Bone China

Canon EOS 20D

Sold to Eduardo

Canon EOS 20D

The 'Behind Shoppe Window Glass"-theme continues. Although Eudardo got to take this home, the photo is for my good friend Michael Haggert, wishing him health and a speedy recovery.

Bowl of Spoons

Canon EOS 20D

Working through what is likely the first real and sustained case of writer's block I've ever experienced. I have very little confidence in what I'm writing. I think it stems from a rejection letter I received from a small Canadian publisher--a rejection that said my work was expository and chatty. I tried to shrug it off as one publisher's narrow opinion, but couldn't shake the jolt it had on my confidence. I started to second guess everything I was writing: Maybe it is too expository and chatty? Though a few friends have said it's the expository and chatty nature of my poetry that makes it stand out and work. Then I started to see the rejection letter as a challenge: Maybe it is time for me to explore new forms, tones, styles, etc. with my poetry? So I got into some of the more complex rhyming schemes and forms of Paul Muldoon, revisited Hopkins, Auden, Ted Hughes. Now, I'm looking at the few poems I laboured over int he past 10 days or so, and I'm thinking: They'd probably be better poems if I wrote them the way I write not the way I'm trying to write.

Needless to say, thank God for cameras. This particular shot is from a used appliance store window on Wyandotte St. E.

Bookshop

Canon EOS 20D

Abandoned Strand

Canon EOS 20D

Spring Collection

Canon EOS 20D

Two evenings in a row, I've gone for long, meandering walks with my cameras. I've discovered it's a great way to get me interested enough in walking, and creatively engaged long enough to get some actual exercise. Last night, I logged 6 km and 110 shots on the 20D--primarily along Wyandotte Street E. and Ottawa St. (pictured above is Freeds at the corner of Ottawa and Gladstone).

Film Festival

Canon EOS 20D

On display in a jewellry shoppe window in the historic Nickel Arcade in Ann Arbor, MI. According to the proporietor, the equipment belonged to a retired obstetrician-gynecologist.

Amer's Cafe, Ann Arbor

Canon EOS 20D

A spontaneous trip to Ann Arbor today. I didn't realize it was St. Patrick's Day until I got there (what a blessed thing it is not to have to deal with that day of amateurs anymore). I spent a large part of the morning wandering around collecting shots with the 20D and the K1000--this was the real purpose of the trip--punctuated with rest periods in Amer's Mediterranean Cafe on S. State Street. Not only does Amer's have some the best coffee I've ever had, they also have awesome bagels (w/ lox, red onions and sprouts) and some of the best people-watching windows in the Midwest. It's 45 minutes from home and it's one of my favourite places to sit with a camera, a coffee and a book of poetry. Today, I finished Ken Babstock's Airstream Land Yacht and started Edward Hirsch's The Night Parade. Also picked up the first three volumes of the award-winning graphic novel series Y: The Last Man at Shaman Drum Books. Good times.

Grow

Canon EOS 20D

The crib has been dismantled and Jonah (21 months) is spending his first night in his toddler bed.

Who Loves the Butter?

Canon EOS 20D

This one's from May 2006--I pulled it out after a particularly spring-like weekend here in Windsor, with the clock moving forward and jacket-less weather prevailing.

I went out for a 5 km walk with the K1000 and a roll of Lucky 100 black & white film on Friday evening. I came upon some great subjects and have been totally geeked about buying what I need to begin developing my negs here at home.

As luck would have it, I probably lost about half the roll this afternoon after finishing it off on a gravemarker from a shipwreck near my inlaws property on the shores of Lake Erie. I was rewinding the film and felt all the tension go out of the spool. Figuring it was done, I opened the camera, only to find it was about halfway rewound, exposing a whole bunch of it to about a quarter second of afternoon sunlight. Fuck is right.

I went into my inlaws windowless downstairs washroom and in total darkness removed the film from the camera, wound it up around its cannister, and slid it into the plastic tube it came in, and then put that back inside the box the fresh roll of Lucky I'd been intending to load came in, and buried that at the bottom of my camera bag, wrapped in a ball of thin cotton gloves I carry for cold weather shooting. We'll see what happened. I can always go back and reshoot the subject if I think I lost anything good, but it'll be a pain in the ass.

Burn Out

Pentax K1000

Fuji X-TRA 400

How's that for a mood-setter? Makes you want to kick up your heels and drink a glass of cider, no? Maybe one of the primary examples of what I like to call Southwestern Ontario Gothic.

Neutral Bastard

Canon EOS 20D

Dining room window ledge, late winter's afternoon--always one of my favourite spots for a still life. No idea who this bastard even is. I may just fight him, though.

Cock

Canon EX Auto

Fuji X-TRA 400

A slightly more pleasing result with the EX Auto and the Fuji X-TRA film. This will be the last posted from that roll, though.

Squirrel

Canon EX Auto

Fuji X-TRA 400

I'm not thrilled with the way this one turned out. In fact, I'm not very happy with the way the EX Auto performs, especially with the Fuji X-TRA film. That's the last time I'll be buying that kind of crap, although it performed much better in the K1000 (some of those to be posted in coming days).

Went to night two of the black & white developing and printmaking seminar at Windsor Photo Outfitters last night. Adrian and Trevor have really inspired me to get a home darkroom going--the great thing being I have almost everything I need right here in my house, including an LPL 3001D enlarger which I found in a corner of the attic studio this afternoon. I have to give a tip of the cap to an old friend, Fred Teno, who dropped all his darkroom equipment off at my house some seven years ago. I'm finally getting around to doing something with it.