long time passing

"how did it get so late so soon?
its night before it's afternoon.
december is here before it's june.
my goodness how the time has flewn.
how did it get so late so soon?"
- dr. seuss (american writer and cartoonist, 1904-1991)

in a month or so, tender snowdrops will nudge their greenness through the frost, and the neverending cycle of growth - flourishing, fading - will begin again.
in the meantime, though, there is mimicry.
and there are memories.

just around the corner

come summer, i leave the north sea beaches - one of which is just a quarter of an hour away - to the vacationing throngs. crowds, sand, and very loud transistor radios: it's a combination i avoid with total conviction.
when the season is low, though, and the tide, and the sun, too, and when the view stretches spacious into another province, i can be tempted into a late afternoon stroll along the coast.
this is the camera i pocket when i anticipate vistas. i'm its second owner - we're still getting aquainted - but sometimes it seems to perceive the wide world exactly as i do.
(a larger version is here.)

winter branches and old bones

it rained, of course. it is december, after all.

but - by times - there was lamplight, and sunlight, too.

there was even, finally, in laon, a bit of rust and peeling paint.
colour me content.

off to see the wizard

a touch of winter flu has tossed a slight shadow over my first few days off, but hopefully i'll be fit enough tomorrow to (gently!) throw a couple of cameras onto the back seat of
the car and join my patient partner on a little, not-too-far-afield, road trip.
we're thinking northern france by way of bruges, but i'm fine with anywhere, really,
as long as it's picturesque, and photogenic.
and as long as it doesn't pour.

to kingdom come

he was a prince of stances, effect above essence: she knows this now.
but it takes little - a posture, a profile, a pair of pigeoned toes - to remind her poignantly of something she no longer truly remembers.

hasta la vista

an autumn day can be an imagemaker's dream in the netherlands, with a pure, crisp, glorious light, and colours that - joni mitchell says it perfectly - stick to all your senses.
it can also (think wet, grey, relentlessly matte) be an imagemaker's nightmare.
i'd like tomorrow to lean the first way.
please.

be my, be my

tsk. i know:
the "sweet spot" on the top image is mi-ni-scule and hovers awkwardly somewhere in the corner of a shutter, but the lensbaby - mounted as it is on a lovely old nikon - has been an exercise in coordination, faith and patience.
an analog camera means no preview, no review, no tossing away; it also means
finishing the roll and waiting for processing and then discovering that i need a lot more practise before i am rewarded with wonderfulness like this.
and this.

holding the roses

"almost all words do have colour, and nothing is more pleasant than to utter a pink word
and see someone's eyes light up and know it is a pink word for him or her too."
- gladys taber

my fascination with colour has not diminished, but my fascination with film has flourished, and i find that my older cameras tend to render what i see in a subtle and subdued - but infinitely true and beautiful - palette.
i do wonder, though, if my using long-expired film could have anything to do with it?
i am a late and plodding learner, but i am a learner nonetheless.

a latte to go

wim, and his beautiful etchings, can be found sundays at the weekly art market on the spui; if i happen to be in amsterdam i always drop by to say hello, and to watch his stall while he stretches his legs and goes for coffee.
i was grateful, on this particular day, for the shelter of his canopy: the heavens
suddenly opened and even the next doorway would have been a leap too far. there is a special calm, truly, in a steaming latte sipped surrounded by a storm.
the top image? i forgot - not once, but twice - to forward the film. it's because i'm three times older than i feel.

on the eve of all saints

i was going to grumble on and on - after stumbling, a few weeks ago, upon a garden
piled high with pumpkins, price-tagged every one - about the merchant mentality that turns other people's traditions into money-making enterprises.
but i'm tired (i know, i sound like a broken record), and tomorrow the orange streamers and the fake spiderwebs will be tucked away till next october, and i suppose i shouldn't begrudge anyone their fun and profit...
as long as they keep their hands off thanksgiving.
*
happy hallowe'en!