Daily Practice 250/365

Title: "Mr. Floaty"

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I went back to work after a nice vacation, and two things occurred to me. The first was that I had not really explored the work place as a source of images for my daily practice. And the second was...that this flotation device is shaped like a bunny.

  

The shape of the device, which we use to incubate small reaction tubes in a water bath, has a certain irony. The campus where I work is renowned for its bunny population. Years ago, people started "donating" (i.e. dropped off in the dead of night) their no-longer-required domestic, pet bunnies. Over the years, with our mild winters and low predator population, and the verdant grasslands of the campus, the bunnies multiplied like, well, bunnies. To the point where as I leave campus at the end of the work day, I see herds and herds of the little darlings grazing the lands as far as my eye can see.

The POTB at the university decided that enough was enough, and it was time to cull the rabbit population....at which point the local media, national media (probably international media) and local citizenry got into the act. After much discussion, court actions, injunctions etc...hundreds of thousands of dollars will be spent (most raised privately) to capture the bunnies, sterilize them, and then send them to sanctuaries. Over 1,000 of the bunnies will actually go from our little Canadian island paradise to the wilds of Texas, where they will live out their days grazing in designated areas at an animal rescue facility.

Fortunately, I don't think Mr. Floaty has anything to worry about. Our other flotation device is shaped like a dragon - I don't think the fate of the dragon population on campus has been decided yet.

Daily Practice 249/365

Title: "Discordant Discourse"

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I had one of those distinctly bizarre flickr moments today. A few days ago I had left a comment on someone's lovely seascape image, which had a strong dark band of storm cloud across the top that seemed to be pressing down upon the horizon. It was a strong element in the composition, and I left a comment "The lowering sky...", a somewhat pithy and succinct indication that I found that element particularly compelling and a narrative element foretelling the coming of a storm.

  

I was checking back to see what other comments had been left on various images, and right below mine on this seascape was a comment that did not directly refer to the image, but the author instead took it upon himself to critique the previous 6 or 7 comments that had been left. The comments "excellent, beautiful, phenomenal, lovely" all got a thumbs up with "awesome" clearly being this person's favourite of the comments. A comment "stunning" was deemed to be heartfelt but used the wrong adjective; the person who left the comment "Silence..." was deemed to be slightly confused, and the critic deemed that my comment indicated I was completely confused. Ah, good times.

  

I was curious about this person who felt they had the right to critique comments left by others, and he turns out to be a professor (I have my doubts) slash educator in the fields of communications and public relations. Who thinks "awesome" is the pinnacle of commentary on a good image (well, it is so communicative!) and who thinks that coming in upon a discussion uninvited to play god with who "gets it" and who "doesn't" is good public relations practice.

Incidents like this are relatively rare, but this one came at a time when I'm given serious thought to curtailing how much time I spend on the internet. I am waiting to get a book from the library entitled "The Shallows" by Nicholas Carr. Carr apparently makes the case that everything we've learned from recent research into neuroplasticity means that while we may think we are shaping the internet, the truth is that the internet is shaping us. When book reading became prevalent, it encouraged us to focus and give careful consideration and deep thought about what we were reading, and these behaviours/talents/abilities were codified into our neural networks. The internet is changing that to shallow breadth and emphasis on speed. Whether that's what we want or not. Well...I know that I do not want that, I feel there's some evidence it's happening to me as an individual, I intend to take steps to stem the flood. I will certainly keep up with a couple of things on the internet (such as this blog), but many things are going to be dropped and much time devoted to forming habits and behaviours that re-establish strong focus and deep thinking.

Daily Practice 248/365

Title: "Ross Bay, September 5, 2010 9:16 AM"

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It was a marvelous morning today: a cool/warm breeze that was as piquant as a good hot and sour soup blew a fresh smell from the ocean. I've been working my way through Frank Gohlke's "Thoughts on Landscape", a collection of essays written by, and interviews with, the photographer. Here's a snippet from page 192:
  

"Our experience of landscape involves a continual tension between the familiar and the new, the typical and the unique, between the tendency to fall back on comfortable habits of perception and the necessity for a heightened attentiveness to what is unprecedented in every situation. As a photographer my relationship to the landscape I photograph is one of dialogue. I am not simply the interrogator of a passive subject; I, too, am being questioned. I look at this place and ask "What is important here" and the reply comes back, "What is important to you". The work that results encompasses both questions."

Simply stated, I photograph the landscape because it is where I want to be; being along the shore, or in the forest, is always restorative for me. For the visually oriented, the landscape offers an infinite variety of details large and small to engage with; lines, forms and textures abound - it is like walking through a drawing or painting that is ever changing with the light, the wind, the rain. The photographs I make in the landscape are highly personal: in their details they reveal far more about me than they do of the physical moment at which each was made.

  

What I find most revealing about Gohlke's comment is his referral to "a continual tension" which exists in the landscape and our experience of the landscape. Successful works of art generally incorporate some kind of tension; it seems that landscape as subject brings the tension into play implicitly.

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.

Daily Practice 246/365

Title: "The Audience"

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My summer vacation is coming to a close, and I was working today to finish my "project" - which was to completely re-do my main web site. I was getting cabin fever, and went for a drive/stroll with the camera - the wind was up and the sea was a bit choppy this afternoon, but the sun was warm. I settled on at a favourite spot, enjoying the view of Mt. Baker in the distance, when the gulls started congregating in front of me. I felt as if they were an audience waiting for me to perform a party trick, but they were just facing into the sun and the wind, resting at the end of their day. After sitting peacefully for an hour, I felt refreshed and came home and finished the web site. Tomorrow I want to finish cleaning up and organizing the studio - as I was documenting some drawing and paintings for the web site, I felt the pull to do some new work. I'm also looking forward to getting out with the film cameras this weekend, too.

Daily Practice 245/365

Title: "Goodacre Lake, Beacon Hill Park"

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Parks play an important part in my childhood memories. My mother's family was fairly extended, with 4 sisters all married, living within blocks of each other in the city back east where I grew up. Each summer this extended family would go once or twice for a big picnic in one of the local parks. The sisters made mountains of salads and deviled eggs, there was pop and chips and hamburgers and hot dogs for the park BBQ. It was an enormous effort for everyone to organize this, but we'd have a wonderful, memorable meal while fighting off the bugs, the wind playing with the paper table cloths that covered the picnic tables. There was usually a lusciously ripe watermelon for dessert. I would play endless games with my cousins, and as dusk came everything would be packed up and we would all return home pleasantly tired.

  

I've lived here on the west coast for the past 27 years, and this is the first time I've really been in this park which is right downtown in the city. I was sitting on a bench, thinking of those wonderful family picnics, and remarking to myself how this park was similar in many ways to one of the parks where those picnics happened. I suddenly remembered that there were peacocks at that park long ago, and how we kids would wait in anticipation to see the peacock spread its tail feathers. Turns out, as I discovered on a walk to the washroom today, there are peacocks in this park as well. So in many ways the circle of present day and fond memories was completed.

  

There is nothing, and everything, remarkable about this image. On the one hand, it's a fairly standard family-type snap shot taken to commemorate the beauty of the park on a lovely day. But at the same time there are many remarkable things about this view: the interplay of blue against white in the sky, the change in the shading of the blue as you look down between the trees; the varying shades of green in the foliage, and the reflection of those trees in the dark, still waters. I was influenced to make such a "straight" image from my recent reading of Frank Gohlke's "Thoughts on Landscape". Looking at this image now inspires me to do a series of straight images that incorporate these little jewels of tone/texture/repetition.

Daily Practice 244/365

Title: "A contemplation of endings"

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Yesterday was a milestone - the completion of two thirds of this year of daily practice. I was feeling under the weather, and couldn't really muster the devotion and concentration when making the image, which in some ways seems a pity given the significance of the day. On the other hand, I did make an image which really is the most important purpose of a daily practice. I think Georgia O'Keeffe said that she went into her studio every day, even if all she accomplished was sweeping up or stretching canvas. The important thing for her was to go into the studio each day.

  

I was sitting on the porch of our studio this afternoon, and saw this fuchsia blossom laying on the step. Summer is coming to a close here, and the fuchsia plants are starting to look a bit dejected. As the final part of this year's project begins, I'm starting to consider what to do next year. Of course, the daily practice will continue, but this public face of it probably will not. It's unusual for artists to show work in progress, or working drawings/paintings/photographs to others. One of the inspirations for doing this project came from reading Edward Weston's Day Books. Although we now have access to some of Weston's journals, at the time he was writing they were private and reserved for his own purposes. After this year is finished, I think I want to continue with a handwritten journal - a somewhat less structured venue to write down thoughts, excerpts from readings and combine those in an organic way with prints of recent work. I believe that doing this will give me the breathing space to bring together information and give further thought before writing about it here.

  

I also want to be a bit broader in my definition of what constitutes my daily practice. For this year, it has been to make images each day, choose one of those images to post here, and write about it. I had planned after the first 4 months to print out all the images I'd taken up to that point, and then mount them in the studio so that I could look for emerging themes. I didn't anticipate the time required just to print the images, and to find a large enough space to put them up (basically a wall needs to be finished and prepared for mounting images). Essentially I need to take some days to look at recent work produced, and be able to recognize what is coming out of that work, or see where the work is going. So in 2011 that will be another component of the daily practice, and I envision that there will be days when I write here about what came out of those sessions of carefully considering recent work.

  

I almost never talk about the process I'm using to produce my images, because I have an aversion to the gear-head orientation that seems so common with people who photograph. I'm a firm believer that the equipment is incidental to the success of image-making, and this was the topic of a recent post at The Online Photographer. But at the same time, I have an embarrassing number of cameras, some of which have not seen much use. In the new year, I might restrict myself to using one camera/lens combination for a month, then change the camera/lens combination for the next month and so on. It seems somewhat arbitrary, yet successful art is often  created within a limiting set of parameters chosen by the artist. Naturally there may be times when I will visualize an image that can't be realistically made with the particular camera/lens combination I'm using that month, but that means I will have to sharpen my eye to the possibilities within the range of the equipment. Years ago, one of my science mentors told me that I would have many more good ideas (in science) than it would be possible to work on. The same is true in photography - for every "missed" shot, there are thousands waiting to be recognized and used. If I do this exercise next year, I think at the end of the year I'll have a good idea of what is possible with a significant portion of my camera collection, and I will be able to logically pare it down (which I would like to do).

  

Naturally, much can (and will) transpire in the next four months, and how the following year is structured could change as a result. As it should.