Happy Canada Day!

Or, Happy Dominion Day!

Yes, I am aware that this is not the Canadian flag. See, for the past few years I've spent Canada Day at places like Fort Edmonton and the Ukrainian Heritage Village, where they put on Dominion Day events. I therefore don't really have a time-period appropriate picture to post today. Oh well. I have history-buff friends who will appreciate this.

I'm off to spend the day in Halifax with some friends. I hope you are having a lovely long weekend.

O Canada

Happy (Belated) Canada Day!

I had a lovely day with my parents and two of my best friends, Gabby and Sally. Breakfast, a picnic lunch, an afternoon at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village, barbecued steak dinner and fireworks...what more could you ask for? I had good friends, good food, sunshine, photo opportunities galore (I came back from the afternoon with almost 100 images), and fireworks (which, as a lover of light, I adore). Yup. Pretty great Canada Day. I hope you also had a great day.

Getaway Car

Getaway Car

Ash Koley

Who let the cat out? Who's in charge here?

What's the latest? Am I supposed to be here?

Have you met him? Have you met her?

He's the greatest but she thinks she's better

Who let the minutes hold you hostage?

Who said their better when they haven't started?

I meant to tell you but you looked too tired

I meant to tell you but the race had started

Who shooting this pilot?

It'll never get made

Who wrote this song?

It will never get played

I've been here for so long I might as well stay

It looks as though things are never gonna change

And if the moment's hard to find

Or the perfect place to hide

I'm building me my very own getaway car

So introduce me while I'm floating

My smile feels tired and I think it's showing

Please excuse me, the water's shallow

I hear what you're saying though it's hard to swallow

I'll fight the currents, treading water

Why sink or swim here when nobody bothers?

They never tell you if you look too tired

They never tell you 'til the race has started

Who's shooting this pilot?

It'll never get made

Who wrote this song?

It will never get played

I've been here for so long I might as well stay

It looks as though things are never gonna change

And if the moment's hard to find

Or the perfect place to hide

I'm building me my very own getaway car

It feels like a play on and overcrowded stage

Every face in the crowd whispered words getting loud

Let the song set the stage, let the voices change

Cue the choir, let the violin sustain

Who's shooting this pilot?

It'll never get made

Who wrote this song?

It will never get played

I've been here for so long I might as well stay

It looks as though things are never gonna change

And if the moment's hard to find

Or the perfect place to hide

I'm building me my very own getaway car

Ash Koley is one of my latest musical discoveries. Plus they are Canadian (and you already know that I love me some good Canadian music). This song is off of their Blue EP and I have been listening to it on repeat for several hours now. Itunes describes Ash Koley's music as "spirit-lifting pop music that's occasionally festooned with moody fringes" and although this particular tune leans more towards the moody side of that equation, it is generally a pretty summary. This song kind of captures a certain mixture of desperation and concession that often infects my heart and mind.The music video does a perfect job of capturing that mood. I love the homemade quality of it. This is the exact kind of song I would want to sing while walking down the snow-filled, dead-of-winter streets. Something depressing or frustrating would have just happened and I would be determinedly facing the freezing cold in order to walk out my frustrations. Yeah. This song just makes a lot of sense to me right now.

Framed

One of my favorite things to do when editing photos is incredibly simple: cropping. It always amazes me how much cropping an image can change it. It brings completely new elements into focus. It's also just as much about what you leave out as what you leave in. Sometimes I have a hard time deciding exactly what it is about a particular shot that I want to focus in on. So today I decided to demonstrate the power of cropping. The first image is the original picture I took. It's a couple years old and I took it at a farmers' market in Halifax on a delightfully grey, Nova Scotia-y day. It's a fine picture of a lovely flower, but nothing particularly spectacular. However, crop it in a few different ways and voila, you have some truly special images. Personally, I am a big fan of the first cropped version. I like that you can still kind of see that it is in a tray of pots and not in the ground. It retains that market feel and yet is focused on the beauty of the flower. The second one draws the attention to the details of the flower, which is something I love to do. When I look at nature and often when I am composing pictures I focus in on the details, the tiny things. That's just what tends to grab my attention. By cropping the photo, the details become all there is to see and therefore that much more important and captivating. The third photo is a pretty standard way that I tend to shoot flowers or crop existing shots. For some reason I really like the composition of just part of a flower in the frame of the image against a non-descript background. It brings the attention to the flower without being your standard, central focal point. The last image is a bit blurred because of the part of the original that I cropped it out of, but I kind of like that about it. It is not a specific flower that is depicted. I love the intensity of the green too. And that just distinguishable bud curled into the bottom of the frame is great.

I went to see the latest round of exhibits at the AGA today and it was fantastic. The one I was most excited to see was "Reframing a Nation", which is a collection of works by Canadian artists. I should warn you now that this is likely to turn into a nerdy ramble. I will not be offended should you decide to stop reading right now. In fact, I won't even know. Anyway, I was excited for this exhibit because I am fascinated by the concept of national identity and how it is formed, particularly when it comes to Canada. Do we even have a national identity? Or do we simply define ourselves in negatives (we are not American, for example)? And it really fascinates me how literature and art play into the development and reinforcement of the Canadian identity. So much can be seen in these paintings, but one of the important things to consider is what has been intentionally included and what has been intentionally excluded. In Canadian art the landscape is what is depcited most often; typically the harsh, barren land is shown while hints of civilization are completely ignored or played down. This is the bush myth at its finest. This is how Canadians define themselves. We are a people beset by Mother Nature, who must struggle for our very survival. It is us against the land and although the land is beautiful, we have to protect ourselves from it. We take pride in the conditions we face. What Canadian has never bragged about surviving a winter where the windchill made it feel like -50*C? How many of us love hiking and climbing mountains? (Not me, but I appreciate the views and admire those who do participate in these activities.) I know that this isn't limited to Canada, but there is something unique about the Canadian relationship with nature and it is definitely part of our national identity. I just find it so fascinating how much you can learn about our national identity by looking at what we include and exclude in our art. This is actually what I want to study at grad school, how Canadian literature and art construct, reveal, and reinforce the Canadian identity. I will now stop rambling because I could talk about this endlessly. If you are ever so inclined to have a discussion about Canadian identity, art, or just national identity in general let me know, I would love to hear other people's views on the subject.