Transitions, Transformations and a Little Photography
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Being Present, What and How We See
I feel like this term gets thrown around a lot these days and in some ways it is losing its impact and meaning for me from overuse or casual use. A google definition of being fully present states that your mind, body and emotions are completely engaged in the present moment, but what does that mean exactly? To me it means that I’m not allowing distractions to take over the moment - I’m aware enough to know when my mind starts to wander and I can effectively bring myself back to the moment. I think for me that is the distinction - when I hear some people talk about being fully present, I get a sense that they are implying that you can totally block out everything but the present moment and I don’t think that as humans we’re wired to do that - at least I’m certainly not.
First Impressions of Zambia
Well we’ve survived our 20+ hour flights to South Africa and we spent some time with the Wild Eye team. This is the company that we’ve used for our safari tours and I cannot speak too highly of them and their support in the planning and booking process. They take care of all of the details that make for an enjoyable and smooth trip, plus we have the added peace of mind knowing that we have support should we need it in case anything doesn’t go to plan (I’ve travelled to Iceland and Kory and I have visited Kenya and now Zambia with Wild Eye).
It was lovely to meet Tanya, Caitlin and Judy - just a few members of the logistics team who have helped us with booking trips. Being able to put faces to names when all communications have been via email or WhatsApp messages really helps.
Encore Seniors Talk
It’s interesting how certain things can cross generations and result in strong connections when you least expect it - that’s how it felt when I gave a follow up photography talk at a seniors facility earlier this week. Hold on a second - let me back up a moment and try to make some sense here - I received an email out of the blue about a month ago with an invitation to give a photography talk at a senior’s facility to go along with their Safari Themed High Tea event. I have spoken at this venue a couple of years ago about Bird Photography.(I wrote about it here)
I was pleased to accept as I had enjoyed giving the talk on bird photography several years ago. I took some 25,000 photos during our 3 week safari trip, so I was pretty confident that I had enough material to fill an hour speaking slot - in fact I think that being able to come up with enough material was not the issue I would face at all
Planning an African Safari
I have long had a fascination and affinity for wildlife and a particular interest in animals from other areas of the world that I don’t see where I live. I am part of a photography group (A Year With My Camera - a high recommend for anyone wanting to learn photography as it’s a free year long course - check out the link in resources) and a very talented photographer from Australia posted an image of a Queen Green Ant covered in zombie fungus (seriously google this). This fungus takes over the host ant and gradually impairs its ability to function - finally killing its host and enjoying a new location to grow and thrive. I was totally fascinated to learn about this insect as we do not have anything like this in Canada.
That’s a bit of a long winded introduction, however it may explain my excitement to be heading back to Africa with Kory in 2026 - I know we plan these a long way out
Revisiting old photography files
I find that when I do a photoshoot I tend to process the images within a few days - sometimes even right away, but I’ve found that recently I’ve moved away from doing this in order to gain some perspective (ok full confession - I was forced to do this recently when I forgot my card reader when travelling and so I couldn’t download images until I got home).
I’m thinking that this is a good thing to do though because if I have an exciting shoot and either capture some bird or wildlife or scene that I didn’t expect or the light or conditions were amazing - I can be too emotionally tied to the images and not able to really assess them effectively.