I'm Baaaaack!

It’s been more than a minute since I posted something here- 2020 happened, and the rest is history. I read, I baked, I slept; I did a lot of stuff, but one thing I didn’t do was use my camera. The muse was gone and there was zero mojo happening. Fast forward to November of 2021, and on a lark I decided to submit a portfolio for review to The Shooting Range- A Photography Challenge , and lo and behold, I was chosen as a challenger. I thought I’d share some of my images and maybe some behind the scenes shots of what I made. I ended the challenge as a runner up- it was a metric s&$* tonne of work, but it made the deep winter months fly by and the best part, it made me pick up my camera again.

I’m still not sure why I chose to shoot something glossy and reflective for my first Image, but I wanted to have bold, contrasting colours to represent my assigned colour for the team assignment to shoot the colours of the rainbow. The guest judges DIDN’T like it at all, and I was left in the middle of the pack at judging time (which was a very safe place to be, I might add). I think it is cheeky, I love the vibrant colours and NO REFLECTION! Lesson learned.

It took me 2 days of shooting to get this one image- here’s the evolution:

It takes a lot of crap images to get to one good one sometimes. Remember that, kids.

Want to help me get this in front of Diamond Pedals in Dartmouth so I can photograph all of their product?

White Hot

Today was the day to burn the monster pile of brush and have a music lesson.
Red Rider was the first band that I went to a club to see- it was The Palace or The Misty Moon 1986. The place was overcapacity, the floor and walls were vibrating and I remember feeling the rhythm of the music hitting my chest. Addicting.

Pre-lesson conversation.

From the 1989 Live album "The Symphony Sessions" by Tom Cochrane & Red Rider. The album was recorded with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra at the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton, Alberta.

Tom Cochrane sat down and listened to his hit "White Hot" and discuss the process in making the song as he goes Behind The Vinyl. boom 97.3 presents "Behind The Vinyl". Where artists sit down and discuss their hit songs and how they came to be while listening to the song on vinyl.

These Days

I think creativity rides like waves- the swell of one idea pushes another along. For the last year I have been knee deep in re-learning guitar after not touching it for 30+ years with no good reason. This relearning is lifting my photography-for-fun-boat, and that’s a very good thing for me. That, and seeing friends like Hillary Hendsbee, Hali Rosborough, and Amy Stackhouse all make images I love.

Anyone who reads blogs can see that the author tries to incorporate a snazzy title to draw the reader in. I’m not a snazzy writer, but I think I am going to use music titles that make me feel something good. When possible, I will include a YouTube link to the tune at the end of my post. Play them loud. They may or may not make sense, but we’ll roll with it. Maybe someday I will get brave enough to show myself playing.

So, These Days, we are in the midst of our first real snow storm of this new decade.

"I wrote 'These Days' before I met Gregg. He heard me play the song when we were first friends, I guess we were probably both 18," Jackson Browne tells Blackbird about Gregg Allman in this concert clip. "The way he did that song completely changed it, I think for me and for everybody...

It's Been A Minute.....

It’s been fourteen months since I wrote a blog post, but, you know……it’s fine. Everything is fine.

Here I am, back again, ready to share the mundane, ordinary, imperfect tidbits of our lives. What is more ordinary than making bread? Not much, really, unless it’s laundry or feeding the cat. I saw in Kelly Neil’s Instagram stories that she was making a sourdough starter using a recipe from Baked the Blog. We love sourdough bread here, so I decided to give it a try. I’m a pretty confident baker, but I have never made my own starter. It’s a fun science experiment so far. I’m not a food photographer, and have zero aspirations to be. Although the mythical prop closets that I hear food photographers have makes me pretty curious about the possibilities.

Day 1: Not much to see…combined the flour and water in a jar, asked for the yeast faeries to do their thing and covered it up.

Day 2: Theoretically, I should have seen some little bubbles starting to form. However, the kitchen was on the cool-ish side and probably didn’t come up to a temperature to promote growth. Rather than feeding it again, I left it, hoping to see some activity in the next 24 hours.

Day 3: Folks, we have bubbles!!

Lots and lots of bubbles!

I added the new feed, gave it a stir, thanked the wild yeast faeries and closed it up again. I got the little bowl in Oklahoma on one of our visits there- a little set of three that somehow managed not to get broken when the TSA demolished my bag that time. At least they left a little card saying it was them who went though it. Travelling is awesome. But, back to bubbles and bread………

I’ll let you know how it goes.