Dave Andrews

“My name is Dave Andrews. And I started making images when I was quite young. My father had a photographic studio on Spark Street Mall. And so from there, I took photographs in the family studio and then left because I got the computer bug and design bug. So I ended up getting a lot of work from Nortel and others where I could design things and photograph them. And so that world became really the draw for me.

 

And what I’m doing now is making fine art prints for clients such as the National Gallery of Canada and other museums and galleries all over Canada. I printed an exhibit for an Indigenous artist and his exhibit is or was at the National Gallery and is now traveling as a traveling exhibit from one end of Canada, right to the other.

 

I was Canada’s constitutional photographer back in 1982 and they hired me to photograph and cover the whole final 1982 conclusion to bringing the Constitution back to Canada. In the background of the photograph,  if you go to the old Union Station, there’s kind of like these columns on the inside and a dais about that high. And I got up on that dais so I could cover things like that, shooting down on people. And each of the premiers got a copy of this photograph. And Richard Hatfield took his copy and laid it on the dais right where I was standing, right below my feet, and signed it.

 

Dad had a darkroom downstairs in the house we grew up in so I’d go down there and make prints and then years later a lot of my friends who were aspiring photographers ended up in my dad’s basement too making prints so there were quite a few of us. Andrew Vaughan, for instance, got his start in the basement.

 

When I saw the first digital camera that came out in the 1990s, the images didn’t look great, if you know what I mean, so I thought hmm well I don’t know if this new technology is going to go anywhere. But then eventually I began seeing images taken by a digital camera that were really good and I said to myself oh this is exciting because the prints were almost as good as the old analog method of making prints. So that’s when I knew that this could all coalesce with the photography, the design work, and the mounting and making of large prints. So it also changed the editing method of course.

 

I learned to use Photoshop and I’ve been using it since version one.

 

But what’s really cool for me is when I get a digital file or when an artist wants me to create these prints for them, there’s a sweet spot.

 

There’s kind of a moment and so I’m looking at density, sharpness, saturation, all that stuff.

 

But it’s kind of like an alchemy of blending all those different Photoshop tools and when you get it, it just pops like bang, there it is.

 

And I’ve had customers that have followed me for years and they’re wonderful people. Because I’m 74 so I know what I like.

 

So I’ve got two CDs out, they’re on Apple Tunes, they’re on Spotify and all that kind of stuff.

 

And so I guess you could say that I sort of follow my heart.

 

I don’t need to know the answer.

 

If I get a feeling that there’s a powerful thing here, I just follow it.”

 

 

Photography by our friend @_finn