More resolutions plus a few favourites from 2014.

Back in November, I got together with a few other wedding photographers to talk shop.  So much of what we do is done in isolation so it’s really nice to hang out with folks who really speak your language.  Without an agenda, we mostly just sat around and chatted about real hot-button topics such as photo printers, photo software, photo books, etc..  You know, stuff you can just talk about for hours.

One of the other photographers, the awesome Catherine Farquharson, was showing us some books she’d recently made.  It just was the tip of the iceberg.  In addition to all the books she makes for her clients, turns out she also makes a book every time she goes on a trip and each year she makes a yearbook with her Instagram photos too!  Mind.  Blown.

For years, my own photos have lived on hard drives.  And that’s it.

In retrospect, it does feel a bit crazy to think that I went through all that effort.  Carrying all that gear or constantly pulling out my phone, here and everywhere — just to capture those perfect, precious moments.  Then, once nabbed, they can just live on as mere pixels, buried under tera-mountains of other pixels.  If I was never going to look at these photos again, why bother taking them in the first place?  Do I really enjoy all this endless scrolling on my phone?

Catherine’s stack of photo books left me inspired.  And galvanized.

I’ve since decided I’m also going to make a book of every trip I go on.  And I am going to start making my own yearbooks too.  There are so many photos that I love but just had nowhere to live.

Now I’m building them a house.

I’ve started sifting through the archives, pulling out all my favourites.  Doesn’t matter if it was from a job, a vacation or a late Sunday afternoon spent on the couch with our dog.  As long as I loved it, it made the cut.

I saw some photos that I’d totally forgotten about.  But luckily for them, I’ve decided now that I want to remember.

(Here are a few photos from my still-in-progress 2014 yearbook!)

A return to Georgian Bay.

I know I haven’t been an A+ blogger lately.

I’m going to say that all this heat has baked my brain but, really, the truth is that I don’t have air conditioning in my office.  Though I guess that’s kinda the same.  Two sides of the same coin kinda bag.  No matter, I’m sticking with it.

Sitting in one’s east-facing office, without any kind of cooling mechanism to speak of, in front of a heat-generating computer, with all of your hot-as-heck hard drives blowing heat in your already blotchy and red face isn’t fun, let me tell you.

So, I’m packing up and heading north.  But just for a few days.

It’s unintentionally become a sorta annual thing.  It’s a silent writing retreat on Georgian Bay, facilitated by the amazing and awesome Chris Kay Fraser.  I’ve been every summer for the last two, making this trip my third.

Basically, your days are like this.  You wake up, do whatever you want, hopefully manage to wrestle some words on a page / laptop / napkin-if-you’re-desperate and, when the time of silence is nearing to a close (which officially happens at 3pm) the scent of freshly-baked cookies will come wafting on a breeze.  At 3, Chris will ring a brass bell on the cottage porch where everyone will gather and share their day so far.  Then there’s dinner and some group writing-workshop-y stuff in the evening and then bed.  It’s all very relaxed, peaceful, supportive and all-around wonderfulness.  Oh and did I mention there’s a canoe?

Anyway, it’s a little gift that I give myself and hopefully it will yield some stories for me to share with you one day.

In the meantime, here’s a little ditty of a slideshow that I made from the first time I went, in 2009.  And here’s the itty bitty blog post from when I returned last year.

Wish I could tell you what to expect when I come back but, like it’s been for the last two years, even I will be surprised.

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Georgian Bay.  June, 2010.

A little levity.

Greg, March 30, 2010.

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Any guesses at which month in the archive I was perusing through on a night when I should’ve been sleeping??

The night is dark.

Greg, March 14, 2010.

Where we were… on March 16, 2010.

A flashback to sunlight and shadows.

Greg, March 31, 2010.

Self-portrait, March 1, 2010.

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Two photos from my “photo-a-day-for-a-year” quest that have never before seen the backlight of a monitor.