Lewis, Jung, Crowther, Juska and Dylan Thomas
Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.
C.S.Lewis, from Till We Have Faces
Yesterday ended in a frenzy of activity around midnight ... after a long 2 days of processing a few hundred photographs.
A few weeks ago I had fallen while carrying my laptop. I was lucky and only the cd player was broken but it has taken until now to replace it with an external setup.
Last night was 'the burning' of images - onto cd and dvds.
In the end, there are only 600+ images - flying off to various friends in Madrid and Brussels, and sitting here on my desk for Antwerp too.
But yesterday wasn't all about photographs. I did stop periodically. I listened to this tv interview with Carl Jung. And, at some point, I had a craving to search for an old old favourite of mine ... Harry Chapin.
I have Mr Tanner playing as I write this, reminding me of those long-ago days, back in Christchurch, when Trevor first introduced me to Harry.
In days past, I emerged from a beautiful book by Yasmin Crowther - The Saffron Kitchen. Absolutely recommended. Also, from the same secondhand bookshop, I have just started A Round-Heeled Woman, by Jane Juska. It makes me smile. Who can resist a back cover that states, “Before I turn 67 – next March – I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.”
I'm loving the way it turns the notion of aging on its head.
"Do not go gentle into that good night"
We mustn't. We must live until we die. Mustn't we.
Expecting 32 celsius today ... before the thunderstorms come, around 21.00, and if the Buienradar is to be believed, they look impressive.
Now ... back to the to-do list with Harry.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
To get up each morning with the resolve to be happy is to set our own conditions to the events of each day. To do this is to condition circumstances instead of being conditioned by them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
I was working on a shot of a yoga gong and saw this ... in case you were wondering.Climbing back into a kind of beauty ...
Leaving facebook has taken me out of the news-loop. I know some interesting people over there. There were the real life friends and the faraway friends, the new friends too but there were also the journalists and professors and peace activists.
I didn't want to sleep in life. I had done that in New Zealand, where discussions about the situation in the Middle East and the history of oil and colonisation didn't really happen in my worlds. Even later, at university, I opted to wander between literature and anthropology. Always seeking a kind of beauty as opposed to cold hard facts and sciences.
I'm going wandering next week. Stepping out of this everyday city life and into another kind of life. One that will involve living out in the country, eating freshly-laid eggs, and picking vegetables from the garden.
Did I tell you, I've been dabbling with becoming vegetarian. I'm liking it so far, although still only dabbling.
And out there, in the peace of the countryside, I'm planning on writing like I haven't written since I reached 27,000 words in a novel back when I lived on that airforce base in New Zealand.
I'm thinking of early mornings, with coffee. out on the verandah. The kind of early mornings where I get to see sunrises outside in a good way again. And tasty coffee ... I'm packing the Nespresso machine because kidnapping a barista would just be rude, and taking their high quality coffee machine would be theft.
And everything I have on Genova is going in too.
Meanwhile I've been playing in Photoshop, with one of my favourite Istanbul photographs. Beginning again ...
Trust and Respect
I have just completed post-processing the 50th wedding anniversary photographs and, yet again, I realise just how much people trust me with themselves ... whether they realise it at the time or not.
I ended up with almost 220 images that told the story of a couple who have been married for 50 years, of their son, extended family, and their friends.
I was pleased with the results but there was one more job that had to be done. One of the comments most made about my style of documentary photography is that people forget I am there ... that I disappear and, therefore, they are often stunned by the results ... by the ways I captured them or their event.
That final job is going through the results and taking out those images that reveal too much. An emotion, a conversation, a sadness.
It's done. My new tally is 197.
Now ... to show them.
Long ago, in a far-away land ...
Miss 8 and I have been gadding about lately ... ignoring the fact that we have had no weather that resembles summer weather and just getting on with the summer holiday thing.
Sunday was a big day. I was off on a 24 hour, more or less, documentary-style family photo-shoot. She was coming as my assistant, although she was soon distracted by her new best friend, as per the picture below.
The family were located in a big old house way out in the Belgian countryside. It rained so hard, on Sunday, and the temperature dropped so low that ... the fire was lit. Now tell me, is there any sweeter smell than a wood-burning fire?
No, I don't think so either.
There I was, out in the middle of nowhere, taking a gazillion photographs of a most beautiful family, absolutely delighting in all those delicious scents and events that reminded me of long ago, in a far-away land ...
