Daily Practice 247/365

Title: "When the sun chased the ghostly kite runner"

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Today I ventured out to a place where people often hang glide, wind surf and fly kites. I had my 4X5 pinhole camera with instant and regular film, and I wanted to use the wider open space to do some sun drawings. There was a fellow there taking a break from flying his kite who was interested in the camera; "must be ancient" was his comment. He started flying his kite, and I tried to follow it with the pinhole: there's a bit of a ghostly image of the kite in the top centre of the picture.

While adults were interested in the camera (one fellow with a digital camera was quite amazed to see me using film), a young girl of about 10 or 11 was interested in what I was doing. I answered that I was drawing with the sun on film, and she asked if she could try. Her mother came over to watch, and I gave her very minimal instructions - move the camera around, up as high as you can and as low as you can, and from side to side. As I watched her, I also saw her rotate the camera and tilt it towards and away from the sun. She was a little worried that it wouldn't turn out, but after we pulled the instant film and peeled it apart, she was absolutely thrilled. As was I - she hadn't moved her body much when using the camera, but all the tilting she did brought the drawing right across the entire frame. I told her that her drawing was the best I'd seen, better than the ones I'd done so far. Her mother immediately thought of getting the image enlarged and printed to frame for her daughter's room. It was such a lovely, fortuitous encounter and in many ways affirmed how doing even the simplest, most spontaneous art making brings something special into a day.