Posts in category "Photos"

Long Exposure

It snowed all day yes­ter­day, and well into the night. The white­ness out­side reflects the sky and has filled my house with bright light. It’s the week­end and I’m awake.

Banana smoothie

Banana smoothie

I’ve fall­en in love with smooth­ies. They are usu­al­ly com­prised of three bananas, three tan­ger­ines, a third of a pineap­ple, yogurt, juice, and frozen 4‑fruit berry or sum­mer fruit sal­ad. I have three a day. This makes me poo like crazy.

Life has been exhaust­ing­ly busy. The pho­to ses­sions are over, post-pro­cess­ing is done, and my pic­tures are all print­ed. The only thing left is to get them framed. I had my first ses­sion with my psy­chol­o­gist. I’m can­celling my Tai Chi tomor­row. I have to plan my relax­ation, and this does­n’t make it very relax­ing.

This week­end I hope to:

  • catch up on my e‑mails
  • fill out a bunch of forms my psy­chol­o­gist gave me, includ­ing a mul­ti­modal life his­to­ry inven­to­ry
  • order some Moo cards
  • work on a clien­t’s web­site
  • add a photography/portfolio sec­tion to my site
  • fit some fun in there some­where

Next week is going to be even more crazy, no pun intend­ed. Monday I’m meet­ing with the framer, Tuesday and Thursday I have Tai Chi, Wednesday I’m hav­ing din­ner at the gallery and meet­ing the oth­er artists.

I haven’t been sleep­ing well. In the midst of all this socia­bil­i­ty, I’ve been bat­tling my anx­i­ety. It’s filled me with a qui­et deter­mi­na­tion, but the long expo­sure has worn me down.

Portraits of Tiana

Tiana smiles

If you gave me the hypo­thet­i­cal option of pho­tograph­ing any­one I want­ed, I’d ask if it could be some­one who had already passed away. If so, I’d choose a Byronic hero like Mikhail Lermontov, or anoth­er one of the 19th cen­tu­ry Russian Romantics, or even Lord Byron him­self.

If I could choose some­one liv­ing though, I’d choose Tiana.

Continue read­ing “Portraits of Tiana”…

Krista and Shane at Irene's

Flyer for the show at Irene's Pub

I asked Julie to come to the show with me. I did it with trep­i­da­tion, because I con­sid­ered it a big favour, and felt like I did­n’t know her well enough to ask. But Blake was out of town and she was going out on Saturday, so it just hap­pened that she decid­ed to keep her Friday free.

It pret­ty much saved me. When dri­ving to the pub, I was hit with an anx­i­ety attack, which I’ll elab­o­rate on in anoth­er entry some­day.

Julie was the per­fect per­son to bring, I imag­ine because she has expe­ri­ence with peo­ple who suf­fer from anx­i­ety. I told her I may sud­den­ly want to leave at any point, pos­si­bly even on the way there. She told me she did­n’t mind com­ing, she did­n’t mind leav­ing, she did­n’t even mind stand­ing out­side the pub with me for a cou­ple min­utes in ‑16°C weath­er while I men­tal­ly pre­pared myself. I owe her big time.

Me and Julie

We played cards to get my mind off the anx­i­ety. I taught her how to play Slapjack, she taught me how to play Egyptian War. It worked.

While wait­ing for the show to start, I gave Krista the large prints from the pre­vi­ous shows. Krista gave us some ran­dom Larry and Bob bal­loon stick­ers she found on the bus (Julie and I think they were from a deaf per­son). Julie also met Cory there, her school­mate from hor­ti­cul­ture col­lege, and Krista’s sis­ter.

At the first show, I told Shane he should make an acoustic ver­sion of his album. Since I paid him in per­son for a pre-release EP that night, he told me he did have an acoustic ver­sion and promised to give it to me. I asked him ear­li­er this week if he could bring it, which he did, but he for­got it in his suit­case. Quite a pity, since he told me he was in the stu­dio mak­ing sure he mixed it right for me. He felt ter­ri­ble about it, and told me he’d mail it to me instead. March 14th is when the album offi­cial­ly comes out.

The sets were rather short. Shanker and Romps opened for them, a garage rock­a­bil­ly duo. Our view of this per­for­mance was a bunch of peo­ple who were much taller than our­selves.

The high­light of the show was see­ing Shane per­form It’s A Drag (and get­ting a video of it!), my favourite song on the album. Krista did the back­up vocals. This is the only time you’ll hear such a dul­cet har­mo­ny from anoth­er awe­some artist, cer­tain­ly some­thing you can only expe­ri­ence from a tour. Krista also got Cory up on stage for the Bumblebee Song as an encore.

Julie asked me if I still had a crush on Krista. I had to think about it for a lit­tle bit, and the fact that I had to think about it made me real­ize that I don’t any­more.

Other shows with Krista Muir and Shane Watt

  1. At the Workshop Studio & Boutique
  2. At Le Petit Salon des Arts
  3. At Irene’s Pub

Lost Girl

Lost girl in a coffee house - head down.

I saw her there again. She was sit­ting in a cor­ner of the cof­fee shop, head on the table. Last time she was still car­ry­ing her gro­cery bags. This time, there were no bags, no Dora The Explorer hat. Only a thin, hood­ed win­ter coat, and salt creep­ing up to the shins of her sweat pants.

Lost girl in a coffee house - head up.

Occasionally, she would prop her head up, as if to reori­ent her­self to her sur­round­ings, and her mat­ted hair would fall about her face. She nev­er seemed to notice. She was gone again.

But was she lost to the world, or was the world lost to her?

Moleskine Cahiers

I’ve offi­cial­ly retired my old note­book, the one I’ve been using since 1999. Starting in my first year of uni­ver­si­ty, it went every­where with me. Long trips, short trips, camp­ing, in the bath, you name it. I even includ­ed it on my list of what I was bring­ing to Hong Kong. It’s filled with so much ran­dom­ness: doo­dles, code, thoughts, quotes, lyrics, bad poet­ry (my own, of course), lists, ideas. One day, I’ll scan them in and doc­u­ment them.

But alas, it’s full.

Moleskine cahier

As a replace­ment, I bought a set of three Moleskine Cahiers. They’re thin­ner and lighter, which is exact­ly what I’m look­ing for; it took me over eight years to fill my last one, and I did­n’t need some­thing that would last that long.

I do have sev­er­al pock­et size Moleskine note­books scat­tered around the house and in var­i­ous bags for use in sit­u­a­tions such as rid­ing the bus, but those are rather dif­fi­cult to write in unless sit­ting at a desk due to their small size.

These cahiers are a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. From the insert:

THE MOLESKINE CAHIERS are jour­nals with heavy-duty card­board cov­er, in black and buff with vis­i­ble stitch­ing on the spine. The last 16 sheets are detach­able and there is a wide pock­et for loose notes.

The pages have a delight­ful­ly smooth feel to them, and absorb ink with­out bleed­ing. I’ll be keep­ing one in my back­pack, one in my shoul­der bag, and one in my cam­era bag. I need them now more than ever.

There’s so much to write and so lit­tle time.