It fascinates me how sometimes a part of something can give you a richer idea of the whole than a wider view. I think that sometimes the whole becomes too much to process. It’s too much to try to fit together all at once. Everything becomes jumbled and the essence is lost. It’s better sometimes to take the pieces individually and then let them fall together. Let the unity show itself through the parts.
Each year Utata does a big project. This year the project is Utata Speaks, photo essays written by Utata members. If you click on the banner you’ll be taken to mine. It will probably also show up here in the Features section in the next few days. Give it a read and let me know what you think.
I had a lovely Thursday Walk today. It was foggy but warm. Nice diffused light for taking pictures. I wandered around the garden first thing and then set off for the beach after breakfast. The red background for the droplets photo is actually an old rusty freezer that was at the beach. It had plants growing up through it and this spider web on the side.
Before coming home from Fredericton, I made sure to get to the Beaverbrook and see their Rodin show. It was incredible. I was moved by the beauty of the pieces and fascinated by the process of their creation. If you happen to be in the area, do go. It is worth it. There are a couple of things that struck me. The first is how beautiful many of his works are from any side. For many of the pieces any angle gives a more complex but just as stunning view of the sculpture. Because I work in such a two dimensional medium, I found it mindboggling to try to think about art in three dimensions, and how effective Rodin was at it. The second thing that I was left with was an expansion of my list of artists who have interpreted pieces of the Divine Comedy in their respective medium. It was fascinating to find out that two of Rodin’s most well known pieces, ‘The Thinker’ and ‘The Kiss’ are from his ‘Gates of Hell’.
So, I’m a little slow getting my Utata Thursday Walk photo posted this week. My excuse is that I’m on vacation. If you want to see this photo on the Thursday Walk project page you can click on this link.
I love the traces of nature on our most permanent things. When we pour concrete we expect it to be almost untouchable by nature for a long time to come. But sometimes, even before it is finished, the chaos of the natural world takes hold and leaves its mark.
I had the chance to take a walk around uptown Saint John this morning and took a few pictures. There are a lot of nice developments uptown. These faces, though not new developments, are on the corner of one of my favourite views of the city.
Vacations are good things. We arrived here in Saint John on Saturday. I woke up really ill on Friday so I wasn’t sure if we were going to leave when we wanted but I was up for a modified itinerary on Saturday. It was a gorgeous hot sunny day for driving. Since we don’t have air conditioning it was a continuous cycle of keeping the windows down until we couldn’t stand the noise anymore then keeping them up until we couldn’t take the heat anymore. Though this picture is taken in Saint John I hope to get out to take some more that are more location specific. This dirty wonderful city always inspires me.
When I first saw this, I was far enough away I couldn’t see the web holding the flower at all. It felt like time had stopped when the blossom was halfway in its descent to the ground. It was as though this one blossom was set apart to not be ground up by the lawn mower or raked into the compost bin. Even after seeing the web, I realized that maybe it was put there with a purpose. Maybe the spider who spun the web picked it and hung it in midair to try and attract a bee. That would be one ambitious spider. An arachnid Lady MacBeth, now endlessly washing 4 pairs of hands.
This is my contribution to the most recent Utata weekend project, Utata Still Life. For some reason I found this one really hard to do. I’m not sure if I just wasn’t really creatively motivated this weekend or just have other photo projects dominating my thoughts. I guess that’s one good thing about these projects is they get you to think beyond whatever you’ve been focusing on. I’m reasonably happy with the result. I’m not usually a fan of colour toning but I couldn’t get it to look the way I wanted in straight black and white.