photography

From the Curiosity Cabinet: A Cicada Cast-off

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This little cicada shell was gleaming in the sun like a miniature bronze, and naturally it beckoned to come home with me. It is the moulted shell from the final  stage in a cicada’s growth. You may have happened across a similar empty shell tentatively clinging to a tree branch. You’d bring it home too, wouldn’t you?


The escape hatch. A little tear up the back.



*If you are curious about method, this cicada shell was photographed on a mirror.

All images © Karen McRae. 2012

Playful

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These little transforming seed heads each seem to have their own bit of personality when you look at them closely. I am absorbed with the details of form, depth of field, and light (of course!). And they are very cooperative subjects. It is really the breeze that is most playful.

All images © Karen McRae, 2012

Windborne

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At the risk of being boring I am posting more seed heads, but there is just a small window of time for capturing these before they dissolve into the landscape.  I am playing with light and form and the fleeting nature of the seasons themselves.

There is already a hint of change in the winds that scatter these little seeds.





Note: I am not sure what type of seed heads these are but all the florets together are only about 1cm in diameter.

All images © Karen McRae, 2012

Exposure

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“Sometimes we find our inherent selves in youth. It is a recognition of something that at first is small within us, that we will grow into somehow” The Cat’s Table, Michael Ondaatje

I was struck by these thoughts. They have woven themselves into me,  and they have pressed up against a barrier on the way out.

I am seeing a small girl standing on the tailgate of truck. (Is that right? Did we have a truck at that time? I do remember being high up.)  She is standing with a brown rectangular box in her hands. A camera. Her first. As I remember this I am watching my younger self. One of those third person memories, where you are separate from the girl you are looking at, but you are also in her, and are her. Those memories can’t always be trusted. They are both real and not real. They ripple with distortion.

As you are protectively watching her, she glances over her shoulder, as if for reinforcement. As though you are her buttress. And you know that you are.

She is marking time. No. She is stopping time. Marking changes.

click. that click seems so quiet. a pause. these images she is making are just whispers in time. there are people here in the landscape, but is that what she is trying to hold on to?

Something tangible will remain. It will be a small paper square with a white border. The surface glossy. The white border is appropriate because it is a landscape of snow.  White, grey and cold.  On the cusp of a warmer  season. (those people; what do they look like now?)

You can almost smell the plasticity of the brown box. The smell of the film. The acrid odour of a just-burned flashbulb. It is powerful, that  particular sense. A sense that can send you back into a memory as fast as a swirling twister. One quick spiraling breath and you are there. Fleetingly. But in that snippet of time you remember that sensation.

The power of pausing time. Shaping images.

click. it is a quiet place this marking of moments. are they shaped to her favour? if the memories can’t be trusted, can the images? are they too, manipulated by time? it doesn’t matter. she is fond of the layers that time settles on these moments, she is easily pulled into the riddles.  click. exhale.  she is still lost in this visual space.  still at times, glancing over her shoulder. i am watching her, still.

© Karen McRae, 2012