Month: November 2022

The main aims behind this process were:

• To become familiar with the limitations of the polaroid process and see them as an opportunity to simply ways of looking at and being in the city environment.
• To explore my very local (a circumference of maybe 3/4 city blocks) area and look for visual narratives in the everyday, playing with light and composition.
• Things got most interesting when I focussed on double explosure composing and even camera shake at specific points – ie. just after exposing the paper.

My reflections back are that the process of executing the method should be analogue but that the method itself does not need to be photography.
It needs to be outside in situ so that you are responding to that environment (nature, light, the cityscape, landscape, skyscape) or any of these in isolation but just not to internal influences.

These pictures were all taken through July/August 22.

Lots of insitu findings. That the composition has to be simple to be engaging. That beidges – as much as I love them – are not the best subjects – I think that is to do with horizontal structure on top of horiozontal structure. Polaroid cameras have no zoom so trying to focus in doesn’t work. Trying to make complicated stories doesn’t work, and the light has to be good but not over bright as your image surface will only over expose.

Another thing is that in scanning these in the light of the scanner flooded some of them, causing incidental but interesting further exposures I guess you could call them.

Words on little voices

(I started this writing on a notepad, your thinking is more tuned into the speed of your thoughts and especially for capturing fleeting moment of consciousness, it is better suited. But then I took it through here to ‘publish’ it and you get to a stage of curating the words/spaces/ what words for what line of text. So there are two stages: flow and curating/editing)

Pavement Breakfast:

Attempt 1:

I just stepped over the small mound of grey fluff, the crow stalked aside, as red triangle in its beak,
Ah, I interrupted breakfast

Attempt 2:

stepping over the small mound of grey fluff (fur), I disturbed the crow stalking to one side , red tinge in its beak.

ah. I interrupted his lunch.

Attempt 3:

stepping over the small mound of grey fluff,
I noticed then the crow step back,
red tinge in its beak,
Ah…I interrupted breakfast

Reflection

Trying to capture words immediately after the scene, you watch a small scene unfold in front of you and you become aware of the dynamics happening at pavement level. Then using the right words, phrases, spaces and sentence structure to convey that. I discovered yesterday Baco Ohama’s work, beautiful. Really drew my attention the use of gaps in sentences like this.

flurry of black

a flurry of black in the sky catches my eye
They’re here!
I can’t get out to see them fast enough.

they pause briefly over the marsh, come this way and
then pause before circling…did they forget a friend?

And then they gather again
and twist and soar, darting through to Vancouver.

I realised, sadly, by August that they’d gone somewhere else

And then in September another flurry, maybe of sparrows? flashed through before sunset to settle on the crane.

sometimes if you are watching you will see a group curve and dart, this way and that over the buildings, as if all tied to one piece of thread

Reflection

Poetry is best read aloud. Or at least in your head. I think especially now with our limited time and head space, a few words that can stop you and create space for nature and to have the soothing properties of nature amidst the constant stimulation of the urban environment are needed.