Fall is a quick season here in Canada. Its relative short existence provides the eyes with a bountiful array of Autumn colours that make soul sing. With camera in hand I set off to document the fleeting season. Collecting images and sounds for an art installation I have been dreaming up. I have a beautiful space to present my work, and due to the digital medium, there is always the possibility of seeking additional spaces. For the last several months I have been rolling around BC and doing lots of video and sound recording. I started out with very little knowledge, at least in terms of modern digital cameras and field recording. I am still learning these crafts, albeit with interesting results. I like to create short digital films, or miniMOs. Each one unique and usually scored with field recordings and electronic music I make on my laptop. I do have a story to tell, and dreams to share. There is the story of the landscape and how it changes and moves. In the mountains weather is a common phenomenon, especially as the seasons change. I find time-lapse is a great way to show its movements, ebbs and flows. I also have been to the best of my ability capturing the wildlife I witness on a daily basis. Occasionally I do get lucky and the magic happens. I will continue to gather footage as we roll into winter, and am excited to try out some new ways of documenting and presenting my work. With some help from the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance I have a year to develop my project ‘Valley Flow’ and present the finished work as an art installation. Below is my video ‘Autumnal’ which features the East Kootenay region. The forest section is on a road up to the local ski resort, Panorama. I go there from time to time to hang out with the trees, roll time-lapses and gather forest clips and sounds. This part of Earth is as beautiful as any other Natural environments I have been to. It has its own unique characteristics, and flow. My project also looks at how we experience our world. Before we all starred at screens, we gazed deep with wonder and awe into the expansive Cosmos. That need to look and gaze has not necessarily left us, it has nevertheless been altered. How we perceive things, including ourselves and the planet is changing. I am very much interested in this.
thoughts I had…
Everything I witness is just a tiny fraction of this ever-changing whole. I like to imagine everything all at once. Every sound, movement, every animal, human, insect, and tree.
Instead of chasing dreams, why not live in the dream.
Hälts on getting the Shot
There is a lot to see, and accepting that I cannot see it all, I let this thing called spirit do the seeing. Now of course there is technical procedure when recording, and knowing these fundamentals is kind of key in letting this tool be an expressive instrument. This is all great but it is the art I am trying to focus on. I shoot spontaneously, and find this works well. Doing a thousand takes over and over kills a scene. It becomes unnatural, and forced. A good scene is elusive, it takes some luck and lots of patience. I find timing works best when I just let my creative brain do it’s thing naturally and easily. Now, I do sometimes fight with this. Like fighting with settings on a camera. How many times when I try to document an eagle take off from it’s perch. They watch me fiddling with my settings, and just when I get it to what I think is right, they fly off before I had a chance to hit record. Now I know that this is part of the dance. Sometimes I let it just happen, press record with nothing in particular in the frame, my settings dialled, and I record a beautiful scene of a bald eagle in flight during a wind storm. Or I am out for walk to the lookout where I like to do time-lapse and happenstance on a buck ruminating back lit by the fall orange sun. I am patient in my approach, usually if I try to rush a shot, it doesn’t work out. The key for me is to be in rhythm with the subject/environment, where my timing is synchronised with the moment. That’s when the magic happens.
This is Autumnal, part 2 of my last video ‘salmon run’ in part made possible with the help from the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance. Thank you.
Mahaloness 