Photography

Creative Challenge: Photograph a space, invent a story

| Mac

For our 13th creative challenge, we set forth into the very heart of danger looking for a mysterious space. The challenge is to photograph said space, create a story of what it is, or why it is the way it is, and of course, share it with us. Here’s mine.

Along the beautiful eastern coast of Vancouver Island, near Cherry Point, stands a bizarre looking structure, on the edge of a sandy and well forested shore line. As my friend and I scuttled passed in his 15.5 foot motor boat, the space called out to be explored, so we went ashore and snapped these photos.

 

I believe it’s an old, derelict lumber camp. The pulley system in the odd structure would have been used to pull logs down to hungry barges, and the ungraceful breakwater might have been setup to protect waiting logs from being carried out to sea by the tide and waves.


Learning to See

| Mac

I’m pretty busy with work right now. I’ve set myself on the path towards my next credential, which means I’m doing a lot of thinking and reading about work related topics on my own time. I have literally purchased myself a stack of books on this new topic and one of them has a title or subtitle regarding “learning to see”.

The notion of learning to see resonates with me. There is something about its zen nature… You must unlearn what you have learned; you must train your mind; there is no try there is only do or do not… there are poetic underpinnings lurking beneath this phrase that imbue it with a profound resonance.

Like my entry art and poetic snap-shot, below is another camera phone shot of something that captured my eye. I wonder what it is about this scene that caught my attention? Is it the harmony between the coffee cup, orchid and  artwork? Is there some aesthetic mystery embedded in this triptych? Or am I finding more beauty in everyday things because I’m slowly learning to see?

His and Her’s – Entry Art

| Mac

This will be an unusually short post for Exploring-Art because I had an impromptu moment of aesthetic bliss and I wanted to share. My wife and I have been in Vancouver this weekend, and we are preparing to return to the island amid gale force winds. I was sitting in one of the club chairs  in our hotel room and was struck by the view on the console table in the entry way. Poetry really is everywhere.