When you think about going for the quick fix, just quickly run this simple paradigm through your head. It all relates to time for adaptation. Nothing complicated. Don’t over think this. This is a just a general guideline, a reminder, that the process of adaption to training takes time.
Flexibility improves day to day
Strength can be improved from week to week
Speed (A fine motor quality) improves from month to month
Something worth remembering when starting out on a new activity. Also particularly worth remembering when having a voluntary break (between campaigns, etc) or forced break (injury say) from your activity.
Trees and Shadow - Erskineville - Wed 16 Jun 2004 (picasa)
Just a very simple photo I like. Pass here each work day as I walk up Swanston Street to Erskineville Railway Station. In winter, when the trees lose their leaves, they project interesting shadows onto the wall of this Terrace House. The trees are now much bigger and the shadows produced are not quite the same. Have taken many shots of this wall over the years, but I have not been able to get a better shot than this first photo.
Have seen many interesting photos that play with shadows. A tribute article (9 Niv 2002) by Robert McFarlane for the late Ingeborg Tyssen helped me to start looking out for shadows. A quote from the article I liked was:
'Whenever possible I carry a loaded camera ... I react without too much thought. Rarely do I wait for a situation to resolve itself. Nor do I direct or provoke people. The important aspects are composition, texture and light.'
A nice way to look a photography and when I look at my own photographic evolution, I guess I have unknowingly tried to look for at least the same three points - 'composition, texture and light'.
I can't really remember, but I expect these simple shadow photos, helped me to see many shadow photos that I have taken over the years. One humble attempt in 2007 follows:
Tree Shadow - Wilson Street/Newtown - Jul 2007(picasa)
Liked the positioning of the shadow of the tree trunk across the path segment - beautifully aligned for a random photo. Also the top of a real tree apparently growing out of a shadow and the position of the air vent. Nothing great, but I was happy and entered it in the 2007 Sydney Life photo competiion which closed a few days later (of course to no avail :-).
A few more random shadow related photos that I could easily find just now, follow:
I think one thing that has helped me think more about shadows in photography, is the strong Australian sunlight. I have found when travelling in the UK and Europe, the sun does not seem to shine as much and when it does it is not particularly strong, and the shadows don't seem to be as prevelant. In Australia, shadows are hard to avoid, so you need to work with the stronger Australian light or you just avoid taking photos at these times.
In writing this, I have just thought of photos that employ the use of the Silohuette. Will write something about this at a later stage as I have also employed the use of silohuette's in many of my photos over the years and is another aspect of photography I enjoy.
Lastly, a little Shadow Excercise I read about recently (in Paulo Coelho's 'The Pilmgrimage'). Often it is fun when walking around to look at a shadows and try and work out what it is that created the shadow. Most of the time it is reasonably obvious (as in these photos), but sometimes it can be difficult to work it out. Have fun ..
The Bulletproof Musician (*) writes On Letting Go (*):
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 (*).
Memories of Jenny - The Time of Your Life (youtube)
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.
Believe in Hope - Cleveland Street / Chippendale (Wed 29 Jul 2015)
Seven year ago today.
We remember Jenny. She (as they all do) lives on through our memories.
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 (*).
Poster Boy - Erskineville Road / Newtown (Wed 13 Feb 2013)
Bruce Wrighton (*) makes the following observation On Success (*):
Success is, of course, as an internal factor – a connection that we, or I, have made with whatever I am searching for.
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.
which leads onto a rather interesting observation about the relationship between Success (*) and Searching (*):
If you know what you are looking for I’m not sure what the value of finding it is.
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.
via INTERVIEW: “An Interview with Bruce Wrighton” (1988) (*) by Sean Phelan.
As always, Bruce is talking about his experiences with photography, but these simple observations can be applied to all aspects of our lives.
Memories of Jenny - The Time of Your Life (youtube)
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.
As many will know, I have another obsession in my life - 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 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.
Believe in Hope - Cleveland Street / Chippendale (Wed 29 Jul 2015)
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.
As well as traveling to the Snowy Mountains during summer, Jenny, Jo and I decided to spend some time in the Mountains during Winter. We did this in Jun 2000, 2001 and 2002. After that the Dragon Boating took over our winters.
It was always nice to go to Perisher during the first week of the ski season (mid-late June) where the Boonoona Ski Lodge was not really that busy - mainly accountants getting a small holiday in before the end of financial year rush.
Jenny and Jo were good skiers and they were able to get out onto the ski fields, while I did some reading and wondering around the local snow covered bush land. Would always have my camera at hand and found many nice photos from these little (actually some were quite long) walks.
This particular photo was taken on the side of the Perisher Valley Water Supply Dam. It was near sunset and there was a nice golden glow on the water. The original photo is shown below.
When I got back to Sydney, I uploaded the a cropped version to my photo.net portfolio (see here). In the discussion I provided the original uncropped photo, which is shown below, and I wondered which was better (cropped or uncropped?).
'Freezing' (Orignal) - Perisher Valley - 25 Jun 2002 (picasa)
I was pleased to receive this well thought out response from Marc G:
Very clearly, for me, the cropped version is better. Just sharing with you, here, a very simple method I use for years to know in similar cases whether it should be cropped or not.
I just ask myself "what I have I lost if I crop ? What have I gained ?
Here, the crop makes you lose the extension of this line - but it isn't a curved extension, so not very elegant, and not actually a loss. Then, no other important elements at the bottom. Now what have you gained ? You have gained simplicity and peace. Peace because you gained simplicity, and peace because that's in general what comes with squares - by the books.
Now in what sense have you gained simplicity ?
That's the most important question. The curved line being shorter, it is seen faster. Since we start from top left and go down, and since what was in the lower part was nothing great, we can say that here we keep only the nectar.
In the original, the nectar came with not much at the end. Then, here, since the eye is quickly finished with the main curve, it then moves to the right, and that's where it can find extra beauty in the dented ice and in the light at the top.
Basically, you kept the best only. Honestly, I would never have thought of hanging the original on my walls, but this one, I would - without a single hesitation. If you are interested, by the way, I'd buy a print of this - provided you give me a good price. It is no, to me, the best ice shot I've seen on this site, without a doubt for me, and I'd regard this as POW material - if I were an elfe, that is...:-))
Meanwhile, if you are keen, I'm serious, let me know the price for a 50 cm square print... Regards.Marc G. August 05, 2002; 02:00 P.M.
All of his critique made sense to me and I was very happy that a professional photographer would like one of my photos so much - was quite flattered. Unfortunately, the photo was taken on a small digital camera (1600 by 1200 pixels) and there was no way the image could be printed to a 50cm square. I would send the full-size original to Marc with my thanks for such a helpful critique and my best wishes that he might find something useful from the original file.
Over the years I have played around with the cropping of this image and I am quite satisfied with the version below.
'Freezing' (Alternate Crop) - Perisher Valley - 25 Jun 2002 (picasa)
There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys. How’s the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"
He eloborates in the midst of the long and inspiring Address ...
[..] The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about....The fact is that in the day to day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have a life or death importance. [..]
and conlcudes with ...
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
The above photo is the photo that seemed to start my obsession of photographing water in earnest. No need to explain any more than this. Just thought this was a nice way to tie it all together, for me at least.
[..] So what is it to be engaged fully in that one stroke?
After the fact it is difficult to isolate the experience of one stroke from the others. It is challenging to gain clarity on exactly one stroke because it happens in a flow of many more. [..] the dilemma is not just identifying the one, but ensuring it is pure and uncontaminated by the past one’s and future one’s.
The joy of performing the one stroke and immersing in it is challenged by the accumulated nature of the cyclic or repeated experiences. [..]
[W]hat is it to be fully engaged in one stroke[?] Knife-edge comes to mind. [..] the sense of being on a knife-edge is a great description. Less so from the perspective of balance or even match up, it has an essence that finds a cord within that is about effort, ease, maintenance and fatigue.
In fact to see it clearer I notice that the one, perfect one that I see is one of edgy contrast.
It is in a position of precarious, pointedness with a subtle oscillation between more than one element and more then one stroke including the past, present and future.
One stroke is so hard to describe, I know it when I feel it and some times I know it when I see it. Maybe the one is not perfect but we make it so because we like the idea of it being better than it really was.
The experience of rowing fascinates me because it has so many things it relates too. What I do know is that when I am engaged things change. The world looks and feels different and it gives me hope. Giving in to it, but not letting it get the better of you is critical. That may sound strange but there is something about being part of the boat, the movement, the other person, and the surroundings that makes so much sense of everything. [..]
Accessing the moment is not just about rowing, but I find it palatable to articular the action of rowing in a way that means something. One stroke at a time is a cliché and like one shot at a time it has meaning if you connect with it in some way. [..]
One stroke then is like every other stroke and they in turn they are like the days of life we live. It is just an experience how I choose to judge it or them is my choice. Years ago I watch a video the Searle Brothers made about their 1992 Olympic Games success in the coxed pair. In the video Greg spoke of a simple activity they did which involved calling out better or worse as a measure for each stroke they rowed. The idea I guess was to have more, better strokes and as such you develop accountability and improvement.
One stroke means different things and the reasons are varied. What enables full engagement in one stroke or in the moment is also varied. [..] One stroke unfolds and expands. Its meaning is huge and the vastness of experience is inspiring. Being at one in one is the art to rowing I suppose which really isn’t anything new, but repeated. So you see, like me, a cliché can mean so much which it does. [..]
Another Favourite Blog Post from Drew Ginn. A truly amazing description of rowing[/paddling] and as is usual with Drew's writings I can relate to in many ways.
I always find the strokes from the start to transition are the easiest to remember. Darren calls them the "glory strokes" and in many ways they set the boat up for the rest of the effort. Get it right and you are on the way. Get it wrong and you are on the back foot trying to recover. Can also remember some lift calls in various efforts over the years.
Love the description of 'Knife-Edge' and 'Edgy Contrast'. I often feel that when the effort is such that things seem to be edgy, that is where we need to be. Always wary of that that perfect feeling.
A bit of a preamble to this but it is worth the wait in order to see his working method on the street and the ensuing interview of which there are many great quotes On Photography (*). I have scribbled a few down here:
[..] 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.
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. [..]
Just a couple of simple photos to remember a Rainy Day in Venice. I like the colour, scaffolding, the graffiti (it's everywhere which surprised me for such a historical city) and in particular the umbrellas in both photographs.
In particular, I have really enjoyed his writings of his experiences of taking photographs in Venice. The resulting series of photographs, titled Let us Burn the Gondolas, is fantastic.
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.
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.
[..it's] what matters most and [..] learning (*) to keep it at the surface of awareness can have a huge impact on performance (*).
Process, get absorbed in it and revel in it because process is the secret!
Focus on the process and the outcome will take care of itself.
To win a championship or a gold medal is a process, it is not a one off event.
You win championships and medals a little bit at a time, bite-by-bite, chunk-by-chunk, a series of small wins and forward moving baby steps.
We see the leaps and bounds in performance because they are so big and very visible but it is the small things the details that make the difference.
It is the small things executed with focus and purpose that make the big leaps in performance possible.
There is no secret; the devil is in the details executed with consistent effort directed toward the ultimate performance goal.
Don’t make it complicated.
Keep it simple and straightforward.
Make it measurable and manageable.
Focus on the process and the outcome will follow.
In my experience, Gav is the one that has pushed this line of thought in our training and racing. Thanks to Gav, I have known and have felt this even before Vern described it so succintly and brillantly in this post. Definitely another Favourite Blog Post.
The warrior of light needs time to himself. And he uses that time for rest, contemplation and contact with the Soul of the World. Even in the midst of a battle, he manages to meditate.
Occasionally, the warrior sits down, relaxes and lets everything that is happening around him continue to happen. He looks at the world as if he were a spectator, he does not try to add to it or take away from it, he merely surrenders unresistingly to the movement of life.
Little by little, everything that seemed complicated begins to become simple. And the warrior is glad.
