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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