travels with a bear
i have been traveling, with very limited, very sporadic Internet access, for last couple of months. it was all in the name of work which meant it was busy, chaotic, and long hours. but it was travel, which i love, and, for the most part, i had a great time. i always consider myself lucky when i get on a plane or a ferry or a train to some distant destination and it is all in the name of work but not the kind of work where you only get to see the inside of conference halls and empty hotel rooms. the type of work where you actually get to look at and explore the places you are visiting. even better get to show others these places for the first time and encourage them to open their eyes to all the new sights on offer.
what does the bear have to do with all the travel? that bear is special, she belonged to the person i cared about most in the world, who, sadly, left this world six months ago today. the bear (and a matching penguin that belonged to me) travelled everywhere with us and now that my love is no longer here the bear continues her travels with me. she’s a well travelled bear and she still has many adventures ahead of her.
i bet toads don’t even like strawberries
i’ve been asked to pick strawberries this week, few things say english summer time more succinctly than strawberries and i am happily picking and eating large quantities. the only problem is i keep startling a toad that lives in the strawberry patch! that thing has some good camouflage.
summer
it’s memorial day in the US and a bank holiday weekend in the UK which basically means a four day weekend for everyone. i spent most of it camping. oh man, have i missed camping. i’m definitely doing more of it soon. i have a busy summer ahead of me but i’ll be squeezing a few camping trips in where i can. this photo was shot in Copenhagen last weekend (on a non-camping trip) and seems like a good photo to go with the ‘summer is finally here’ feeling i have today.
the big top came to town
i don’t remember the last time i had been to a circus but i remember watching magic shows as a kid and being completely awed. i had a paul daniels magic kit at home and would make hamfisted attempts at the tricks but only ever mastered one or two. my dad encouraged this love of awe in something i knew wasn’t real. he refused to ever tell me the secret to a trick choosing instead to ask me to think about how it might be done. i look forward to the day he can take his grandchild to a magic show and smile at the innocent awe, that kid is in for some fun!
this time i went to the circus with the family i’ve been working for recently and their youngsters were on the edge of their seats throughout the show. it was a small town traveling circus, the guy who would later come out and do fantastic acrobatics from a rope at the top of the tent dropped his diablo multiple times in the first act. the clown was an old guy who had his act down pat and seemed to genuinely enjoy doing it. the fire breather who did the finale appeared in various other incarnations prior to his impressive finishing act.
the magic was well rehearsed and pulled off impressively and without a hitch by two young girls. the smaller children with us didn’t really get the magic but the three year old watched open mouthed. how was the girl not severed by the swords pushed into the box? how did the audience member asked to participate disappear? i remember when those tricks seemed so completely impossible to me too, the misdirection, the slight of hand, not yet something i could possibly comprehend let alone figure out. and all the adults smiling and sharing indulgent “wow!”s and “how did she do that?!”s. that’s the magic of childhood at work right there.
blowing wishes
maybe it’s because i’m not a gardener but i don’t understand why so many people hate dandelions. we call it blowing wishes away when we pick them at this stage and huff and puff until the little white fluff of seeds fly away. i like that because it means that eventually many of those wishes seed and become new dandelions, ready to be turned into new flying wishes next year.
walking away
photojojo (source of much awesomeness) has a competition running on twitter today to win a package of prints from fracture (which looks to be source of framing awesomeness). to enter you have to pick a photo that would look good framed on glass. that got me briefly poking about in my archives and i came across this photo i made for a project i was working on last year.
over a year ago when i was working on this project i didn’t have much sadness or grief in my life. illustrating the concept of giving over a little piece of ourselves to such feelings and choosing to pack up and walk away had little personal tie for me. now it hits much closer to home. how long should we grieve before forcing ourselves to move on? to what extent can we just pack up and walk away? how much of ourselves do we need to leave behind in order to do so?
grayscale
this is copenhagen. in black and white. i am into black and white at the moment. experimenting with editing is fun but i like shots like this that require very little post-processing.
i found an cheap point and shoot film camera in a second hand store here in sweden last week. inside was a roll of film. i am excited to shoot with that roll of film and see what gets produced. that’s the magic of film, the waiting.
learning
one of the things i’ve always loved about working with children is the learning. they are constantly developing new skills and gathering new information. this age group is one of my favourites to work with because they are literally learning by leaps and bounds every day. they discover something new about their world on an hourly basis. and that is just so much damn fun to be around.
