show me yours

GOD this is impossible.

(sighs in disgust, hovers on DELETE)

Screw it. I can't do this. I don't know how anyone does this.

(yanks exposure slider to far right in frustration +3.35 stops)

Hey.

(ups brightness and contrast)  That's kinda cool.

(cools temperature to 2250 - strong blues)  You know, I think that's actually... me.

(opens raw file as JPG)

(fails to resist spot-removing bubonic cold sore with crust like g-d crème brûlée, thanks the gods for digital herpes cure, lifts middle finger to no one in particular in counter-salute to authenticity)

(runs action or two for zip, zing)

(saves)

++++

Something Cheeky is playful. Myinspiredheart and camera shy momma wear hearts on sleeves. Lucrecerb is pure... well, you know. And in those jeans, so does she. Miss 1979 is interpretive. Miss Vivienne gets grassy with her polaroid. Mainemomma revels in her mommahood. Cherryvanillastudios is ‘messy', and sharp.photo is ‘drunk and dressed up'... and fabulous.

There's nothing I admire more than a well-executed, patient, soulful self-portrait - except maybe one that's impulsive and scruffy. Love ‘em all, props to all.

I've shown you mine, this keepsake. Hyper-processed, a slippery slope like that song you adored until the 472nd time you listened to it (and swore you'd never play again). But refreshing, in this rut, for being completely unlike anything I've done before. Reminiscent of the bliss and broodiness of being delicious in stiletto musk perfume, up to my neck in the decadence of my very own hotel room in my very favourite mistress-city.

Show me yours?

clandestine at little nest

Saying it was always some form of self-preservation.

Listen—if we’d had children in Vancouver, we would not be skiing until midnight and paddling every weekend and spending every paycheque at the Granville Island Brewery and Mountain Equipment Co-op. Parenthood in Vancouver would be about the same as parenthood in rural Nova Scotia—at home, up to our knees in cheerios—so we may as well be here and be able to have a little sailboat and a little house and a lot of help. We’re not missing anything.

So here’s the trouble. Back in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago for an autonomous, mama-only/girl-only/career-only getaway, a friend, her daughter and I wandered Commercial Drive looking for lunch.

I know exactly where we’ll go, she said. Little Nest.

We opened the door and hit a wall of Hip. But not Snooty Hip, nor Stuffy Hip, nor Footloose and Fancy Free Hip. It was Mama-Daddy Hip.

Little Nest is the kitchen of the mama-friend you wish you had. Bashed-in wood floors, mismatched chairs anchored by a trestle table for twenty, vintage Fisher Price, tepid hot chocolate for little misses and misters in proper china cups, the aroma of fresh baked cinnamon and icing sugar and pistachio, homemade fig jam and a gourmet-everyday menu that transforms scrambled eggs into heaven.

I’d like to be a parent here. I’d like to walk here on a Tuesday morning and spread out and run wild, and laugh and talk and commiserate with these people while the sun shines through that window.

And so much to my chagrin, despite my eastern contentedness, I discover yet another reason to envy these citizens of lotusland.

Sipping cooling tea and dragging bread around an empty plate to sop up the remains of roasted portobello and goat cheese, I stole a few moments to bring home. Unable to peel my eyes away from her and not sure why. Smiling at the two of them, or rather, the four of them, the very picture of sisterhood. Noting the kid-ammended interior design. Coveting the personal style of those who make motherhood look so cool, and yet so welcoming.

+++++

This Monday, show and tell us about photos you’ve snuck of people or things wholly unconnected to you, but that left an impression you couldn’t leave without.

quotable photable

Needles and pins, Needles and pins,
Sew me a sail to catch me the wind.
Sew me a sail strong as the gale,
Carpenter, bring out your hammers and nails.
Hammers and nails, hammers and nails,
Build me a boat to go chasing the whales.
Chasing the whales, sailing the blue
Find me a captain and sign me a crew.
Captain and crew, captain and crew,
Take me, oh take me to anywhere new.

--Shel Silverstein

+++++

Show us your adventurers, won't you?

the practice of patience

Babies oblige, scrunching and burping and stretching and drooling, more or less lying there all chubby and delectable. Toddlers must be chased, cajoled, tickled, bribed, tricked. Adults require layers upon layers of self-awareness to be peeled back with a gentle hand.

A few days ago, Marco taught me a new lesson. He was too cool for me. And it changed everything.

We scrambled atop boulders and danced like crabs and dug for treasure and walked through the woods to a secret cabin perched on the edge of the sea. What made for shot after shot of his little brother and sister was contrived for him. UGH, he said to me, rolling his eyes in mock boredom, sticking out his tongue. I don't want to do that.

You... what? Oh. Okay. Harpy out.

Startled, I turned away for a while, focused instead on the toddler and the preschooler, pointed my lens at familiar and readily tameable beasts. All with my mind racing, and one eye trained on the conundrum that stood kicking rocks by himself, hugging his mother one moment and scowling good-naturedly the next.

Shooting Marco was the first time I've ever been so exquisitely attuned to patience. To stepping back, to letting him show me what kind of photo he wanted me to take--not the kind myself or his parents may have envisioned, but what is just right.

This is the age of the birth of a sense of self--delicate, tentative, antsy.

But looking straight at you, when he chooses to.

delicious ambiguity

I always wanted a happy ending... Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.

::  Gilda Radner (1946 - 1989)

Behind the camera, there's candid (i.e. subject knows you're there, makes you chase, does best to Act Natural! and not pose but look agreeably windswept) and then there's reeeally, truly candid (i.e. subject thinks you're chasing windswept un-posers and sneaks her sixth cupcake).

This Labour Day, share with us the photos that had nothing to do with work, or planning, or chasing. Show us how you stalk the moment.