Yours, 'til the end of Tim

I may have lost the taste for Tim Horton's coffee. After several years of drinking a large, double-double from Timmy's every day (the office complex I work in has no fewer than three outlets), I can no longer stomach the stuff.

Yes, I know this is tantamount to high treason.

But the thrill is gone. In its place is a faux-caramel aftertaste that threatens to make me gag with every swallow. I will now take my coffee dollars elswehere or hope someone near my workplace can make a decent cup of tea (not as easy as obvious as you might think).

I may have to turn in my Canadian passport.

Photosho-off

There's no reason for this post... except to say how pleased I am that this image was selected to appear in Issue 5 of Photosho, a new Canadian photography magazine.

I made the image last year in Old Montreal, so it fits well in the gallery devoted to black-and-white shots of "Rural and Urban Architectural Grandeur." It was also nice to see that the photo made it into the online preview for Issue 5. If you're a Canadian photographer -- and even if you're not -- consider supporting the magazine by subscribing, advertising, or displaying your work in its pages.

Man the lifeboats!

We've got a forecast high of 13C tomorrow for the National Capital Region? With all this snow still lying around?

Now, doesn't it feel good to panic about something other than the economy for a change?

Time for some warmth and colour

There's no real reason to post this image, except that it is bright, and warm, and I feel like posting it.

We've had a long winter in the Ottawa Valley and, while it's not over yet, cracks are appearing in the snow's armour. Ice is hinting at receding and the accumulated yuck of the last few months is being unveiled at the side of the roads. We'll have weeks yet of cold and salt and sand blowing around -- and at least one end-of-the-world snowstorm -- but eventually rain will wash the anti-slip muck into our creeks and rivers.

It's March and spring will come. Even in Canada.

Bye, Gran

My mum's mum died just before Christmas. I would never have called her that, of course: she was always "Gran."

Gran was the hub of our extended family. Mother of seven, grandmother of 16 and great-grandmother to 23, she was the queen of our clan and no trip home was complete without paying a visit to her. Besides, that was where you were most likely to run into the rest of your relatives.

As the eldest grandchild, I have many years of memories of Gran from before we left Scotland in 1966 right up until the last time I visited her in mid-November. She was always glad to see her grandchildren and was proud of every one of us. She was absolutely convinced that we were all brilliant and I lost count of the times that she told me "you'd be good at that, son." It wouldn't have mattered what it was, from flying an airliner to performing brain surgery, I'd be good at it. If I was cheeky when I was younger, Gran would threaten to come to my "backside wi' a teaspoon." It wasn't much of a threat, but I seem to remember behaving. If I was cheeky in fun when I was older, Gran would usually just laugh. She enjoyed a good laugh.

When we got older and had our own children, Gran was thrilled with every new addition to the family. Even though you might think some of the wonder had gone out of the business after raising seven kids of her own, she still loved babies. And it didn't matter how many of us showed up at her house or, later, at her apartment -- we could always order out or, as the minister reminded us at Gran's funeral, just "pit another tattie in the pot."

That was Gran. And it was typical of the woman who decided in her 50s that it was time to emigrate to Canada to give the children she still had at home a better future than the one they might have in Scotland. Over the years, her adult children followed with their own families until all my aunts, uncles and cousins were in Canada. Most located within 20 or 30 km of "Gran Central Station."

I'm not sure what will become of our big family now that Gran has gone. We'll all miss her, of course, but I think we'll also wind up seeing each other less. Perhaps that's inevitable when the centre of something big and growing finally gives way.

I know I'll miss her. Bye, Gran.

Reality: pre-, mid- and post-processing

No one would believe that this image of the pond behind our house is a factual recording of an actual scene. Yet it makes me think about a question I often hear from people who are beginning to get serious about their photography.

Concerned about how much an image should be manipulated after it has been taken, they fret about the best techniques for "getting it right" in the camera in the first place. The idea is that there is a way to take a picture "as it really was." They often look back fondly at film-based photography as being more honest and less subject to manipulation than digital photography.

This concern is entirely misplaced -- and not just now, in the digital age. While there may be a popular understanding that photography offers a documentary view of the world in a way that other graphic arts do not, it completely ignores the fact that everything about the photographic process is an abstraction. From the photographer's choice of subject matter, time, place, lens and angle of view, to the projection of a three dimensional world onto a two-dimensional screen or sheet of paper, there is not a single aspect of the process that is not subject to interpretation and alteration. From the very first image on a light-sensitive surface until now, not a single photograph has escaped being fiddled with.

We could ignore this truth during the film years by squinting through our cameras with one eye and then entrusting our film to a lab -- thereby concealing the impact of the photofinisher's choices and our own selection of film type. The difference today is that most of those choices have become explicit and obvious as even rank beginners have access to powerful image manipulation software.

Manipulation has always been the norm. But it is now impossible for photographers to ignore the impact of choices they make between scene and finished product. And our understanding of the relative importance of camera work versus "process" is also changing. The job is not about creating a document in-camera that preserves the scene as it really was -- it's about capturing data that will best support the image we choose to present to the world. And it always has been.

So, perhaps we should stop talking about our time on the computer as "post-processing." There is no time when we are not processing.

In praise of monotasking

As with many people I know, there is an unrelenting contest for my attention. From the moment I get up until the moment I turn out the light, someone or something wants me to listen, agree, react, spend, perform, change or press "enter." In my current job, I receive over 200 work-related e-mails a day.

A colleague asked me last week why I was attracted to photography. Although there are a number of reasons, the one he was able to appreciate fastest was the fact that using a camera lets me slow down and use a different side of my brain. As long as I'm holding my camera, I can view the world around me through a 2x1-shaped rectangle, one frame at a time. If I turn my lens this way or change my angle of view that way, a whole new vista comes into focus.

Time goes by at a different rhythm as I stop merely navigating my surroundings and start seeing and interacting with them. I can resolve complex scenes into their component lines, patterns, tones, textures and colours. I can isolate details and abstract them from their surroundings. I can see the world around me with fresh eyes.

Making pictures lets me concentrate on doing one thing at a time, because I choose to and to suit no one else but me. It's therapy and I'd miss it. So would the people who have to live with me.