November

Simple kindness

Mornings, for the last little while, have been the lowest part of my day. Many nights either start with me going to bed too late, get interrupted in the middle by a small person needing to pee in the dark, or begin far too early, because that is when little tummies grumble. To top it off, no matter what I seem to do, my days have been starting with a headache for the last few weeks. I am groggy to start off, and may even be a little bit grumbly.

Yesterday was one of those days that should have snapped me out of it quickly. A crisp but sunny morning with a heavy frost, something I had been waiting for. I love the way that frost alters objects, and wanted to take some pictures with my macro. The lils were in the final stages of school prep when I managed to sneak out for a few shots. My quick review was somewhat disappointing, so I decided to take my camera on the walk to school with the lils and hope for better shots.

Stopping on the way to school was out of the question. I have one slow walker who likes to stop and collect treasures and one fast walker who is typically a block or so ahead. If I were to start stopping to take pictures, chaos would ensue. Instead I mentally marked things that I could photograph on the way home and herded the lils to school.

The trip home was somewhat disappointing. I was underdressed and cold, so I rushed and missed half of the things that I had marked for shooting or the shots I took didn’t work out how I had envisioned them when I was walking from the other direction. My macro lens, which has been acting up for a while, has gotten worse since I used it last and fails to focus at times, which is frustrating. I was about to give up and figure out something else for my wordless Wednesday post when I happened on a little garden that had some neat plant/frost combos. I knelt down, just off the main street and started clicking away. As I was immersed in my own little world, I had a vague sensation of a car driving by really slowly, backing up, and moving forward slowly.

I was trying to figure out what the car was doing as I got up and headed the last bit home. When I pulled even with the car, the driver leaned over and said “Are you feeling well? Are you OK?” I explained what I had been doing and we both laughed and carried on. I felt differently though. All it took was that simple act of kindness, her taking the time from her trip to notice and stop to ask for my outlook on my day to change. I had energy that was lacking before, I lost the grumbles that I woke up with, and was reminded that the little kindnesses really do matter. That’s the kind of reset I love.

2 comments

November

Wordless Wednesday – frosty morn

No comments yet

November

The 100

It’s no secret that I love to take pictures. I have been taking them since I was a wee girl, and hope to still be taking them, like my grandfather is, when I am well into my nineties. As such, I tend to have a number of friends who are photographers (birds of a feather and all that), and I read a number of photo-related blogs and publications. Some of them are serious and some of them fluff so they give me a good cross section of what is happening in the photographic world.

I was pretty excited when, in June, I saw a post on PhotoJoJo that was talking about a neat project being run out of the UK. The premise was that 100 people around the world would be sent disposable cameras, and they would have a week to take pictures of whatever they wanted before sending them back for processing and publication. The angle that intrigued me the most was that the photographers would be selected on one main criterion – their age. The organizer of this project wanted to see the world through the eyes of all ages, so 100 cameras were sent to people aged 1 – 100; one camera per year. I loved the idea and immediately applied for myself and Woo (Willy and Goose’s ages were already assigned to photographers).

Life went on, and I forgot about the applications after a few days. I’d seen a few messages that the project was inundated with applicants after the PhotoJoJo plug, so I figured that there was little chance that either of us would be selected. I was shocked to receive an email in mid-July letting me know that Woo had been selected! Apparently having an interesting story, like being a Canadian boy living in India for a year, helped to tip the balance in his favour. I guess it wasn’t quite as interesting to be a 38 year-old Canadian living in India for a year!!

Woo was just as excited when I told him about it, and wanted to start right then and there! That proved to be difficult, since we didn’t even have a camera yet. I had some back and forth with the curator, and decided that the best course of action was to have me pick up the camera in Bangalore. We didn’t want to risk it never getting to us, or have it damaged by some of the extreme temperatures that it likely would have faced on it’s journey through the Indian Postal System. Of course I failed to have a contingency for when I would be unable to find said camera in Bangalore, and sent one last ditch plea on a local message board as to where to find one. A good friend, who happened to be in the States at that time, saw it and offered to ‘import’ two for me. We were good to go!

Woo shot his pictures in Mysore and Bangalore. He LOVED the idea of taking these pics, so much that we had to restrain him from shooting off the entire roll in one outing! He did have a hard time working the view finder, and accepting that he could not just see the picture after he took it. My explanation about how that was “old school” didn’t really cut it with him, but he pushed through. He saved his last three pictures for the last day of his week, so that he could take the camera to ‘show and tell’, where he proudly told his classmates all about the project.

With the camera completed, we faced the challenge of getting the camera safely back to the UK. Thankfully a friend was travelling there from India, so she popped it in the mail once she got there. The photos were posted online this past week, and Woo and I sat together to review them and have him narrate some comments to accompany each picture. He loved reviewing each one, and has been through them several times, reliving the experience.

We have loved being part of this project, both as a contributor and an observer to the process. There are some great images being posted most days on the website, with many more to come in the next few weeks. For a variety of reasons, there are still three slots available – ages 77, 94, and 96. If you know anyone who fits the bill (turns that age on their 2012 birthday), you should encourage then to apply! There is a REALLY good chance that they will be selected, as the project wraps up at the end of the year. Woo’s pictures, if you are interested in having a look, can be found here: http://the100.thinkplaymake.co/the100/5/. Can you guess what his favourite is?!?!

8 comments

October

Working for the weekend

I have been planning to go to an annual blogging conference in Toronto for about two years. I didn’t go to the first one, held in October 2010, as I was new to blogging, and didn’t really think that a blogging conference would be beneficial to me. I was wrong, and regretted my decision not to go before the conference had even been held. I didn’t go the second one in Toronto, despite having bought a ticket. I was nowhere near Toronto last October, given that we were just getting settled in India. I was sad to have missed it too, and vowed that I would attend in October 2012, no matter where we were living in the world.

I purchased my ticket the day that they went on sale, and started to make plans with my two travel partners, Anna and Krista. They are simply awesome travel companions, and it was just assumed that we would go together. We chatted back and forth about the conference over email, until one day Anna let me know that she had been contracted to shoot the conference as their official photographer! I offered my congrats, and then she sent me a note that both excited me and terrified me – she asked me to work as her second shooter for the conference! Although I have never actually shot anything other than family get togethers and little children’s parties for my own use, I was pretty pleased that she had faith in my abilities and trusted that I would produce the images that she needed. She has seen a lot of my pictures, so it is not like she didn’t know what she was in for.

In the months leading up to the conference, I was pretty quiet about my role. It was almost as if I did not believe that I was going to be working the conference, and that Anna might just send me a note that she had found someone more qualified. I prepared though, by studying the types of images that had been used before and treating any event that I attended as a gig, where I would try to get the right kind of shots. Willy even talked his work into allowing me to shoot one of their conferences to get some practice in. It was very worthwhile, as I learned a lot about shooting this type of event, and was able to produce a series of images that they were happy with at the end.

The morning of the first day, I was beyond nervous. Instead of taking my last bit of free time and doing something fun, I holed up in the room and checked, double-checked, and then triple-checked my gear. Once I was certain that it was working properly and all was clean, I fired off a couple more test shots for kicks. Then it was go time. Once I started to take pictures I was fine, and even started to have a little bit of fun. It helped to have great friends and a supportive response from conference staff and attendees alike.

The weekend basically flew by, but it was a lot of hard work. I don’t remember the last time that I shot that much, and my hands were sore from holding the camera by the end of each day. We went non-stop from registration, through the parties, the sessions, the exhibitors, and the fun excursions that people went on the last day. I could not believe how physically tiring it was, and I am now even more impressed by professionals, like Anna, who do this all the time. This was my first time doing any sort of work in over a year, and I returned home Sunday night and fell into bed, exhausted.

It was a great experience for me, and I am pretty sure that Anna liked enough of my shots that she was happy too. Most of all it was a great learning experience. Yes, I take pretty pictures, but I have lots left to learn, and much more to practice. I am happy with how the weekend turned out. If you are curious to see any of the pictures, both our pictures are available in the most recent sets at http://www.flickr.com/photos/77190089@N06/sets/.

4 comments

October

Wordless Wednesday – Worldwide Photowalk

No comments yet

October

On ice!

One of my earliest memories of defying my parents always happened under the cover of darkness. I used to lie in bed and secretly listen to the Montréal Canadiens broadcasts on my radio, long after I was supposed to be asleep. i never got caught, but growing up in a family of hockey fans, maybe I did… I was a diehard Habs fan for a long time, until Ottawa got the Senators and I became a season ticket holder. Hockey was a big part of my life growing up, so it is no surprise that it still is now.

The lils have grown up with hockey in their lives. The first time we left Woo alone with a sitter was to go to a Sens game in the spring of 2007, something that was repeated many times that spring. Hockey is pretty much the only thing that they have been allowed to watch on TV for their whole lives, including this past year in India, when Woo and Goose often got up, on their own, in the pre-dawn hours to watch the playoffs with me. In addition to watching on TV, they have both spent many an afternoon watching their Daddy play with his beer league team, and have been given all the pieces needed for many a game of living room, and then basement hockey (this change was necessitated when Woo decided to start using a real puck and learned to raise said puck). We were gifted with several full sets of ice and road hockey gear, so both lils happily play in the basement, suited up, for hours.

The winter before we moved to India was the first that Woo was really skating, on real skates. He loved it, and begged and pleaded with us to go to the local rink EVERY DAY. We went as a family occasionally, but more often than not it was just Woo and Willy, skating, shooting pucks, goofing around. He was so sad the day that the rink closed for the season, but had big plans for the following winter. Those skates turned into roller blades when we moved to India, and he loved it ALMOST as much. One of the things that we all missed was winter, and as soon as we knew that we were coming home, Woo started talking about skating.

Still I hesitated to enrol him in hockey upon our return. I didn’t want to be the parent that forced their lil to play a sport that they never played/played well, and I wanted to make sure that I was putting him in it because he liked it, not because I liked the idea of it. It was a visit with friends, just days after getting home that convinced me to give it a try. Their daughter is the same age and starting out this year, and she is loving it. We wanted to let him have a chance to see if he felt the same. We found a spot for him and filled him in on the plan. He was hesitant when he heard that his dad wasn’t going to be on the ice with him, but it took mere minutes (and a trip to Canadian Tire for a new stick etc) to get him excited.

His first practice was this past Saturday at 7:00 AM. Willy took him, despite fighting jetlag. All of my fears melted away when he walked in the door and told me that it had been “good, great, awesome, awesome, AWESOME!!!!” He was hooked, in one short hour. Sunday afternoon, he and Willy headed to the closest rink for public skating and spent the better part of two hours on the ice. He came home happy and excited to go again. I can’t wait for the ice to be put in in the park so that we can go every day after school. Time for Goose and I to get new skates, and maybe, just maybe, time for me to start to play hockey again.