I'm back at the desk now ... for days I suspect. I just realised I have an unprocessed folder of photographs from Genova.
I'm torn between delight and something like despair, knowing how many hours will be spent here at the desk.
I can't share all of them, I need permissions but this one ... I love the moodiness of this one.
We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
we wonder if there is a place here for us,
if we will tell our stories to island visitors some years down the line,
this island gets under our skin, into our blood
little remnants of it coming home in our memories.
Leonie Wise, extract from where the road ends.
Beautiful people, beautiful photographs, beautiful words.
Here is just one of Leonie's exquisite images from that particular post.
She has opened a conversation for me ... we wonder if there is a place here for us.
I know that curiousity. I have been looking for 'home' since forever. I'll know it when I find it and in the meanwhile I'll enjoy where I am, like always. I've spent the last 30 years moving towns, moving countries.
Perhaps it will always be like this for me but perhaps one day I'll arrive ... and somehow I'll know that I'm home.
TRAM 11
Tram comes. Tram goes. Going: a young Zairean
humming huskily with baby, plenty of time,
intimate with each other, in public
yet still alone. The tram looks on.
Tram comes: a Moroccan woman tries to quiet
her whining little tatty boy. The more she shakes him,
the more syllables fall from him.
Until an Antwerp woman's ta-ta-ta
brings him to himself. And to all of us.
Ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling through the town.
Public transport civilizes us, makes us festive,
maintains our confusion.
Herman de Coninck
Translated to English by Cedric Barfoot and Sonny Williams.
Way back in 2007, that was me reading Herman de Coninck's poem on stage in front of more than a few people.
Raf, Gert and I were talking of flashes and cameras at the kitchen table last night and there I was, relaxing.
It makes me laugh to confess that I have become a woman best-suited to low-light, layers and filters.
Raf came to dinner last night, asking if he might use my camera flash while he was over. He was curious about the process of using the master/slave set-up on his camera. Neither of us had attempted it before and it was the best fun I had had in a while. More to follow as I experiment with that in the months ahead as it turns out the Gert's Metz flash is able to make a wireless connection with my Canon flash.
The photograph following was taken when Raf put down his beautiful Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III, with its battery pack attached and picked up the smaller Canon EOS 550D, laughing over how to hold it in his big hands. I liked how it looked and took a series of images with my beloved Canon EOS 5D MkII.
It was a lovely evening. Thank you, Raf, for opening the door into this new way of working with light.
The element of 'challenge' continues to dominate as I work at finding a photograph for every day of this year however my lovely friend and I are delighting as our stories and images roll out over days.
Today's image began as a shot of the beautiful dish with the delicate fern leaf imprint inside. The one that was gifted to me by the truly special New Zealand family I had the pleasure of photographing when I was home. But as I worked at composition and struggled with light ... because yes, I did leave it until the last moment, it soon became clear that it was more about the bracelets and necklace I wear everyday. They nestle there in the dish over-night.
The jade necklace was carved by Jayme Anderson, a talented New Zealand artist and jade carver. I was told that the jade is Marsden Jade and that delighted me. Hokitika and the wild west coast stole my heart way back when I was teenager.
A little from Jayme's business card , 'Jayme's love for jade and carving began in 1996, the first year of his Diploma of Visual Art and Design. He graduated in 1998.
Later it tells me that, 'From his 10 acre lifestyle block at Marsden, home of the flower jade, he travels internationally and pushes the boundaries in techniques and stone limitations. His innovative work is in the Spiritwrestler Gallery in Canada and private collections in Canada, the U.S. and the U.K...
I feel extraordinarily fortunate to have a piece of his work. It was well worth the horrific journey through my old nemesis ... the Homer Tunnel. That story is here.
I loved this!!
"The fruit of years of collaborative work between Afghan and Western photographers and photojournalists, Streets of Afghanistan chronicles one of the most captivating efforts to connect communities and cultures through our common humanity and the power of art."
You can read the rest of this over on the Youtube page.
Shannon Galpin, the woman who said on the video that 'art has a function beyond beauty', has her own website - Mountain2Mountain. She is so very inspiring!
I would write that I could spend days photographing this lovely boy but I think every portrait I ever do affects me like that.
I love the work of it.
I was the photographer documenting a child's birthday party and this series unfolded in front of me.
I do enjoy event photography. The work of capturing real life as it unfolds ... nothing like it.
Tickets have been booked and I'm off to Genova in February. I cannot begin to tell you how good it feels to have the promise of wandering back in my life. It's time ... more than time.
Miss 9 and I have begun reading a new book series together. It's delightfully creepy. And I have 'Italian for Dummies' here on my desk. Now to open it and begin serious work.
I have been struggling to fulfil my daily foto commitment. And I'm intrigued because I see it's so much about my inability to give myself too much time off. And the battle is there in the fact that I can't 'snapshot' this commitment. I climb into photography, working my way towards the right angle perhaps, seeking out the right light. I have to be prepared to do ... just do the photography for an hour each day. It's an interesting battle.
And emails ... I've been caught up in a few email exchanges that make me stop to take notes. And I'm printing out interesting blog posts and articles, sticking them into my journal.
My super-talented niece called Katie sent me an email containing the static digital image she made at school and it's stunning. I must ask permission to blog it. Katie's the one in the foreground.
So, I did a 'girl and her guitar' series for the foto-a-day shoot today. I was using my 17-40mm lens on the Canon EOS 5D MkII and I was all but climbing onto the couch as I took the image you find at the end here. I think, in future, I might just stick with my 70-200mm lens. I love that lens. It's my way of seeing ... and being. Potentially my photography subjects may appreciate a bit of distance too.
The bear, she suggests, "offers us a model of how one lives with that paradox, of public and private life, of a creative life as well as a life of obligation."
Terri Windling, extract from Following the Bear.
I photographed this little man when he was born. And every year I've photographed him again. The camera adores him. You can see why ...
Anyway, the photograph below ... I took the longest way to school today and discovered this beautiful mural in the back of the city somewhere. I slipped inside the gate and took it.
The best of portrait photography is surely the beautiful souls you meet along the way. This man was truly delightful.
I'm so ready to head back into portrait work ...
We left New Zealand, a 1am Singapore Airlines flight, on this day a year ago today.
The days leading up to leaving were full of the things I love best. Solitary early morning walks, the beach, good people, and sunshine at Christmas.
The clothes- line pictured is loaded down with swimsuits after a swim in the river at Cooks Beach. And the little hut at the end reminds me of the much-hated longdrop toilets that occasionally featured in my childhood memories. This was was decommissioned and could therefore be defined as picturesque.
It's a blue-sky 5.2 celsius day in Antwerp as I write this. It reads colder than it feels. I have the bedroom window open and we've already been out for a short walk. Coats and scarves were involved but we still haven't even had many serious frosts. There was blossom out there. And there was that one evening of snow that didn't settle a while ago.
Gert was cautioning me, explaining that the Belgian winter kicks in in January and February. Last winter was simply brutal and long. December through into June, more or less.
Anyway, from the backyard of a New Zealand crib (South Island) or bach (North Island), holiday home (rest of the world) ... a little bit of simply happy.
I would be wicked if I didn't add today's news from Cooks Beach ...
80mm of rain in 2 hours, as reported by New Zealand's TV3. And I will admit, NZ does have unstable weather around Christmas. In fact, if you're planning on visiting NZ, February's considered a more reliable time.