And something else happened this weekend too. I started to relax. so much of the time I am so busy being serious about my writing and photography that I seem to get stuck in a very serious rut. But I am never serious about anything I shoot on my iPhone, so, all weekend when I was shooting pictures, and had nothing but my iPhone to use, I wasn’t taking anything seriously at all, and, quite frankly, it was quite freeing. Sometimes it’s just nice to relax and see what happens when you push the “shutter.”

I had grand plans for the 24 hours when I signed up a month ago, but my life seems to have run away from me again and I am spending the 24 hours of Long Shot with my in-laws. and so I grabbed my iphone with it’s toy camera app, and my wife’s camera with the hipstamatic app and the Holga lens filter/ adapter for the iphone, and am spending the next 24 hours taking photos of my 24 hours with the in-laws.

First stop? The comic book store. Where I got some fun shots, and picked up Kick-Ass 2 while I was there. Lesson learned? Find inspiration where ever you can.

The first title, The Cartography of Farmers’ Wives: Photography from 1915-1976, is a short paper-back book with sampling of photography from my great-grandmother and my grandmother. Many of the photographs are landscapes from eastern Washington, although there are a few portraits as well in this contemplative story of one families relationship with the land. I look at this book as a small meditation on a much larger project that I think will probably take me the next 2-3 years to complete. Now that I know I can complete a small project with some of the information and items I have in this collection of family history that has been handed to me, I feel ready to embark on the larger journey.

The second book, A Traveling Song is a small paper-back of Hipstamiatic images I took on my phone on the road-trip my wife and I took when we moved across the country from Washington, D.C., to Seattle, Washington, in 2009. We pretty much drove straight through, and most of the images were taken from the car window while passing through middle America.

On saturday morning, I was up before the birds. Low tide was at 5:30 in the morning, and I decided that if I could get my butt up at that hour, I would make a jug of coffee and go down to a tiny inlet on the west side of Vashon and watch the sky, sea, and creatures wake up. And I made it. No one else seemed to be up that early but the gulls, and the morning quietness was well worth the early rise.

This afternoon it’s back to the city and the projects and distractions that await me, but I feel more ready to start checking things off my to-do list now that I have had a bit of a calm weekend to refocus. Another thing I realized this weekend, is that I don’t have to take myself so seriously when I am out shooting. I am just trying to bring a camera with me wherever I go just to shoot. The simple act of shooting may not result in any masterpieces, and hell, it may even result in a bunch of crap that I just end up tossing, but the act of shooting and looking through photos is inspiring more longer term project that I can take seriously. Plus, it’s reminding me how to see. So I’ll just keep being shutter happy for a while, at least while I let the serious projects marinate and come into fruition.

So, long-term, serious project these beach shots are surely not, but they are an exercise in the practice of looking.

They both also took a lot of landscape photographs, and candid images of their families (as opposed to posed group shots), and that is primarily what I have been working with as of late.

One of the reasons I am starting to work with these images is because I am taking a photobook class. I signed up for the class mainly for the technical information (i.e. what makes a successful photobook? what is the history? what makes a successful series of images? when is a photobook the best format? etc.) that will aid with the new publishing venture in the upcoming year, and for some inspiration (as the class is being taught by one of my favorite contemporary northwest photographers).

The difference between me, and most of the other students in the class, is that they have a clear concept of one specific book they want to create. I, on the other hand, want all the information, and to be able to pick peoples brains, and see what is going on in the world of photobooks currently. But seeing as making a photobook is part of the class, I am using some of these old photographs and making what I hope will be a quiet contemplation of the land that my family farmed from 1912 through the late 1960′s. It’s a good exercise in editing, and I’ll let you know how it turns out.

I love the packed atmosphere of the city: apartments and houses almost stacked on top of each other, creating a beautiful jagged skyline. Tiny back porches and fire escapes, riding past Wrigley field every day while listening to the clickity clack of the train, cafe signs with flashing lights and 1950′s lettering, and just the hum of the city’s soundtrack were all things that made me fall instantly in love. And yet there seemed to be a soft quietness underlying the bustle of the city, which made me swoon even more. And I hope I get to go back some day.

I like these very much indeed

A few months ago I got the opportunity to start going through my grandmothers photographs. This collection is not your standard few albums with posed family snapshots, but thousands of prints, slides and negatives by both my grandmother and my great-grandmother. There are family portraits, landscapes, snapshots, and close-up shots of flowers. Starting to sort through these photographs that span my grandmothers entire life (and yes, I mean entire, as some of the oldest negatives in the collection were taken in Salt Lake City by my great-grandmother in 1911 when my grandmother was born), I find myself focused on the compositions and lines in the photographs, as well as the life lines that flow through the photographs and make up the stories of my mother’s, grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s lives.

So much of our lives have been shaped by where we live, and where we come from. My grandmother spent her childhood in the Alberta prairies, mapping the land her father farmed, and much later, helped her husband work their farm in the Wenatchee Valley. My grandfathers family had helped settle the land, and it was here, after 30 years of being a nomad that my grandmother settled down, as best as a nomad can, and found her roots.

So this is where I have started, somewhere before my beginning, in the middle of my grandmothers story, and near the beginning of my mothers story, following the maps of my family’s roots.

Bright sun yellows and shimmering golds; fire reds, neon greens, and shimmering silver sequins. Dragons and lions moving like water above the crowds and small children sitting on shoulders, giggling with glee. Drums pounding out celebratory rhythms to welcome in the new year. the smell of sulfur lingering in the air long after one’s ears stop ringing from the firecrackers, and lettuce and discarded medallions wishing good luck scattered on the ground. Happy Chinese New Year!