Everything Is Unpredictable

It’s Thursday, so let’s take a look at my From Equinox to Solstice: Photographing the Fall project.

Last week:

This week:

So once again, I had to take this picture in the morning, but it’s at the same time, so I am officially saying that this experiment was always meant to have half of the pictures show my backyard at night, and half in the morning. (Don’t tell anyone that wasn’t how it happened and that I actually just had to work and couldn’t take the picture before the sun punched out.) So, technically, now the sky will be getting brighter (I’ll take my picture roughly around 9AM every Thursday), which I think does put a nice artistic spin on the whole project, you know, sky getting lighter even as the days get shorter.

Anyway, I don’t know if it’s just that this is one of my first morning pictures, but this one might be the first where you can actually see like, a real ray of sun. It hasn’t shown its face too much this fall, which is sad, because there were days when I could have used it. So yes, sun is here, finally!

Maybe one of the reasons we can see the sun more clearly is, yes, the snow. It’s back. And I think it’s here to stay. Who knows, really, everything is unpredictable. Moving on though, with snow comes frozen everything. Soil, trees, flowers, roads, water pipes. Maybe even hearts. Late fall will do that to you.

Otherwise, nothing happening here. But… maybe next week? Come back to see!

RJ

Too Much Nothing

I tried, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make it home in time to take a picture of my From Equinox to Solstice: Photographing the Fall scene before dark. But, thinking this might finally happen, I planned ahead and actually did take the photo in the morning. Let’s take a look:

Last week:

This week:

So other than my failure to plan my photography around my work schedule, what do we see? Unfortunately, the snow from last week has melted. This is unfortunate because, although I like warmth, I can’t enjoy it when I know it’s just going to last for a day. It’s like my favourite person (he’s real), Calvin (from Calvin and Hobbes (Hobbes is also real)) says: “Autumn Sundays are the worst. You can ever really enjoy Sunday’s because in the back of your mind you know you have to go to school the next day” (check out Bill Watterson’s fantastic comic here). Autumn Sundays are the same as autumn warm days. I can’t enjoy them. I know they’re not hanging around. See, even in this picture, you can see that the snow from last week is gone, but there’s clearly a new snowfall starting. It’s all a cycle. You can’t get too comfortable. I guess that’s what seasons are there for: to remind you not to get too comfortable.

Moving on: plant life. Nothing. Same as last week. Nothing. Nothing alive, nothing to say. That’s too much nothing, sorry. So then, sun. Forget for a second that it’s rising instead of setting (can you find a metaphor in there so that I don’t feel so bad about switching my whole system up? Please?), and just look how it’s gone. No sun, just… blue. So, my question: is the blue because of the snow, as I said last week, or is it just a winter sky? Is it because it’s darkening more quickly? Maybe that’s it. Does darker mean bluer? On a completely different note, does darker mean sadder? This is a conversation for tobogganing down the hill with my favourite perpetual 6-year-old and my favourite stuffed tiger that is stuffed with life for those of us who can see past sight. That is, if we ever get any more snow.

So, moral of the story: the weather and my thoughts are all over the place. It’s exam season. But as all seasons do, it will end. Either way, leave a comment to tell me if you can see another difference between these two photos or between any of the photos from the collection, which you can find here!

RJ

Speed Limits Go Out the Window When There is Fog

So, the other day, my friend and I went to see David Fincher’s Gone Girl. It was pretty creepy. But you know, you see a creepy movie and then you walk out of the theatre into the cool night air and reality hits you like a first raindrop and you’re good again. The movie is just in the past, life isn’t scary, you drive home and go to bed. NOT THE CASE! At least not that fateful night last week we went to see Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike in their exceptionally frightening portrayal of married life.

So, we walk out of theatre and I’m telling you, it was the foggiest night I have ever seen. Felt, really. Walking from the building to the car, maybe 30 steps (great parking spot), we were wet! Like, as if it was raining! Mind you, I did stop along that walk to take a few pictures, so that could have added some time and contributed to the water factor. Either way, I thought I’d share the pictures because I was so freaked out by the experience. I’m not sure if I captured the night perfectly, I can’t completely remember it… it’s all so… foggy. But here are my attempts:

So this is a huge parking lot that we can usually see the edge of because it’s so bright. Love the trees, right? Fading into the distance. Like nature. Sorry, too environmental.

This picture is my favourite, with the one street lamp that looks like a creepy post-apocalyptic sun:

Now this last one is going to be a little bit of a trust exercise. See, it doesn’t look too exciting, but I’m telling you, there is a town right in front of us. I mean, it’s been there all my life and we eventually ended up in it, so I know it’s there. But you can’t see it! And neither could we! So it was a trust exercise for us too, I suppose:

Crazy, right? Maybe not. I was actually blown away by the fog though. It’s so intense when you know something’s in front of you, but you can’t see it. You’re looking, your eyes are adjusting and trying as hard as they can, but they cannot see. You cannot see. You’re completely vulnerable to everything around you, everything coming at you. It’s eye-opening, really.

Anyway, we figured out that in these situations, you finally just have to trust your other senses and drive 20 at fastest.

RJ

Cloudy With A Chance Of Winter

And it’s Thursday again! So, let’s pick up where we left off with my Stargirl experiment, with the photo collection I call, From Equinox to Solstice: Photographing the Fall.

The picture from last week:

And the picture from this week:

So, the main differences I see: first, the fallen leaves. Look at them! They’re everywhere! This is going to be so pretty come November. Next, the sky is a lot greyer than it was last week; I think that’s just the weather though, not the sun doing anything solsticey. And finally, the garden, of course! We prepared it for winter! A major difference for sure, and though it looks nice and clean I will definitely miss fresh vegetables. Summer is officially over:(

What differences did you see? Let me know by leaving a comment, and check back next week for a new picture!

In cloudy skies,

RJ

Just Do What You Want (And Of Course, Photograph It)

Hi there:)

A photo I took, called “Shadows on the Wall:”

I took this picture last summer in the middle of the night behind a government building, with my family. It was awesome because we’re a super PG group of people, and we were just loving how our shadows looked on the fence – we were doing slow motion stage combat, shadow puppets, the classics. Too fun. Then suddenly this light shot out at us; it was a security guard with a really bright flashlight. He ran over, yelling, “Hey! What are you guys doing back there?” And we’re like… “Um… shadow puppets?” He just started to laugh, either because he thought it was obvious we were lying or because he thought we were exceptionally pathetic compared to the hooligans that usually hang out behind government buildings. Anyway, totally okay with it.

So, a general photography tip: embrace your PG-ness, and don’t hide it in your pictures. You don’t have to do anything crazy or performance-art-ish or illegal (though that can be awesome too – I’ll post about pictures in illegal places in the future, I promise) and you don’t have to give up on a subject just because someone else has done something weirder with it in the past. Just do what you want and take a picture of it.

RJ

Either My Clock is Fast Or the World is Spinning Backwards! Maybe Both!

So, last time I wrote about my tree-and-garden-equinox-solstice-experiment I didn’t really have a name for it. So here’s the name: From Equinox to Solstice: Photographing the Fall.

First thing’s first, I took this picture at 6PM today instead of 6:30PM. So it’s a little off with the sun, or our world is turning backwards. It’s possible. Anyway, I’ll be careful to always do it right at 6PM in the future. Apologies. The picture from last week:

And the picture from this week:

Despite the sun being a little higher, you can still see how the leaves are changing (beautiful, right?!) and the garden’s looking a little colder, no? One week closer to the solstice! Leave a comment about how you’re seeing the seasons change right now. For example, pumpkin spice everything at Starbucks. (Not complaining, I like it. It’s just… a lot of pumpkin spice, you know?)

RJ

P.S. Sorry, I know I posted my first instalment of this experiment just a few days ago, but I promise, the picture was taken on Thursday! I’m going to start posting my tree-and-garden pictures every Thursday though, no later! Sorry about this, my experiment and I are just not in sync yet. We’re getting there. The relationship is still new.

Photographing the Seasons: An Experiment Inspired by Stargirl

Okay, so, have we read Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli? I was a huge fan of the first book, Stargirl, in elementary school, and then the second one came out and I was ecstatic! And despite all these classics I have read since my first encounter with Stargirl herself, I think this work of junior fiction is as classic as they come. There is so much I could say about the novel, like, I love how Stargirl seems to become more human in Love, Stargirl than in Stargirl, and is thus so much more relatable. But I’m going to focus on one topic here: her Winter Solstice spatula thing. For those of you who are not huge fan(Star)girls, the Winter Solstice spatula thing is this: every Thursday morning at the crack of dawn, Stargirl walks out to this hill near her house and plants a spatula in the ground to mark where the first ray of sun hits the earth. Now, as the sunlight changes every day, she eventually creates a solar calendar with kitchen utensils (awesome, right?) that is finished on the Winter Solstice, and that day, she invites all of her crazy neighbours to celebrate her epic work of solar spatula art.

So where do we come into this? Well. Last week on the 22nd, it was the Autumnal Equinox, which, for everyone who is confused and needs a simple explanation, is the time in the fall when the sun is closest to the celestial equator, causing the day and night to be roughly the same length. So what I’m going to do, since I can’t afford even one spatula, is take pictures of the sun behind my tree and my sister’s garden every Thursday. Not in the morning but rather in the evening, because at 4AM it’s going to be way too dark even for my fabulous flash, and I want to capture both the sun and the plants changing. Anyway, I’m going to do this until the Winter Solstice, which is the time in the winter when the sun is furthest from the celestial equator, causing the greatest difference between the length of the day and the length of the night. And then, who knows, on the 21st of December, I might get the strange people from my own neighbourhood to have a Winter Solstice party with me à-la-Stargirl!

Okay! So this photo might not seem too exciting now, but in a few months, you may come back to it and see with new eyes! I hope my change-of-seasons pictures will be, as Stargirl’s little friend Dootsie says about the sunrise, “better than T.V.”

RJ

Sources:

Spinelli, Jerry. Love, Stargirl. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. Print.

Will I See You Tonight?

Sometimes a sentence pops into my head. A little while ago, a particularly sad came to me, so I turned it into a poem. Here is the final product:

Will I See You Tonight?

I don’t see you in my dreams anymore

I can’t help but wonder if you don’t see me

What does this mean when we are awake?

Will I soon not see you in my thoughts?

Will I forget who this poem is about?

Come back while we’re just drifting, while we’re not separate yet;

Come back into my dreams, before we forget.

 

Thanks for reading, let me know what you think!

RJ