Wonderment

It’s easy to take picture after picture when out and about. Whether you shoot street, events, candid portraits, architecture, nature… you can easily fall into an image capture mode similar to hypnosis. You desperately want to find great images and stop seeing, but most important cease to allow yourself to be impressed by what you see. And that impression is key to producing pictures that will in turn leave a strong impression on the viewer. In order to translate a scene fully, you need to allow it to inhabit you.

I regularly visit a few streams nearby, all seasons, different times of day. I have learned their paths in the forest and know a lot about them. In winter, there are amazing ice formations all along them, and it’s difficult not to take a picture every few steps! Yet, I need to stop and just be there, long enough to really allow the stream and its presence to build a voice that will guide me to the picture that best presents how it feels to be there.

So I sometimes stop, put the tripod down and just sit, listen, breath. Quieting the soul allows to see more.

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Expectations

A year has passed, a new begins… life continues to surprise by letting some dreams come to be, while others remain out of reach.

Happiness abounds when you stop looking. Simple things: gestures, moments, gatherings, make each day special. Worthwhile.

Editing summer pictures I’ve kept tucked away for days too cold to go out are a thrill to discover.

A first child expected for the coming summer promises great joy and short nights!

The new year has come again and life continues to thrive.

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Under the surface

The leaves have fallen, nothing remains. And as they waited in clumps and layers, thick and sparse, in nooks and against logs, blowing across fields and in as many places as leaves… the waters froze. Lakes and streams, puddles and ponds, all taken to quiet waiting with their belongings tightly sealed away.

I can see, though, these weeks where no snow has fallen. Tadpoles swim under the ice and all things slowly come to a halt. It is beautiful, to see things this way; held in suspense and perfectly still. Autumn is like that, strange and contained; autumn is like that.

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