Making pictures with a Digital SLR camera

Ungluing the camera from our faces.

 We see something that interests us, we raise the camera, squint through the viewfinder and snap our photo. That is how most of us took our photographs in the past and perhaps we maintain the habit when there are now other ways available. Learned habits of operation can be so valuable in that tight moment when so many things must jump into line before we trip the shutter, but they can also be narrow channels, like blinders on a horse, that have us taking the same basic images over and over again. We live in the age of the automated digital camera however and many new ways of operating our cameras are available.

The small cameras that have no viewfinder but a screen on the back break the to-the-eye habit and we can now hold the camera high over our heads to see over the crowd. Focus, exposure, shutter speed and ISO take care of themselves. We hold our little cameras at arms length to take our own likeness. What fun and what freedom! What we forget is that our more pricy and bulky DSLR can do the same without reference to the viewfinder. That lovely little flower in the dewy meadow? No need to lie down and get wet. But no need to hand over all decision making to the camera either: On aperture priority for example one can control ISO as usual, decide on depth of field and preferred metering zone. Shutter speed a little slow? We can think again about which combination of settings will serve us best, but one does not have to operate from eye level.

When photographing within a crowd there is a natural tendency to step off to the side and use a telephoto lens to catch our subjects unaware but there are other ways of releasing the shutter; by holding the camera at waist level on its strap and mingling with the crowd for example: a wide angle, smaller aperture for greater depth of field, a finger on the shutter release to unobtrusively focus and snap. Of course we can hold our camera over our heads or down beside our feet, we can pan with our moving subjects, try with or without the vibration reduction on,and deliberately under or over expose. We may also choose to involve our subjects in the photographic process by engaging them in conversation and then taking their photo with their co-operation. The sky is the limit and back in our 'photo-shop' program there are so many adjustments we can make.

  Composition is a tool of communication.

 We do learn one very important skill while doing this kind of off-the-cuff photography: we must be able to visualize what an image will look like from another perspective, to frame in our minds eye rather than using the viewfinder. In fact all photos are taken by our minds with the machine doing the work we ask of it. We learn quickly that our photograph is a construct, a creation, and not simply a record of reality and that we are in control of what it is communicating.

When we are involved in composition, in deciding the form that our image will take, it is easy to become confused and feel helpless. “I am not an artist”, we declare and claim a special category in the visual arts for amateur photography. (All that composition stuff is fine for painting but photography is a new and pure form of communication and simple 'rules' are adequate). The 'rule of thirds' comes to mind. In fact picture making is very old, going back to the dawn of human kind and photography is simply a recent manifestation of an ancient form of expression. The visual artists of past and present have much to teach us if we will look and listen. In fact listening may be one way that we can understand composition because people have always told stories and others have listened. The story teller who can organize his material and present it in a dramatic form will communicate well. Writing, no matter what the form, ( scientific reports, novels, poems etc.) requires organization if it is to successfully say what it means. That idea of organization is what the school system spent years trying to pound into our heads. An essay has a specific form and when a writer strays far from it readers become uneasy. A photograph that is well organized, that is composed in such a way that it does not confuse us with irrelevant information will get its point across. Words, sentence structure, paragraphs, an orderly development of thought, work well in written and verbal communication and there are elements of design that work together to express our thoughts in picture form, in two-dimensional space: colour, line, texture, form rhythm etc.. A musical composer too works in a very abstract form of expression, working in sound and time and using the elements of musical composition to pass his thoughts and feelings on to his audience.

If this seems a lot to swallow for the amateur photographer it far better to keep in mind the parallel with written communication than cripple oneself with a simple set of ' rules for making better pictures'. Sure we think visually and not in words when making a photograph, but we can ask ourselves what is our subject and how best to express that. We can try to simplify and select what will appear on the stage that our photograph encompasses. A cluttered stage with multiple back drops, characters scattered haphazardly and a confused storyline will soon also have an empty set of seats before it and if we wish to communicate we need to attract and retain an audience. Photographic skills, both with camera and in composition technique do not guarantee a great photograph however, just as writing skills do not in themselves produce a good story, there remains the more personal element that can recognize a meaningful subject, be it ever so practical or fanciful. That calls for our engagement with the world at quite a different level.

Finding our way to making photographs that are universal in their ability to reach others and yet express our uniquely personal vision is a long path, but an eternally interesting and rewarding one. It will probably not be a journey that we can take by the busload with others, nor should it be. The images that have instant appeal to a mass audience, that garner us praise from our fellow travellers, may not in the end be those we personally value as we walk down our life’s path. These will be those personal sign posts that indicated where next to turn on our photographic adventure.

Being Human.

'But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged.'


Albert Camus



I recently finished reading Rudy Wiebe and Yvonne Johnson`s powerful book 'Stolen Life – the journey of a Cree Woman' and am still living in that place. As it is the story of abuse, incest and murder it is not exactly a pleasant place to be. I made myself continue out of respect for the authors and the pain they must have lived in simply getting this down. It is also a transformational story with an ending of hope for all who have been down this road.


What I found interesting was my willingness to enter that place of suffering and my capacity to step deeply into Yvonne's life. Empathy would be one word to describe this human capacity to imagine the lives of others. All stories, all films, all images, require this ability for us to participate in them. It is not unique, is universal and is not confined to human beings only. We all love our dogs and can see things from their point of view and know that somehow they understand us. With practice we feel the thoughts of trees as they sway in the wind, experience the sadness of sunsets, fly out into space and cruise among the stars.


Perhaps it is not our big brain or opposing thumbs that has made us human over time but a steady refinement of relationship, our family, our tribe our environment and eventually the Creator, that final comprehensive understanding of total relationship.




Yvonne`s prayer at the end of the book:


Oh Creator, here I am, Medicine Bear Woman. Forgive my pitifulness. I have shared my pain because I know it is also the pain of my people.

I pray you

Remain with my words, I mean no harm;

May the existence you have chosen for me

Enlighten all people to a better understanding;

That we may have humility and pitifulness, so that no one needs

To suffer alone, but can find spiritual union

With all humankind.





A - Ho


Yvonne Johnson, 1998

Fare thee well, Oh Canada

While writing this piece for Canada Day ( July 1^st) based on an experience in the Coral Sea, I was also aware that the Sea itself had become my country too; I had become part of this Landscape/Seascape during the often far too exciting crossing of the Pacific. I recently found a quote from the French sailor Bernard Moitessier that expressed this very well.

“I am a citizen of the most beautiful nation on earth. A nation whose laws are harsh yet simple, a nation that never cheats,which is immense and without borders, Where life is lived in the present. In this limitless nation, this nation of wind, light, and peace, there is no other ruler besides the sea.”

Fare thee well oh Canada.

We are four hundred miles off the east coast of Australia, the wind is gusting to forty knots and our schooner is hove-to in chaotic seas. This is the forth day of this storm and we are more than ready to move on to the end of our eighteen month voyage across the Pacific from our home in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia. I sit on my night watch, wedged into the cockpit, listen to my daughter’s music on the headphones and watch our big traditional gaff-rigged schooner poke her bowsprit high into the dark sky, heel lee rail under and slide away from the punch of the next breaking wave. She has been performing this dangerous dance for what seems like forever and has never missed a beat. So far.

Perhaps it is the music that sets my mind to wandering, a collection of tunes about the 'Bluenose', the Myra River, about a boat like mine running before a gale in the Atlantic, but I begin to think what it really means to be Canadian. Those songs are from the other side of the continent from my home, but like most ex patriots I have a larger view of my country than I would have back home on my island. There I might feel that Toronto was on the far side of the moon and Halifax in another orbit altogether, but now ,hanging on til morning’s light, I am deeply touched by 'Farewell to Nova Scotia' singing in my ears. There are a lot of us living far from home these days. We use our computers to keep in touch, to pipe in CBC, that coast to coast to coast lifeline, but once when my wife and I were CUSO volunteers in South America we listened to Canada on short wave radio ( Daa da da daa), even picking up the broadcast to the north which had bounced around the earth to us teaching in the headwaters of the Amazon. We fitted into our host culture but needed more than ever to feel rooted in our homeland.

The wind direction has shifted at last, the storm-centre is sliding away towards New Zealand, and is rapidly building a wicked cross sea. The regular wave pattern is now broken and chopped and this presents a new challenge. Our schooner staggers, looses her stride, smacks her broad stern hard down on the back of a wave and then shrugs, finds a new furrow in the seascape and carries on. I think of all those nameless east-coast fishermen from the past who stood on deck in seas like these and watched carefully how their schooners swam among the waves. They thought about how they would improve the design of the next boat they would build, perhaps a little flatter curve to the turn of the bilge, a steeper run to the stern. Slowly the design evolved that is keeping my boat and my family safe from harm. ``Good old boat!``, I give the deck a pat just as a slosh of warm salt water trickles down my neck. I stand to check for shipping, catch the full roar of wind in rigging and the crash of the waves and then settle back to the music in my ears.

I am thinking about that country of mine far back around the curve of the earth: about those things we pretty much take for granted; our communities, our system of government, our social programs that reach out to support all of us, even those obvious things like the railways that were built for us by preceding generations. They were built by people like that nameless fisherman, like the creators of the music now playing in my ears. Step by step, piece by piece, like designing and building a boat, a lot of dedicated folk pouring out their lives to build a better country. A fair and generous community that we could be proud of, that could ride out storms and carry us and future generations safely home.

At last the moon breaks through the clouds and the wind is definitely easing. A few more difficult hours of bone shaking seas and by morning’s light we will hoist our sails again and resume our voyage westward.

The photograph: A lie that masquerades as truth

It is a difficult concept to get across, that a photograph is not equivalent to reality, despite the long history of visual art down through the centuries that has presented ideas dressed in visual form. There is something so mind bending about the product of the camera, that supposedly truthful, unbiased, machine-produced reportage of the reality of the world.

If we see an old painting of Napoleon, atop his rearing white horse, nobly pointing toward the foe, we can, from our present place in history, recognise a piece of propaganda. We 'know' he was a 'nasty dictator' and that the image was painted to influence the French people to follow his lead. We do not know however, the mindset of the artist: whether he was consciously making propaganda or if he believed in the cause and the person; his personal point of view. The wartime posters of the past century that said in pictures and words that your country needed YOU, were images intended to influence how we thought and how we acted: consciously propaganda.

We are presented nightly on the television with photographic images of the atrocities committed during the present struggles in Syria. There is the evidence, the photos show us, and this is used to control how we feel and could be influenced to act as individuals and as nations. The 'story' is massaged by interested parties to promote a point of view. Even those images from other wars of injured children, sad soldiers, and blasted cities were created by human minds controlling what the camera recorded and ultimately what the publisher wanted to put across to the public. Truth is the first casualty of war, that has long been established, but every photograph is subject to individual control and the individual swims within the mind set of his times. Our point of view creates the reality we see and photograph. The photograph is no more truthful in an ultimate sense than that painting of Napoleon.

It is not just what we choose to take a photograph of that is subject to manipulation, but how we design it in the viewfinder, what is in and what is left out, the proportions of the various elements, the amount of exposure; in fact all the elements of design, - colour, line, texture, rhythm and so on -, are orchestrated to deliver a specific message. Every designer in advertising knows this. The photographer, of even a gentle landscape scene, has a point of view and is composing his image, consciously or otherwise, to put it across. If we think about it, this is the common knowledge of our consumer society but one that many people do not think about when they press the camera to their faces for that snapshot of 'reality'.

This image of Katie at the beach is a companion piece, in terms of the point of view of the photographer, with the earlier image of her within the bars of the playground. Here though, I have manipulated the design to place her in a low corner of the frame, overshadowed by the black tree. She stands on the rock by the sea, a small, off center part of the overall image and yet the point of interest. A psychological composition, this is a real scene but I have shot it in such a way as to convey a particular point of view of mine about her place in the world. Almost, you could say I am creating a piece of propaganda designed to influence others to see my point of view about childhood development and the isolation that individuals of all ages feel within the larger society. It is real from my point of view, but only that; it is also a crafted image that is presented as a truth. It is also integral to the tradition of art down through the ages.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life`s star, hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God which is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Natures priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

From, 'Intimations of Immortality', by William Wordsworth.

I thought of this poem while taking photographs of Katie, my granddaughter, the other day in a playground on Vancouver Island. Active children are always tricky to catch in a photo, especially when they are expecting one to play 'catch me' at the same time. One photo, taken on the fly, had more to say about childhood and specifically about her reaction this year to all-day kindergarten. She found it too much; too many people, too much confusion and at the same time regimentation; a tightening of the bindings that will all too soon form the child into the adult. By chance my photo had caught her caged in by brightly coloured but obvious bars. She pauses on her path; glancing down. She sees the bright attractive colours but feels the bars; it is a defining moment.

Images are creations of course, and I cropped this down from a somewhat larger raw capture to emphasis the cage and I sliced off any conflicting or irrelevant information. "Look at this one message", I am saying, thereby moving the image from a stray piece of reality to a visual commentary. It was there, contained within the photo and in Katie`s life, in my awareness of her situation and of the more universal process of acculturation of children:  I simply drew out this one subject and emphasised it.

It is this difference between the capture of reality and the completed image that becomes a new reality in itself that is difficult for many photographers to grasp and yet is the key to a good photograph.

If we write or tell a story about a personal experience , the bare reality that we tell about will contain many parts, but we prune out that which does not relate to what we think is the central issue or theme. We have made a new thing, a story, whatever the raw material may have been (and many other stories could be constructed from different perspectives on the same event.)

When we take a photo, the medium itself is intractable and we must be very careful how we select the key elements. A drawing or painting is much easier to manipulate; what to include or leave out, colours, tone and so on, even to complete abstraction. The camera is a different instrument from a brush though; it captures all that is before it, or at least within its field of view, in detail. At the moment of pressing the shutter we have a lot of considerations to take care of. What is the central 'story' here? What in the viewfinder is a distraction and what parts support the central theme? What lens, how near or far away is our point of view, depth of field, degree of exposure…. There is a lot to think about in a single moment compared to the artist with sketchbook in hand progressively developing his visual thought into a statement. So much information, obtained so quickly, requires a trained and sensitive eye prepared for that moment when the shutter opens and closes.

Once the photo is in a computer photoshopping program there is the possibility of making adjustments that will fine-tune all that detail further. We can crop to zero in, or to clean-up distraction details. We ask how it may be adjusted in colour, tone and sharpness to bring out the best that is contained within the original photograph; the possibilities are endless, but central to every adjustment must be the communication that the completed image will make.

 'Katie in the playground' becomes a more universal statement about children in our society. A subject Wordsworth also tackled over two hundred years ago in his poem 'Intimations of Immortality'.

The Merit of building a temple: from, Agni Purana

The ancient text details how the act of building a temple to the Gods gains merit for an individual and his family through time. By building a golden temple one is freed from all sins, and so on. A poor man who builds a temple expending a large portion of his scant resources to build even a humble one gains as much merit as a rich man who builds a large temple, so there is actually some equity built into this ancient Sanskrit text.

I know this reminds me of Biblical parallels, or Buddhist precepts but where the thought lead me was a reaching through the literal meaning toward a way of understanding this within my own life and times. Why build a temple? What does that act really mean? Why gain merit? What are sins really?

Thoreau, on his death bed, was asked, conventionally, if he had made his peace with his Maker. He replied that he was not aware that they had ever quarreled. He was questioning, reframing, conventional ways of thinking. So if I reframe 'building a temple' in a like manner and ask of the universe what it is that I can do to gain merit, to be sinless, to build a temple to the Gods, what would that be? I mean, other than actually building a bricks and mortar structure. Are there things that I do, or could do, which would be equivalents? Would loving my fellow human beings be building a temple? Being compassionate? Caring for the whole natural world in practical ways? What about my central ability, my creativity; is that an important place for me in building a temple?

Now I have created a form of dialogue with Sanskrit text and in doing so have built a bridge of thought. By not taking the text literally I have freed a concreted idea and opened it to new life in the mind.

If an artist is lead to a deeper place through pouring himself into his work and new creative expression is produced could that be 'building a temple', or what about the long history of works of literature, philosophy, music? Was not Gauguin`s paintings of Pacific Island girls a way of building a temple, of opening a new door of perception at the very least.

I have a feeling that 'The Gods' ask us to build a temple as a way of affirming a relationship, of laying down a path and then following it. What that path is though, must be the business of every individual. If we blandly follow a road up the mountain to a glorious temple that someone else has built it will be an uplifting experience in the company of our fellow travelers and we will get the results commensurate with that particular journey. But we ourselves will not have built a temple, and that the scribe tells us we must do.

Ruckle days. Survival farming on Saltspring island.

 Once a year in the Spring, Islanders gather at the historic farmstead that forms the core of Ruckle Provincial Park at the south end of Saltspring Island. It is a celebration of, and a reminder about, the pioneer life that lie just back over the historical horizon. In fact, for people like us it is still contemporary; this week we have just finished a herculean task of replacing our deep well pump (all 200 feet down) and this was accomplished without calling in the specialists; the plumber and electrician that would have made this a very expensive operation.  Just my wife and I and Heather`s brother Colin, hard at work for a day. We are independent minded people who are quite convinced that there is very little we cannot learn and do. We get a lot of satisfaction from this kind of big project just as during these warm Spring days we are deeply involved in planting our big vegetable garden. Small wonder Ruckle Days seems up to date and perfectly normal.
  

The area near the barn, the milkhouse and the blacksmith shop, was full of folk demonstrating their skills; butter churning, rope making, blacksmithing, and various groups of musicians added to the ambiance. For the children there was 'go fish' and face painting. On the other side of the fence in a field was a lovely Swiss breed young ox that had been trained to pull a sled. All this would seem rather 'cute' to a professional agri-business farmer, so small scale and amateurish, more a version of hobby farmer and home gardener: from the kind of small acreage that would sport a few chickens (steadily being decimated once again by racoons, mink, eagles and hawks), a large vegetable garden (organic), with an orchard of heritage fruit and nut trees and perhaps milking goats, or a cow or two.  This is the kind of mixed survival farm that our pioneer ancestors of a hundred and fifty years or so ago would have had. And for much the same reasons in some cases: if money is scarce one can live well off one`s own produce or trade with neighbours and there is that secure feeling that these skills can be passed on and be the essential knowledge base for making a whole community self-reliant if that great economic mega-system that keeps our stores full of products should fail.

In places like Greece the unemployed young are returning to the inherited farms of their grandparents to learn old skills and this is happening in many other places around the world. What we see on this little patch of historic farm is an example of people who are hedging their bets, learning old skills and getting a lot of pleasure and satisfaction at the same time.

A misty visit to the summit of Mt Maxwell.

Mt.Maxwell Summit

Imagine if, after gazing up the rocky slopes of a giant mountain in the Himalayas, one were to simply drive up the back way, park and walk the final few steps for that summit photo ( perhaps struggling into the correct clothing and oxygen mask, before exiting the van). Somehow the ecstasy of the moment would be severely lessened by the lack of agony involved in attaining that peak. A peak life experience indeed! 

The other day, after a year of photographing Mt. Maxwell , the highest hump on our island, from below, in all weathers and from many angles ( I am working on a version of Hokusai`s 'Thirty-six views of Mt. Fuji') I simply drove up the gently sloping north face to the provincial park at the summit: only a ten minute drive from the bottom, the gravel road in better shape than I had feared, tall firs, and, over the safety fence, a view of the Burgoyne valley and the mountains to the south. Ta Daa!

Fortunately this was not really such a let-down. My fascination for this mountain reaches back a long way to my Park Ranger days when it was my job to look after this eagle and raven haunted place and to visit it not only in the dry hot days of a busy summer but to check it out in the Fall and Spring when snow and gales were more likely and the great first- growth firs roared in the wind.

I remember one lunch break when I dangled my feet over the cliff and munched my sandwiches while a raven rose on the up draught, growing slowly from a dot in the misty trees far below until he hovered without a wing-beat beside my shoulder looked questioningly at my meal: a raised eyebrow, "quonk?" and then he was up and off into the clouds sifting softly through the trees. To be spoken to in such a place, in such a direct manner, by Raven, that quintessential spirit of the natural world, made my ranger job so much more rewarding  than my more mundane chores of cleaning up after the park`s human visitors could ever be.

The light of Spring

.

The daffodils are flares of yellow light in the spring, little flames set in mossy green, so it was a moment of creative lateral thinking that lead me to place a flower into one of our kerosene lamps that serve us well in the winter months when the powerlines are down. Photography, the arts in general, even life itself, requires a lot of careful concentration, of good technique, but all that can lead to stuffy rigidity without a good dose of non-conformity. The capacity to jump sideways and experiment endlessly, a kind of playfulness, is at the heart of the arts and of the sciences as well, and of daily living,  -  that blend of flashes of insight and the drive and skill to bring an idea to life.

Low tide at Indian Point. New perspective.

Spring is in full advance by late April and at Indian Point beside the warming sea it is two weeks ahead of our home which is shaded by forest and higher in elevation. These are almost too easy images to create with the camera, bright new leaves against a vivid blue sky, but I do work to record the aspects that would be easy to pass over: last year`s grassy seed heads, frail amid the new grass, the perfect sprays of new alder leaves set against the darker shadows.

 What is special today, as I climb carefully over the rugged shoreline outcrops, is a very low tide. I find that with great care I can slither over the sea-weedy rocks, around a point and below an overhanging cliff. Up above are the familiar little arbutus that I have photographed many times and the cliff edge from which I have pointed my camera down to the rippling sea. How useful a fresh perspective can be, and how this new viewpoint creates new possibilities for thought.  The weathered old stump, usually so difficult to access, has all sorts of possibilities, the rock face, the old fir I last photographed from above in a storm, all these familiar elements are now up close and personal and open new ways of experiencing this familiar world.

Yeo Point and the ‘wild’ parts of Ruckle Park.

Bear Point

This south island park is a place I worked at as a park ranger for several years and the populated parts I got to know very well. The glory of park rangering has much to do with being a public servant and much of that in the summer months is involved with pit toilets and garbage pick-up in the camping areas. The large back country part, hills and forests and a long rocky coastline were outside of my working duties. In fact, public access was discouraged by park administration. With no trails and no signage there was no patrolling or servicing to be done either and that saved money. Only after pressure from island hiking groups were trails finally established by volunteer labour. Now, many years later I am venturing out into the backcountry of my familiar park.

This spring-time season has rich greens of moss covered rocky ledges and trails that have become small rivers in the swampy parts. A mist of tiny leaves cover the oceanspray bushes and the salal leaves wetly reflect the sky light. My first walk down each trail is exciting; my eyes are lifted to each new vista; steep cliffs, gravel beaches, arbutus and oak topped points of land.  At Bear Point, I look around carefully as I edge down rocky slopes, and I find Yeo Point, absolutely beautiful, - only ever seen by me before from the deck of a yacht passing between the Channel Islands and this shore. To walk a place, to stumble and then remember to watch each step as well, is the story of my exploring new territory within a mile or two of my home. All those years, and here it is!

Yeo Point

Channel Islands off Yeo Point

Early Ferry.

And a grey mist on the sea's face

And a grey dawn breaking.

                                Mansfield

For much of the year, through the winter months, the 6:15 AM sailing of our Fulford ferry is made in darkness, rain and rough waves, but now in April when we depart from the dock the first loom of dawn filters through heavy clouds onto a calm sea. Mt Maxwell`s steep south facing slope shows part of  herself, a black triangle exposed between layers of soft grey cloud, and I clamber out of the van to add this view to my growing collection of Maxwell photos. I adjust the camera to underexpose so the scene will truly report as dark and the result is far from being a 'good' photograph. Dark, a little shaky, and out of focus it never-the-less is an accurate capture of the moment, the mood, and this makes this a good image for me.

 The ferry is up to speed now as we head out of the harbour and its passage through the air creates a biting wind, but I am caught up in the mood by now and find some more variations: the contrast between the yellow ferry lights and the blue-grey of the sea and hills, the lemony streak of dawn beneath the cloud layer to the east, the twinkle of the ferry terminal lights back down the wake and spreading wave pattern. I have my cap tucked under my arm to prevent it blowing away as I climb the stairs to the upper deck. What a splendid time to be alive in this cool grey dawn.

By the time we approach the Swartz Bay terminal the dawn is leaping into day and it is high time I returned to my vehicle. I do have in my camera a record of this half -hour long voyage from darkness to day but more importantly the process of making these images, of being present through this transition with my photography senses set on receive, has been a great way to start the day. Now, is there any more hot coffee in that thermos?

The practice of photography.

Yesterday I arrived at Burgoyne Bay just as the morning sun was lighting Mount Maxwell in dramatic relief of light and shadow. Last visit here, I walked the farm fields down towards the bay and almost got captured by dense thorny bushes by ‘bushwacking’ off the path. Today I will hike the other way, out to a rocky point along the steep slopes of the mountain. This is a familiar walk in the shadow of Mount Maxwell. Steep slopes stretch up through trees trunks and enormous boulders. At the beginning of the trail I slide downslope to peer into the tops and trunks of fir and arbutus trees that overhang the rocky beach.  Through this screen I can see the red railed wharf and the anchored boats of the ‘alternate fleet’ across the bay; the floating homes of sea gypsies. Look, one even has a wood stove spouting smoke into the still cold air.

I climb steadily higher along the slope until the sea shines far below and then the trail begins to drop back to the shore again:  shadowy tree trunks and no sounds but my own breath and footfalls.  Once out on the rocky point the sun has crested the mountain slope behind me and the landscape is now open to the sky and populated by Garry oak.  Mossy bedrock, an old long-gone homestead`s` patches of daffodils and down the final slope I step onto the startlingly fresh-washed white granite point. The sun slants through the trees and side lights this very old rock so that every line and wrinkle stands out amid stripes of bright light. Here is a world of information:  of line, texture and form right before my eyes inviting me to observe closely. This moment is changing even as I take the photograph, this light, this angle, this rock of ages. This is an act of paying attention through the practice of photography.

Sacred Headwaters. The Swamp.

Beaver Swamp,-  the sacred headwaters?

I found it interesting to put those two titles together. ‘Sacred Headwaters’ is the title of Wade Davis` beautiful and passionate book about a landscape in northern British Columbia that is threatened by ‘development’ interests backed by our provincial and federal governments. It is the headwaters of three major rivers and is considered sacred by Native Indians who know this to be their aboriginal land, never compromised by treaty.  ‘The Swamp’ is almost a put down word for useless land, and is the very kind of place that has suffered from being drained for farmland, or used as a dump by our industrial society. The swamp I am writing about is just down Beaver Point Road, the headwaters of two streams that drain the height of land on the peninsula where we live on Saltspring Island.  These are our own swampy sacred headwaters, small and insignificant in the larger scheme of things. Or are they?

This swamp beside the road is a tangled mass of vegetation and pools of water, trees growing packed close together on the higher humps, rushes and reeds and deadfalls criss-crossing everywhere. Imagine, all that lumber going to waste, all those farm fields unrealized, those crops ungarnered.  Useless, and yet beautiful, and full of life lived outside the yoke of humankind. But of course this swamp does have functions that extend far beyond its narrow borders; it captures winter run off, stores it in its tangled heart and releases it slowly through the dry summer season.  Vegetation far removed from here grows tall because of it, a high watertable, down-stream as far as the sea on both coasts, even helps the wells of houses and the lives of countless creatures, both wild and domestic. It is a valuable resource after all.

That word ‘Resource’ though; there is something wrong with our cultural perspective. How does this resonate with ‘Sacred headwaters’? We tend to make the mistake of thinking that ‘Sacred Earth’ is the special cultural preserve of the original inhabitants of North America and those individual representatives we can name; Black Elk, Chief Seattle, Chief Dan George, among many others. What we do not have within the perspective of our resource based industrial economy is an understanding that theirs is the default position of peoples around the world and back through time to the beginning of human beings.  We are the strange ones. ‘Sacred’ is a useful way of understanding our relationship with our selves, because the land, this swamp, wildness itself, is intimately connected to our individual lives and to our survival as a species.

If we thing ‘Resource’ in relation to our environment we place it in a subservient position, to serve our needs. Even in a provincial or national park, as a ‘Recreational Resource ’it is there to serve our need for pleasure or rejuvination. In the Headwaters region that Wade Davis writes about, mining companies are digging up the mountains and filling lakes with toxic tailings all in the name of ‘the greater good’; which is presented as employment and tax revenue that will support services for you and I who live many miles away from this serious and beautiful land. Native groups oppose this desecration of the land.  Cynically, those in power in the larger culture think of this as a tactic to wring greater wealth from some legal settlement; how far apart these word views are and how mutually incomprehensible.

When I walk down the road on this late winter morning the sun gleams fitfully between the clouds and when I reach the swamp, ( let`s give it a name, ‘Beaver Swamp’), the tangled mass of roadside bushes is marked with some pink survey tape. An ominous beginning, this little pink slash amid the grey and green, and at my feet in the mud are old liquor bottles and fast-food waste paper. Beaver Swamp is right on line as waste land waiting to be modified by someone with a chain saw and heavy machinery because any protective laws relating to it are always subject to alteration if ‘resource development’ should come first.  I step closer across a bridge of rotting log, away from the road and am inside the swamp`s embrace. Mossy logs, clear water reflecting a brief flash of blue sky, reeds, a glimpse of a forest bird and tangled complexities of undergrowth. A lone paper cup is adrift in this suddenly cleaner place.  A small, wild place, protected by nothing much more than difficulty of access and an assumption that there is nothing here worth knowing: chuck your garbage in the ditch, move on.

What I have done here is to move away from one word view and into another; just by stepping into the margins of this natural place I have moved into relationship with it, into a sacred relationship. Framing this world in photographs and in my mind is a form of prayer. When I kneel on the soggy earth to catch the first sprout of a skunk cabbage I am bringing myself down from the 'heights' of humankind and experiencing humility;  I`m participating in an age old act of humanity in these sacred headwaters. ‘From whom all blessings flow’ is a reality, here, not far from the Beaver Point Road.

Love of Place.

The love we feel for another human being, especially one we have spent many years beside, is also possible in our attachment to landscape, to place. Like close companions we have grown together, our minds and emotions intertwined: that city street we have walked since childhood, the beach that has been our emotional refuge in hard times, the mountain on the horizon that somehow anchors our personality. We are creatures of attachment, one of our nicer features.

Once we are grounded in this capacity, once we have practiced this for a long time, we find that we can love a greater number of places that are different from our own. The Gulf Islands are part of me, I am at home here, but the wide ocean, the Pacific Islands, the Tropical Savannah, can easily claim my love as well, perhaps because I have done it once already so well with the one.

Today I walked down to the valley below and along a familiar road, one I have walked years ago with my young children and still walk regularly these days with my wife. A cloudy day, Spring barely begun: brown leaves, bleached and beaten down grasses, a touch of snow, a complex texture of bare twigs arched over the mostly hidden little streams that wander down the hills. First frog chorus today though, robins beginning to break the winter silence, ducks chasing each other in the still half flooded fields. This familiar nondescript place is where I take my photographs today and I celebrate those browns and greys, the tattered green bramble leaves still hanging around from last season.

I see this landscape through my own experienced eyes, a place I love even though I might not usually name that feeling. I have been helped to that realization by the work of the artist Andrew Wyeth who brought out the same qualities in his paintings of the north-eastern United States. I study his paintings, feel them, and I can then reach deeper into an appreciation of my own tattered, dark, late winter landscape.