[Andrew P Street] is comedy the new news?via How Donald Trump killed comedy - What happens to satire when the world of politics is a joke? by Andrew P Street.[ Dan Ilic ] Politics is often dense and obfuscates intent, so there's ... value in breaking down, in simple, clear language, what the hell is going on.
Seth Godin on Learning:
Learn something new and difficult and valuable. Learn it today and continue learning it tomorrow.via Three simple and difficult steps by Seth Godin.
As many of you will know, I have another obsession in my life beyond paddling - Photography.
I started out buying a small digital camera for our Dec 2000 trip to the Cook Islands to visit Jenny and Jo's Meditation teacher, Barbara, who had moved there to help setup a refuge for women . We didn’t know a thing about paddling back then.
I had bought the camera hoping I would be able to capture our memories. It was a tiny digital camera by today’s standards, 1 Mega Pixel and it cost $1600 duty free and a 64 MB compact flash memory cost more than $300.
I did not flinch and I thought it was all worth it, as my credit card was swiped at Ted’s Pitt Street Camera Store the day before we flew out. 15 years later I can tell you here that it was one of the best things I ever did.
My motivation for the camera came from that fact that Jenny had 11 tumours in her lungs and I did not really know how long we would have together. In the end we had just over 9 years of married life. Given Jenny’s condition, a miracle really ..
We were married on 30th April of that Sydney Olympic year and we honeymooned on Lord Howe Island for 10 glorious days in May 2000. Jenny had a film camera and she took many photos.
On our return flight to Sydney, I remember a conversation we had at the Departure Terminal with an older couple from Whyalla who congratulated us on our marriage. We had briefly met them at dinner at one of the small restaurants on the Island.
They told us they had been married for many years and the trip to Lord Howe Island was a way of creating another experience in life and expanding their memories. Better than [running a busy business or] sitting at home and watching the Telly, they said.
This conversation and piece of simple worldly wisdom has stuck with me and I remind myself of it constantly. It was my main motivation to buy that small expensive digital camera for our December 2000 trip to the Cook Islands.
I took many photos that trip to Cook Islands, even of the Outrigger Canoes on the shore of Muri Lagoon - we had no idea what they were – who would guess our future.
Shortly after our return, Jenny and Jo found Dragon Boating. And over the ensuing years many experiences and memories were created, dutifully captured by our cameras.
I documented the many dragon boat campaigns here and abroad, and ensuing holidays that followed each event.
In the process of this documenting I came to realise the power of photography, not only its visual power, but its ability to record our experiences and remind us of things we have done and who we were. We were doing selfies before the term was even invented. We called them “Holdouts” and I think this might be the main cause of Jo’s shoulder injury.
In those last few weeks at St George Hospital in Jun 2009, I captured the last moments of our lives together. They are the best I ever made.
After Jenny’s passing, It took me a while to pick up a camera again. I had lost my purpose and will. I was hurting and numb all at once but paddled through for a year or two – it helped a lot to be busy and in the company of friends. New experiences were created and I even smiled [for] a little [while].
Lost in the enormity of what had happened so quickly, though it was not a surprise, I found my first moments of comfort and hope, when I decided to start looking at some of the photos from our lives together. It made me cry, but it also made me smile. I was so happy that I had this archive of bits and bytes to remind me of Jenny, Joanne, myself and who we were.
It was only after Jo told me to organise my photos and my Mum said I should start making photos again, that I started to move forward. I was completely broken but I took up their advice and kept myself busy again, organising and photographing again. I am still broken but I live with it better now, it is part of me and who I will always be, but I am happy, optimistic, naïve and creating more experiences.
So I guess what I am trying to say is that we have to go out there and make our memories through the experiences we create for ourselves.
In our lives we have loss, grief and bereavement. It is a part of living. You make a choice when it knocks on your door. And we have chosen to live in the Afterglow of our loss of Jenny – to remember and honour and be guided and inspired. Accept it and live with it and make the most of it, even let it inspire and motivate you. And that is what Jo and I have done, I would like to think.
“Believe in Hope” as the graffiti’ed wall in Cleveland Street said for a few weeks in July 2015.
Seven year ago today.
We remember Jenny. She (as they all do) lives on through our memories.
This is my 2000th post here at eljeiffel.
I always try to write something for the Annual Presentation of the Inspire Award. Most times it is just for me, but sometimes I share it with a few people. So here it is, unedited from the time it was written on the evening of Fri 27 Aug 2015. I think it is a pretty good way to mark the milestone.
I started out buying a small digital camera for our Dec 2000 trip to the Cook Islands to visit Jenny and Jo's Meditation teacher, Barbara, who had moved there to help setup a refuge for women . We didn’t know a thing about paddling back then.
I had bought the camera hoping I would be able to capture our memories. It was a tiny digital camera by today’s standards, 1 Mega Pixel and it cost $1600 duty free and a 64 MB compact flash memory cost more than $300.
I did not flinch and I thought it was all worth it, as my credit card was swiped at Ted’s Camera Store the day before we flew out. 15 years later I can tell you here that it was one of the best things I ever did.
My motivation for the camera came from that fact that Jenny had 11 tumours in her lungs and I did not really know how long we would have together. In the end we had just over 9 years of married life. Given Jenny’s condition, a miracle really ..
We were married on 30th April of that Sydney Olympic year and we honeymooned on Lord Howe Island for 10 glorious days in May 2000. Jenny had a film camera and she took many photos.
On our return flight to Sydney, I remember a conversation we had at the Departure Terminal with an older couple from Whyalla who congratulated us on our marriage. We had briefly met them at dinner at one of the small restaurants on the Island.
They told us they had been married for many years and the trip to Lord Howe Island was a way of creating another experience in life and expanding their memories. Better than [running a busy business or] sitting at home and watching the Telly, they said.
This conversation and piece of simple worldly wisdom has stuck with me and I remind myself of it constantly. It was my main motivation to buy that small expensive digital camera for our December 2000 trip to the Cook Islands.
I took many photos that trip to Cook Islands, even of the Outrigger Canoes in the lagoon at Aitutaka, we had no idea what they were – who would guess our future.
Shortly after our return, Jenny and Jo found Dragon Boating. And over the ensuing years many experiences and memories were created, dutifully captured by our cameras.
I documented the many dragon boat campaigns here and abroad, and ensuing holidays that followed each event.
In the process of this documenting I came to realise the power of photography, not only its visual power, but its ability to record our experiences and remind us of things we have done and who we were. We were doing selfies before the term was even invented. We called them “Holdouts” and I think this might be the main cause of Jo’s shoulder injury.
In those last few weeks at St George Hospital in Jun 2009, I captured the last moments of our lives together. They are the best I ever made.
After Jenny’s passing, It took me a while to pick up a camera again. I had lost my purpose and will. I was hurting and numb all at once but paddled through for a year or two – it helped a lot to be busy and in the company of friends. New experiences were created and I even smiled [for] a little [while].
Lost in the enormity of what had happened so quickly, though it was not a surprise, I found my first moments of comfort and hope, when I decided to start looking at some of the photos from our lives together. It made me cry, but it also made me smile. I was so happy that I had this archive of bits and bytes to remind me of Jenny, Joanne, myself and who we were.
It was only after Jo told me to organise my photos and my Mum said I should start making photos again, that I started to move forward. I was completely broken but I took up their advice and kept myself busy again, organising and photographing again. I am still broken but I live with it better now, it is part of me and who I will always be, but I am happy, optimistic, naïve and creating more experiences.
So I guess what I am trying to say is that we have to go out there and make our memories through the experiences we create for ourselves. And this is what I love about PD’s, we are always out there doing something. This time last year we were in Bologna on our way to Ravena, this year we are heading to Hawaii in the next week and month, next year Adelaide and who knows where after that.
Finally, in our lives we have loss, grief and bereavement. It is a part of living. You make a choice when it knocks on your door. And we have chosen to live in the Afterglow of our loss of Jenny – to remember and honour and be guided and inspired. Accept it and live with it and make the most of it, even let it inspire and motivate you. And that is what Jo and I have done, I would like to think.
“Believe in Hope” as the graffiti’ed wall in Cleveland Street said for a few weeks in July 2015.As many will know, I have another obsession in my life - Photography.
With this post it is time to let go of a lot things, including the photos of another time and life. I have shed my life here (and Facebook more recently) like a snake sheds it skin and there is nothing left but to start over again. Time to move on, but it is hard to let go .. but I will.
Trying to make a new start here (arotlt.com) with photos from this point onwards. There will be the occasional post at eljeiffel to mark the odd moment in our lives that are relevant, but for now thanks for coming along for the ride these last, almost, 7 years.
You can observe a lot by just watchingvia The future is not what it used to be. by Mike Peters.
Such a simple and true observation.
Did not even notice the face in the background when I made this photo. Only later did I observe it. Reminds me of this Poster I took on the T Station at Harvard in Boston in 2011.
Joel Meyerowitz writes beautifully on a Moment:
These simple moments are precious, no attitude, no becoming something she is not. She's just there, rooted to the earth, part of the spirit of the place.via Contadina by Joel Meyerowitz.
Now we know what Pluto looks like after knowingly not knowing for quite a while now (a great read about the significance of this here at ribbonfarm ). So on a slight less significant level, here is what I know now, that I did not knowingly know back 13 months ago...
Just on 13 months ago I found a passion for cooking. A new kitchen and a little help from Michelle and I was on my way. One of the dishes Michelle suggested was a spaghetti bolognese.
I thought that would be an easy start, so went to Google to find a recipe, as you do. This is the one I liked the most from all the ones I read back then:
I liked the authenticity of ingredients, the correctness and approval from Bologna - a place we were heading to on the way to the World Club Crews in Ravenna a few months later.I have cooked this recipe almost every second week for a year now. And all modesty aside (you know me), the one I cooked this last Monday was perfecto, with a hand and fingers rising from my mouth.
Indeed the recipe looked simple and my first efforts did not excit me that much and I thought to myself where was I going wrong? I have learnt that a recipe is just a starting point and that to make it work and indeed, great, like anything in life, you have to experiment, listen and learn from others, take risks, knowingly or unknowingly.
These are just some of the things I have learnt:
It has taken 13 months to work all this out and I am so pleased with what I have learnt. Feel like I could enter World Bolognese Champs mentioned in the article and give it pretty good shake.
So as New Horizons speeds past Pluto into the outer Solar System and beyond, to make more of the unknown known, I will continue my quest to know more, master and perfect what I don't already know about Tagliatelle Bolognese 101.
Doug Miller on a Moment and Eternity:
One of the most difficult parts of walking the early stages of cancer seems to be the waves of feelings, emotions, guilt, etc. that you feel. It is the strangest feeling. One moment you are having a normal conversation or doing simple daily tasks and SUDDENLY......WHAM you get hit by a wave of thoughts. [..]via Waves by Doug Miller.But at times this weight lifts. And for a moment there is a lightness of being. At times as you face your mortality there are moments where the importance rests solely in a single moment. The blueness of the sky, a breeze, the warmth of the sun, a laugh with a friend, the touch of a hand, these moments sometimes sharpen the focus of life. And at once time stands still pausing in the simplicity and perfection of that moment. Maybe that is how eternity feels.
Make the most from the leastvia Penelope Seidler maintains interest in architecture, arts (*) by Nicole Elphick (*).
the purpose of a [photo]book is to educate and inspire you.via On Opportunity Costs in Street Photography (*) by Eric Kim (*).
preparation (*), connection (*) and release (*). It seems to me the simple cycle of what we do in the boat [/and Life in general]. [..]Drew then expands on the concept of release (*):
Release and get excited I like because no matter what happens we have the power (*) and capacity (*) to see (*) and respond (*) to our experiences (*) in a way that best serves us and those around us.And finally::
it is fascinating to think about how our mind set (*), emotions (*) and the manifestation play out physically.via What's on the RADAR (*) by Drew Ginn (*).
[..it's] what matters most and [..] learning (*) to keep it at the surface of awareness can have a huge impact on performance (*).
Deep down, you almost always like how a real leader (*) makes you feel, the way you find yourself working harder and pushing yourself and thinking in ways you couldn’t ever get to on your own.via 3 Simple Things Great Teachers Do (*) by Dan Coyle (*).
Despite the digitization of photography - or perhaps because of it - we are in a golden age of photography books. There are now numerous websites, blogs, and Facebook groups that review or sell photo books, and all of that virtual infrastructure helps build community and encourage sales. But without local bookstores, where one can browse, discover, pick up and feel, fewer photo books will reach the public. Simple as that.via New York/Bookstores Still Essential (*) by Brian Rose (*).
I think the lessons for teachers and coaches are pretty simple:via The Simple Phrase that Increases Effort 40% (*) by Dan Coyle (*).
- First, connect: like John Wooden said, they can’t care (*) how much you know (*) until they know how much you care (*).
- Highlight the group: seek ways (traditions, mantras, fun little rituals) to show what it means to belong in your crew.
- Don’t soft-pedal high standards. Don’t pretend that it’s easy — do the opposite.
- Emphasize the toughness (*) of the task, and your belief (*) that they have what it takes.
[..] if you’re willing to take a gamble, I’ll bet on you. If you’re willing to put it out there, if you’re willing to fail, if you’re willing to let go of it all, thumb your nose at the world, and do it your way, I’ll believe in you. [..]"I’ll believe in you." Spencer wrote. There it was. The answer was so simple - self belief first comes from others who believe in you.
photography has changed drastically over the years, becoming more and more ingrained in everyday life through the Internet and Photoshop, smartphones and devices like iPads.via The Lens Rises in Stature (*) by Carol Vogel (*).
Now everyone’s a photographer, [..] It’s part of the language of what we do. All you have to do is walk down the street. And with Facebook or Tumblr there are infinite possibilities. But museums should be devoted to the original thing. That will continue to give the public a reason to see what’s here.Julian Cox (*):
There’s a hungry audience of people who want to see photography shows”and he adds, the reason for photography’s popularity is simple:
It’s accessible.”Quentin Bajac (*) notes a new direction in Photography Curation:
I’m thinking of photography within a far broader context - with film and painting, architecture and drawing - making connections that show it to be equal in status with all the arts.Katherine Bussard (*) concludes:
It’s an interesting moment, [..] Earlier generations were struggling to have photography taken seriously. We’re way past that now.
Success is, of course, as an internal factor – a connection that we, or I, have made with whatever I am searching for.which leads onto a rather interesting observation about the relationship between Success (*) and Searching (*):
Sometimes it can be elusive.
Sometimes it can be immediately self-evident.
The expression. The pose. The posturing. There can be windows that open up that are surprises.
But it’s that connection.
It’s the connection between having a sense of what you are working for, but not really having it defined well enough, so you always have to search, you always have to dig a little bit, it’s always a little bit unknown what you are looking for.
If you know what you are looking for I’m not sure what the value of finding it is.via INTERVIEW: “An Interview with Bruce Wrighton” (1988) (*) by Sean Phelan.
That is to say, I’m not sure what’s the value of doing the search. At that point that part of you has been ‘played out’ so to speak.
If I find myself making the same images over and over again,
I begin to suspect that I have to dig a little harder or deeper to find what the next level of mystery is in a particular subject matter or go on to a different one.
Tokyo, the 50'sI bought this book following this Review (*) by Jesse Freeman (*). The preface is one of the most amazing pieces of writing on photography I have read, and I have read a lot. A beautiful book, both in words and photos, and I am so glad I took the risk to buy it on a whim.
When I First Roamed the Streets
by Ikko Narahara (*)
Photographs arrive suddenly from out of the future. For it me it was always like that. Suddenly I would reach out and grab it in midair - the photographs had appeared by itself in my hand. Whenever I pushed the shutter button, my body seemed to become transparent, as if it were out int the middle of the photograph. And as I continuted to take photographs over the years, I came to feel that the images I took had already buried in matrixes of some sort in the space of the future, where they remainded waiting for the moment when I would one day dig them up. That must surely have been how it was. From that time of the big bang with which the universe started and began its evolution, perhaps even though the will of the universe latent in the fluctuations in the "nothing" preceding the big bang, these experiences had surely been prepared for. I am simply a messenger sent to meet up with the images and rescue them. This is the only way I can reconcile myself to the strangeness and mystery of having brought so many photographs into the world.
Possessed by thoughts like these day after day, I suddenly remembered I'd forgotten something - the photographs I had taken when I first began roaming the streets.
I bought my first camera in 1954. I got it to use for my planned work., "Human Life". At the time I couldn't have imagined that after exhibiting that work my whole life would change course toward photography and toward the person I am today. In the intervals between photographing "Human Land" I used to walk the Tokyo streets with my camera. I didn't have any special or clear purpose in mind. My family had often moved to different locations in western Japan, and since I was a child I'd had the habit of thoroughly exploring each new location. I felt the same interest in my exploring Tokyo, whereI'd lived since I came there as a college student. The only difference was that now I carried a camera with me. I breathed photographs on Tokyo street corners the way I breathed air. In my viewfinder those street corners changed into "streets in my photographs." Whenever I released the shutter, I seemed to hear the beat of modern jazz, which I loved so much. I remember I kept on rambling the streets in this way until I became involved in taking my next work, "Domain" in 1958. I was so lazy that I only printed a few of these photographs. The negatives lay buried their negative case, where I forgot about them. By chance, however, I remembered these negatives from forty years earlier. For the past three years I have again been photographing in the streets of Tokyo, and this brought back the memory of my earlier roamings.
"I'd really to see them .. I wonder what photos I took back then?" I couldn't even remember most of the images, and very few of the contact prints remained. But the moment I realized I wanted to see them, I was overcome with the strange feeling of being faced with the all too obvious and simple fact that photographs have to be printed in order to be viewed. After all these years I'd become thoroughly accustomed to the life of taking photographs, and yet here I was suddenly realizing that all too easily I'd vaguely assumed that once I'd pushed the shutter the things I'd taken simply continued to exist by themselves. But even for me, they were actually nothing more than events lying latent in my mind. As mere negatives there were like inverted ghosts; they had to no reality as photographs. I was shocked to realize that those negatives still lacked real existence, and then I had to laugh at my own blindness.
Before long, from what seemed to be the negatives, I made new contact prints and began to look through them.
As I put them into the enlarge, I could hardly wait to see how they would turn out. Unrecognizable images of which I had almost no memory began to appear before my eyes. Were these really my photographs? The photographs came into being like starlight arriving from forty light years away.
Past time buried in the time of the future - a sleeping time with with its eyes suddenly wide open. Through this small astonishment I was also tasting the strangeness and wonder of photographs. As that time my darkroom was filled with the paradoxes of time travel.
I've come to see that these photographs, which excavated the light and wind of the 1950's, were unmistakably the first steps in my travels through cities which would turn into the rest of my life. [..]
Assuming you’ve put in the work in the practice room, and you’ve worked out the intricate details, nuances, and technical complexities of the repertoire you’re playing, you have earned the right to keep it simple, let go, and trust your body to naturally produce what you have trained it to do through all those hours in the practice room.via The Importance of Keeping Things Simple Under Pressure (*) by Dr. Noa Kageyama (*).
[..] They are snapshots and they are made in a very simple way. But the thing they see when they continue to look at the pictures, they start to see the closeness is one of the things they see. Some one is making pictures that are really close on the street and its that kind of taking the camera so close to the subject and making pictures and not in a studio way. in a flow of life on the street or field kind of way. And they see that closeness and that is the thing that gives the pictures there uniqueness and their agressive sort of character.A copy of Grim Street (*) is on the way.
When you make an exhibit of this work, you walk around in a room filled with it and you see all these strange pictures. You know there is a certain excitement to it, There is a certain quality in that room about an artists mind, and an artists work that comes from the pictures and touches the viewer in some way. That's why it works. I don't know why exactly it works. A lot of physcological reasons, sexual reasons. A lot of things are going on in those pictures.
It is not some kind of exact analytical science going on here, its right on the edge of meaninglessness, but its in there and that is what makes it so fascinating.
It feels awkward for me to try to talk about my work, frequently. Once in a while I do it. I do a slide show and I describe how I take the pictures. Describe how I think they fit into things socially and formally, in the context of photography in America. Different kind of things.
You usually don't think about that kind of stuff. You dont think about that. You think about when you are taking pictures the most important thing is to get new pictures.
The pictures you already took, you already took those pictures. My main drive is to do something new. To make some new kind of picture. [..]
