the single moment...

I remember many years ago looking at a National Geographic magazine and one of the photographs was an award winning image taken in Ethiopia. It was part of a collection intended to profile those enduring the famines in Africa. It was sad.

This picture in particular was of a small child that had been on route to a shelter and collapsed part way. Curled up in the fetal position, the child just laid there naked on the cracked, dry soil while vultures flew up above and waited for him to die. I remember thinking how devastating it must have been for that photographer to watch this moment…to be a part of this moment…to capture this moment.

It compelled me to read up on the photographer a bit and as it turned out, the photographers on site were actually given very strict orders not to touch any of the children as their immune systems were so depleted that even the most harmless of our germs could cause serious illness. It broke my heart to read it and without a doubt, it was even more excruciating to witness in person. The photograph ended up winning one of the world’s most prestigious awards and shortly there after, the photographer killed himself. The guilt and grief of having to watch this child die was more than his soul could handle.

I remember telling myself afterwards that if I were ever so privileged as to capture moments that intimate…I would pray that God would let them be moments of joy instead. As I take more pictures, I also realize a bit more that there are moments in which I feel I should look away; moments that seem too private for me to be seeing them through a lens. That being said though…those are also the moments that make being there such a gift…being there to take a split second and turn it into something eternal. That is why I love photography.

That is also why I love this picture that I captured of my dear friend and her daughter over the weekend; what an honour to be present during this brief moment…

caught in the act...

I was working on my photography website yesterday (did I mention that I was creating one? It will soon be here!), and as I was playing around with the design of the “about me” page, I realized that I didn’t have any good pictures of me with a camera! That’s kind of the thing with being the photographer…you’re generally behind the camera!

Low and behold though, Christina sent these to me this morning; “action shots” from our weekend in Toronto! Talk about aiming to please!!

{Christina…I would also like a million dollars!}

So here they are…the first shots of me getting down and dirty for my craft! It’s such a hard life being surrounded by beautiful people…

a day at the distillery...

Toronto; an economic powerhouse for our country; our provincial capital; a tourist hotspot and despite having spent quite a bit of time there when I was young, it’s also a city that I’m not a big fan of! We used to travel there often when I was a little girl to visit family and even now, decades later, I still feel the same way; too big, too busy, too many people who should be in anger management classes instead of behind the wheel! That being said, I’ve driven through it…but seldom ever send a postcard!

I have a problem now though…over the past years, months, days…the city has taken a number of the people that I love hostage!!! Whether it be due to family, work or a combination of the two, one by one, they are being plucked from me and taken to Toronto!! And because I love my friends more than I dislike Toronto, I felt that it was time for a little truce!!!!

So this past weekend, I packed up our car and made the four hour drive to visit my nearest and dearest! Because there were so many of us coming from different directions, the big question was “what do we do for the one afternoon that we have together?” Our question was easily answered by suggesting a meeting place in Toronto’s historic Distillery District where all of my friends could play dress up for me and I could spend hours in one of my favourite places…behind the camera!

So we met up at Balzac’s with coffee in hand, ready to make our few hours together rock; Olivia and Josh melted my heart (it wouldn’t be the first time!); Christina and Jason reminded me of how much fun it is to photograph true love; Joanne was her usual stunning self and even though she was plagued with a rotten cold, Sara still made it out to offer her moral support!

Bottom line; my friends are amazing! Some people may make more money than me, have a bigger house than me or have nicer clothes than me…but they don’t have my friends and frankly, they are about as good as they get and so worth braving Toronto traffic for!

Needless to say that an afternoon together just wasn’t enough but thankfully, 325 raw files and four hours of post-production later...we do find ourselves with a little something to remember it by…

For more pictures from our day at the Distillery, click here.

just because she can...

haunted...

Do you believe in ghosts?

I know that we’ve all sat around campfires in our younger days scaring ourselves out of our wits telling urban legends about flesh eating neighbors living under our beds. But now that we’re all a little bit older and wiser, where do we all stand on the whole “spirits lurking among us” thing?!?!

When I was about fifteen years old, I spent my summer at ranch just outside of London. As a counselor in training that year, I had spent nearly two and half months doing everything from kitchen duty, riding instructor and of course, camp counselor for the hundreds of kids that came to stay with us in the woods for weeks at a time.

The ranch was set on 220 acres of land, including wooded areas and cornfields. Each camping area was tucked away in different parts of the ranch to give each group a more private setting once group events were over. There was no doubt that once the sun went down, the ranch was a scary place! Without the light pollution radiating from the city, the ranch was very dark at night and no amount of flashlights ever seemed to make it better!

One night in early August, I was co-counseling a group of eleven year-old girls for two weeks. Each of us counselors were required, throughout each camp session, to take turns monitoring the sites after dark. The girl’s site was the closest to the camp lodge but still far enough away that it would give you a run for your money if you needed to use the washroom in the middle of night. Our site, unlike most of the others, was protected by the shelter of enormous maple trees that had a small clearing just in the middle of them. While this provided a welcome canopy during the rainy days of summer, it also made the perfect home for the many things that go bump in the night. The nocturnal happenings of the woods were certainly more alive under the trees and became one of the scariest places that I endured during my childhood!

Late one night while I happen to be on monitoring duty, another counselor came back to their tent to call it a night. Given that it was going to take her a couple of minutes to settle in, I asked her if she would mind taking over for me while I ran to the lodge to use the washroom and grab a drink. So, flashlight in hand, I took a deep breath and made my way through the dark woods to the lodge. Every step that I took made the leaves and branches crinkle under my feet and my heart start beating a little faster. It was impossible to get around the site without perpetually thinking that someone was trailing close behind you (and, if my imagination had anything to do with it, it was almost always someone of the “knife-wielding-camp-counselor-abducting” disposition!).

Ten minutes later, I arrived back at the site unharmed and unwilling to return to the lodge regardless of how much my bladder needed it! I quickly went to my co-counselor’s tent to let her know that I had returned and that she was free to peacefully head off to dreamland for the night. Just as I about to pull back the thick canvas flap of her tent, I was startled by a young girl standing right next to me in front of the tent. She was young…too young (maybe eight years-old or so), with long dark hair, extremely sad eyes and a long white night gown nearly reaching the ground. I looked over at her, puzzled as to how she could have sneaked up on me so unexpectedly, and quietly said to her “stay here for one second and I’ll take you back to your tent”.

Desperately wanting to return the little girl to her bed, I quickly poked my head in the tent to let my colleague know that I returned and no more than ten seconds later, I closed the tent flap, turned to take the little girl’s hand and realized that she was gone. She was nowhere to be seen. I glanced around and there was no sight of her. I hadn’t heard her move or enter her tent. She was just…gone.

I didn’t think too much of it at the time but the next morning, as I looked around at the campers during breakfast, I noticed that there wasn’t anyone bearing the same resemblance as her. No one with long, dark hair like hers and certainly no one that looked that young. When I asked around to other counselors, no one remembers any of their campers having any white, frilly nightgowns either. In fact, the standard response was “who would send their kid to camp with something like that anyways?!?!”

Good question. I would have said the same thing myself had I not seen it with my own eyes.

I’ll admit, my eyes could have playing tricks on me and it might not have been real. But it felt real and my brain thought it was real enough for me to actually speak to whatever it was that I was looking at. I’ll also admit that maybe there was in fact a little girl standing there and that in the light of day, every thing just looked different. I honestly don’t know. All I know is that even now, fifteen years later, I still think about it, still believe it and most certainly…still get a little weary of little girls in white dresses!!!

strategic planning...

I’ve been emailing a bit with an old friend of mine from Toronto lately and we’ve been chatting a lot about the transitions of life; the crossroads that we unexpectedly find ourselves at and the options that those crossroads end up leaving us with. In the midst of it all, we’ve found ourselves discussing a lot about what we would like to do and who we would like to become.

I’ve been raised in an environment that is big on “five year plans”. We’ve always been looking ahead, dreaming big and planning ourselves into oblivion...and I’m certainly no exception! I’ve always believed that this is an incredibly important thing to teach young people because an adolescent’s inability to have foresight can end up being a rather inescapable trap later in life (just ask the $10,000 that I spent in three months during my first semester at university!). It’s important to have vision and to see the possibilities of your life…I think in a lot of instances it’s what gets many of us through the day. It sounds cynical but we are a society of planners and many of us live our lives doing nothing but planning! We plan vacations and investments, weddings and family, weekends and retirement. And not only is this not a bad thing but in many ways, it’s a necessary thing. But when exactly do we cross over from planning our lives to outright living our lives waiting and anticipation?

The more my friend and I discussed our future goals and our long term vision, the more I wondered if my constant need to plan is in some ways a detriment to my present fulfillment? In recent years especially, I’ve been working at redefining my life in many ways and much of that involves a great deal of change on my part. Change is good and in my case, change was life saving but I think I’m realizing that there’s also something to be said for acknowledging your present circumstances.

As I write this I recognize the irony of the fact that I expect those that I share my life with to accept me the way I am…so why shouldn’t I do the same? Perhaps the pursuit of betterment is best achieved by embracing where you currently reside in life in order to better appreciate where you are going.

Having said this, maybe it’s okay that I’m no longer in marathon shape or that I don’t think I’m suited to sitting at a computer all day long. Maybe it’s okay that I love my morning coffee and that the colour yellow scares me. Maybe it’s okay that I look (and feel!) more tired than I would like to and maybe it’s okay to be overwhelmed by my current learning curve. Maybe it’s okay that I love Cadbury mini eggs and don’t like purple foods (except purple mini eggs!). Maybe it’s okay that I love watching reruns of Sex & the City and don’t fully comprehend the problems of the world. Maybe it’s okay that I don’t understand why our remote control has to have so many buttons and I think math is hard. Maybe it’s okay that I’m moved by beautiful things and that I often judge a book by its cover (literally!). Maybe it’s okay that I still want to do great things with my life and it’s okay to think that I already have. Maybe it’s okay to not like flying over the ocean and it’s okay to enjoy playing with fire (but it’s not okay to do so in the house!). Maybe it’s okay that I didn’t survive the entire season of Lent and maybe it’s okay that I never really wanted to to begin with. Maybe it’s okay that I wish music played in the background every time I walked outside. Maybe it’s okay that I don’t like to get dirty but I like to leave my clothes on the floor. Maybe it’s okay for me to feel insecure sometimes and to want to be different. Maybe it’s okay to be torn between faith and religion and it’s okay to ask why. Maybe it’s okay to wish you were here and wonder why you’re not. Maybe it’s okay for me to believe in magic, miracles and astrology all at the same time.

And maybe…just maybe…in order for me to become the me that I want to be tomorrow…I need to embrace the me that I am today.

in conclusion...

I’ve decided that giving up coffee for Lent is stupid!

What was I thinking? Seriously…

The world is in no way a better place because I don’t have a peppermint mocha in my hand.

Honestly…who came up with this crappy idea in the first place?!?!

Feel free to judge my lack of discipline if you like but frankly...what's good for my mental health is, by default, good for your mental health!!!

let's get it on...

I was going through some old cds a few weekends ago and came upon a mix that a guy had once made for me back in the day! I actually remember getting it in the mail one afternoon at work with a little note attached to it that said “Will you have dinner with me on Friday night?”

I had met him at a bar the previous weekend while out with some friends and we started talking about music. Somehow, our conversation shifted to a debate about what constitutes the very best “make-out music”. I voted for rock music and he argued melodic R&B tunes were the only way to go. Three days later, he pleaded his case with an invitation to dinner! I’ll admit…it was such a cute approach and it’s very possible that he may have slightly won me over in the end!

Coming across his cd recently sparked the question in my mind again. I still think that rock music prevails when it comes to making out but there’s also no denying that some people’s clothes seem to spontaneously vanish just listening to Marvin Gaye (he's just that good!)! And so I wonder…what are the ultimate make-out songs??

I wondered so much in fact that I felt compelled to create my own top ten list of make-out songs! Feel free to use it anytime if you’re thinking of asking someone out for dinner!!!

In no particular order…

1. Witness by Sarah McLachlan
2. Disarm by The Smashing Pumpkins
3. Creep by Stone Temple Pilots
4. Destiny by Zero Seven
5. Breakdown by Seether
6. With or Without You by U2
7. The Red by Chevelle
8. It’s Been Awhile by Staind
9. Save Yourself by Sensefield
10. Soul to Squeeze by Red Hot Chili Peppers

my helium...

I’m starting to wonder if I’m in the wrong line of work!

A while back (a long while!), I wrote a post about how I joined the online writer’s network called Helium. It’s a place for writers to go, submit their work and have it rated by their peers. All pieces are anonymously and randomly rated within the category that it was submitted to and other writers can comment as they rate. It’s really a great tool for receiving objective feedback about your craft.

The best part is that Helium is also used as a marketplace for publishers who don’t want to wait for submissions. Writers are “classified” based on their writing statistics (which is determined by your overall ratings) and this enables publishers to browse articles classified by any number of calibers. It’s truly a very intricate and incredibly large network of critiquing that allows writers to determine which of their peers they feel have the most merit. I always find myself feeling a little bit bad when I rate someone’s work because as far as I’m concerned, just contributing to the craft earns merit in and of itself.

So, after submitting my initial two articles to Helium, I got distracted by life and didn’t really end up going back. A couple of weeks ago I decided to dust off my username and jump back into the game. In turn, I felt ambitious and submitted another ten articles!

I think that I should take this opportunity to mention that I don’t really enjoy criticism very much!!! While some people go out of their way to receive feedback on their contributions to the world…I prefer to go on the basis of “no news is good news!” So the idea of submitting work for the sole purpose of it being critiqued does leave me in a frenzy of anxiety!! Every time I type in my password to log onto my account, my heart starts beating a little faster, the breath quickens and I find myself wondering why exactly I ever thought that this was a good idea!

I braved all of my physiological responses yesterday though and logged back on to my account. As it turns out, the gods of “pick one or the other” seemed to be in my favour and it appears that I may have missed my calling; not only have my articles been really well received by my peers but three of them have been ranked as the top article in their category (two of those being book reviews!)!

Yesterday’s blog post is ranked second as of this morning and this article is currently ranked 5th out of 105 submitted articles. And if that weren’t enough…I’ve been named as one of Helium’s Premium Writers, the highest honour given to Helium writers for visiting publishers searching the marketplace.

I’ve never actually submitted any work for publication before but I’m starting to wonder if it might be worth my while to do so!

It would be like sweet retribution for all the times that no one wanted me on their team for trivial pursuit!!!

breaking up is hard to do...

Last night, on our way home from work, we were listening to the radio when some commercial came on for a local company. The name of the company was also the last name of a guy that I dated back in University so I couldn’t help but wonder how he was doing. We hadn’t really seen each other since we stopped dating so I had no idea what he had been up to for the past decade. In this day and age, the first obvious place to look was facebook and sure enough, there he was, skydiving in his profile picture!!

Needless to say that it was a lot of fun catching up on his life in recent years. It’s equally hard to believe that this was a guy I met at a restaurant one day who ended up bringing me a dozen roses…a guy that I had to write theories of communications papers with and whose phone calls gave me butterflies. Now, here I was looking at pictures of his daughter (who, might I add, is among the most stunning little girls that I’ve ever seen!) and sharing stories of our weddings. My, how we’ve grown!

Catching up with him kind of made me think of how similar facebook is to the real world of dating in some ways; it’s our social resume for the new generation! Kind of like when he and I first started dating, facebook is about showing our best side to the world; it’s a tally of our best pictures, golden moments, glowing achievements and of course, visual proof of our social acceptance in the world (the more “friends” the better, right?). I was hesitant to join facebook for a long time…but it just kept calling me over and over again! Even though I said no, I felt the need to give it a chance…after all, persistence is flattering!

The beginning of my relationship with facebook was just like any new relationship; countless hours spent together at night learning all about each other… weeks go by and you realized that you haven’t done your laundry or spoken to any of your family. Eventually, you discover that you’re knee deep in lust and the addiction is intoxicating. Before long you find that you can’t go more than a couple of hours without getting your fix!!! Now here we are, two years later and still going strong!!!! Or is it? Many relationships look prettier from the outside and it’s certainly easy to make life appear delightful through the eyes of our daily status!

It took me a little while to figure it out but my relationship with facebook provided a rather false sense of connection. It turns out that facebook was a bit of a player!! “It’s complicated” as they would say but to be fair, who doesn’t love getting two hundred birthday wishes on your wall?!?! It wasn’t until one day when my seemingly innocent status got used as a reason to create drama that I realized I needed to break up with facebook to some extent. The same way my old flame and I hadn’t really worked out in the end, I found that facebook and I needed to talk. “It’s not you…it’s me”, I said! Of course I was lured by its memories of days gone by and endless possibilities. The seduction of so many pictures and a wall full of validation is hard to resist…but it was time! So I did the great purge…the cleansing of my social circle from 300+ “friends” to the 50 people that would understand that “you’re sweet like candy to my soul” is really a nod to Dave Matthews and a not a secret invitation to run away to Mexico with me! Parting ways is never easy…especially when you’ve had as much fun as we have, so I’ve agreed to still have a date or two. We even spent a good twenty minutes together before work this morning! What can I say…attraction is hard to get over sometimes!

So I guess you could say that facebook and I are still seeing each other from time to time, but we’re not exclusive! In fact, I’ve even gone back to using my hotmail account more often, sending snail mail every now and then, and {dare I say it} visiting face to face!!!

But I’ve been very clear that in no way does this constitute cheating on my part!