As for Cricket Hill, it is more
symbolic than physical at this time. At some time it is a
strong desire
of ours, (Joseph's and mine) to buy a chunk of land and build a
beautiful
and simple environmentally alternative home there. It does
not have to have a physical hill,
but does need to have a wondrous and
lively swamp (or wetlands). You see, I like the
symbol of sitting up on
a hill - a special place to "see
the big picture", "put things back
into
a helpful perspective", to reflect, meditate, pray, admire a
sunrise or sunset, and so on.
Beaver {Stylized Canada Map},
Manitoulin Island
© 2002-6 by SLaF & JVP, Cricket Hill ~The Digital Darkroom,
Original
Digital PhotoArt, All
Rights Reserved
Over my
lifetime, thusfar, this "hill"
has been many different places in different parts of our
amazingly
diverse and beautiful country, Canada.
For me, it has almost always
been
sitting by some kind of water - be it a stream, a river, cascades,
a quiet pool of water watch-
ing otters joyously play and sun themselves,
a lake and sometimes even an ocean. Since I
have become a passionate
photographer with a camera in hand, one of my (and our)
favourite
places to visit over and over again is called Beaver Marsh
(right here
on
Manitoulin Island!). Here, I have combined
my "zen-time"
on my
"hill"
with my love of
photography.
My vision was to someday have space to
have our darkroom equipment set up so that I
could further indulge my
artistic passions. We have a collection of different old cameras,
and I
had dreams of "playing" with them and developing and printing the film
myself.
Even knowing that the gelatine layer of film does not fit
within my lifestyle as a vegetarian
and knowing that the process of
making the film, developing and printing the film is both
expensive as
well as not environmentally "light
walking" did not alter my vision.
Joseph's vision for me was one of
immediate feedback and increased freedom and
independence. So, Joe
being Joe, persisted with his research into different cameras and
continued talking up all the reasons why this would be such a great
shift to take , or at the
very least to explore. And, me being me (and okay, a wee-bit stubborn!)
kept
repeating how
much I loved my camera, how I could lose all of my
fingers and my eyesight and still make
the camera do whatever I wanted.
I humoured his ramblings for the first while, and then I
began to tune-out
his new little endeavour.
Working Farm, Manitoulin Island
© 2002-6 by SLaF, Cricket Hill ~The Digital Darkroom,
Original
Digital Photography, All
Rights Reserved
Yes, Joseph went out and bought me a
digital camera, and he was So Excited! I was mildly
curious and mostly
unimpressed. I humoured him and looked through the manual and
quickly
became frustrated. I was going to have to learn all kinds of new jargon
and concepts!
There were so many buttons and settings, and I kept trying
to translate the concepts back to
my dear and comfortable friend, my
Contax SLR. I became
even more frustrated after
taking some photographs
- there was no "zen", and
the photographs (as viewed on our
computer)
were variously troubled.
Joseph maintained his calm mantra that
if I embraced the learning curve, I would come
to love all that is
possible with digital photography.
The Beaver Road Marsh ~
'Cubed', Manitoulin Island
© 2002-6 by SLaF & JVP, Cricket Hill ~The Digital Darkroom,
Original Digital Photography, All Rights Reserved
