8 Clicks from Nowhere ䷀

Dispatches ⌂

Tag: travel tales

Chapter List

  • Photographic Oddity

    I’ve written a few times about the black and white photography that accompanies the posts on this project.  What I haven’t mentioned as often is the shades of vulnerability I encounter in that act of taking such non-traditional photos in public.

    Let’s define something: I think of a traditional photo as something that someone out in the wilds of a public space might expect one to take a photo of, like say, a scenic view, a bit of shapely architecture, a group of people, an animal, flowers, or some kind of public performance. Everyone takes pics of these things. They are quote… normal.

    A non-traditional photo is something else that usually falls outside of that category: say, snapping pics of a crack in the pavement, a macro of the textured bark on a tree, a storm drain cover, a street sign, one’s own feet, or even the whorls of clouds in the sky. Not everyone points their camera at these sorts of things. They are, um… less normal.

    My black and white photography tends to stray almost exclusively into the non-traditional realm.

    And having partaken in increasingly frequent acts of non-traditional photography over the last few months, I have noticed that with every click of the shutter I have been putting myself into a weird sort of public performance and place and vulnerability.

    I stopped while walking through Paris in August (when we were there on vacation) pausing to point my camera at a mailbox. Parisians who for the most part went about their lives indifferent to my existence on that trip, instead turned their heads and payed a bit more attention to my non-traditional moment of photography.

    It draws more attention to take odd photos than to take photos of things people expect to take photos of. People’s heads turn. There is a moment of “what’s that guy doing?” and then they move on… but still a moment.

    It didn’t bother me, of course.

    It was just a curiosity of consideration, and I couldn’t help but ponder what was going through the minds of commuting Parisians as some curious Canadian snapped serious pics of the relatively mundane in an otherwise massively photogenic city like that.

    I was a standout, an oddity, and temporarily creatively vulnerable to something I can’t quite put my finger on.

  • Curry Surprises

    We recently returned from a mini family vacation to France. And yes it was a long list of the lovely things you are probably thinking, including the food.

    Oh, the food.

    France is bursting with great food. Cheeses and breads and wines and it often seems like a pastry shop on every corner, and could we have tried it all in our short visit we just might have.

    It did get me thinking about cooking, of course. We cook at home a lot—a creative outlet of its own sort, yes—and we do that not only because it is the more economical and healthy choice, but because we love to do it. Too, it’s a family tradition, of sorts.

    All that said, I started my home cooking career late. I moved away from home having learned how to fry an egg and heat some pasta sauce from a jar, and maybe grill up a cheese sandwich if I was brave.  But realistically, at twenty, I was very much a beginner.

    Beginners in the fine art of cooking can find themselves with many outcomes, but if one wants to eat on a student’s budget the one outcome that cannot afford to manifest is surrender: you just gotta keep trying.

    My wife uses it as a punchline now, but one of my early beginner experiments in cooking as a broke student was a dish I affectionately called Curry Surprise—a mix of ground beef, pasta, cheddar cheese, curry paste and a few other add-ins—that was a weekly staple in my campus housing kitchen. It was pretty terrible. But it was better than another bowl of macaroni and cheese from a box.

    These days we cook elaborate pasta dishes, grill amazing sandwiches made from homemade sourdough, and dine on a long list of honed and practiced recipes. 

    But once, long ago, we were beginners and we played with terrible ideas that literally nourished us and taught us how to break away from instant meals and ever more deeply enjoy amazing foods at home or abroad.