Aimless Photography

Rose Coloured Glasses

2011-11-25T15:33:00.001-07:00

I have no hilarious tales concerning roses. I don't think I even have profound ones or mildly entertaining ones. I can tell you that for some reason, I find them difficult to photograph. Roses are perfection, and somehow that never quite seems to translate onto 'film' when I try and shoot them. I want to practice shooting roses, but somehow it would seem kinda selfish if I walked out of the grocery store with armloads of roses for myself. Now, before you get all high and mighty feminist on me, I have zero issue with a person buying flowers for themselves. When Safeway had BOGO tulips on one spring, you can bet your britches I had a dozen bouquets scattered about the house. I only had two vases at the time and had to stuff the tulips wherever they could fit, including the teapot, creamer, and sugar dish. No, we're penny pinching a little 'round here (it being the holidaze and all) and it's the season for giving, not for indulging on out-of-season flowers. Plus, my son is in the taste-test phase of his adventuring (which has included some fairly strange assaults on our Schnauzer), and I'm pretty sure any living thing that we bring into the house would end up in his mouth.

You'd think I'd have a funny story concerning roses since we do, after all, live in the wild rose province. People intentionally plant them here. In the Maritimes, they grow wild along the highway. We used to have them growing along the side of the house, but we didn't buy them. Nope. My folks went out with a shovel one afternoon and came back with a few bushes. Same went for the raspberry patch they had going in the back yard-- another highway transplant, so to speak. Come to think of it, I think a great many of the shrubs and whatnot in my parents' quite amazing garden had come from along the highway somewhere... the plants, and some of the more shapely rocks, which we got from a construction site that was on the way home from one of my summer jobs. My husband and I have talked about doing the same thing to the tangle of rose bushes planted outside the optometrist's office (midnight shovel raid!), but I reckon someone might notice, and I'm not up for tempting cowboy justice.

The shots you're seeing here today were taken from two locations. If you wander around to the back of the Parliament building in Victoria, you'll discover an English rose garden. If you get there early enough in the morning (after the sprinkler system has done its thing), you'll even get the requisite dew on the rose petals-- saves you from having to bring your own squirt bottle. The others were taken after the first snow here. There is a house down the street that has forsaken grass in favour of a jungle of roses. They aren't all that into pruning, so some of the bushes still have whole heads of roses still clinging for dear life, these dry, shriveled things among the red rose hips and the yellowish thorns-- thorns, by the way, of fairytale-esque proportions. I thought you might enjoy the juxtaposition of the lush, summery Victoria roses against the withered back-alley winter roses.

Bring on the Totems

2011-10-01T22:21:00.002-06:00

C'mon. You know you want one. Bring home a totem print for Thanksgiving. And one of the pumpkins, too.

Know Any Good Jokes?

2011-09-30T20:49:00.002-06:00

I thought I might regale you with some humour or some puns about totem poles. So I Googled, literally, jokes about totem poles. The result? It's kinda like when I was in junior high and did an internet search for a home economics class. Nutrition.Typed in milk. In the case of the former, I ended up with a plethora of sites devoted to jokes about Polish people (Poles... Do they even like to be called Poles? Is that PC?)... and one site of people attempting to make up totem pole related jokes. (Colossal failure. In case you need a few brain cells to die, please view said attempts here, none of which belong to me. Please note the emphasis on ANY, as if the poster were desperate for totem pole humour. OH MY GAWD. Aren't there ANY jokes??? But I digress.) In the case of the latter search, why oh why would a search on milk (with the safe search squarely on, in 1993, in a junior high school) result in an inundation of porn? I ultimately did my project on caffeine, the benefits thereof, a lesson I would carry with me to university.

So instead I'll tell you about our trip to Victoria, home to a number of spectacular totems. And Poles, I'm sure, but I haven't looked into that yet, whether there is in fact a Polish community in Victoria and/or if such a community would warrant the adjective spectacular.

Our first trip to Vancouver Island, we had just a few hours to spend in Victoria before our flight left. We didn't go far, so I decided to spend the last few megabytes I had left on my memory card shooting the totem poles near the museum. My husband's voice suddenly hits octaves I didn't realise possible as he squeaks excitedly, "Animal! Animal!"

Okay, so my imagination is going crazy here. First of all, I can't see what he's seeing, mostly because yelping "Animal! Animal!" leaves an immense slideshow of possible animals running through my brain. You yelp, for example, "Platypus! Platypus!" and my mind envisions the platypus and the eyes start looking for him, making the platypus more readily identifiable. I'm no neurologist, but I do believe it helps to know what you are looking for. The only thing I could conclude in those panicked seconds is that it must be an animal my husband has never seen before and therefore cannot identify by proper name.

So, the thing is, to my knowledge, there ain't much my husband hasn't seen. I am bit of a zoo junkie and make my husband take me to the zoo in pretty much every major city and country bumpkin small town we visit. (Remind me to tell you about my experience at Ueno Zoo sometime), and hubby o' mine is on the up and up on dog breeds, too. He's no animal slouch. So what the heck animal is he seeing that he doesn't know the name for?

Gulp.

<insert list of strange and potentially dangerous animals into imagination here>

I began to wonder if I was going to photograph said mystery beast and therefore inadvertently document the last moments of my life, and would the pictures be shown at my funeral?

The end to this story is not nearly as interesting as the beginning. Evidently, my husband has never seen a North American raccoon before. Ja. Fer real. Raccoons. A pair of the critters. It makes sense if you've ever seen a Japanese raccoon, called a tanouki (Mario Brothers fans, remember the tanouki suit? Yeah. Raccoon suit.) and you'll totally get why the coons on the lawn were totally alien to him. But still. We had to add The Raccoons to the list of TV shows my husband has to watch in order to ~~not freak out his wife~~ ~~unnecessarily~~ better understand Canadian culture.

It was a good experience, though, because the next time he hollered "Animal! Animal!" at the corn maze a year later (in that case, for prairie dogs popping up and down like those gophers you whack in a carnival game), I knew I wasn't in immediate peril or going to die.

In the meantime, now that you've made it to the anti-climactic ending of my totem anecdote, I hope you've enjoyed the images. Some of them were in fact taken in Duncan, on Vancouver Island, where, if you must know, a wasp crawled down my decolletage during the shoot. (For our concerned readership, my spheksophobic cousin was obliging enough to coax the wasp out and my bosoms escaped unscathed.) I find that some of the shots really work well as a set, and if you're interested, they'll be available for sale shortly. In fact, a huge variety of totem shots are going to be available. And you don't have to tote'm to your house. We'll mail 'em.

Images of Autumn

2011-09-23T16:47:00.001-06:00

A-maize-ing (Pun Intended)

2011-09-23T16:02:00.001-06:00

It's autumn. In some places, it's still summer. Not here, nope, zero, zilch, nada. Officially autumnal. Yellow leaves, crunching, the perpetual smell of burning something in the air, cardis, oxfords, tights, jaunty hats, grasshoppers and wheat and red berries. And NO CAMERA. Distress.

Right around this time of year, last year, we went to our very first pumpkin festival out in Bon Accord. We've been there several times since (albeit not for pumpkins), mostly because I'm inclined to believe my husband likes a good deal (in any language). They have a corn maze (which I love to tell people is a maize maze, mostly to see the expression on their faces when they don't get it, or think I am suffering from a speech impediment). They also have a canon that they shoot the pumpkins out of at a 2-D pirate ship. (Last weekend, pumpkins not being quite ripe yet, it was a corn canon. Seriously awesome.) I was a few months preggo at last October and not showing at all, yet the demands for 'belly shots' were rampant on Facebook. I was awfully tempted, folks, to stuff one of the pumpkins under my shirt just to freak people out. That, or find a picture of me from Thanksgiving when I've eaten too much and pass it off as baby bulge. Turkey baby. Baby baby. Same difference at four months, right?

So let me tell you about this place. Don't go if you don't have a giant sense of humour, because unless you can get into the kitsch and shabby attractions, you'll spoil your afternoon. The corn maze is awesome-- that is, unless you go at the end of the season, and people have tramped through it to take a shortcut to the parking lot. At that point, you're sort of wishing you'd worn industrial boots because, ladies and gentlemen, a cut cornstalk is actually quite penetrating and resiliant. They also hide a number of oddities, including discarded Timbits, which our schnauzer found (and was disgruntled to relinquish). Their petting zoo boasts an exorbitant variety of chickens. The first time we went they were roaming freely around the grounds. I have a thing for chasing chickens, and every time we've visited since, they've had the chickens behind bars. Alas.

The Enchanted Forest bit of the festival consists of things intended to be creepy... but what makes the Enchanted Forest legitimately creepy is that it looks like a playground out of a horror movie. The statues and whatnot that are intended to be cute and charming have fallen into decay, paint peeling, cement cracking, vines and grasses rising up and twisting around them, like an abandoned circus or playground where children were murdered. WAY freakier than the plastic skeleton sprawled in the dead leaves, although, I must admit that the plastic Kewpie doll in the muddy witch's pot was also somewhat twisted. The kids delight in the mundane plastic skeleton while the adults shiver at the legitimate and more subtle creepiness of the place.There is also an authentic 1970's hearse they pull out for Hallowe'en.

If you have children who have difficulty assessing the severity of a situation, do not take them to the toddler's maze made of six-inch-high bales of hay. I cannot tell you how many kids stand in the maze, unable to figure it out, and believe they are legitimately cut off or separated from their parents, also in the maze. They stand there bawling until someone comes to rescue them. It never occurs to them that they can walk through or over the wee piles of hay... Strangely, they know that the skeletons in the "concert hall" singing country songs aren't real.

You can stuff your own scarecrow. The best part about this is that people leave behind their discarded scarecrow parts. It's like D-Day on Omaha beach. Lots of parts everywhere. Dismembered scarecrows with their faces drawn on by 6-year-old artists. It's colourful and comical and gruesome all at the same time. Be prepared, friends, if you go, to sit in a hay pile stuffing jeans with straw.

And did I mention there are pumpkins? LOTS of pumpkins.

We're going back this year because my husband has decided he wants to take pictures of our son on all the pumpkins. We did a dry run of Oliver on the pumpkins and hay bales last week at the Harvest Festival (which really, was just an excuse to shoot corn out of a cannon), got him with an Olympus point and shoot. Epic fail. I have documented a plethora of Oliver expressions suitable for a number of caption contests... I'm afraid none of the captions would be family friendly. Glare-o-rama. Lots of up-yours stares and eff-you grimaces, proof that kids are on to the ridiculous need of parents to pose them in "fun times" pictures. I can wait until adolescence for those looks, thank you very much.

And then there is the issue of my camera AND lens being in the camera hospital-- still in the waiting room to go through triage, I'm told. Must be a Canadian camera hospital. Luckily, aside from the glaring, Oliver hasn't started doing anything photo-worthy, like sculpting masterpieces or tap dancing. But, the next pumpkin festival is around the corner, and I haven't got a gawsh durn thing to get it with. Le sigh.

In the meantime, please enjoy the collection of foh-tohs I have to share from autumns past. I'm gonna give them their own post so you can enjoy them without the distraction of words. Although, if you're here, thanks for reading the distracting words. I'll also be setting up a new image gallery so if you're looking for some of these fabulous seasonal images, it'll be easier to find them.

The Busy Season

2011-09-20T11:20:00.000-06:00

It seems, sometimes, that the months can fly by and feel like days. You look back and wonder where the time went, how you managed to neglect your diary, how your blog goes without updates, and you haven't bothered to answer those e mails from your mom. (I don't have that problem with my mom... I think if I somehow didn't assert my existence in the universe for more than three consecutive days, she'd inundate my phone with messages and eventually end up on my doorstep.) In our world, we moved, took a vacation, and started a new teaching semester all in the same breath. Looking at the calendar, I realise this was more than thirty days ago, not yesterday. It's a miracle some couples manage to find the time to talk, right?

My husband and I found an interesting solution to this problem that inevitably creeps up during the busier phases of our lives. We came across this Q&A book at the bookstore and bought a pair of them. Essentially, there's a different question every day that you answer, everything from philosophical questions (what's standing in your way?) to silly questions (do you need a cold shower?) to questions about what you ate for dinner (what was the last meal someone cooked for you?). The book allows you to record your answers over a period of five years (starting from any year-- you can fill in the year as you go), so in 2012, I can see what I wrote in 2011, or in 2015, I can see what I wrote in 2014, 2013, and 2012. I'm curious to see how my answers this year will be different next year.

My husband I keep them on our night tables, and as we're going to bed, we answer the day's question and talk about our answers. Sometimes we have about thirty seconds of sharing, sometimes the day's question actually gets us talking before we pass out.

A bigger project we've taken on is a sort of auto-biographical journal that prompts you to write down different memories and experiences, info about your family, quirks and quarks, and your philosophy on life... we're hoping to finish them before we're old, senile, and can't remember our own names. We thought it might be a nifty keepsake for our kids or our grandkids, who would never know us as young thirty-somethings, just wrinkly, doddering, doting grandparents. (What I'd really like is for my parents to fill them out, but I don't think that'll happen. They somehow manage to be two of the busiest people I know.) I'll try and find the links for you so you can check it out for yourself. It seems a little daunting, but again, it's been a project that has definitely stimulated some conversation between my hubby and me. It's amazing how much you don't know about someone, even if you've been with them a million years.

The Treatise

2011-07-22T11:25:00.000-06:00

So we left off at my sudden and burning desire to photograph the rural and the derelict. I wrote a letter to a friend of mine who, over the last eight years, I have only communicated with via letter. Yep, snail mail, the lost art of writing. My friend, whom I call Joe (the result of another story, which I shall tell another time) is a brilliant young, edgy, award-winning playwright who happens to be Australian and alas, in Australia. We've been exchanging letters since university. In any event, I think I will share the letter I sent to him with you, as it indeed paints our photographic tale of adventure in all the right colours.

I am considering, Joe, writing a treatise on the repelling of mosquitoes, which have effectively stolen what brief summer we have here, that and the incessant road work. Even the immigrants here know the half-joke that ~shire has the following seasons: winter, more winter, still winter, and construction. And this is how we teach them the meaning of the word sardonic.

Conspiracy theorist junkie husband believes that the government… yes, the mighty municipal government… is responsible for the mosquito invasion to distract from the fact that all of ~shire’s major roads have simultaneously been unearthed and are likely to stay that way for yet another summer, thus forcing traffic to constant apocalypse-esque city-evacuation levels of traffic jams. I suppose if hubby and I invested in a kayak, we could use the Saskatchewan River as a sort of shortcut through the city, except I’m afraid that if I got tired, I would be whisked away to Winnipeg, which might be a fate worse than death.

Winnipeg, you see, used to hold the proud title of Canada’s mosquito capital. They have to regularly spray the city to make it habitable. (I am not sure what effect the spraying of mosquitoes has on the human population, but there must be some sort of chemical reaction in the brains, or else why would people voluntarily stay in Winnipeg during mozzie season?) In the Old Country, they have tales of babies being spirited away by fairies. In Australia, isn’t it the dingoes? Well, here in Canada, it’s mozzies that make off with the infants. I feel like Prime Minister Harper has missed out on a great natural resource, and he is so fond of ~~stripping~~ taking advantage of natural resources. You see, I feel as if Canada has access to a rather brilliant bio weapon. Perhaps that is why we are a peaceable country. No one has the stomach to piss us off for fear of a mosquito bombing.

I would like to remind you of the tense I used in order to speak of Winnipeg’s mosquito status, its claim to fame: used to, as in, no longer. According to the reports (which remarkably sound like bragging), ~shire presently has six times the number of mosquitoes Winnipeg does. (They have determined this by counting the females. HOW does one DO this, count the females???) I understand that we are a competitive province, one that delights in competition against Winnipeg, but really, ~shire need not be number one in this thing. Being number one in catastrophic environmental destruction and number one in homicides is quite enough. But we are. Six times higher. And they say that this is “average” based on our historical record of mosquitoes, the years before the drought. (There is a historical record of mosquitoes?) Yes, the drought kept the mosquitoes away, but now that the rains have come back, so have the mozzies. In droves. In swarms. In clouds of black, oscillating orgies. They fling themselves at the car as you tear away from the park, bouncing off the windows and the hood, tires screeching, not unlike hapless zombies at the end of the chase scene. Our walls were covered to them (mosquitoes, not zombies) to such a degree that dear husband lit the mosquito coils inside to smoke them out. I think he was willing to do a dozen loads of laundry to get the campfire smell out of every fabric thing indoors than be eaten alive in our sleep.

In Newfoundland, at the wildlife museum, there is a rather substantial jar filled with red liquid (which I have told myself to this day is red-dyed maple syrup). The placard tells us that this is how much blood the mosquitoes can and will drain from a moose, ultimately killing it. People are wearing their mosquito bites like battle scars, and really, that’s what they are. People seem determined to tough it out, to go out of doors bundled like ninjas in winter, and run through the parks, arms flailing like madmen, chased by an almost cartoonish cloud of black mosquitoes.

I myself made the mistake of going out of doors one afternoon sans chemical protection. Husband and I stumbled upon a canola field that played host to a row of derelict barns. I had to shoot it. I hopped the barbed wire fence and traipsed up the long unused dirt path through the trees, camera in hand, floral rain boots on, grass to my knees, butterflies flitting in the weeds and wildflowers, sunlight pouring through the birch and poplar. I felt like I should have been in some rustic Whitman poem and was feeling rather good about myself, trekking through nature to shoot the landscape. I felt very artistic, very idyllic indeed. Until I was swarmed and felt rather less idyllic as I ran, screaming like a banshee, back to the car. I should not have screamed, because I’m certain I swallowed enough mosquitoes in that instant to end the (slight) anemia I’ve suffered since Oliver’s birth—or, perhaps add to it. Is it a myth that the mozzies can bleed you from the inside out? Or does that go in the swallowing of watermelon seeds category of old wives’ tales?

Well, regardless of the insect protein I ingested, in that moment, I sustained fifty bites from shoulder to elbow on my left arm alone. To add insult to injury, as I was later examining my swollen face in the bathroom mirror, I could not tear my eyes away from the grotesque sight (they say the same thing of horrific car accidents), and smashed my face into the door, squirting a stream of blood from my left nostril all over our Ikea bath carpet and orange Ikea bath towel. Husband o' mine swears I did it in purpose. I’ve wanted to replace that bathmat for months, and I’ve left it there, bloodstain and all, to prove to him that I did not intentionally inflict a nosebleed on myself. He forgets that, graceful as I am, I once gave myself a black eye on the folding closet door, which, by the by, does not make for a sturdy prop when one is trying to wiggle one’s legs into skinny jeans while pregnant. Words to the wise, should you ever try to wiggle into skinny jeans while pregnant.

I wrote an e mail to the mayor. He has ignored my invitation to partake of a walk through the park with schnauzer Stanley some evening. Nor has he decided to fix the plane that, once upon a time, before the time of the decade-long drought, sprayed our fair city with mozzie-killing pesticide.

But I have also considered the alternative (the alternative to what? To becoming a shut-in). Would repelling the mosquitoes through natural means make summer in ~shire any more tolerable? Here is, in no particular order, the list of ways one can naturally repel mosquitoes. I shall leave the inevitable conclusion to you.

The List

· Wear bright colours, such as traffic cone orange and day-glo yellow
· Duct tape your pant legs and your long-sleeved shirts down, even in 35C heat waves
· Wear many loose layers, even in 35C heat waves
· Refrain from perspiring
· Avoid activities that involve CO2, such as exhaling
· Eat lots of raw garlic or ingest garlic tablets so that your skin secretes a garlicky odor
· Douse yourself in citronella, geranium, and soybean oil
· Rub yourself with fennel, thyme, clove oil, and celery extract
· Bake at 350 for 25 minutes
· Refrain from using shampoos and soaps, particularly ones with a floral scent or ones that eliminate your own scent
· Do not mask your natural body odors
· Slather your body with bear fat/grease that has been infused with castor oil or cloves or cedar
· Spritz yourself with the urine or musk of bears, deer, or other various animals. If deer or bear are unavailable, cow urine and cow dung are effective alternatives
· Smoke, or burn something indoors when you are not at home
· Do not wear sunscreen

Old and Dusty

2011-07-21T13:07:00.000-06:00

While at the farmer's market, I met a photographer who has an eye for the kind of things I'd like to shoot... that is, if I could just pip off to <insert exotic country here> whenever I felt like it. In fact, she is in Borneo at the moment on a photo shoot. I sigh in green, frothy jealousy. But it was not her exotic shots that caught my eye but her local ones.

Yes, she had a rather impressive, textural and rich collection of the rural and the derelict. I have no idea where she found the house? barn? that she shot in, but I want to find one like it, too.

When I was a child growing up in Newfoundland, just up the highway from my grandparents' cabin in Holyrood, there was an abandoned house. Salt box house, in retrospect, and it still had all the fixings-- old furniture, old stove, the kind you have to put wood inside to get hot... at least, that's what I could glean from peeking in the window and the open door. My father would never let us go inside. He went inside once and left me outside, just burning up. I never wanted to disobey him more in my life than at that moment. I never wanted to explore a place more than this old, abandoned property with the clover and the thistle and the grass growing as high as my waist, the pieces of somebody's life left behind, perhaps the magazine left on the table where someone had been flipping through it, dishes left in the sink to dry, never put away, moldy linens still in the closet and on the iron beds...

I was experiencing my first pang of nostalgic curiosity, a haunting feeling I experience whenever I saw a place like this, or watch Titanic or Schindler's List, or hold an artifact from a museum (you're allowed to do that, right? touch the old stuff?), put my grandmother's dainty gloves on my own hand or go through her purse and find a 80-year-old shopping list. It's the feeling I had when walking through the halls of Versailles and marveled that once upon a time, it too was a house and not a museum, that people looked out those windows on their drive and on their yard, or sat in those chairs, now forbidden, and stoked the now empty fireplaces. The idea of ghosts was fascinating to me, romantic, that the shades of the past could still be creeping about. I was never afraid of ghosts, just the dark Shadow Man I was convinced lurked outside my bedroom door in the hallway. But he was not a ghost.

So the photograph I saw that really captured my attention was one of a bouncy horse, a toy that I'd had as a child. It sat in the ruins of whatever place she was photographing, this symbol of innocence and childhood just cast aside. Why was it left there among the bottles and the cans and the other remnants of desertion?

I've been trying to convince my husband to take me on an excursion into the deep, red-neck countryside of this province so I can trespass or creep into the derelict and abandoned barns along the way... The best he's done so far is take me a 20-minute jaunt to the outskirts of town, where our adventure will continue next time.

Until then, I highly encourage you to visit her site and to take a look through the galleries. You may wonder why I am promoting another photographer's site, that it will hurt my own business, but to summarize one of Ayn Rand's philosophies rather crudely, we should not be afraid of others' greatness or attempt to squash it. It is a small person who fears the accomplishments of others. We do not fail because others are successful. We fail because we ourselves have not achieved success or greatness. So, waxing philosophical aside, check out her galleries. They're great. And visit mine while you're at it.

Kiosk

2011-07-20T13:12:00.000-06:00

For those who haven't the time or energy to view our full gallery, you can visit our kiosk if you're looking to make a quick purchase! We've included a sampling of our most popular images (by sales) and are making them available in 5x7 prints. Of course, we do sell other sizes and other images which are available through our webstore, but if you just want a nibble, check out the kiosk here.

Just Beet It

2011-07-20T13:01:00.002-06:00

Farmer's markets are fabulous. Anywhere. One of my favourite markets is in Seattle (the Pike Place Market, where they have the first ever Starbucks), but there is always such a crowd I find it difficult to shoot over or through people. I am short and not exactly what you'd call imposing. Lord help me if I don't get front row at a busking event. I always end up with somebody's bald spot.

But what a great way to get some really colourful photos, right? (At the farmer's market, not some dude's bald spot.) Clusters of vegetables, beans, pastas, flowers, fruits, candies, fabrics, soaps. Oh, the textures. A friend of mine has the most amazing shot of chilies from the Seattle market. I would really love to hit someplace with spices, like India or Morocco, and get some of that on film. If I used film. However, I don't know how plausible or practical it would be to push our giant plastic North American stroller through a sweaty, spicy, vibrant Middle Eastern market and try to take a decent shot. I may be an old woman before I get to explore the off-the-beaten-paths (and even some of the well-worn roads) of the world.

So I went to our downtown farmer's market to grab a few snaps. It's no Morocco, but if you're lucky, there's a really fun candy display or heaps of fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, due to the weather we've been having, there wasn't what you'd call a wide variety of veg. (Or, for some reason, candy. None to be seen. Perhaps next week we'll see candied mosquitoes? More on this later.) In fact, root vegetables seemed to be the only thing available. Beets. LOTS OF BEETS. And parsnips. Time for a good old-fashioned Newfoundland vegetable boil with that much to choose from. So I shot the beets.

And then it got me wondering if it were true if beets make you pee red. Does anybody know? I had a roommate in university who decided to test this to see if it were in fact fact, but he never told me the results of his experiment. Probably a good thing. A friendship has to have boundaries. I have also heard you can time how long it takes your food to go in one end and come out the other by eating beets. I don't know why one would need to know how long their digestive process takes, but it's good to know that there are simple and natural ways to explore this miracle of nature.

In the end, we bought an artichoke. No, not a beet. Being originally from Newfoundland, it was my first non-canned artichoke, and I wanted to cook it. Supposedly, you have to boil them for a heinous amount of time, which, by the by, is the quintessential Newfie cooking technique... I wondered if I had inadvertently come full circle... In any event, after boiling my artichoke in water, lemon, butter, and pepper for about an hour and a half, it disappeared. A few flakes of artichoke heart, not even a mouthful, appeared on my plate when my husband proudly emerged from the kitchen. Alas, after all that wait, he had prematurely removed the artichoke from the burner, deemed it too tough to eat, and chucked the whole thing, save for scraping out a wee bit of the heart. So I still do not know if canned artichoke is superior or inferior to freshly boiled artichoke. Maybe we should have gone with the beets? Again, gentle readers, you will have to let me know. Or, if you have better artichoke recipes. That, and the beet thing.

But our market adventure does not end here, for it was the innocent, innocuous beginning to a much less enjoyable journey. Stay tuned.

Tanka

2011-07-08T23:48:00.001-06:00

Written by a friend and translated from its original Japanese, here is the state of affairs here:

エドモントン　日ごと五箇所は　蚊に食われ　掻きむしるたび　悲しき快感

In Edmonton, at least five mosquito bites a day--
each time I scratch 'em,
somehow, a sad pleasure

It seemed fitting to show you my leetle friend, for whose digital image I sacrificed several pints of blood in the capture. He, and his dragonfly buddy (affectionately known as The Ham), are both available in the webstore. A fabulous pair with fabulous colour and detail.

Oh Me Nerves

2011-07-08T09:33:00.002-06:00

I had a Jonah Day (or perhaps a comedy of errors?) in photography the other day. At least I didn't cram fireworks into the wood stove, but the way I was headed, I'm surprised my Zeiss lens didn't end up in there. If I had a wood stove. Which I don't. Probably a good thing, too.

If you don't know what a Jonah Day is, and aren't reading your bible every night (I, in fact, first heard the expression in one of the Anne of Green Gables novels, and believe you me, even without the bible reference in the other hand, it was NOT hard to understand from Anne's experience just exactly what a Jonah Day was.) In the meantime, the uber short version of the story is, Jonah got swallowed by a whale and lived there in its belly for a while a la Pinocchio only without the sprightly Jiminy Cricket until the whale coughed him up. If that isn't an unlucky day, I don't know what is.

I first discover that, because of all the pictures I've been taking (mostly of my son... I do get a little carried away, to the point where one of my colleagues worries that he'll start calling the camera "mama"...) that my computer space is running a little low. Like, really low. Dang. I don't want to invest in an external hard drive just yet. Not yet. There are end of summer sales to hit. So I decide to do a massive cull of all the duplicates, copies, and icky photos I've taken over the last five years. Except somewhere in the cull I manage to delete an entire folder of nice landscape photography that hasn't been saved to my gallery yet. The loss of most of the pictures doesn't irk me so much as losing one particular shot of a grassy field with one of those perfect, poetic trees and a winding path. The sky has sweeping, textured clouds and the sunbeams are bursting through the branches of that tree and streaking across the field like the beams from a Care Bear's tummy. It's gone.

So I decide to go back to where I shot it, hoping that the miraculous lighting conditions are just like they were the first time. I've got my camera around my neck with my new neck strap and the lens hood on, ready to shoot at a moment's notice. Except as I'm crossing the bridge, the neck strap breaks.

Yes.

And the camera and my lens go hurtling towards the pavement, all slow-motion style. Somewhere, Requiem starts playing.

Heart attack.

Except the lens hood, which is already in the go position, takes the impact, and shatters. The camera and the lens make a ten point landing on the pavement, oblivious to the near death experience it just had, and wins the Olympic gold. All systems are still go, captain, for the field shoot.

Except the mosquitoes are blackening the sky like a plague of Egypt and I have to shoot on the run. My husband is pushing the stroller through the field like a bumbling kidnapper, poor Oliver jostling around with a giant grin on his face. Luckily he was strapped in or we would have learned rather quickly if babies in fact bounce. I told Oliver he had better watch out or he'd end up swallowing half the swarm. I'm flailing my arms like a lunatic to keep the mozzies away from my husband and son and came *this* close to clobbering poor husband in the face with the million pound glass Zeiss lens.

So, perhaps not a Jonah Day in the truest sense, but a series of accidents and near-misses. When I think of all that could have gone wrong, or have gone much worse, I'm in fact quite lucky. I still didn't get the shot that I deleted, but my camera and my lens and my husband are intact. But as they say back home, oh me nerves!

A Feast for the Eyes

2011-07-07T12:40:00.000-06:00

Summer has finally arrived, but we're all trapped indoors. It's hot and sunny and perfect out there... well, almost perfect. We're being held hostage by the mosquitoes, who have made their comeback with a bloodthirsty vengeance. The newspaper photogs have had no difficulty capturing images of hapless victims being swarmed by clouds of mozzies, gleaming in the sunshine. Some folks are worried about the fairies or the dingoes spiriting off their babies. Me? The mosquitoes.

The heat, however, inspired my husband to hold an impromptu lunch party. His idea of advanced notice is, oh, 24 hours max. And then he's surprised when only one or two people can come... In any event, he wanted a somen lunch party. Somen is a noodle dish served cold on hot summer days in Japan. Or, in this case, Canada.

Handsome husband made way too much food for the two and a half people that came to lunch, and he's been eating leftovers for days, but hey, I'm not complaining! Check out the foh-tohs that resulted from his meticulous chopping. At least if we can't enjoy the outdoors, we won't go stir crazy hanging out inside.

These, and plenty more food shots, should be available within the week in the gallery. If you're thinking of dressing up your kitchen with some colour and originality, we have lots of images to choose from.

A Must See

2011-07-05T20:28:00.000-06:00

Okay, fer real. This will make you smile, and if it doesn't, you're not allowed back here.

144 Years Young

2011-07-01T10:39:00.000-06:00

I've assembled a collection of Canadian photography here for you to enjoy... the images may not all be iconic, but they are all Canadian, taken coast to coast. It's a beautiful country. Most of the images are available through the webstore, but if you can't find it, and you love it, just e mail me.

Rainbow Feature

2011-06-30T13:14:00.003-06:00

We did it again! Check out our Rocky Mountain Rainbow featured here.

This was taken through the windshield as we were on the highway on our very first ever trip to Banff. In fact, a lot of fabulous shots were captured on that trip, most completely by accident. I'll be featuring a few in an homage to Canada on July 1st. Check back tomorrow! especially if you're into Canadiana or heck, like the colour red. I'll be featuring mostly photographs, but there might be the occasional anecdote to entertain the masses. See you then!

100 Days Old

2011-06-30T11:09:00.001-06:00

My Oliver turned 100 days old on Tuesday. It's a big thing in Asian cultures, the 100 day thing. If we'd been back in Japan, he would've been dressed up, plonked on the lap of the oldest family member, and grandma or grandpa would've pretended to feed him fish. It's a symbol of health and strength and that he'll never go hungry.

Unfortunately, all Oliver's grandmas and grandpas are about a 10 to 12 hour flight in either direction, so we did the best we could... dressed the kid up in a jinbei and went out for sushi. I don't post pics of family, but the look on Oliver's face as my husband pretended to feed him a piece of raw salmon is priceless. Oliver's eyes seem to be reaching across the table pleading for help!In the meantime, here is one of the sushi shots I have from dinner. I'll be uploading some sushi and tea shots eventually to the gallery, some artsy, some in their original states. In the meantime, try not to lick the screen.

Double Feature!

2011-06-29T14:03:00.000-06:00

We made it again! My husband jokes that the dock photo looks better than the real thing... We went to a lakeside retreat about an hour from -shire. There was supposed to be a beach... there was... it was a little squishy (that's the best word to describe the texture of the beach, I swear), and we had to discourage our schnauzer from eating the pelican poo... BUT there was this dock, and it fulfilled one of the items on my bucket list: photograph dock to infinity. Here it is! Chosen from hundreds and hundreds. Featured on Poppytalk.

Featured!

2011-06-29T10:03:00.002-06:00

Check us out! Featured. Can you believe it? Here's the photo that turned heads. It was taken on Etajima, an island near Hiroshima. It was the beginning of summer. I've often described the humidity of Japan to liquid air. That day was no different. Etajima is not known for having a lot of sakura... in fact, the island was covered, and I mean covered, in citrus trees. The ground was littered with rotting orange orbs. Imagine the smell? Kinda glorious. These steps went up and up and up to a temple? shrine? can't recall (will have to ask hubby, who has a steel trap memory) and happened to have the dried out petals from a lonely, lonely cherry blossom tree-- not the typical wimpy pink, as you can see. Captured this shot with a Canon point and shoot.

Our Facebook page just about had a heart attack. It vacillated between 47 likes and 1,291 likes for about an hour. Glitch, or the fickleness of the adoring (or not so adoring) public?

Jamaica Me Crazy

2011-06-28T11:16:00.002-06:00

A couple of years ago, we took our late honeymoon in Negril. People (and Lonely Planet) swear up and down that it's the most romantic part of Jamaica-- a quiet, long, white, sandy beach with spectacular sunsets. (True) The beach is also supposedly home to the best jerk chicken joint in Jamaica. (Also true. You'd never know it to look at the place, it's just a small grill on the beach where the jerk chicken guy not only listens to Michael Bolton but knows all the words...And while we're on this note, I feel you should know that you're going to hear a lot of Celine Dion when you're in Jamaica. To a reggae beat. I have an unconfirmed theory slash suspicion that Jamaicans listen to rap and reggae and R&B in public-- gotta keep up appearances-- but have secret stashes of soft rock and light jazz under their beds.)

So when we went, I thought we should avoid the whole resort thing and experience the 'real' Jamaica. I thought this would add to the romance. (False)

Let me tell you, there is nothing romantic or sexy (or remotely enjoyable) about having every inch of your skin covered in sandfly bites. We had become literature for the blind, Hamlet in braille written all over my epidermis (Tale of the Genji for my husband). Folks, do the resort thing. Seriously. From what I hear, they don't let the sandflies (or the hustlers) on the resort beaches. Fer real. If you do decide to stay off a resort in one of the smaller (and yes, very pretty) beach-side hotels, bring your Benadryl. Pill form. You'll thank me later.

If you've been to Negril, you'll recognize the shot of the fisherman's village at one end of the beach. The indigo-stained river meets the ocean here. By the way, the river is indeed shallow enough to cross if you want to get to the road (there's a Burger King on the other side), and the indigo won't dye a permanent pair of denim socks to your calves... only be forewarned that one of the local fishermen will offer to help you across, and promptly ask you for lots of money.

I have not posted many of the Jamaica shots for sale. For one, sandfly bites do not make for a steady hand, and the image quality is lacking in a lot of the shots. Two, it just seemed wrong to sell the pictures from my honeymoon. You'll find a couple scattered in the webstore's gallery (a bird, a boat, a sunset...), but don't go digging through the gallery looking for a ton of Rasta shots. If you're in the mood for Jamaica, pour yourself up a glass of rum punch and thrown on Bob Marley. Or Celine Dion. Or both. A Bob and Celine mix. And you're there!

String Theory...

2011-06-27T13:05:00.003-06:00

...or, A Good Yarn.

When I was a child, my mother had her wisdom teeth taken out. I think she was in her 40s, and I remember the dentist gave her one of the teeth because it was shaped like a whale. I don't know if she still has it. My mother is a sentimental and nostalgic woman. She keeps everything, but for some reason, I don't think she kept the tooth. Probably a good call.

My wisdom teeth were taken out when I was a teenager, which I believe is the usual timing for such things. It was Hallowe'en. (I, too, am nostalgic erring on the side of old-fashioned and still use the apostrophe in All Hallows Eve's abbreviation Hallowe'en.) They were putting me totally under since I don't respond well to the general anesthetic, which we discovered the hard way having had a number of baby and adult teeth pulled in my lifetime. I was wheeled into surgery by folks dressed up like zombies, princesses, mummies and witches. I was nervous that the folks dressed like doctors were only wearing costumes and not licensed practitioners at all, but they were drugging me, and I wasn't thinking clearly. Needless to say, seeing Elvis at the hospital may or may not have actually happened, and it's entirely possible a giant squirrel removed my wisdom teeth and kept them with his acorns. (Notice how I chose not to say nuts?)

The fun didn't stop there. Of course, when they pull your wisdom teeth, they send you home with enough Codeine to sell in the junior high schools of Canada. Of course, if you've ever been on Codeine, you think you're perfectly fine, lucid, sentient... which you are not. I, a teenager, woke at the crack of dawn the morning after the squirrel pulled my teeth . It was a Saturday. I promptly proceeded to go flying down the stairs, landing in a heap on the hardwood, legs splayed up the wall, new dent in the drywall. Of course, being drugged, I didn't know how to respond when my parents asked me if I were okay... I wasn't sure if I was registering pain. And my sister's sleepy voice drifted from upstairs, "Is Aim going to the hospital again?"

Several hours later, I'm microwaving a towel for my aching jaw. The squirrels at the hospital tell you to do this. Of course, they also tell you to thoroughly moisten the towel before putting it in the microwave. Evidently, I must have missed a few spots in the moistening process, because I lit the towel on fire. I often wonder if my mother was sneaking a few of the Codeine, because when I went running through the house and out the front door, clutching the flaming towel in a pair of BBQ tongs, my mother registered nothing unusual about this event.

We will not discuss the essay I attempted to write for my Honours English class while taking the Codeine. Yes, I was determined to carry on as normal. My teacher has promised never to mention it.

Now, losing your wisdom teeth is not supposed to leave any permanent damage or lasting scars. Except in my case. If you've had your chompers removed, with or without squirrels, you know that the stitches they use are supposed to dissolve and come out on their own. They did, painlessly. Except now, for about thirteen years , I have had consistent and regular dreams... nightmares... about pulling meters and meters of string from my teeth. Psychoanalysis, anyone?

Alternative string story, for the squeamish: in Japan, they say you are connected to your soul-mate by a red string.

While you ponder which yarn you like best, here are some images of twine, yarn, and string taken from a trip to the local living museum.

Omiyage Blogs: Monday Morning Eye Candy - Aimless Photography

2011-06-27T11:44:00.000-06:00

Omiyage Blogs: Monday Morning Eye Candy - Aimless Photography: "Can You Canoe - Aimless Photography Totem - Aimless Photography Red End 3 - Aimless Photography Hudson Hood - Aimless Ph..."

G20 Photos and Stories

2011-06-24T15:25:00.002-06:00

It's a lot of sharing in one day, I'll admit, but if you're less into cupcakes and a little more hard-hitting or edgy (oi, I sound like a judge on So You Think You Can Dance...), here's a link you might want to follow. A photographer (professional one) friend of mine Evan Mitsui works for CBC (I think he's now heading up Toronto's still photography department?) and has some of his images as well as his stories featured in this CBC piece about the G20 fun times had by all. Check out his stunning portraits. The man has talent.

My Guts are Made of Icing

2011-06-24T14:06:00.000-06:00

If you haven't been able to tell from all my shots of butterflies, food, architecture and paper cranes, I am a distant photographer. As I mentioned before, I'm still working on getting my lens in the faces of strangers.

However, yesterday I did the unthinkable. I actually walked in to one of -shire's most fabulous French inspired bakeries and, after ordering a croissant sandwich and an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie, dropped off a mysterious package. No, not planning on blowing up the bakery, not unless they discontinue their dark pain au chocolate. I think they ought to buy and frame some of my enlarged Parisian prints for their new space, and told them as much. In politer terms, of course. A letter complete with apologies for being so forward to suggest such a thing. With photographic samples. My husband was waiting outside with the engine running so I could make a quick getaway. I felt like I had just stuffed my pockets full of macaroons and roasted almond shortbreads and tried to make a slick escape. I think I would behaving far less anxiety about this whole scheme if Canada Post had just delivered the package instead.

In any event, it got me to thinking about baked goods, in particular, cupcakes. I hate them. To be more specific, I hate the icing. It's always reminded me of the stuff they use at the dentist's office to polish your teeth, only with more sugar. Now, I do realise they have made significant advances in icing technology, so that it ain't what it used to be, but I just can't bring myself to do it. I do, however, have an innate girly attraction to cupcakes. I think they're precious. Looking.

Last year, when I was on vacation all by my lonesome, I went so stir crazy bored I started making cupcakes. Weird flavoured cupcakes. Mocha cherry. Blueberry lemon cream. Orange cranberry chocolate. Caramel pecan. I fed them to my coworkers, none of whom died. I even once set up a cupcake bar with a choose your own topping sort of deal. It was that day I discovered that many of my coworkers share my loathing for icing. I felt less alone in the world, and that perhaps hours of therapy had been avoided thanks to the revelation in the cupcakes.

My cousin had cupcakes for her wedding cake. I thought I'd share the photos with you since they were so gawsh durn purdy. I think if I think about her wedding and the cupcakes right now I can distract myself from having thrust myself on an innocent bake shop. I feel like I've given my number to a boy I like, only I stuck it in his desk at school and he hasn't found it yet-- excited and terrified all at the same time. Things behind the lens are much more comfortable! Maybe I need a cup of tea. And a cupcake.

Photos of Dead Guys

2011-06-24T12:45:00.003-06:00

No, no, don't run away. It's not those creepy Victorian death photos. Not at all. This is a quirky share! Thought you might enjoy this particular photo blog. Do have fun!

Food Fight

2011-06-23T13:00:00.001-06:00

One of the greatest thing about the Japanese, strange as it may sound, is their love affair with food. And it ain't the same kind of love affair we North Americans have with our food. I picture Guy Fiori from the Food Network and how he plunges into the biggest plate of fried something and think that THIS epitomizes the North American love affair with food. It's big, it's enthusiastic, it's messy, gooey, and typically involves cheese.

The Japanese, on the other hand, will travel to an entirely different prefecture (that's province to us Canadians, state to the 'Mericans) for a bowl of noodles that is purportedly different from another prefecture's bowl of noodles. Or a mushroom. Or a kind of tofu. Or fish. Or flavour of ice cream (cherry blossom ice cream!) It is an elegant, subtle, and quiet love affair with food. And don't this love affair always get caught on camera! The Japanese are always photographing their food. When my friends and students come back from vacation abroad, one of the first things they show me is their pictures of what they ate. It's brilliant.

I didn't photograph my food nearly enough while I was in Japan, and now I'm kicking myself for it. If you've ever been to an izakaya, which is a kind of Japanese restaurant, you'll know the kind of spread they put out, and how each little dish is a work of art in itself, right down to the fried chicken and giant tater tots called croquet, which is not a Japanese word, no, but they have borrowed from the French to make the giant fried ball of potato sound delicate. How I wish I had shot the food more-- and I certainly will, in November, on our trip back. Check in with me after my trip to Japan. I'm hoping to have more photography than I know what to do with.

But this nostalgia (and a trip to Subway) ignited another little photography project that hasn't been quite as successful as others... Let me explain. Have you dined in one of Canada's fine Subway establishments as of late? Our favourite Subway (yes, we have one) is downtown ~shire and has the look of an industrial loft. Exposed brick, hardwood, beams, steel, concrete, it's swank. And it's a Subway. I wish it were my living room, only without the sandwich bar... Or would I have the sandwich bar? Convenient, no? In any event, they have these framed pictures of FOOD hanging on the concrete and original exposed brick walls, square images matted in white and framed in black. A loaf of bread. Grains. A cut apple. Cucumber. Lettuce. Red onion. Cheddar cheese. So gorgeous, and SO simple.

Now, these images are decidedly different than the ones you might take in Japan. This is raw food, just chopped, unprepared, at its finest. The Japanese have a knack for the beauty of the finished product, but I was rather drawn to these images of nude food. I thought, hey, I can do this.

Wrong. Ish.

While I was busy basking in the confidence of my supposed photography skills, it failed to occur to me that I lacked any manner of food skills-- cutting, to be precise, and arranging. I could not, for the life of me, cut the onion and get the rings to layer or stack or bounce the way they did in the Subway images. My husband informed me that while I was pondering the failure of the onion, my cucumber had transformed into some new kind of antibiotic. I tried to get a slice of lemon to stick to the kitchen window so I could get the light coming through it, but it just slid off. (My husband has not asked why the window is smeary and smelling citrus fresh...)

I need a pro. Not even a chef, or a cook, but one of those people who just chop all the food in the kitchen. A fruiter. A peeler. A chopper. Someone who can arrange my naked food in style (hah! no, I didn't write someone naked who can arrange my food in style, or someone who can arrange my food in naked style, which would be somewhat provocatively ambiguous...) And that just ain't me (I mean, I am not a pro chopper, not not provocatively ambiguous). I hope our local Safeway doesn't get its knickers in a twist the next time I show up, because I won't just be shopping. I'll be photographing the bins of red bell peppers and heaps of apples and forests of asparagus and the mounds of jellybeans. Cheating? Perhaps, but hey, I never pretended to be handy with a knife.

But the thing is, you can do this, too. Seriously. Break out the cupcakes, the muffins, the rounds of cheese and the bowls of lemons. Run your knife through a couple of loaves of rough, homemade bread. Fill a jar with jellybeans and jujubes. Make your favourite salad. Pour a bowl of olive oil. What could possibly look better in your kitchen than the inspiration for dinner? If you're not so handy with a knife, like me, then shoot your dinners when you go out. The Japanese do it. Why can't you? Hit one of those fancy-schmancy bakeries that do the princessy cupcakes or the French pastries. Go to the deli with the hanging sausages and giant cheese wheels, the fishmonger to get the salmons and the mussels and the clams. Get the herbs and the spices at the farmer's markets. Hit the bulk section and get the candy. There's nothing saying you can't shoot someone else's culinary work of art and have it on your kitchen wall. And they don't have to be big, either. Grab a collection of 4x6 white frames from the dollar store and create a gallery on your wall. Imagine the variety of textures and colours you can have... not to mention, it might be inspiration for dinner. Or to break your diet. Choose accordingly.

Shooting on the (butter)Fly

2011-06-21T19:45:00.003-06:00

I have yet to work up the courage to photograph people a la National Geographic. Not that I am on the hunt for naked people or anything (I'm pretty sure that during the first week of university, with all the newbies in town, I could find plenty of people running around campus without clothes... though perhaps that would not be as poignant as a NatGeo nudie...) but I am rather envious of a friend of mine's ability to snap the most colourful people, most notably, the folks she snapped while in Peru. I have a couple of theories about why she gets away with snapping people without them posing and/or hurling rotten fruit at her for her presumption slash gumption:

One, she has a giant lens and is so far away from her ~~victims~~ subjects that they have no idea they are being photographed. Two, I think if she is espied snapping without permission, that they assume she doesn't speak English. She does, perfectly well, but there is a false, invisible language barrier that people put up between themselves and others that prevents them from experiencing things they want to, or in this case, chewing out the brazen photographer. Two and a half, perhaps she doesn't care if they do feel like hurling rotten fruit, is not so self-conscious, and shoots regardless of what the opinion might be. (And this, I think, is the point I am most jealous of!) Three... and I hate to say it, but I think a lot of people assume that people of her particular culture are born with a camera in their hand. Not so, not so, but who am I to pretend like stereotypes don't exist and feed our perceptions of others and/or (mis)inform our own actions? (And YOU thought you were going to read a fluffy blog entry on butterflies! Whoops!)

Meanwhile, I, on the other hand, am terrified that people will get angry with me if I try to shoot them without their permission. Or pose. And therein lies the Catch 22-- I desire consent, but consent often results in posing. Perhaps I need a bigger lens... Start buying some prints, people. Mama needs a bigger lens to ~~stalk~~ capture poignant images of unsuspecting folks on my urban photo excursions.

Which is kinda why kids are so much easier to photograph. They are so unassuming and not as self-conscious as we are... or if they are self-conscious, it is a very endearing, photograph-able self-consciousness, not the kind of self-consciousness that prevents this photographer from shooting candid portraits on the fly. They (the children) have been instrumental in capturing some of the best butterfly shots, wouldn't you say? In my attempt to keep my subjects anonymous, I've zoomed in on bits of them rather than on a portrait... in the case of the butterflies, the focus has been those adorable little hands the butterflies cling to.

Butterfly Girl was shot last year. I was on my way out of the butterfly house with a few really lame snaps that I think I deleted the majority of when I got home. This little girl was standing rather shell-shocked near the door, hand thrust out as if she were afraid a single breath would disturb the butterfly sitting on the tips of her fingers. I think she was even more dumbfounded when I asked to photograph her-- or rather, photograph the butterfly. It wasn't until I got home that I realised she was wearing a butterfly dress. How perfect.

This year, for the life of me, I could not get the blue butterfly to open its wings. When they are closed, the butterfly is the colour of bark. Beige, boring, cardboard-coloured bark. Opened, of course, the wings are a brilliant blue or purple. It wasn't until a very enthusiastic little boy approached and with uncharacteristic gentleness encouraged the butterfly to rest on his fingertips did it finally, finally, finally open its wings. Snap, snap, snap. Butterfly Boy was more than happy to let me photograph his achievements.

In the meantime, I think I may make it my mission this year to shoot some urban candids: that is, to photograph people without their consent. I'll let you know if I survive the endeavour.What are your thoughts on shooting people without consent?

In the meantime, if you thought to come and just look at some pretty pictures of butterflies, hit the gallery here. All the butterflies (and their little dragonfly friend) are available for purchase at the webstore.

Fowl or Fair

2011-06-20T23:18:00.004-06:00

One of my earliest memories involves waterfowl... swans, to be precise. My mother, sister and I had gone to the park armed with a loaf of bread to feed the ducks. I don't ever remember doing this on any other occasion, purposefully going out to feed the ducks. But here we were. I remember standing at the edge of the pond, clutching that loaf of bread, wondering why my mother and sister were slowly backing away. I turned around to see a trio of swans, wings spread, descending upon me, hissing for all they were worth. I can't recall how old I was at the time, but I must have been very small, because those swans seemed so much larger than me. I hurled the loaf at the birds and hightailed it out of there.

Flash forward to Ueno Zoo in Tokyo. They let the Canada Geese roam freely around the zoo. I would like to point out that they may be called Canada Geese, but these particular birds do not sport the ~~stereotypical~~ world renowned manners of a Canadian. I was wearing sandals, and had my toes viciously pecked by those geese. Had the Japanese visitors not been watching the white girl getting attacked by the birds, I would have punted them like a football-- the geese, not the Japanese visitors, although punting the latter for nonchalantly watching the attack was awfully tempting.

Now, we walk our dog across the river from -shire's largest public park, complete with its own duck pond. The Canada Geese migrate here every spring and nest. There seem to be more goslings than ever this year, and all it took was a loaf of bread to get the flock to gather. My husband distracted the mama and papa geese while the wee ones gathered round for their photo shoot. Do not attempt shooting a flock o' goslings on your own: you will require a partner, if not a team, to disperse the bread. By the way, if you ever attempt such a shoot, never mind feeding the babies, feed the parents. Trust me on this one. The parents are not afraid to get in your face. The little ones will get close, only less with the hissing and pecking. So there I was, surrounded by about fifty or sixty goslings (and the odd golden-eye duck) all clamoring for a piece of bread, when my husband calls out for me to turn. There, coming down the hill toward me like the Mongol hoard, or some medieval army swarm (imagine Braveheart, only with fewer kilts), came another hundred or so goslings and parents. And we were out of bread.

My next piece of advice is entitled: How to Survive a Canada Goose Attack When You are Out of Bread. The answer: hissssssss back for all you're worth. The geese will not respond to your energy a la Cesar Milan. Hiss, baby, hiss. And mean it.

And, I shall close with a piece of news I read today that may make you laugh or cringe. Evidently the Canada Geese in New York have become such a nuisance that New York is going to cull them and ~~dump them on~~ generously donate them to feed the poor people of Pennsylvania. Waste not...

Photo Caption Contest

2011-06-20T09:52:00.002-06:00

Announcing our very first photo caption contest! (Thanks, Scott Blundon, for the idea!) Winners will receive a 5x7 of the duck herself as well as a 5x7 print of their choice from Aimless Photography. Simply submit your caption with the image on our Facebook page by July 1st and our panel of experts will decide which has the least lame duck caption. Submit as many as you like! Just keep it clean.

A Nature Blog

2011-06-19T09:57:00.001-06:00

Thought I would share this blog with you today, done by a guy who's into nature. For the outdoorsy, or those who admire it from a porch or the window of a mountain resort, you'll like this. Nature. A reason to get a macro. Hah! One of these days I'll share some of my own nature stuff (done sans macro), but until then, enjoy his.

P.S. If you're not into that whole English thing, you can read his blog in Japanese and German. Woo hoo!

A Word on Dad(s)

2011-06-18T23:30:00.001-06:00

I couldn't let Father's Day pass without a word about my dad and my husband, a new dad. Naturally, I'm not keen on posting family pics-- too personal, you see, and I believe in protecting the privacy of my family, who didn't sign up for this whole blog thing. But of course, I have a million pictures of them. Snap happy daughter slash wife slash mama, you see. Don't even get me started on how many pictures I have of my son. One of my friends slash coworkers tells me I should not be surprised should Oliver start calling the camera 'mama'.

My dad is a scintillating talker. He's sharp and witty and the poop disturber of the party. Dad has pulled a lot of pranks in his day, and I'm sure there are things he's done that he hasn't fessed to we his family. Dad's also the epitome of manager and it's that sharp tongue that lays down the law; don't even try arguing with him. His style of debating just ain't for you. Something I'd forgotten about my dad was just how much he loves kids and playing around-- forgotten until I saw how much joy Oliver brought him, and all that kid can do right now is drool. It makes me think of how much fun Dad must have had with my sister and I when we were little. I think we got big too fast for him. I remember when I was a teenager, a pair of brothers in the neighbourhood would hang about the garage just to talk to Dad. He got such a kick out of showing them how to use the lawnmower or talk about whatever project he had on the go. Once, he even offered to bring them to the hardware store. He loves teasing the kids at the camp he and my mom stay at. When we were kids, my dad used to leave post-it notes with messages scrawled on them when he went on business trips. When I first started university and began to doubt whether my major would make my parents proud, it was an e mail from my dad that encouraged me to go for it. When I made stupid decisions, it was my dad who crumpled up the 'debts' for all the favours (and dollars) I owed and let me start fresh. I don't remember word-for-word the speech my dad made at my wedding, but I do remember being touched by it. Yep, my dad has always believed in me. We may not agree on everything, but he's a big fan. So am I.

My husband is a brand spanking new dad. I'm sure this terrifies him on some level, but he's so good at it-- being a dad, that is, not being terrified. His special time is giving our wee ~~pooper~~ prince his nightly bath. Oliver loves it so much we only have to say the word "shampoo" and the kid breaks out in giggles. New Dad lets New Mom sleep in on weekends so she can preserve and conserve her sanity for the week. We don't have a whole lot of family memories as of yet (some), but I am sure this is a byproduct of sleep deprivation-- not that sleeplessness has prevented us from making memories, but from remembering them at all. This is why I take so many countless pictures of my son, so that we can look upon them and encourage memories to the surface. Or make some up.Whatever works.

Photograph your family, people. You don't have to be good at it. They don't have to be genius, but they will be your memories. Pictures can indeed jog a fuzzy mind. My mother used to write information on the back of pictures, back when people actually developed their pictures... or better yet, make your own photo book. Most drug stores have a photo lab. You can type your memories right in the photo book. And remember, crop the images so you don't have stupid stuff in the background and just zoom in on the faces, the actions, the smiles, the eyes. You don't need all that extra lawn or your messy living room in the shot, just focus in on the people. That's what the crop feature in Photoshop is for! Slap them on a wall in a jumble of eclectic and random frames. That's what the staircase wall is for: a collage of all the faces you love. It was the best wall in my family's house, that family photo wall, and I can promise you that for all the art and fine photography you frame and hang, your family wall will become your favourite, too. Seriously. You'll find yourself staring at it on your way up or downstairs, arms full of laundry or homework or a cup of tea before bed, and looking at those faces and remembering.

Okay, another site I'm sending you to. It's a video. Wait. Don't leave. It's a video about a photographer and photography. Tres cool. Yeah, it's Japan related (are you sensing a theme?) but don't let that bug you. It's beautiful. And about photography. I'm not saying you have to like it. But you might. So... Go. Watch

P.S. Thanks, Omiyage, for the tip... (Hey, folks! If you're feeling Asian inspired after watching the video about photography, check out Omiyage to get all crafty. Or my Japan galleries. Lots of images there... Okay, shameless, blatant plugging is over now.) Go watch the video. Then go shopping.

To the Letter of the Word

2011-06-16T23:07:00.006-06:00

My son's name is Oliver. He's lucky he has the wall space of a bathroom in his room, or otherwise mommy would be covering it in cute Papyrus cards framed in cheap white Ikea frames. But when Oliver gets a bigger room, I know exactly what's going to be on the wall other than a whole lot of magnetic chalkboard paint (and it'll be way more personal than the adorable aforementioned Papyrus cards).

It's not hard, or spendy, to personalize your kid's room if you have just a little imagination. While visiting a small town that shall not be named (perhaps I should type it like they do in Jane Eyre or all those Austen novels...--shire...) , I happened to snap this photo, and it hit me. I can do more of this and make a really, really fun Oliver collage. We happen to live in a part of town in -shire that has a neighbourhood called Oliver, which naturally makes shooting Oliver signs really, really easy for us. We're planning on an excursion on the weekend if the weather holds, and by the end of the day, we ought to have a fabulous and eclectic (and hopefully colourful or textural) group of Oliver images that will someday grace his future big-boy room.

But what happens if your kid's name isn't Oliver? Or it is, and you don't live near the Oliver section of -shire? Well, you could buy my Oliver images off the webstore... Yes... But, don't limit yourself. Start looking for shapes that look like letters and spell out words. Like this. It's an S, get it? Get it? And you don't have to get all matchy matchy with colour, either. Just convert to black and white and play with the contrast until you get the look you're aiming for.

Lazy? Busy? No worries. These gals here have already done it for you. I recommend just buying the pics and not the frame-- it ain't hard to buy a frame (or frames) to go with your alphabet photography, and it's cheaper... not to put these girls out of business or anything... You'll also want to look at how your letters look together-- are they all dark, have you mixed your mediums and textures (rope, stone, iron, glass, that sort of thing...) and, are they all the same 'shade' of black and white? Keep in mind, kids, that not all blacks and whites are the same. Some are redder or bluer than others, and when you put them together, you'll wonder why it all looks a little off. I highly recommend the Alphabet Photography website, but I also recommend you take your time going through the galleries to get just the right balance of shapes, textures, and 'colour'.

My hubby and I have Y heart A framed up on our family wall (aka eclectic yet charming jumble o' family photos), as well as our 3-letter last name, and I'm working on selecting OLI for our wee Oliver. Or perhaps his initials. I can't decide which. (Yeah, I'm not industrious enough to go out hunting all those letter shapes when it's already been accomplished for me, and at such a reasonable price of just $5 a print... though unfortunately they don't do bigger than 4x6...) Either way, Oliver's room will have a fabulous collage of Oliver images, and the family wall will bear all our names and such. I've also bought initials and hearts for wedding presents and anniversary presents. It's a really affordable and yet beautiful, personal way to celebrate somebody. So what are you waiting for? Pick up your camera and start looking for opportunities... or, if you're the busy sort, shop online. I've already given you two fun webstores to explore (Aimless Photography and Alphabet Photography) so you've got no excuse!

A Must Share

2011-06-15T11:09:00.001-06:00

This guy really excites me. I mean, I adore photography. You can have really crisp oh-so-realistic you feel like you're there images, and then you have the people who get playful... I wanted to share this fellow's photostream with you because the things he shoots inspire me. I'd love to hang some of it on my wall, although I think we live in a smallish place on purpose so that I can't go hog wild and frame everything I want to...

Anyway, check it out here. Seriously. Go.

Antiquing

2011-06-15T10:30:00.003-06:00

It's summer, or at least here, something is masquerading around under the guise of summer, and it's the season, folks, that other folks (perhaps yourself) like to go and hit the antique stores. Well, you may bring your wallets stuffed with cash, but isn't there something you're forgetting? Camera, people, camera. There is no better opportunity than a barn stuffed full of oldies but goodies (not to mention some hit or miss lighting) to practice your skills. And hey, if you don't walk away with a 200-year-old chair at a steal, maybe you can steal some fabulous images. Whether you pick up a gem or not, whether you sniff out that bargain or drool on something horrendously overpriced, the day will never be a bust if you are sporting your camera. Want to have a double antique whammy? Bring a vintage camera. Something from the 80s. Or older. Shoot the old with the old.

I have hit but only one antique shop in this province, and it wasn't even the big'un. My mother came to visit and spent the better part of two full days in the Antique Mall, which is a warehouse of two levels, floor to ceiling antiques and wannabe antiques (crocheted doilies...) She just about had a heart attack, I think, because she wanted to take home truckloads of the stuff to Nova Scotia and resell it there. If you've got something antique to sell in Nova Scotia, you'll probably make the same amount of money as you would opening another Tim Horton's on Main Street. But seriously, folks, antique shops in Nova Scotia are like the <insert famous chic, modern, contemporary designer furniture store name here> of London or New York, and they sell for a pretty penny. I am not so much into the antiquing myself, not unless I have my camera armed and ready to go. My mother loves them because I think she's from another era at heart, and my dad, the handyman, loves restoring old things.

Case in point: the cradle my son slept in for his first month has been used by three previous, possibly four, generations in my family. He would be the fourth (or fifth). My father spend an entire summer restoring the old cradle after poor storage or shipping damaged it. When my parents raided my grandparents' house before their big move, they took a few dirty old pieces that turned out to be real gems when my father stripped the paint from them. One of the pieces was a real old-fashioned music stand or sheet music holder or something, hand carved with the most curious designs... but you never would have known it for all the muck and gunk covering it. My Pop, my Dad's dad, once told me about cupboards his sister fashioned out of tea crates and those old square nails... though we do not have those cupboards now.

In any event, my family is antique nuts. The closest I usually get is the Antiques Road Show, which must have peed its pants when it went to Newfoundland that one time. My aunt has stories.... But I did visit an antique store with my folks in Cape Breton a summer ago while we were driving the Cabot Trail. The lighting was murky, but I love the natural effect it has on the images. You could put a pair of Nike sneakers in that light and they would look vintage. Another place that's good to shoot antiques, believe it or not, is a heritage type museum. We have a couple of those lying around here, and I've taken some of my more interesting pictures from that living museum. So, if you're afraid of taking your spend-happy self (or spouse) to an antique store or in a barn (yeah, hay fever...), check out one of your local museums or something (and read the signs to make sure you're allowed to take pictures first).

If you are looking for inspiration, or simply cannot be bothered to visit antique shops, then visit our webstore. Our Antique and Around the Farm sets show off a few of the more interesting shots we've taken at antique stores and farms, and you can peruse them for your pleasure, or add a few images to your cart. Might be cheaper than actually visiting an antique shop, because you might end up going home with furniture you didn't really need. Ain't that so?

But what to do about that light? The graininess? That colour? Nothing. Really. Enhance it, but don't try and make it look like a modern photo. Isn't that the fun of antiques? You can get some really special images if you don't fool with the natural lighting of your shot. Just keep a steady hand, look for a cool angle or a jumble of weird things all mashed together on the same shelf, and shoot away.

P.S. Don't forget to shoot the doors. You'd be surprised.

Tsuru-rama

2011-06-14T16:27:00.004-06:00

Just started a bit of a photography project that could quite easily turn into an obsession. I folded my first paper crane yesterday from a 7cm square piece of paper. Evidently, the smaller the paper, the harder it is to fold. Wish somebody had told me that before I attempted origami. Me not smart...(then again, starting small meant I had to try extra hard to be precise, and it paid off, that level of meticulousness...) and to be honest, I thought that the whole folding paper thing was really going to be a challenge for me. I can't even put the duvet cover on without a struggle, or fold a hospital corner. What turned out to be the challenge were the instructions. I think I watched and read four or five different sets of instructions and videos about folding a paper crane before I stumbled on one that actually made sense to me. If I had any doubts about my learning style, well, yesterday's adventure in origami instructions confirmed that I am indeed a visual learner.

I'm not going to lie, though. I have a thing for paper crane photographs. And now that I can make them, I can take as many pictures as I want. The trick is getting the camera to focus on the little beak, or it all goes hazy.

There's a legend in Japan that if you fold a thousand paper cranes, your wish will come true. I'm sure you've heard the story of Sadako, the little girl who got a million kinds of cancer after the Hiroshima bombing. She folded a thousand paper cranes so that her wish (to live) would come true. Though she folded the cranes, her wish was not granted... nevertheless, in the Hiroshima Peace Park, you can see thousands of paper cranes strung together like gaudy curtains, folded and hung by schoolchildren. The next time I'm at the Peace Park, which should be this November, I'll take a few shots so you can see what I'm talking about. If you go yourself, I swear, zoom in on those masses of paper cranes. You could have the least sophisticated point and shoot on the planet and you would still walk away with a stellar pic. People would admire your artistic sensibilities.

If you also ever find yourself in the Hiroshima Peace Park, I recommend going in August on the anniversary of the bombing. It is not the depressing boo-hoo fest you might think it would be. In the morning, the same ceremony is held every year-- poems are read, prayers are recited, some of the survivors speak, doves are released, and people wish for peace. (I've read articles where some folks think the Japanese are condemning the Americans for the bombing, but that's not what the park or the anniversary ceremony are about at all). Mostly I wonder what happens to the doves. Do they come back? Forget about trying to shoot the doves, though, not unless you've camped out overnight in the park (which the Japanese would never allow) to get a front row seat.

It's the evening, though, when you'll want to whip out your camera. Thousands of lit paper lanterns are set on the river in the twilight hours and into the night. Each lantern is a wish for peace. The opportunities for amazing pictures are countless, provided you have a tripod (and/or a ridiculously steady hand) and know how to use your camera in the dark. I'll see if I can dig up some of my lantern images one of these days. They were taken on a point and shoot (and no, I didn't have a tripod..) and I can't remember how good or poor the quality is.. But check back August 6th and you may find that I've posted a few of those old pics.

For other photographic opportunities, don't forget to check out the art displays made and sent by children from all over the world. It's something different every year, and again, you zoom in on some of that artwork and you have instant genius photography.

Now, I know you can fold origami out of anything. Folks do it out of Starburst wrappers and newspapers and toilet paper and and and... but the paper I've been using, the gorgeous paper, has all come from www.omiyage.ca, if you're interested in getting in on your own origami paper project. In the meantime, I'm trying to come up with new and creative ways of photographing origami cranes. I'm thinking garden shots, newspaper origami, tsuru parades... what else? Suggestions welcome!

The Ham

2011-06-13T11:02:00.003-06:00

I do not have a macro lens. I once aspired to shoot petal textures and have oh-so-artsy renderings of them all zoomy and close up, but I gave it up. Plenty of people out there can zoom in on a flower or a ball of yarn and achieve greatness, provided they have a swanky macro lens. No, I discovered that I'd rather shoot other things. Until I met this fellow, and wished a thousand times over I'd had a macro lens.

This dragonfly was quite possibly the most accommodating bug I have ever encountered. He perched right there on his little thorny twig and let me shoot him from all angles. He even tilted his head a few times, adjusted his wings, gave me a wink and a smile. Of course, in my exuberance (and fear that the closer I got, the more inclined he would be to fly away), I completely disregarded the optimal focal length for the lens I was using and went in for the kill... or rather, the close-up shot. Naturally, my focus was never ideal... either the head or the body would be slightly out of focus while the wings were crystal clear. That'll learn me.

The first dragonfly I ever shot was in my Nan and Pop's yard. It was quite possibly the size of my pre-pubescent hand. I, at the time, was sporting an $8 camera... was it an 18mm or 35mm camera? I can't recall. It was about the size of a Hershey's chocolate bar, only a little thicker. It took horrendous pictures. Or rather, I took horrendous pictures. (Can't blame the tool; blame he who wields it.) I am certain that dragonfly picture is in one of those albums with the gummy pages, wedged in next to the sticker albums I kept. Actually, what would be neat to have is that old Hershey bar camera so I can take some retro looking photographs. Isn't it funny how they're coming back in style? People clamoring after old cameras, or using Photoshop to add some 70s vignettes. But I digress.

I thought I'd share some of the images anyhow. I am not certain if they will make it to the webstore; you certainly won't find them on the cover of National Geographic or anything. You'll have to let me know if you're interested in a copy, or at the very least, if it's not too embarrassing to try and sell them. Still, I rather enjoy how you can see the detail in his little legs clinging to the twig, and the beauty of his wings. And, doesn't it look like he's smiling?

Photo Security for the Clueless

2011-06-10T12:14:00.007-06:00

Let me tell you, when I started this whole photo blog thing, I was in a bit over my head. I may be resourceful, but I am not most tech savvy person on the planet, and nothing can be more frustrating sometimes than struggling with the formatting of a blog. (I come in almost every other day and even question the design of my blog! but I digress...) The security of my images was a big concern to me. I've right-clicked myself in the past, I'll admit, and copied a few images for the sake of a school presentation or something... but the whole copying and printing of somebody else's images is nails on a chalkboard to me. I'm a teacher, too, so it's right up there with plagiarism and tying kittens to the railroad tracks. Blogger, as you may have already discovered, allows for a simple right click of your images and voila! you can save whatever you want, and at a pretty decent size, I might add. Big enough for a decent-ish print if you wanted. Or a re-posting to another site. Are you posting pictures of your family that you don't want random strangers saving to their hard-drives? YUCK. Think about it! (or don't...) I am just not down with having my photos out there for anyone to take, but neither was I on the up and up with keeping my images safe...

It took me a while, but I finally figured out how to thwart the copiers and savers of the world. And now, I'm a-gonna share that information with you. Yep. Big of me, I know. But I'm a giver. Here we go.

First of all, you need to add an html gadget to your blog. You can put it anywhere you like; it matters not. Don't give it a title or anything like that, and then it won't show up on your page. It'll be a little secret gadget, like an invisible force field ensuring the protection of your rights. Yes, your html gadget will stand for justice. Just paste this whole thing into the gadget box:

What that does is prevent folks from right-clicking your images. It even pops up a message telling folks that they can't copy. Fun. (You can even customize the message with something more rude if you like, or with quotes from Gandhi, lines of poetry, Japanese kanji. Up to you.) But we're not done yet, because all people have to do is click on the image to open it in another window, and then they can copy or save. We need to prevent that, too.

So, now that you've added your html, you're going to go in to edit your post. Select (click on/grab) the picture you've added to your post. Remove the formatting on it. That would be the little icon in your editing menu that looks like a T with a red X next to it. What this does is allow you to change the web address your picture links to when people click on it. That option will now be available to you on the same bar that allows you to change the size of your image in the post. You can put in a whole new website if you like, or link the image to your e mail address. Want to confuse people? Link the image to your blog's web address. People will be running around in virtual circles. Either way, people can no longer steal your images.

Does this seem like a lot of work? It ain't. It really ain't, especially if you're posting things you sell, or images of your precious kids. Consider how much time goes into watermarking images or reducing their quality. Who wants a low-quality image on a photo blog? Not me, folks, not me. You want to show off your work, not cheapen it. No, forget watermarking. It's a waste of perfectly good computer space and a waste of your time. If you manage to follow my instructions, you're on your way to safe and secure photo posting.

Gallery Update

2011-06-09T13:51:00.008-06:00

Good news! Aimless Photography has just opened its first 'artsy fartsy' collection; that is, a set of photographs that have magically been transformed into art prints. Titled Artsy Japan, it's the first of many sets to come. This one happens to feature some fantastic kagura images taken at a festival in rural Hiroshima. Unfortunately, the shots were taken on a 6 megapixel point and shoot from the back of the amphitheatre, so they make for rotten photographs. They do, however, look fantastic as art

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prints, and in my mind, really capture the movement, colour, and pizazz of kagura.

Feeling Festy

2011-06-06T10:53:00.001-06:00

Every year (I say every year like we've been doing it for decades... let's try again...) Every year since we moved here we've gone to the Japanese cultural festival. The Kurimoto Garden is crawling with people, which is nice, but inevitably makes it difficult to photograph. I hate seeing so many people in a garden like that. It inspires the same feeling I get when I espy somebody with greasy fingers going to touch a painting or something. People are going to chide me, I know, for the unrealistic-ness of it, but I want my garden shots sans people. In fact, I want all my landscapes and (shock!) cityscapes to be without people. Or, at least if I'm shooting the city, with nondescript people. This, of course, did not happen at the Japanese cultural festival, and you'd think after three years trying, I'd give it up and go on a sleepy Monday afternoon or something. At least then I could snag the bridge shot without people hanging off it like a celebrity they didn't expect to see buying coffee at Tim Horton's.

One of my favourite parts of the festival, other than all the white folks walking around having conversations in Japanese with one another, is the taiko drumming. I swear there's an intrinsic response we all have to the banging of a drum. C'mon, you can't tell me some part of you doesn't respond on some primal level to the timpani banging away George of the Jungle. The thing is about taiko is it's not just about the drumming (which is wonderfully tribal), but that it's a performance. Tres Japanese, no? Getting involved in taiko, at least in these parts, is no easy task. It's not like joining up with some music group and learning how to bang the drum. No, it's pretty serious stuff, and they only accept you if you are already drumming at a particular proficiency. Lord knows how you're supposed to get to that proficiency without joining the group, but there goes a circular logic that is beyond me. Perhaps you're meant to play one of those taiko games at the Japanese arcades to get your start... All I know is, the taiko is pretty spectacular, and I do not encourage you to buy the CD. Hit a live performance if you can.

You can also catch taiko drumming at performances of kagura, which is a folksy version of kabuki, only way more entertaining to watch. More exciting. Lots more movement, speed, colour, masks, dragons and demons, costume changes, action, love, hate, betrayal.... not to mention the drumming! although I am uncertain if there are any kagura (or kabuki) performances in this corner of the globe. Perhaps a trip to Japan is in order for you folks?

In any event, to avoid the t-shirt and shorts wearing crowd at the festival ending up in my shots, I find myself taking snaps of pieces of the festival-- the collar of a kimono, the spokes of a rice paper umbrella, hands writing calligraphy the carving on a great iron bell... I'm hoping over the next year to put together a rather substantial Japanese-inspired photography collection... food, origami, tea, dishes, kimono, obi, lanterns, shoji, shrines.... If you're into that sort of thing, it might be worth a visit to the gallery over the next six months as it's updated to see what I've been up to.

What are your favourite parts of a festival to shoot?

Puffy Excursion

2011-06-04T10:57:00.013-06:00

I am a huge dandelion puff fan. If my father reads this, I'm sure he'd groan, since he spends a lot of time making sure they stay off the lawn. If he could, he'd set up some sort of invisible force-field to ward off blowing dandelion seeds. Not to mention, in this part of town, if you have one of those yellow heads peeping up from your yard, the neighbours might revolt. This is one manicured neighbourhood. Neighbour wrath aside, the real peril is the trek out to photograph the puffs. The mosquitoes around here travel in gangs. I am fairly certain they're responsible for our city's graffiti problem. They are definitely responsible for the puffiness of my derriere, which was attacked without mercy on the occasion of the puff photo shoot. I was wearing several layers of denim that particular evening, not as an homage to the denim-on-denim fashion atrocity of the 80s, no, but as skeeter armor. It failed. It did not deter the skeeters from getting me in my largest of targets as I bent and squatted to get my shots. Folks, there is nothing elegant about a vigorous bum scratch, not even if the other hand is gripping a beer. Alas. Considering all the floral shoots I've been doing this season thanks to the discovery of apple?cherry? blossoms in the 'hood, it would come as little surprise should my bottom swell to titanic proportions. Rest assured that in such an eventuality, I will photograph it for the posterity of my posterior.

I tried to get a little creative with the puff images. I love the sort of natural watery-ness to the images, the melding of the greens and shadows that sort of came about naturally. That sort of thing lends itself to a little artistic filtering with good old Adobe Photoshop. I find that this kind of artistic playfulness lends itself well to the puffs,especially not everybody might find framing and hanging dandelion fuzz on their wall quite as charming as I do.

I don't often fool with the images, filtering them and whatnot, but when I do, I like the results. In some cases, an artistic filter can salvage a shot I might have otherwise deleted. I once read the testimonial of a photog who won a prize in National Geographic's wildlife contest where she said she was about to delete the blurred photo of a running rabbit, but thought better of it, and used a filter to sort of play up the motion blur of the critter. Almost garbage, now a winner. I'm no Picasso (or Ansel Adams, for that matter), and some folks aren't into photography, but if you turn the image into a painting-esque print or something? Instant wall art. What do you think? To filter or not to filter?

Either way (shameless webstore plug ensuing), the puffs au naturale and avec a filter will soon be available for purchase.

Howdy!

2011-06-03T13:57:00.003-06:00

visit the webstore

Welcome to Aimless Photography's blog! ...wondering what you'll find here? Simply, photos, and the thoughts they inspire-- yours and mine.