“Are you taking pictures of other people’s kids?”

“Yes. Yes I am.”

“That’s against the law.”

“No, it’s not. We’re on public property, there’s no expectation of privacy in a public space, the images are not of a sexual nature, and my right to take pictures in this setting and publish them is guaranteed by this country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”

“You still can’t take pictures.”

“I can, and I will. I dare you to call the police into this so I can explain how you’re interfering with my Charter Rights. It’s helpful to have that sort of thing officially documented for when I sue you privately for damages.”

“You’re a fucking pervert!”

And he left.

Folks, know your rights for your country and shooting locale. Don’t back down when challenged if you’re within your rights.

I’m 30 lbs lighter, can run 5 kilometres without a problem now, and am training to run a half marathon by November. This is in sharp contrast to January of 2009 where I weighed 264 lbs and couldn’t run as far as a city block without keeling over.

All of which doesn’t leave much spare time for photography. I’m hoping that living 20 years longer will even up the score.

Here’s the kicker. This is a not-for-profit film made entirely by volunteers. They had a budget of about six thousand pounds which was mainly used for props and costumes. The actors volunteered their time. The film crew volunteered their skills and equipment. Many other Tolkien fans volunteered their computers, software, and talents to assemble the special effects so well done that George Lucas is probably drooling right now.

I have never in my life seen a better example of how an artist’s passion to create great art will overcome any obstacle placed in the way of that effort. Indeed, I’m humbled, and even ashamed at the artificial barriers that I have allowed to come between myself and my photography as of late. I have no more excuses. But I digress.

I’m tickled, to say the least, that The Hunt for Gollum, which was made for less than $11,000 CDN, beats the pants off ANY movie that Sarah Polley has made or been involved in.

EVER.

This is “a moment” in film making just as Barack Obama being elected president was “a moment” in American race relations. Any black who whines that those with dark-toned skin are being kept down by The Man can now safely be told to STFU. And whenever Sarah Polley (or any other tit-suck CanCon “artist” [spit]) whines that she (they)  can’t make a movie without extensive government funding, she (they) can also be told to STFU and The Hunt for Gollum thrown in their faces.

Polley is NOT an artist. Artists create art. They find a way around obstacles. They go into debt. They take a third mortgage on their home. They find volunteers who share their vision. And they create.

Whores, on the other hand, won’t hop into bed until they negotiate a price first.

The minute the high quality download becomes available I’m going to burn DVDs of this movie and mail one to every goddamn MP in Canada along with a letter describing the project. They need to know that government funding is irrelevant when it comes to creating art. The true artists will find a way.

It’s time the whores were given the boot, and we’ve just been handed the most impressive lever ever to use in this effort. Those behind The Hunt for Gollum have earned my eternal gratitude.

Once you have your survival dance established, you can wander, inwardly and outwardly, searching for clues to your sacred dance, the work you were born to do. This work may have no relation to your job. Your sacred dance sparks your greatest fulfillment and extends your truest service to others. You know you’ve found it when there’s little else you’d rather be doing. Getting paid for it is superfluous. You would gladly pay others, if necessary, for the opportunity.

Hence, the importance of self-reliance, not merely the economic kind implied by a survival dance but also of the social, psychological, and spiritual kind. To find your sacred dance, after all, you will need to take significant risks. You might need to move against the grain of your family and friends. By honing psychological self-reliance, you will find it easier to keep focused on your goals in the face of resistance or incomprehension, initial failure or setbacks, or economic or organizational obstacles. And spiritual self-reliance will maintain your connection with the deepest truths and what you’ve learned about how the world works.

Swift Deer says that once you discover your sacred dance and learn effective ways of embodying it, the world will support you in doing just that.

What your soul wants is what the world also wants (and needs). Your human community will say yes to your soul work and will, in effect, pay you to do it. Gradually, your sacred dance becomes what you do and your former survival dance is no longer need. Now you have only one dance as the world supports you to do what is most fulfilling for you. How do you get there? The first step is creating a foundation of self-reliance: a survival dance of integrity that allows you to be in the world in a good way—a way that is psychologically sustaining, economically adequate, socially responsible, and environmentally sound. Cultivating right livelihood, as the Buddhist call it, is essential training and foundation for your soul work; it’s not a step that can be skipped.” - From Soulcraft, by Bill Plotkin

So I find Paul Butzi’s Solo Photo Book Month (SoFoBoMo) project intriguing, because it presents me with an opportunity to challenge and compete with myself. It’s a photographic marathon of sorts, where even if you don’t win, you can still brag about having participated in the event. I missed it last year because of work issues, but this year I’m in. I’m so in.

And it will be a marathon. With a camera.

48 Hours In The Neutrals

My intention is to spend 48 hours traveling the Neutral Hills - an area of East Central Alberta, Canada - where I will assemble both a written and photographic diary of my trip while covering as much of the area as possible. This diary will be published in book form within a month of the completion of the project as per SoFoBoMo’s rules.

This will be an endurance test for me. I’ve put myself under pressure to produce images before, but I’ve never forced myself to do it over a 48 hour period with no sleep, regardless of weather and lighting conditions. This will be a new experience, which is the point of the exercise; to push myself past old limits and find new ones.

The Rules

These are the guidelines I’m operating by to produce this book, and there is no fudging or fiddling allowed. This trip is intended to be a gruelling photographic marathon and I hope these rules reflect this.

1. No mulligans or do-overs.

The trip starts at 9 am on Friday May 8th, 2009 and ends on Sunday May 10th, 2009 at 9 am. I have selected this time to take advantage of the full moon for my evening shots. The weather is irrelevant. Breakdowns are irrelevant. Equipment failures are irrelevant. Either I produce the required images according to my rules within this period or I’m out of the SoFoBoMo challenge for 2009. Period.

2. 48 Hours, 48 Images

The goal is to produce one fine-art image for each hour of the trip. The SoFoBoMo rules require a minimum of 35 images. My rules require a minimum of 48 or the project is aborted.

3. One Image Per Hour Minimum/Maximum

If more than one satisfactory image is produced per hour then only the best image from that hour may be used. There will be no hoarding images from a productive hour and then using them to fill in a drought period. Failure to meet this rule means aborting the project.

4. No More Than 4 “Gimmes” Allowed

I define a “gimme” as a grab shot such as, here’s a picture of my lunch or here’s me fiddling with my iPod while waiting for a long exposure to complete. The book will be, in part, a travel diary, so a few “gimmes” are allowed, but the primary focus of the project is to highlight the Neutral Hills as an area capable of readily yielding a bounty of fine-art images for the serious photographer. I recognize that there will be a temptation to sneak in more “gimmes” and to try to catch some sleep as I near the end of the road trip, so I’m limiting myself to a maximum of four.

5. You Can Never Go Back Home Once You Leave

Once I leave home to begin the trip, there’s no going back until after 9 am on May 10th for any reason. If I forget a piece of gear I have to go without. If my vehicle breaks down I have to phone and have the help come to me. If I finish the trip on foot using a bag full of disposable cameras purchased in some town along the way, so be it.

6. No Sleeping On The Job

If I fall asleep during this 48 hours, I’m out of SoFoBoMo 2009. Sleeping is not allowed. Gratuitous abuse of caffeine is.

Strategy

I live on the east end of The Neutrals, which extend from the town of Veteran, Alberta, to Major, Saskatchewan. I plan to start in Major and work my way west over the next 48 hours, keeping close to Highway 12. I’ll end up in Veteran (maybe), which is where The Neutrals end.

I plan to carry pretty much all of my digital cameras and lenses along with me. As well, I’ll have spare batteries and chargers and an AC power inverter to top batteries back up if needed. I’ll need spare fuel in the event I run low while a service station isn’t open, so a Jerry can will be bungeed to the roof of my van. I’ll bring food with me in a cooler along with bottled water and a few flats of Jolt Cola.

I’m going to try to carry enough food to do all of my eating on the road as I want to put most of my time into harvesting photos. Well, that, and (speaking as a former chef) the fact that most of the restaurants in The Neutrals simply aren’t that good. The exceptions are The Rite Spot in Consort, Alberta, and The Hilltop Cafe in Veteran, Alberta. Don’t be surprised if “gimme” shots appear in the finished book from either or both restaurants.

For data handling, I’ll be carrying my 250 GB Hyperdrive so as to backup memory cards constantly while I’m on the go. My Hyperdrive will be, in turn, backed up onto my laptop with a 500 GB external drive as the trip progresses. Image loss puts me out of SoFoBoMo 2009.

Will I bring along film cameras? Probably. I’m thinking my Holga, my Zero Image 6×9 pinhole, and perhaps my Kiev 60. They all use 120 roll film and I’ve got a pile of it at the bottom of a freezer that needs to be gotten rid of.

The Book

The book will be titled 48 Hours In The Neutrals and it will be produced using Blurb’s print-on-demand service courtesy of their BookSmart software. It will be hardcover. It will be available for purchase both online, and through my wife’s gift store on main street in Oyen, Alberta. I won’t know what the final price is until I get closer to finishing the book. My book deadline is June 7th, 2009. If I overshoot that I’ve blown SoFoBoMo for the year.

All proceeds from the sale of the book over and above its production costs will be donated to the Neutral Hills Community Adult Learning Society (NHCALS). They have been wonderfully supportive of our local photographic society by providing us with a low-cost meeting facility, and I’d like to return the favour by helping raise some money to purchase them that LCD projector they so desperately need for their computer lab.

A Challenge

I’d like to challenge my following photographer friends to participate in SoFoBoMo 2009:

• Larrie Thomson, the Night Photographer
• Ray van der Woning of photographi.ca
• Randy van der Woning, the Big White Guy
• Brian Strynadka, the Dusty Farmer
• Kevin Gulstene, the Dock Walker

That’s it. Wish me luck.

So I just don’t get it when someone tells me that my sunset image is a cliche. It’s my image. It’s my interpretation of the event. It’s me who experienced the beauty of the sunset and who enjoyed its creation. I intend to keep creating these images, without a concern for how many more cliches I’m creating.

There’s no shame in revisiting old comforts and familiar experiences, just as there’s no shame in ordering Eggs Benedict every Sunday.

Comments are turned back on for images. It seems to me that there is an implicit social contract in the photo blogging community where one agrees to receive feedback on the images one posts. Fair enough. After all, there’s nothing that says I have to agree with the validity of the comments themselves. So comment away.

I did receive one comment from Anita Jesse that I’d like to address:

You seem to me one of those people who would dismiss me within seconds as shallow, uninformed, and uninteresting, but I would love to sit in a room and listen to you talk–to someone on your level.

It took me a couple of years to figure out that there are two types of photographers: technicians and artists. The technicians are the ones running around chastising people about the rule of thirds, depth-of-field, and the need to remove noise from their images. The artists are the ones who try to capture what they feel and then share those feelings with others, no matter how technically imperfect the method of transmission.

From looking at Anita’s images, and her excellent SoFoMoBo book (which I was able to download before she exceeded her bandwidth), it’s pretty obvious to me that Anita is an Artist. She photographs what she feels and viewers of her images are able to come along for the emotional journey. I’ve always got time for photographers like her and I’m adding her blog to my links as I think her work will be a regular source of inspiration.

So I’m glad Anita commented as I found another photographer producing work that I will greatly enjoy. I need to remember that you don’t always have to agree with someone to enjoy their images, and that visiting the sites of commenters is one of the best ways to find great new photography. Comments will remain turned on and will be gratefully accepted. Even the ones I don’t like.

Beautiful colors, but i think there is something distracting about this shot. I’m not quite sure what it is, maybe the shallow depth of field?

Of course it’s distracting, that was the point of the image. I intentionally made sure there was nothing one’s eye would automatically lock onto. The subject was the colour, the moisture, the reflection. The image is intended to evoke memories in the viewer of a late summer evening. Of moisture in the air, or frogs frantically calling out for a mate, of something. I was trying to achieve a connection, not depth-of-field. I regarded the depth-of-field as irrelevant to the purpose at hand.

Here’s another comment on the image Heading Back To The Home Quarter that I found irksome:

Great composure. Would like to see a few more blacks in the shot though - maybe tweak the contrast a bit.

I did tweak the contrast when I gave the image an antique and faded appearance. It supposed to look washed out, like it has faded in the sun for many years. Once again, that was the point. The subject of the image is an anachronism. The poor fellow was born 150 years too late. Nothing would have made him happier than driving his cattle across the prairie on horseback. Instead, he finds himself heading down a paved highway dodging the oil patch traffic and hoping his critters don’t get killed by some moronic toolpush doing 150 kph. My treatment of the image attempted to reflect this, by creating a photo treatment that was out of context with the present as well.

So I’d like to say a couple of things…

First, if the image looks too light or too dark to you, check your damn monitor. All of my images are processed on a colour managed system under consistent lighting conditions. They look exactly the way they’re supposed to. More importantly, they look exactly the way I want them to. If they look wrong to you then either your monitor is off, your eye is off, or both. I’m not interested in hearing about it either way.

Also, I bloody well know how to compose a photo. I know how to achieve depth-of-field. I know all of the compositional “rules” all too many amateur photographers are wont to enforce a la Taliban. I know how to add noise to an image and how get rid of it. I know Photoshop well enough that it feels like an extra limb to me. I know how the sensor in each of my cameras work, and how they stack up against the sensor in your respective cameras. When I’m not working on computers for people or holding a camera, I’m looking at the work of other photographers and reading up on photography. It’s what I do. It’s all I do. I think about photography more than I think about sex, and that says something for a guy.

So, if my photos have compositional quirks that you feel break the rules, or the depth-of-field that bugs you, or a there’s cockeyed horizon that you don’t like, I have only one thing to say to you: get stuffed. Every image I put on my site looks the way I want for reasons that are important to me. I’m not interested in having you regurgitate the pap I overheard at too many print competitions in my inbox or on my comment form. If you connect with my images, great. Tell me about it. If you don’t, tell me about that, too. I want to know what your emotional response to the image is. That’s the kind of feedback I’m looking for.

However, if all you want to do is chastise me for flouting your precious rules or posting an image with a histogram that offends your delicate sensibilities, well, go fuck yourself. My time is too important to waste on people like you. Nobody likes a bureaucrat except for other bureaucrats.

Friends of ours (many years ago, now that I think on it) who were active in trying to increase government funding for the arts were mortified at the very notion of going back to the days of private patrons. Apparently the need to satisfy the paymaster is utterly beneath contempt for a true artist. Artists are the “soul of the culture” and should be free to explore, create, and ponder art to their hearts’ content, we were earnestly informed. Let’s just say that the conversation didn’t go well from that point onwards… [link]

I’m entirely in agreement with “the friend” when it comes to the notion of satisfying a paymaster. When it comes to my photography, I really do hold all commercial considerations beneath contempt. Indeed, as I say in my own FAQ:

I’m done with commercial photography of all types and honestly don’t give a damn if the pictures I produce these days are marketable. The marketing jackasses can sit and spin for all I care. From now on I’m only producing the images that I feel compelled to as an artist.

There is, however, some truth to the saying “he who pays the piper calls the tune”. This is accurate, and, to my mind, both fair and sensible. This is why I work a day job to support my photography. Aside from the odd print sale (which I consider non-voting shares in my stock), my photography is entirely self-supported. I call the tune. I am unencumbered when it comes to pursuing my artistic vision because I am not beholden to any sponsors be they governmental, corporate, public, or private.

Which is just the way I like it.

There’s nothing wrong with being an independent artist so long as you’re truly independent. And you can’t be truly independent when you have your hand stretched out to others begging for loose change. Have you got that, Ms. Polley?

Her latest crusade is to prevent the federal government from passing Bill C-10, a piece of legislation that would remove government tax credits from Canadian productions deemed “too violent” or “too offensive”. Ms. Polley wants the bill killed as she feels that this could amount to censorship of her work as a film director.

Well, no, not really.

Removing the government tax credits that fund a creative endeavor is not the same as an outright prohibition of said endeavor. If Ms. Polley has an artistic vision that she wishes to pursue, she can still shop it around to studios, find investors for it, or hey, even fund it out of her own pocket. This is the way most film productions are done in every other country in the world.

No, the problem that Ms. Polley has is very few members of the public are willing to pay to see her work, which means that it will be difficult to find wealthy people to bankroll her work, which is why she requires the Canadian government to forcibly remove money from the pockets of its citizens to fund it. If all of her films are going to be like Away From Her, Ms. Polley’s directorial debut, I can see why. In the words of Calgary Sun columnist Ian Robinson this was “…a love story about unattractive old people, one of whom is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, which means it’s the perfect Canadian movie.” Quite. My own description of the film is much less charitable so it’s best if we stick with Mr. Robinson’s instead.

The point of Ms. Polley’s latest outburst is that she wants to continue creating tepid movies and handing me the bills for them. I don’t like that. I will admit that I do agree with Ms. Polley to a limited extent: we do not need the federal government as an arbiter of what is tasteful and what is not. Her solution is to fund practically every proposed Canadian production through tax credits. My solution is to fund none whatsoever.

Look, I consider myself an artist as well, and I have my own creative vision that I pursue on a regular basis. Well, whenever I can afford to, which, with fuel at $1.17 a litre, is not so affordable these days. If I could get Ms. Polley’s hand out of my pocket, perhaps I could pursue my own vision just a bit farther. And not just myself, but all the others who quietly follow their own artistic vision in this country. I’m talking about grannies having a little extra dosh left in their pocket for buying yarn or needlepoint supplies. Or painters having money for buying better oils and acrylics and more of them. Or potters being able to buy, throw, and fire more clay. We’re the silent art majority and we manage just fine without having the government forcefully extract money from our fellow citizens on our behalf.

And then there are the art consumers. I firmly believe that Canadians should have a choice over whether or not they want to become patrons of Ms. Polley’s work. I’m betting that most wouldn’t, and that’s perfectly okay. Maybe they want to spend that money on a new sofa instead, or beer and popcorn, or maybe even groceries. This is as it should be. If our art work doesn’t sufficiently captivate the attention of a consumer to warrant his parting with his hard-earned money, this is a failing on the part of the artist, not on the part of the consumer. This alarms Ms. Polley, and she states her case quite bluntly:

“I wouldn’t have a career if it wasn’t for public money,” said Polley. – CanWest News.

Don’t worry, Sarah. I’ll still fork out to see an on-screen scantily clad version of you (with the fewer lines, the better) getting chased around by zombies. So you’ll always have a career. I just won’t pay to see the films you’ve directed. At least, not if I get a say in things.