One of my photographs, entitled “Avian Encroachment”, has been selected as one of the finalists in CBCs 2008 Nature in Focus contest under the category Your Habitat. There were 1200 entries entered this year.

The title is a play on the term “urban encroachment”, which is used to describe the destructive habits of human activity spreading over natural areas.

One of my geology teachers in university said that it was silly to think of us trying to save the planet, because the earth, as a living thing, is going to be around for a long time. Environmentalism is really about saving ourselves.

You can check out the winners and other finalists on the CBC website.

I’ve sold 10 of my fruit and body prints so far. Officially, I’ve made a small profit, with the money being used to pay off the debt incurred from the purchase of much photo gear.

When Dan did my reading two years ago, he mentioned that I see colours differently from other people, and that I should try making money off my art.

Back then, I was far from considering myself an “artist”. I used my camera to express myself in capturing memories, not in delivering messages. At the first Emergence Exposition, Nisha would introduce me to people as a photographer. I would add the word amateur as a prefix, but Nisha would correct me and say aspiring. I suppose I’m more inclined to agree with her now. Being able to support myself like this (albeit in a small way) makes a big difference.

The best part of the entire process though, is meeting people. Not just meeting people I ask to model for me, but when I’m delivering prints as well. I get to see where they’re going to hang the pictures, and I get to meet their kids, their parents, their pets, their friends.

Most recently, it was Tiana, who has two dogs, a cat, and a husband. I didn’t get to meet Brent (or the cat) but I’m sure the opportunity will present itself at some time in the future.

I love this dress.

I love the colours. I love the palette. I love the stripes. I love how they go from thick to thin.

I love how she wears it. I love how it hugs her body. I love how it leads the eye along her curves.

I love how I love this dress.

(I’ve been writing this in my head for four years. Four years and seven months, to be precise.)

So one last touch and then you’ll go
And we’ll pretend that it meant something so much more
But it was vile, and it was cheap
And you are beautiful but you don’t mean a thing to me

—Death Cab for Cutie, Tiny Vessels

I got this picture in New Jersey. It’s the most peculiar size for a photograph: 3 7/16 by 4 13/16 inches.

For some reason, I see it properly like this — landscape orientation, with the white stripe on the left — when it could just as well be rotated any other way. This is the bias I place on it. The way I view it.

It almost looks like a room with a wall in frame on the left, and the camera has metered for a flash off the wall, underexposing the rest of the picture. There are two smears in the blackness. Maybe an out-of-focus object, maybe a fingerprint on the lens.

I didn’t take the picture. Someone else did, thought it was bad, and was about to throw it out before I asked for it. Someone who took me for granted. Someone who’s world I lived in but for a week, in the midst of the intense summer humidity and coitus interruptus.

I’ve kept it in one of my notebooks since. The edges have turned yellow, and the corners blunt from handling.

Every time I look at it, I like to think that I see something in that grain and that noise. That something’s there; I just don’t see it because there isn’t enough light to expose it, but it exists nonetheless. Some photographic kōan, where I become that which I seek.

But I know there isn’t, the way I know it was nothing more than passing moment, a week forgotten, a life unchanged.

And I’ve been happily fooling myself ever since.

Usually I don’t post this many pictures of one shoot of a single person because there’s often a lot of redundancy, but Paige has a thousand expressions that must be captured and shown to the world.

There’s a complexity in her face that betrays the layers and layers of her character. By turns ebullient, hopeful, playful, and uncertain — every frame is different. I feel like I could write an essay on her look alone.

Best viewed on large and on black, of course, so click the pictures. Commentary at full size.