I wanna grow up to be Terry Richardson – The Travelling Yashica in Ottawa, Canada

Hi my name is Weldon Poapst (or Toonboy7 on Flickr and Twitter), I live just outside of Ottawa, the capital of Canada, and have been in the animation industry for over 30 years. I am a musician, visual artist and now am teaching all that stuff at a college here in Ottawa. I seem to prefer film, collect and shoot whatever I can.

I count myself lucky to have been included in the Traveling Yashica Project.

I have always held an odd fascination with Terry Richardson and his paparazzi-style/anti-style of shooting; hard flash, x-pro, barely composed … sort of like eating junk food and watching trash T.V. I know it’s bad for me but I seem drawn to it.

Knowing the Yash was his tool of choice, jacket loaded with TWO of them, so he didn’t need to; stop, rewind, re-load, just pull the second out of his other pocket and keep swinging, I had to try it myself. Loaded with the “Travelling Yashica” I headed off to the Ottawa International Animation Festival. The O.I.A.F. (as it’s known for short) is one of two major animation festivals worldwide, held each year, (the other being in Annecy, South of France), Ottawa attracts all the heavies; Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network etc. So with names like that I wanted to snap some ‘famous’!

I couldn’t help myself but keep the camera for a little while and try to cram some B&W, slide, and slower Kodak Gold through it … darn you Hamish I fell in love, to see the results I got out of that little camera rather impressed me … now I have to start saving for my own.

Thanks ever so much.
Weldon Poapst

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