Marinating Ideas

  • Honorable Mention: My Photography 101

    Honorable Mention: My Photography 101

     

     

    Ever since I was a kid and start­ed burn­ing eggs while learn­ing how to cook, I real­ized I tru­ly enjoyed doing cre­ative works. As such, and final­ly, 15+ years lat­er I decid­ed to try my hand at pho­tog­ra­phy. As luck would have it I got a Canon A‑series cam­era a few years ago as a birth­day gift. For those who do not know, the Canon A‑series are known for hav­ing a lot of man­u­al options for the price. They are pret­ty straight to the point and although you would not  utter their name in the same sen­tence along DSLRs,  one can­not deny that for a bud­get cam­era and if you want to stay away from dumb-proof-yet-bor­ing point and shoots, they about the best option you can have.

    I remem­ber I took some nice shots with that cam­era. Then it got stolen. Sad­ly dur­ing a move, the bag my cam­era was in *dis­ap­peared* from with­in my mov­ing truck. A call to the mov­ing com­pa­ny proved fruit­less.

    A few years ago, I man­aged to save enough to buy a new cam­era, anoth­er Canon, this time an A640. A 10 megapix­el cam­era which again like my pre­vi­ous cam­era was heavy on the man­u­al options. So I start­ed shoot­ing again. I would have to say some real­ly nice pics came out of that. You can see them here on my Flickr! Which I am very proud off! Spe­cial­ly since my cam­era just stopped work­ing and I do not think it is finan­cial­ly fea­si­ble to send it back to Canon for repairs.

    BUT! Before the cam­era died, I was able to take a few more shots which I did enter in the City of Toron­to Pho­tog­ra­phy con­test, and was able to earn a Hon­orary Men­tion for my work. Although mon­e­tar­i­ly speak­ing I get squat, I am tru­ly proud to have been hon­ored and that is proof that at least, pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly speak­ing, I am not burn­ing eggs any­more.

  • My Paintings (Part II)

    This is one of my first *real* paint­ings where I actu­al­ly tried to con­vey a mes­sage. The ‘Sand­man’ is a piece where the observ­er might not be sure at what exact­ly they are look­ing at. Whether it is a wine­glass or a hour­glass, a sur­re­al bowler hat adds to the anthro­po­mor­phic work and asks to be open to inter­pre­ta­tion. In one, it might be a glass of red wine while if the lat­ter, the con­tents of the hour­glass seem to be spilling onto the ethe­re­al.

    All of the paint­ings are done in water­col­or as I find the medi­um inter­est­ing and most impor­tant­ly, fun. The idea of cre­at­ing has always been a plea­sure of mine and paint­ing is mere­ly anoth­er tool, a gate­way in which to let some of those ideas that linger inside all of us a path into the real world.

    I used to be more into poet­ry when I was young (read: ear­ly 20’s) heck, I end­ed up writ­ing over 50+ poems! Some of he lat­er, non-roman­tic ones have found their way in here but for the most part, I have kept it a poem-free zone as I tend to cringe when I read blogs which are 100% poet­ry. How­ev­er I am think­ing of putting some of the best ones up, you know just for kicks. As I have been feel­ing pret­ty cre­ative in the last cou­ple of weeks. Not only through paint­ing but through some more seri­ous mat­ters which will even­tu­al­ly be mak­ing their way up here. So until then, feel free to pon­der and give your two cents on the paint­ing.

  • My Paintings (Part I)

    A few weeks ago, I attend­ed a star-stud­ded and rel­a­tive­ly new Euro­pean Film Fes­ti­val held in the glorious…well, actu­al­ly my ancient-local­ly-owned inde­pen­dent movie the­ater about twen­ty min­utes from my house… and on top of that, the screen­ings were free. So…maybe it was not all that but you real­ly could­n’t go wrong with that.

    Any­way, one of the last flicks I saw was a pseu­do-his­tor­i­cal tale called El Gre­co (PS:. You can watch the movie for free off from that link) that’s based on the actu­al life of, El Gre­co –one of the most influ­en­tial painters of the west­ern world, and no, I did not make that up. Which remind­ed me of exact­ly how bad my paint­ings are how­ev­er, since I have nev­er claimed to be in the same league and I love doing them –did I men­tion that paint­ing can also relieve stress?

    So, I decid­ed to keep on going. I find it to be an excel­lent hob­by which is use­ful as a ‘stream of con­scious­ness’ exer­cise that preps your mind and focus­es it into the right frame for any oth­er cre­ative projects. With that said, this lit­tle work over here is called ‘One Tree Hill.’ I know, I know, no piv­otal prover­bial peek into the human con­di­tion. Although I have been told, if you look close­ly at the blue sky lines above where they meet the red sun­set that you can actu­al­ly make out the shape of fish­es on a stream. Per­son­al­ly, I do not see it but hey, the more seri­ous­ly peo­ple take me ‘dash­ing’ on can­vas­es, the clos­er I am to one day sell­ing one. *I hope*

  • All Good Things: The Compass Culture

    All Good Things: The Compass Culture

    It has been two years ago, already? Time indeed does fly by. It was two short years ago I was for­tu­nate enough to help a friend to start off a project she had want­ed to do for a long time. ‘Start an online trav­el mag­a­zine!’ she said, with peo­ple from all over the world con­tribut­ing their expe­ri­ences through both pho­tog­ra­phy and writ­ten articles.‘But with a focus in pho­tog­ra­phy.’ It sound­ed like an amaz­ing idea, just a few pieces of the puz­zled need­ed to be set in place. She got to work.

    First, a name, a catchy name was need­ed. She brain­stormed and researched but noth­ing jumped up at her or like most of us, who have ever bought domain you find that most of the eas­i­est and straight­for­ward names ‑which online are your lit­er­al iden­ti­ty, have long, long ago been tak­en. As such, some­times it tends to be quite hard find­ing just that right name. No one wants to slap two word togeth­er sim­ply because they have not used by any­one else. So, like many things in his­to­ry, the name found her, in this case in the way of her broth­er who just casu­al­ly hap­pened upon the idea of using a ‘com­pass.’ Fair enough, the idea of trav­el­ling and the use of com­pass­es is as old as hon­eys and bees but with­out the buzzing and sting­ing. Then we hit some online search engines for a few play on words to see what was avail­able on the inter­webs and just like that, The Com­pass Cul­ture was born. Then she hur­ried to reg­is­ter the name before some moron bought the domain first and used it to sell porn. Seri­ous­ly, it hap­pens!

    Just like in any project, there is a time for plan­ning and there is a time when you just have get to it –hope­ful­ly after the plan­ning ses­sions are done, prim and prop­er, or course– and plan­ning she did and with the help of her broth­er aka: her Art Direc­tor, the site was up in no time and ready to carve itself a chunk of the inter­net! And… then noth­ing hap­pened.

    Con­tent was need­ed and I was lucky enough to be one of the first peo­ple to sub­mit some arti­cles from a recent Euro­pean trip to Spain and France, which even­tu­al­ly they also found their way back to my blog. Then soon, with a lot of adver­tis­ing from her part, whether it was online on sites like Craig’s List, Face­book, Kaji­ji and in the real world like Uni­ver­si­ties post­ing boards to let the word out to writ­ers and pho­tog­ra­phers alike the site, like a flower, began flour­ish­ing. Not to men­tion she was then an edi­tor in her own right! Which is nev­er as easy as peo­ple think, but not too shab­by for a side project. As I always say, “you want to be some­body? Don’t wait for some­one to give you the job! Cre­ate it first and then just put your­self in the posi­tion.” It’s not easy but so she did. She jumped right into it. The pic­ture at the bot­tom left, was her first cov­er. Although I do like the con­trast of both of them.

    And so, fast for­ward two years and 90 arti­cles lat­er from just about every cor­ner of the world, she unfor­tu­nate­ly, due to time con­strains decid­ed to close shop. Which is sad to hear, how­ev­er one can­not deny that a lot must have been learned from the expe­ri­ence which I am sure will help her to land that next job she wants. Short­ly the site will be turned into an arti­cle repos­i­to­ry, which sounds more than fair that at least the project leaves a lega­cy for all the writ­ers who con­tributed and as a tool for them to still dis­play and adver­tise their work. I wish you the best on your next project. Well done!