On this morning’s walk I chose music over prose.  The brooding plot of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover in all the consideration before action seems quite bleak and maybe the story is written intentionally so that renewal in physical sensuality is highlighted against the mundane existence of day-to-day life.

Music suited me better in the initiation of the day. Robbie Robertson played first, then Bruce Cockburn and U2, then on to Roxy Music and The Tragically Hip, all on my genius playlist beginning with Sweet Fire of Love. Then, in combination with thought about this photograph Sting begins on a song called The Soul Cages. For as much as the song’s lyrics refer to our humanoid condition here on earth I was drawn to consider whether or not a camera is another soul cage. I’m thinking that a camera is a tool that cages the soul within the photograph produced in that it  encapsulates a moment of time, recording Life status and history in whatever condition we or the world were in – good or bad.

The camera photographed here is a Leica.  A while back, Maciek Sokulski encouraged his Shuttertime with Sid and Mac podcast listeners to purchase an older camera, one that causes you to think about photography beyond the digital means, a camera with which to use your honed knowledge/skills of photography and to exercise expertise and skill in creating good photographs without waste.  This Leica is my father’s from the early sixties.  It is a camera that was used technically in the production of plastic and was used as part of the process to view at a microscopic level the grade/quality of plastics at an Edmonton plastics plant.  It is a Leica without a viewfinder and is something my brothers and I should try out one of these days to see how it shoots. Maybe we will give it a try this summer.

Listening to – Robbie Robertson’s Soap Box Preacher, Amanda Marshall’s Sitting On Top of the World, Jann Arden’s The Sound Of, U2’s I Fall Down, Joan Osborne’s Man in the Long Black Coat and Neil Young’s When God Made Me.

Quote to Inspire – “Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving.  What you have caught on film is captured forever … it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.” – Aaron Siskind