Progressive photo journal

[vaneramos]

One of my shortcomings is I'm not very observant. It runs in my family. I used to grow a beard or shave it off and my parents wouldn't notice. When I try to record an event I can rarely recall details such as the clothes my friends were wearing, what other people in the room were doing, or precisely what anyone said. Sometimes I lose track of conversations altogether. My mind takes over, tumbling down some remote hillside of its own.

Poor observation skills are a downfall for a writer. Sensory detail is the currency of good writing. Action and detail are the tools writers use to create vivid imagery, the thing that grabs hold of our minds and makes us want to read more. Here are some sensory details in my friends' journals that grabbed my attention recently:

• rjwolfx watching milk and coffee blend together in his cup.


• anoisblue's husband, kenhighcountry, pulling her against him and kissing her in a parking alcove.
  
• q_knox watching a daddy-long-legs struggle in the bathtub.
  
• ruralrob hearing the nightly noise of frogs in his pond.
  

I need to emerge from my navel and find ways of getting back in touch with the rest of my body, my sense organs in particular. ruralrob commented to me that carrying around a digitial camera can provide interesting photo ops for our journals.

Then I saw an excellent idea by danlmarmot. He suggested taking pictures at fixed intervals along a road trip or walk.



This was a beautiful morning, so I decided to create a progressive photo journal of a walk along the Eramosa River. I started at my front door and took a photo every 30 paces. Unfortunately the camera ran out of memory after 36 images, otherwise I would have gone further.

On my geocities web site, Silvan's Glade, I used the 36 images to create a gallery which you can view here. The small images can't be enlarged, but in this LJ entry I have posted larger versions of two images which I found particularly interesting.

I used most of the pictures to record the actual path of my journey. But when something off to the side captured my attention I didn't hesitate to shoot it, like the blue car in image 9 or the picturesque tree trunk in image 35 (enlarged at top of this page). This resulted in a large number of uniform pictures and a few eccentric ones.

This exercise brought a few points to my attention:

1. The first 12 images of Kingsmill Ave. are remarkably uniform, then the landscape changes dramatically as I enter the river park. The last 24 images are, again, quite uniform.
   
2. I'm nervous of photographing strangers. This is a ridiculous hangup. What will they do to me? When I saw a woman walking her dog, I resisted my phobia and shot the picture (image 21, at right).


3. A single black willow dominates the park. It first appears as an indistinct blot, apparently at the end of the trail, in image 14. It reappears later, in image 21 (at right) and overshadows the next few scenes until I pass it in image 25. This single, dramatic tree is the kind of feature that adds remarkable beauty to an otherwise unexciting landscape.
   
4. The next most obvious feature of this landscape is a factory. It is visible in eight of the original pictures, although the scale makes it too small to be seen in a couple of the gallery images. Droning sounds from the factory are also omnipresent. And yet I tend to close that human contruction out of my awareness whenever I walk through the park.
   

Overall it was an interesting exercise that made me review the way I see things.

Comments

[ruralrob.livejournal.com]

This is very good stuff - the kind of thing I personally love to see in journals. On your part, it's an exercise in seeing your world more acutely and, on the viewers part, it's an introduction to a different world to one's own - in more details than they are usually ever provided with. There's alot of value in that. I always thought that the LJ of androkles from Australia and his many photos was a good example of the latter too.

I also like the controlled nature of your little experiment. I once coerced a bunch of LJ friends to take pictures of the view from the front of their house - looking right to introduce a bit of uniformity in to the exercise. The results were fascinating.

[blueeyedbear.livejournal.com]

Hey buddy, I just noticed you added me to your friends list, I have added you too. I have enjoyed reading about you on your journal and your web page, I think it is so cool that you hvae two daughters that you involved with. I have a 6 year old that I love very much. She does live with me and is about two hours away. It is very hard I have to say. Feel free to say hey if you like. Oh and Woof,, you are very cute too!

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Hey! Woof!

It is very hard I have to say.

Believe me, I understand. I had some terrible times, afraid I would lose my daughters altogether. Things are much better now.

Nice blue eyes behind those glasses, mister!

By the way, I sing in a GALA chorus. Guelph (pop. 95,000) is the smallest city in Canada with its own gay and lesbian choir, 38 voices. Our spring concert is this Saturday.

Re:

[blueeyedbear.livejournal.com]

I wish i could be there! Please keep in touch,, and thank you!

[missprune.livejournal.com]

I have the same problem of being relatively unobservant. It's definitely a handicap for a writer. My ability to remember details of past events is just about zero - which is one reason I'm glad I have kept a diary most of my life. Your photography project seems like a fun way to sharpen observation; I'm hoping that writing more will force me to pay better attention. Instead of being lost in the fog of anxiety that inhabits my head much of the time!
Phyllis Atwater has written about how she acquired super observation skill as a child by hanging out with her father, a police detective. He'd quiz her on what she had noticed in various scenes, until she gained the habit of noting details...
I enjoyed the photos you posted on LJ. Looks like spring is just as far advanced there as here.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Sometimes it helps me to write somewhere other than my desk. Natalie Goldberg recommends writing in different places and positions until you're comfortable doing it anywhere: leaning up against a tree, riding a bus, sitting on a bench in a crowded place. It forces me to observe and writer, observe and write. I notice more. Restaurants are particularly fertile for my imagination. They're full fo scents, smells, sounds and strangers.

[jwg.livejournal.com]

Very nice. I really like this idea of taking progressive photos. It makes so much sense because I think that is a somewhat how we subconsciously see the world when we walk around (or sit in one place where people are moving about). We capture a brief snapshot of our surroundings and then a few moments later another one replaces it. And for most people the memory fizzles away quite rapidly. Taking the photos like this allows a recapture of what was seen and the subsequent analysis such as you posted. I think it would be a good brain training activity to help sharpen ones observation and memory skills. I'm going to try this myself later today.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

We capture a brief snapshot of our surroundings and then a few moments later another one replaces it.

This is an interesting perspective. We couldn't possibly observe and remember everything around us. Such a surplus of information would overwhelm our brain capacity.

I would be interested in hearing how your experiment goes.