We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
Stephen Hawking (1942 – ), Der Spiegel, 1989
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This isn’t necessarily a call for monkeys, although monkeys are welcome.
This is a call for wonderment. Gaping, gobsmacked, anything-but-average wonderment — the kind that makes us something very special.
Nest offerings, untouched.
I blink once and they squirm. I blink again and they’re weeping, then again and they’re metaphor, then again and they’re a collection of minute particles and who’s to say they’re not looking back at me?
It’s seven minutes to midnight. It’s acceptable to be either asleep or pushing an elephant of a deadline up the stairs but I’m here with you contemplating how it’s possible for yarn to hold a twist and saying isn’t that something, when you see a story where you might otherwise not?
And you might cock your head just that way, or furrow your brow and say yes, isn’t that something and you might smile and right there, you and me together have generated electricity, an addictive current as real and as humming as red.
I blink one more time and they’re twists that wait to be useful. A photo of the pact of readiness.
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This first Monday, show me something inanimate that speaks to you. Or perhaps suggest your local Shady Acres, or a stronger drink. Or a weaker one.
Today’s giveaway is for a $25.00 gift certificate from the fabulously hip Nina & Tom Family Fashion, whose Peace Dove Snapee/T-shirt Ben wears above.
We also love their famed I’m This Many Birthday T-shirt (Ben’s got one of those too, and Evan as well), and the I’m The Big Brother (or Sister) T-shirt that Evan received for the day Ben finally came home and promptly went from two-pound otherworldly visitor to the fridge-raiding, lego-chucking, gloriously grinning maniac he is today.
Thanks, Nina & Tom, for being as cool as our kids.
On this day a ball ran away, first with intention and then with current, and I dove into the ocean after it fully clothed, up to my neck in the salt of July. For the rest of the day and until we sailed home I festered in the sun, my shirt crispening and stinking of seaweed, but oh, the rightness. There’s something rare and delicious about being wet and dressed.
Tonight, the land is tucked in for winter along with the sailboat and the beach, and the sea is a determined grey, and thanks to your encouragement I am set to keep my photo-mojo from going into hibernation.
Can I tell you something? You’re all glorious, a kick in the pants in the most excellent way. I visit the flickr pool and see this and this and this and think my god, how can I presume to post in company like this? You are teacher, mentor, muse.
Thanks for being here, shutter sisters. Thanks for being that runaway ball for me, for each other, for saying jump the heck in.
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In grand celebration of our sisterhood here, we are giving away a coveted Flash Bulb Necklace (as seen above) to a lucky reader. You must comment on this post today to be included in the random drawing. It seemed like the perfect way to jump start the December festivities here at Shutter Sisters. What December festivities you ask? We thought you’d never ask. All month long we are hosting A Giveaway a Day and just as the name promises, each and every day this month we will be giving something fabulous away to one of you. It’s just a little way to show our gratitude. Click over and comment each day for your chance to win something wonderful just in time for the holidays. Be sure to invite your friends! The more the merrier we like to say.
Updated 12/2…and the winner is Lilia (aka Pumpkinoodle)at Babymoon Photography. Thanks everyone for your comments!
It is the dull light’s season in this landscape of bleak, crunchy brown–the precursor to snow and the highly functional but totally non-adorable outerwear that accompanies it.
What you see here is the very last of beach, squeezed out in complete denial from a pancake-flat tube.
I’m already yawning with the touchdown of my annual photographic hibernation. Each year I try, head full of visions of crystalline flakes and brilliant sun on white. Each year I mourn my mojo.
So tell me, fellow shut-ins and winter-bounds: how do you keep your shutter spirit intact from now through May? What do you see through your lens that redeems this season of exhaust-spattered slushpiles and day after day of stay-puft marshmallow boys?*
*Texans, Trinidadians and Californians: tread CAREFULLY, sisters. Poke not this sleepy bear.
GOD this is impossible.
(sighs in disgust, hovers on DELETE)
Screw it. I can’t do this. I don’t know how anyone does this.
(yanks exposure slider to far right in frustration +3.35 stops)
Hey.
(ups brightness and contrast) That’s kinda cool.
(cools temperature to 2250 – strong blues) You know, I think that’s actually… me.
(opens raw file as JPG)
(fails to resist spot-removing bubonic cold sore with crust like g-d crème brûlée, thanks the gods for digital herpes cure, lifts middle finger to no one in particular in counter-salute to authenticity)
(runs action or two for zip, zing)
(saves)
Something Cheeky is playful. Myinspiredheart and camera shy momma wear hearts on sleeves. Lucrecerb is pure… well, you know. And in those jeans, so does she. Miss 1979 is interpretive. Miss Vivienne gets grassy with her polaroid. Mainemomma revels in her mommahood. Cherryvanillastudios is ‘messy’, and sharp.photo is ‘drunk and dressed up’… and fabulous.
There’s nothing I admire more than a well-executed, patient, soulful self-portrait – except maybe one that’s impulsive and scruffy. Love ‘em all, props to all.
I’ve shown you mine, this keepsake. Hyper-processed, a slippery slope like that song you adored until the 472nd time you listened to it (and swore you’d never play again). But refreshing, in this rut, for being completely unlike anything I’ve done before. Reminiscent of the bliss and broodiness of being delicious in stiletto musk perfume, up to my neck in the decadence of my very own hotel room in my very favourite mistress-city.
Show me yours?
Saying it was always some form of self-preservation.
Listen—if we’d had children in Vancouver, we would not be skiing until midnight and paddling every weekend and spending every paycheque at the Granville Island Brewery and Mountain Equipment Co-op. Parenthood in Vancouver would be about the same as parenthood in rural Nova Scotia—at home, up to our knees in cheerios—so we may as well be here and be able to have a little sailboat and a little house and a lot of help. We’re not missing anything.
So here’s the trouble. Back in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago for an autonomous, mama-only/girl-only/career-only getaway, a friend, her daughter and I wandered Commercial Drive looking for lunch.
I know exactly where we’ll go, she said. Little Nest.
We opened the door and hit a wall of Hip. But not Snooty Hip, nor Stuffy Hip, nor Footloose and Fancy Free Hip. It was Mama-Daddy Hip.
Little Nest is the kitchen of the mama-friend you wish you had. Bashed-in wood floors, mismatched chairs anchored by a trestle table for twenty, vintage Fisher Price, tepid hot chocolate for little misses and misters in proper china cups, the aroma of fresh baked cinnamon and icing sugar and pistachio, homemade fig jam and a gourmet-everyday menu that transforms scrambled eggs into heaven.
I’d like to be a parent here. I’d like to walk here on a Tuesday morning and spread out and run wild, and laugh and talk and commiserate with these people while the sun shines through that window.
And so much to my chagrin, despite my eastern contentedness, I discover yet another reason to envy these citizens of lotusland.
Sipping cooling tea and dragging bread around an empty plate to sop up the remains of roasted portobello and goat cheese, I stole a few moments to bring home. Unable to peel my eyes away from her and not sure why. Smiling at the two of them, or rather, the four of them, the very picture of sisterhood. Noting the kid-ammended interior design. Coveting the personal style of those who make motherhood look so cool, and yet so welcoming.
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This Monday, show and tell us about photos you’ve snuck of people or things wholly unconnected to you, but that left an impression you couldn’t leave without.
Needles and pins, Needles
and pins,
Sew me a sail to catch me the wind.
Sew me a sail strong as the gale,
Carpenter, bring out your hammers and nails.
Hammers and nails, hammers and nails,
Build me a boat to go chasing the whales.
Chasing the whales, sailing the blue
Find me a captain and sign me a crew.
Captain and crew, captain and crew,
Take me, oh take me to anywhere new.
–Shel Silverstein
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Show us your adventurers, won’t you?
Babies oblige, scrunching and burping and stretching and drooling, more or less lying there all chubby and delectable. Toddlers must be chased, cajoled, tickled, bribed, tricked. Adults require layers upon layers of self-awareness to be peeled back with a gentle hand.
A few days ago, Marco taught me a new lesson. He was too cool for me. And it changed everything.
We scrambled atop boulders and danced like crabs and dug for treasure and walked through the woods to a secret cabin perched on the edge of the sea. What made for shot after shot of his little brother and sister was contrived for him. UGH, he said to me, rolling his eyes in mock boredom, sticking out his tongue. I don’t want to do that.
You… what? Oh. Okay. Harpy out.
Startled, I turned away for a while, focused instead on the toddler and the preschooler, pointed my lens at familiar and readily tameable beasts. All with my mind racing, and one eye trained on the conundrum that stood kicking rocks by himself, hugging his mother one moment and scowling good-naturedly the next.
Shooting Marco was the first time I’ve ever been so exquisitely attuned to patience. To stepping back, to letting him show me what kind of photo he wanted me to take–not the kind myself or his parents may have envisioned, but what is just right.
This is the age of the birth of a sense of self–delicate, tentative, antsy.
But looking straight at you, when he chooses to.
I always wanted a happy ending… Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.
:: Gilda Radner (1946 – 1989)
Behind the camera, there’s candid (i.e. subject knows you’re there, makes you chase, does best to Act Natural! and not pose but look agreeably windswept) and then there’s reeeally, truly candid (i.e. subject thinks you’re chasing windswept un-posers and sneaks her sixth cupcake).
This Labour Day, share with us the photos that had nothing to do with work, or planning, or chasing. Show us how you stalk the moment.