Donald Scott Bray

1983 My first photography class was in 1st year Industrial Design college: design critiques required presentation of images on slides and I had never touched a camera. I still remember the first assignment, a 3 photograph depth of field study alternating focus between fore- mid- to background.

1985 I was living in Vancouver Canada and a local tourism magazine had a photo spread where the photographer was doing high multiple exposure photography, in camera on film, of flowers that were exquisitely beautiful and impressively creative. I experimented with the same technique, in camera multiple exposure photography on film was fairly common back then. Exposure compensation is an easy calculation, log2n (n = number of exposures), but high multiple exposure compensation is extremely difficult as light and film sensitivity is so variable over short periods of time. Failure rate was very high from a 36 exposure film roll, but occasionally results were impressive, creating intense pastel colours. It was a lot of fun.

1987 I moved to Toronto Canada for my Industrial Design career and in 2005 I started pier design.

During this period I continued photography but also did a lot of oil painting. Understanding this medium feeds my high multiples photographic compositing technique as it requires complete responsibility for everything within the picture plane: composition, line, balance, and colour.

2006 move to digital photography was of course an important change. High multiple exposure photography is now out of the camera on the computer using photo editing programs. The amount of work increases but so to does the success rate as film’s light response is no longer the master, light is editable. These are 2 early successful high multiple photographic composites that showed the new digital work flow could produce chaotically beautiful results:

2012 – 2015 Published 6 different photobooks, one of select images with poetry story, web version Elegy. Positive comments and critiques of these photobooks was incentive to start exhibiting.

2014 Conducted historical research of similar photographic image making, itemized on History page.

Here are a few interesting biographical details:

1964 born in Beirut Lebanon, moved to Canada in 1976.

An artist with protanomoly colour vision deficiency.

One of the oldest males in Canada with cystic fibrosis, Δf508.

From Luther College High School to University of Regina to Fanshawe College London Ontario.

Lived in the cities of Beirut, Amman Jordan, Guelph, Regina, London, Vancouver, and Toronto since 1987.

FAQ has more information.