Time is On My Side: What to Do With Coyotes Outside Your Tent

The past week was spent camping with forty students at an outdoor education centre. Sleeping on the ground for four nights cannot help but cause a head cold, and I will be spending the next few days resting, I think. Beyond the daily work, education allows me to think and reflect. I am permitted a few clear moments each week to consider just what our time in this world means, which is far more time than most people get. This week, while a few deer or coyotes were tramping through the woods toward my tent – nothing helps clarity like a few animals crashing towards you – I gave myself permission to ask what I valued in my life these days.

The value we place on time has become cheap. So much of our time is spent looking forward or is surrendered for the sake of our professional lives. This month I actually turned down work for the first time, and I did it because I valued my time at rest more than the extra income it would provide for me to take the gig. I cherish the time I get behind the lens, and when I was lying in my tent it was those times out in the world that I thought about the most.

If I had not been out in the world, then I would never have met V.  Without my photography I doubt that I would be able to remind myself of where I have been, who I have been, and who I have known. Being out there is never easy. I know that many people claim that travel and change is easy, but I have my doubts about what those people are doing. Walking beyond your comfort area, even if that means to a different corner store, is just not a normal human activity, and for every push you make the world pushes back with an equal and opposite force.

V. just got word that she has been given an extraordinary opportunity to travel to Thunder Bay for placement for an additional four weeks beyond her upcoming six week placement. For me, it will mean less V. over the next little bit, but I know that such opportunities are never to be looked at negatively, and I probably also feel a little jealous that I am not able to just pick up and go with her. Still, it does mean that I will probably head north in March during the break to visit and see what we can photograph together. We are thinking that the Linhof View camera might be an ideal tool for us given the landscape and chance to slow down from the Toronto pace. We might even get a chance to weekend in Winnipeg, which would be fun.

In the end, the deer and coyote bypassed my tent, and I went on reading Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. What I value is the chance to focus on my growth versus needing to focus on merely providing the essentials of survival for me and my family. I value my family, my few friends, my career, my photography and maybe, just maybe, I value the hard tasks just as much as the soft moments.

The photographs featured in the blog all come from the never-ending scans of the Spain Through Morocco adventure. The Atlas Mountains, Barcelona’s Gaudi interior and a few Essaouria photographs from the rough part of town made it onto the Epson V700 tonight, and they turned out not too badly. I am still working through my new business plans, but the PhotoShelter site is beginning to attract more views every day; I am still waiting for my first sale. Time is on my side.

 

Life is Much Worse for Them: Quentin Crisp, Bobby Fischer and Me

My evening was spent watching Resident Alien, a film made about Quentin Crisp at the end of his life in New York City. The viewer finds Quentin peddling his witty quotes over and over again in loops as an infamous celebrity and dinner party-goer, and yet he only subsists on Heinz Beans and lives in what we would consider abject poverty today. It is a gut-wrenching film about a man who takes his life’s tormenting demons and turns them into hand puppets to be used in a carnivalesque show.

Last night I watched Bobby Fischer Takes on the World. Both of these men rose to new heights from horrendous childhoods. Crisp subverts his stagnation at age 73 by moving to New York, while Bobby fades into a pathological paranoia at the heighth of his game.  Quentin takes a Margaret Atwood’s “victim position four” and runs wild with it through Harlem and the Bowry, while Bobby sits in madness and anger.

I compare that to our world; the one we now live in within the confines of North America and the rest of the First World. I listen to BBC World News and the doom and gloom resonates hour after hour, but really…really…are we not all living a life of unimagined dreams where even at our worst we have food for the table and a clean pot to cook in?

From my travels in the Third World I know that the rest of the world does not live such charmed lives. In Marrakech hustlers pound the street selling whatever they can. Their water is compromised. Garbage litters the landscape. Education is non-existent beyond that which extolls the virtues of Islam or that which will enable tourism. We are fortunate to be where we are, and yet we are not happy. We fear loss. We fear the future. We bemoan our conveyor belt towards death in lieu of acknowledging the beauty (and perhaps the horror) of the now.

Perhaps the days ahead will be difficult, but I have to believe that there will be great opportunities for those with the vision to let go of their fear, to let go of their need for doom and to embrace change. Through change comes growth, and through growth comes new ways to improve the world for all. The game will not withstand our continued march towards materialism without education, without craftsmanship and without understanding of our limits.

This week is about acknowledging my own limits. We all come to our personal boundaries of health, education, finance, and age; what makes heroes of ordinary people is the ability to put the toys down to address what one needs to do to surpass the limits. I have come those my own limits about twenty times so far; each time the wall is all the more solid. I have also sat, re-evaluated who I am and who I need to be to go beyond that very real limit. It might mean eating less meat or learning how to do a difficult task; it might mean paying the bills before you buy a new toy, and it might mean finding a way to tap into a new reserve of energy deep inside a body that is unfathomable to a younger person. With every closed door comes a key, but not all keys are made of metal or shaped like you would expect.

My favourite quote from Quentin Crisp was:

“People are always complaining about being used by others…Think of all the people who are never used. Life is worse for them.” 

 

Ghosts: The Past is in Your Future

When I traveled to India a few years ago, I had my palm read by a man who we had come to the hotel to read our fortunes. He told me that in my life the challenge would be that come to terms with my disappointment in others; that I held myself to such high standards that I would constantly be disappointed in others when I reach out to them for help. At the time, I did not pay it much heed, but it is a ghost that comes back to haunt me on sleepy days like this one.

In life, there will be days when all one can do is remember the past with bittersweet emotions of joy, loss and sorrow. Memory is a pre-occupation of mine: what have I done, who have I known, what have I experienced. Perhaps that is why I am drawn to photography – it is a vehicle for me to hold on to the precious memories to visit on days when I am ready. I do miss people, the places and the precious moments that comprise the good days and nights. At the same time, I know that my path is the correct one and that we seldom can grow in tandem with those we meet along the road. The best that I can do is be content to spend time with their shadows; the bits and pieces we collect in the suitcases of our minds.

 

The scanning process continues…the four photographs in the blog were all taken in Morocco and represent the stronger pieces from my scanning endeavours. I am starting to like what I ended up with coming out of Morocco, but it is a long process to come to terms with how the photographs speak to me as a whole project. Tonight I am going to take a look at what V. came out with on her digital and analogue cameras; from what I have seen I like her stuff better, but the grass is always greener…we are hoping to have different perspectives on the same experiences for combining into a grouping.

Morocco and Spain: Triptych Photography

I have begun the long scanning process. With about 200 negatives I tend to scan 100 of the better images and see what works from the travel photographs. I am not sure what to think of the photographs thus far as they are not exactly what I expected to take away from Spain and Morocco. One thing that I have noticed is that I must have subconsciously shot each scene in threes because that is what I appear to have: a series of triptychs. I have decided to post the images on that basis on the blog over the next few weeks. In an exhibition I would probably sell these as sets or framed together. I am not certain how I feel about the work, but as V. notes, I never am.

The first series comes from Essaouria. I know, I know…the whole beauty of Essaouria’s boats is the dark blue colour, but the sun and light quality made for terrible colour interpretations on film. Given that I do love the compositions and the ancient feeling of the city, I decided to use SilverFX Pro 2 to transfer these into a fine art image that should print extremely well onto a rag paper.

The fish markets in Essaouria were not extraordinary – I preferred Spanish ones – as the press of humanity made it impossible to not step in fish guts or be dragged along the wharf. The boats were special though, and I would have liked to see the fishermen come in each morning, but that seemed to be off-limits to tourists, especially given that it was Ramadan and many would be eating their final meal of the day around that time.

Work just came in by the truckload…literally. I have six large boxes of catalogue work to shoot tomorrow, and that is fine with me, as that is how I will be paying for the Spain/Morocco adventure. I also had to pick up a new motorcycle helmet so that I can phase one of my older ones out. I ended up going with a Suomy Vandal Dream model, as it was the only Large in stock. I find that I just have to buy gear when it is available, since it is mostly Italian and hard to come by without a month long ordering process. I hated spending the money, but it is my head being protected, I guess.  It is a little…risque and slightly feminine, but I love the octopus on the other side. All good.