A Full Complement

The last day of the masterclass workshop with the whole crew and the last day of the daily project.

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Missions complete.

Doorknob self

Some of you know the elaboration on why.

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walking in the rain

clearing the head between flowerboxes and headlights, emptying it into the geraniums

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A perfect summer day

A morning of reading and writing and an afternoon and evening of cycling and playing at the beach with friends. The water was perfectly warm.

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courtyard tarzan

my call is as quiet as a moth sneeze.
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Summery Exploring

Warm wind. The new day has arrived after weeks of waiting.

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Like the personality of the one above but the aesthetic balance of this:

Start at the Bottom

the basics: light, shadow, feet.

I thought of dyptych with dog legs and my own in contrast but didn't gel; tried adding some geewhizardry but its pretty marginal as a picture of self as is. adding a milky way overlay and green legs isn't going to make any improvement to wow.

composition is there or isn't and it isn't. there is good light and bicycle grease on me, a laptop, aka external brain, at my toe.

those are my ankles. does identity hinge on the nose? how someone walks may be more characteristic than the configuration of face. a face may say, sat in the sun but calves say been cycling or nope, not a lot of muscle tone there.

we are a face fetish society. if we were primed to use hands or feet as key identifiers of individuals, we could tell each other apart as well. that distinct way a toe clenches on touchy subjects or the way hands get more bulgy-veined or red. they are emotive as well.

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our couch could go there

are we getting back on the real estate roller coaster? Victory Home Bungalows have always appealed. A yard again. Quiet. Something like suburbs doesn't sound bad compared to continuous circus of drunk crack-whirled neighbours.

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pulling yourself apart

break it up, you one

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This Project

With a week remaining, I'm satisfied with how this project has gone. I've had a excuse to learn things which is a good place to be.

I started out following Clinton Meyer whose incredible creativity inspired. I thought I might try myself.

Before I began I looked at about 6000 examples. I considered questions (what I wanted in the public domain, how much I wanted it to be autobiographical, how did others frame themselves, their gender, their world and what would be characteristic of me, and what would propel me to learn?)

I set out objectives (explore photography, styles, visual presentation of image, get over preciousness of how I look, learn to be a model as well as a photographer) and this grew to add other things like force myself to learn manual settings on the camera, to learn about lighting set ups, to look at Exif data until it resolves into sense.

Before I took my first photo, I brainstormed considerations for audience (mixing it up: staged and spontaneous, various moods, photoshopped and sooc, color and b&w, humour, serious, solo and with others).

And I created lists of dozens, and what would becomes hundreds, of ideas (events to document, images to do tributes to, visual puns, mood and color tones, props to use, concepts, techniques of framing and lighting) and after a month of this, I began.

As it went along, I started to storyboard images, watch for lighting changing, give up on natural light and then pingpong between natural light and lighting set ups when I realized the other had different advantages. I'm not sure I'm further along on what a portrait is. Is it a picture with a part of a person in it with some quality of being emotionally present?

I realized that what I felt inside did not transmit to the camera. My level that I verbalize changed as I realized I was asking for mind-reading not face-reading of people.

I started to look at published and painted portrayals more critically, study sub-text more than I was already doing. I could see my skills at framing on the fly in taking pictures of others change as I was taking more into account. It shifted my head from documenting to story telling and more attention to differences between word and image, still image and film.

Along the way I met Nizaad who works elaborate stunning images from the level of concept, Adam Freeman whose images are often graphically simple and striking, Jenny /Jay totheVee whose images are vibrantly alive and exploring with humour and exuberance , wizardjks whose running in year 3 with those keyhole shots into his life in time lapse, Roberto/Randomographer with his offbeat angles that wake me up. Paul folded early from selfies, but the internet is warmer for his good soul was bobbing around here.

In a way it is like buying postcards on vacation. It'll take a while for my brain to reset from scanning for pic opportunities. I'll continue to take portraits and visit people but with cooking food, dailies of food, weeklies of hubby, creating poems and books and normal life photography, I think I can comfortably scale back the selfies and not go creatively stagnant.

(without comment)

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On one hand...

I'm calm. On the other, it's a nailbiter.

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looking for the door

there must be a way into this poem but all the windows are barred.

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(that's the Everyman Journal from Lee Valley with a column for index, subject or date line. heavy but well-designed and well-built.)

Storm Circles

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The Mind Leading the Mind

...almost invariably leads to cupcakes.

No, we are not trained actors. How did you guess?

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in the long view of landscape

chasing sun patches and walking too slow or it going too fast in the long light, and then nearly rolling myself into the river in the process of lying down on the bank as the shutter goes. outtake is best take sometimes.

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I'm my own darling

in sweet sections, Clementine

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a day in the life of the arm

two moments of arms, with mayfly and with news. the clean air and the dirty newsprint.

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lists and listless

brain threatening to flip over to straight test pattern.

today: the vernissage with my poetry at SPAO and time with hubby and time upcoming with some pea poutine.

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Turning to Stone

My back is going to hate me for how long I sat without moving.

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Firelight, fire bright

moving to the heat.

ah, what the heck, a second too:



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Facet-nating

Inside the echoing sound.
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the sting's the thing

while cycling on Rideau, hit a pothole and the tire hit the curb. the bike stopped. I didn't. over the handlebars, books out of basket into lanes of traffic, bottles of jar rolling along the sidewalk. those striped pants finally met their end but mostly saved some abrasion of my skin. both knees scraped but able to clear bike and self from street before cars came.

an inuk man ran up to me and asked whether I was ok? was anything broken? was I broken? it looked bad. I assured him I was ok. no glass broken. didn't even scrape my hands. upon getting to the picnic at the park, the sting started in on both knees. but far better than it could have been.

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Fallen Keys

Simple color, simple walk.
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Read this

If you haven't read This Heated Place: Encounters in the Promised Land, you can still correct that. Lucid, detailed, fascinating, well-written, comprehensive, eye-opening. If you don't get what's going on in Israel or what the Palestinians are on about, here's the ticket.

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the best kind of lacy

parked in a park

and a little while later, Brian there too.

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File me

file me under B for busy

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Spotty

overdid it over the last few days. today I'm just zoinked. slept 16 hours unwakeably.

when awake, the day is largely a write-off. which means the backlog pushes into tomorrow.

complicated by eating comfort foods — the dairy in pesto, thus congesting my COPD-predisposed lungs, and tomato in stew thus exacerbating my joints.

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Basswood Protection

I'm powerless to stop this too. My mom is resolved.

I detest the human habit of getting rid of what lives become inconvenient. The basswood tree has a contract with "a tree surgeon" to be removed.

There goes another memory — 20 summers sitting in its shade with my dad.

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Warmth of Evening Comfort

As dusk falls, cyclists, joggers, lilies, and a lost tennis ball.

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Poets reading in the hay loft

Readings on the Tay with Holly Luhning (who got off somewhere before the pic), Catherine Graham, myself and Susan Gillis (who was about to dash off).

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2 things kinda the same

fitting in is about position, context, not anything intrinsic.

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sunset park

at the Centretown Outdoor Movies Festival

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a toast

from my shade to your shade

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inspiration from this one by Adam

implant

it's always at hand and I won't have to look for it again. plugged into my body's electrical system, it never needs a recharger. hardware upgrades are a real pain tho.

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what mischief

crossed my mind? I don't remember. amazing how far the brain can stray within a 12-second timer.



sitting as the sun goes rosy. new project afoot and tables and windows full of research. a good groove.

but man, do I need a haircut to not look like I should be playing with the Partridge Family Band.

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Who could that be?

Calling on the banana phone? Helllooo?

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floating in a lake of pain

the massage therapy helped me feel more towards human.

I can ignore and screen out a lot until it shuts me down.

pain is just a sensation. nausea is an ornery sensation I can't screen out.

exhaustion and blare blurt of weepy brain is just an impediment that is sporadic.

I become an unreliable narrator of whatever I perceive, can see my own skew darkening. I hate that.

I'm pruned and am done with it now.

My pain threshold is low and dropping innocuous gestures and movements give an inordinate tiredness. there's general fatigue, ache, tenderness and pains taking turns at most of me.

Take that body. I see your pain and raise you 2 tylenol, 1 anti-histamine and 2 bowls of chocolate ice cream.

bother x → ∞.

the lighting symbols have prescience. some of the joint jobbies was barometric pressure drop. bang up lighting storm.


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Set Up for Solar Recharge

First good decision I made today. The start of something good.

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to hold the night

to hold onto this one night, what to hold onto it by and will it hear my lullaby?

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sunset glorious behind my back

day's end. tomorrow is another day and hopefully sleep will heal my wrenched back.

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of the beholder and beheld

The eye is the communicative center of the face, not the mouth. The eyes are the focus of every portrait, even when the eyes are closed.

It is hard to be on both sides of the lens and get crisp focus on not the eye area, not the brow, not the lash, but the iris. And to not have the pupils be in the light and not become pinpricks at the brightness and at the mis-fired shots. And over the months it is getting harder to ignore those eyebrows that want to migrate and cover my eyelid. I want my head hear to grow longer but I didn't mean that head hair.

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Being of my word

Guess I'll have to eat my hat. Which sauce goes best with velvet?

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Spelunking

Looking around. May check for an echo after a bit of a climb.

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Deeply unsatisfied with the comparison between what was in my head vs. what I could make but too crabby now to persist. Programs keep crashing and internet flaking out. And tomorow's another day and concept.

Mending My Ways

Mending, amending and re-mending my ways


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pinned, sewn, photographed, printed, sewn and scanned. And the teeny nearly invisible spot of red on the right index finger is a bead of blood. I managed to stab myself. I considered squeezing some onto the glass for the melodrama but passed on such contrived excitement.

askew and you shall receive

Post-Carravagio, uncertain angel askew in dark room. light sensitivity. I am fungus. I am cave of sporing cotton.

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let's all go down to the river

a visit to Perth, thinking about the sense of depth created by the use of vertical lines and horizontal lines. The docent said that Mondrian's paintings were of landscapes, extending Pissarro's directional blots of color. Huh.

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On the Other Hand

It's grimy too. I spent 4 or 5 hours cleaning the storage locker. Sorting thru stuff that even didn't get unboxed in the last 3 moves.

The floor is now navigable. I look like a miner. I talk and dust comes out.

I have some catching up to do with 365. Photos taken but not processed.

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Staying above water

Eyes on the horizon, despite all the ducks up.

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