salutations

This is the place where you meet me.




About four days ago, I was driving down a street and it was raining. The day was dreary. The rain stopped, and I saw the edge of the cloud above me. It wasn't feathered or hazy, it was a solid edge stretched across the sky in front of me. I parked the vehicle overlooking the valley of a ravine, I had a moment to kill (or live). Just as the sun started to shine, it started to snow from the edge of this cloud. The end of the cloud turned into a snow cloud. After not having snow in a few months, it was a pretty surreal feeling. Golden shining snow on the wet glistening leaves. There was nobody around.

Ever think that a moment is there just for you to feel? Almost like it is intangible in any other way but for you to feel it in its surreal shell? That's how this was for me. For a few seconds, I knew how small but very a part I am of this big universe.


And of course this started me thinking of time and essence, and then I got distracted before I got too philosophical, and became more self indulged. About my life, my daughter and I, where I was going, what may be possible, what I feared and worried about... but those are for blog entries far from this one to come.


I mention all this, because I want to give weight for what I say now and here: I remember the most intimate moment where I went from a person who took a picture to someone who felt I was taking a photo.

I can no longer take a picture. It is very hard to take a picture. (I find it tough even at the most boring unphotogenic event!) It was a couple of years ago now, but I remember the sweet candle smell around me, the laughter of my daughter, the weight of my new (but old) manual camera. I remember feeling the moment as I clicked the shutter, that there was something more than light and colour I was trying to capture and convey.

Even if I am not quite in the moment as the golden snowfall I truly experienced the other day -and all photography conditions are completely imperfect and I'm tired and I'm alongside a boring subject- I can't help to, not only try, but need to tap into the true caliber of the nature of what it is I am capturing. It's a challenge I strive for, to discover and try to pull what significant substance there is- from small to large in character, flat to deep in essence.

Through photography, I have become a firm believer that no matter what the moment be -the unfolding of a tulip in the spring, a child's first birthday, a marriage to the love of ones life- it all holds value in our world, in our hearts and in our memories. It's something we were for a few seconds or an era in our lives, for a moment, and it creates who we are right now. Theoretically, photos are these moments captured to keep and help not fade from our minds and hearts.

Slices of life, for you to enjoy.