Di Mackey's Blog

My Canon EOS 5D Mk 11 and I, out in AntwerpenMarch 10, 2010

I loved this light in Muntplein ...
That’s the why of it.

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Noorderterras, de Schelde, AntwerpenMarch 10, 2010

My hands were numb at this point but the light ... oh, the light.

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Late Afternoon Light, AntwerpenMarch 10, 2010

I was getting cold and hungry, just as the light started to turn golden but cold ... really cold.

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Graffiti Park, AntwerpenMarch 10, 2010

The graffiti park has been ‘refurbished’ ...

I liked the new look.

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Downtown AntwerpenMarch 10, 2010

I have spent the last two days, home, babysitting a sickly Miss 5 and heard that her cough means she’s home again on the morrow ...

Feeling slightly cabin-fevered, I disappeared into the city for a few hours, while her mum looked after her. It was grand to be wandering, camera in hand, again.

Don’t ask me why, I don’t know. I just loved these bottles in a shop window some place in the back of the city.
But then the wonderful Jurjana commented on this shot elsewhere and told me, These are Roman tear glass bottles, when somebody dies they collect tears and bury them with the loved one. Klosterstraat, Flemish Antique shops Association.
Dank u wel, Jurjana.

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So Much Love ... IVMarch 10, 2010

The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression… . In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotif.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Photographer

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So Much Love ... IIIMarch 10, 2010

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So Much Love ... IIMarch 10, 2010

I have decided to create a series titled ‘So Much Love ... ’

I have photographed some beautiful people.

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An update from my World.March 09, 2010

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began
Mary Oliver, The Journey

I’m busy ... crazy-busy but breathing still.

The most exciting ‘busy’ is about working on crafting a series of adventures ... photographic journeys where you and your camera are welcome to come join me as I wander the worlds I have come to love.

It has meant talking to the people I know and respect in countries not my own, and led me to discover that there is this network of truly excellent people willing to work with me to create some delicious adventures that will allow us explore our own ways of seeing the world, as we tidy up the basics of the technical while capturing those things that make people and culture unique.

I’m also working with Van on that all important first newsletter where all things will be made clear.

And my website is finally beginning to sing with the voices of many as I interview them, curious about the lives of everyone else. This means that it is finally living up to its original promise of people becoming stories and stories becoming understanding ...

I have been invited to speak to a Rotary Group later this month and I am quietly enjoying the process of putting a slice of my life and work together, with photographs of course.

Mostly I’m enjoying this time where it’s all about working out what I want to do. Things got crazy back in November, with the 24/7 nature of the 3 month Berlin Project - TASWIR and then I complicated things by jumping straight into my joint photography exhibition, Liminal Spaces on Flanders Fields. I was a wee bit stressed for a while there ...

These days, I am also doing things like finalising fees for my portrait photography, ready to place that ‘photographer for hire’ advertisement in April.

And onward.
I finally have a photography resume and it needs to make its way out into the world of freelance assignments ...

So that’s what I’m up to.
Tot straks from the kiwi in Belgium.

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Maya Stein - news of her InterviewMarch 09, 2010

I have been following the poetry of Maya Stein for a very long time, receiving her poems via the RSS feed, so often loving what I find there.

And so, I asked if I might interview her.

And she said yes.

You can read what we talked of over in my interviews section and below, a Maya poem:

immersion
Sometimes you have to blend in or disappear,
glaze over, hide, be silent, be unremarkable, lose
the way, feel impotent, forget the point, get dirty,
trip over your tongue, overestimate your power, underestimate
your exhaustion, fall behind, not know the language,
break your stride, stub your ego,
come panting in in last place.

This morning, I couldn’t help myself.
I saw the Atlantic and just leapt in.

To my left, a god slid through the waves
like a seal. To my right, a ballerina
pirouetted around ropes of seaweed.
In front and behind, a cache of children,
giddy with sun, bobbed through a line of foam,
their innocence intact.

Flapping my arms in saltwater,
I was neither the picture of achievement
nor grace.

But no one was watching.
They were all too busy
swimming.

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