out all well. I didn’t end up using that shot for the lead in because it was a wide shot, and the SB website is very narrow. Portrait oriented shots work better because I can get a larged sized photo in there. So instead, I got in close and shot them all bunched together – I know you’re not supposed to put heads on heads, but I did it anyways. So there.  Read Patrick Grant’s article here.

And last but not least, I also shot Melanie Janisse – Poet and owner of Zoots Cafe, the home of the Monthly Eggplant. Melanie let us shoot in Zoot’s when it was closed which was kind of cool. I tried getting her to sit in the front window shooting in from the street. That didn’t turn out too well, which was a little unfortunate. I managed to snap a couple of nice photos of Melanie while she was drinking tea at the cafe bar. I was with Karen and Curran the whole time – Karen was writing the article, and Curran works at Zoots. Curran suggested going back to Melanie’s studio/office which was fantastic. She has this awesome back office with high ceilings, white walls a great eclectic/retro cabinet wall unit thing and a desk with all of her current projects on it. I knew this was where I’d get my shot. While Karen and Curran kept Melanie busy with the po-mo lit talk of steel bananas – which went right over my head – I started snapping photos. I put my flash behind her pointing at me, and it created an awesome halo around her fur hat. Read the article by Karen Correia Da Silva here.

Ridiculous Synergy Seeker

“Ash Buchholz and Jason Parsons aren’t afraid to admit that they tend to be overly-energetic.
“You know what would be really challenging for me?” asks Buckholz. “To be in a room of ice skyscrapers — you know, skyscrapers made of ice, like models — and try to have a conversation surrounded by them.” “I would not move,” adds Parsons, “yeah, it would be like SHHH [makes glass-crashing sound].” ” [The Medium]

Go behind the scenes of The Medium’s exclusive USS photoshoot.