No, this is not going to be a self-congratulatory post about how a photo of mine got selected to be included in a book by an awesome group of photographers and writers called Utata that I’ve been a member of for years, nor is this about how somehow it ended up being on the cover of the book. No. This is going to be a post about how the photo came to be.
Photo by Jody Miller
You see, I’m a creature of habit. I like having annual traditions. One of the annual things I like to keep doing is an early Spring tradition of going up to Aylmer to see the tundra swans followed by a visit to a sleepy little town by the Lake Erie called Port Bruce and then to Port Stanley for a walk on the beach and lunch and finally to St. Thomas to do some thrifting.
We went a little late in the tundra swan season this year and most of the swans already left for their summer breeding ground up north so the tundra swan viewing was pretty much a bust. So off we went to our next destination, Port Bruce, which is a place I have a soft spot for. I probably wouldn’t like it in the summer because the beach would probably be packed, but in early spring, that place is pretty much deserted, quiet and so unpretentious. Some time during our drive, I must have got bored. I took a page out a promotional notepad Troy had in the car and made a paper crane.
I started shooting a pack of expired film with my big, old Polaroid Land Automatic 100 camera as soon as we got to Port Bruce. Before long, I had a bunch of photos laying around on the dashboard of the car to dry. Once I got tired of carrying around a rather heavy Polaroid camera while dealing with peel apart film with its icky, gooey chemical, I decided to put down the Polaroid and take out my digital camera and shoot pictures of the murky lake and the cliff and the wind turbines in a wind farm in the distant.
Tired and cold from taking pictures outside, I went back into the car and started taking pictures of Polaroids drying on the dashboard. Then I thought, hey, I have a paper crane with me! I picked up the crane and arranged it so that it looked like it was carrying one of the Polaroids. And that, dear readers, was how that picture came to be. It may not be an overly exciting story, but it’s something for me to recall fondly and smile about. It’s a good memory.
Check out the online preview of the book and see the amazing images from other Utata photographers. Utata also has some really talented writers but the text in the preview is probably too small for you to read comfortably so why not buy a copy? It’s available in hardcover and softcover editions and if you buy before November 18, there’s a 25% discount if you use one of these coupon codes:
USD $ coupon code: SPECIAL
GBP £ coupon code: SPECIAL1
EUR € coupon code: SPECIAL2
CAD $ coupon code: SPECIAL3
AUD $ coupon code: SPECIAL4
I’m waiting with giddy anticipation for my copy to arrive!
Well, it’s bedtime. Four days of NaBloPoMo down, 26 more to go!
Congratulations, Firda!