Dear Montreal

Dear Montreal,

Thanks for the jazz and the croissants and the crepes.

Thanks for the lights and the graffiti and the old buildings.

Thanks for the countless opportunities to take photos.

Thanks for reminding me of all the reasons I love cities. And all the reasons that I don't.

Thanks for reminding me of my love for French. And for making me determined to become fluent.

Thanks for providing a jumping off point for some new and crazy dreams.

Thanks for providing the space for me to relax all the way into a friendship.

Thanks for allowing me to immerse myself in art in so many forms.

Thanks for leaving me aching and disoriented in my normal life. That sounds bad, but it is actually very, very good.

Hopefully I'll see you again soon.

Bree

Off to Montreal

My friend and I are headed to Monteral for Reading Week. I am terribly excited. So, it will be pretty quiet here on the blog for the next little bit. But fear not, I will come back armed with an incredible number of photos to share with all of you. Have a great week!

Obsession

obsession, n.
3. An idea image or influence which continually fills or troubles the mind; a compulsive interest or preoccupation; the fact or state of being troubled or preoccupied in this way.


I may have a bit of an obsession with photos of sunlight through tree branches. I hope this doesn't bother anyone.

On Days Like This

Today was not a good day. I did have a lovely dinner with a friend, but aside from that there just wasn't much good going on. When life sucks and nothing seems to be going quite right, I find that searching out beauty and inspiration is one of the ways I can maintain my precarious grasp on sanity. Here are a few of the places I wander to online when I'm in need of a reminder of the good and beautiful things in life. I thought I'd share them with y'all so that you too could turn to them in moments of need.

A Cup of Jo - I visit this blog every single day, without fail. Every. Single. Day.

rockstar diaries - I'm obsessed with this blog. It is impossible for me to not be inspired by Taza's posts.

Clumsy, Creative Bliss - Gorgeous photography and a consistently positive outlook on life. This is a must-visit blog any time I'm feeling sapped.

wit + delight - Consistently reminds me why I appreciate the finer things in life, and how wonderful the simplest things can be.

Note to Self - Just a gorgeous blog. And the Monday quotations always resonate with me.

Nancy Straughan - The sheer volume of visual and artistic inspiration I find on this blog is astonishing.

thxthxthx - Because I find this concept absolutely delightful and Leah's view of the world is so wonderful.

Ring Them Bells - Witty. Funny. Touching. Slightly bizarre. Elizabeth is a delightful writer.

The Storialist - Ekphrastic poetry that is incisive and touching and challenging all at the same time. Hannah's discipline astonishes me.

Live Creating Yourself - Always something beautiful to be found on here.

The Meltdown

Winter just doesn't seem to want to stick around out here. Everything started melting today. It made for some pretty photos, but not exactly the kind I was hoping to take. Oh well. I was just excited about being able to squeeze in a half hour photo walk before my afternoon class. Sometimes I'm pretty certain that art and my friends are the only things keeping me from having a total meltdown.

Snow-bound

It snowed a lot today, and I honestly could not be happier about it. It was an absolutely beautiful day. Not too cold, and perfectly wintery light. With the exception of a quick trip to the grocery store, I've been at home reading all day like the good, studious grad student that I am, even though my heart was trying to convince me that I should go take a good long photo walk. Well, I couldn't NOT pick up my camera when there was an abundance of snow and the perfect fading light of the end of the day, so I went out (without a coat!) and took pictures just outside my apartment for about 10 minutes. Hopefully the snow will stick around tomorrow and I can squeeze in a photo walk in the morning.


One of my friends came over for dinner on Friday before we headed out to a concert and party, and she left her bike here since it is generally unadvisable to bike after drinking. The weather hasn't exactly been bike friendly since then though, so her bike is still living outside my door. Turned out to be lucky for me, since it made for a couple of great shots this afternoon.

Cover Me

In general, I would not say that I am a fan of cover songs. They can be done really well, but more often than not a cover just doesn't live up to the original. I honestly don't think anyone is ever going to be able to cover "Big Yellow Taxi" in a way that lives up to Joni Mitchell. (If you think you know of a cover that does that, then feel free to send it my way.) Every so often though, I find a cover that I absolutely adore. Here, for your listening pleasure, are a few that have struck my fancy lately.

Birdy covering Bon Iver's "Skinny Love"

Pentatonix covering Gotye's "Somebody that I Used to Know"

The Little Willies covering Dolly Parton's "Jolene"

And, because I'm still obsessed with it, The Honey Trees covering Moon River

Don't bend me or I will break

Wake Me Up
Norah Jones

Wake me up when it's over
Wake me up when it's done
When he's gone away and taken everything
Wake me up

Wake me up when the skies are clearing
And the water is still
Because I will not watch the ship sail away
So please say you will

If it were any other day
This wouldn't get the best of me

But today I'm not so strong
So lay me down with a sad song
When it stops then you know
I've been gone too long

Don't shake me awake
Don't bend me or I will break
Find me somewhere between my dreams
With the sun on my face

I will still feel it later on
But for now I'd rather be asleep


Do you ever find yourself listening to a song over and over and over again? I do this all the time. If I had grown up in the age of records I would have been one of those people who played a single until the record actually warped. For the past few weeks this Norah Jones tune has been the one on endless repeat at my apartment.

What the Camera Sees

from "Fontanelles"
Anne Michaels

The chemistry of looking;
to look until the river
swallows us, until the redness
of the stone fills our veins.
To look until we're
seen. But this is only longing.
We leave our heat shadows
in moss shocked with frost.
Even your camera
sees more; the detail you crave.
We strain to see even
what the camera sees,
what the eye can't; and this is as good
as a philosophy. An embrace
of failure, as if
just once, impossibly,
we'll catch the visible reflection
of what's invisible.
Our white breath in the dark.

How to photograph this,
the dark when one has said
too much. The dark of 
sudden feeling. Love's
darkness.


Here's where the new blog name comes from. It's no secret that I seriously love Anne Michaels' work. She's one of the authors I am dealing with in my thesis. If I take a PhD, she will be one of the authors I deal with in my dissertation. So, it seems appropriate to select a phrase from one of her poems to define this blog. The ache, the longing, contained in this passage are the perfect description of how I feel about photography.

Branded

You might have noticed that last night I quietly changed the name of my blog and made a few little adjustments to fonts and colours. I've been wanting to do a total rebranding for a while, but since I have neither the time to make massive changes myself or the money to pay someone else, the changes are relatively minor aside from the name. So, why change the name of the blog? Basically, it's just time for something new. "Shape of Your Looking Glass" served me well for almost two years, but for several reasons it hasn't been sitting quite right with me for a while. Yes, there were reasons I picked it that night I decided starting a blog was a good idea. However, I also decided to start this whole thing on a whim and the name was picked late at night while sitting in the apartment living room surrounded by books about Sylvia Plath, and so the significance of those reasons was relatively minimal. Also, the song that "Shape of Your Looking Glass" came from seemed to be part of a very particular chapter in my life. I loved it the first time I heard it. I still love it. But for a while it seemed to be a song of longing for me. I spent this period of time constantly talking about heading east. Toronto. Nova Scotia. Europe. This summer I moved across the country and literally was eastern bound. It's like the song saw me through a particular chapter in my life, and nicely closed it off for me. It was sometime in the midst of moving, of drastically changing my life, that I started to feel like I wanted to change the blog's name. My approach to photography has changed a lot in the last two years as well. I'm more serious about it now. I think about it more. I've invested a lot more time and money into it. But I'm also having more fun with it. It has become one of the things which allows me to balance my life and ground myself. Basically, the place photography has in my life has changed dramatically and my understanding of it has changed dramatically as well. "Shape of Your Looking Glass" began to feel too simplistic. It was unable to capture this new significance and meaning. This new name has a lot more significance for me, a lot more thought put into it. Tomorrow I'll let you know why. So, until then, thank you to those of you who have been on this journey with me. Welcome to those of you who have only recently joined me. I hope many of you stick around for what's still to come.