Oct
10
Vintage! This is a random post. The year was 2007...
Balancing The Stone Coriolistic Anachronisms - A Vancouver Blog
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Jun
16
There are times and places when - and where - one wishes the former would stop and the latter could be taken home. But time surely never stops and those places only follow us home on frozen photographs and wrapped up softly in our memories. It’s up to us, then, to match our pace to that of life around us and
to make sure the memories live on and generate new dreams.
The Seawall is one of those places, and last Sunday night, one of those times.
I had noticed on my afternoon run that Kent Avery, the singular man behind the famous balanced stones, was at work on his regular spot half-way between Ferguson Point and Second Beach, and I’d decided to come back for sunset.
When I arrived, the sun was just dipping lazily behind the gentle mountains across English Bay, leaving us with nothing but a cloudless sky and a palette of colors that were still too dull to exploit. I would have to be patient.
As I was slowly setting Abe up on the tripod, a man rushed past me, headed towards the city, and said: « If you hurry up and turn around, there’s barely enough light left to get a shot of this. » He was pointing at the moon. I smiled to myself and muttered: « Dude, you have no idea how wrong you are. The light hasn’t even appeared yet. »
Kent was still around, balancing two last stones near the water’s edge. Eventually, seemingly satisfied with his work for the day, he came over and started talking with passers-by. After glancing at my camera, he asked in a melancholic tone: « Did you ever use Kodachrome? » It said nothing but said it all. I replied that I had been more of a Fujichrome fan and 
the conversation picked up. We talked about good old times vs the new, about the Photoshop lab we now have at home and about the ever-lasting need to still get it right from the start, in-camera. He mentioned he was working on a book of photos of his art and stories he’d accumulated during nine years of « being around ».
People were walking past us, commenting out loud, in admiration. « They look like little people » said someone. « I can’t understand how come they don’t fall down right away » added another. « This is so peaceful » said a small girl that could not have been older than 10 or 12. True, there was a peculiar stillness in the air and the balanced stones seemed suspended in space, defying gravity and our very understanding, as if painted unto the scenery and as such, immortal. They would, however, be short-lived. Tides and the wind have been making sure to keep Kent coming back week after week, and he does.
I was in no hurry to shoot anything, and neither was he. I knew that the magic was 
probably going to happen after most people had given up and gone home. There are, really, two golden hours. One is the painters’ favourite, late afternoon, when a low sun washes over a scene in warm orange tones and long shadows. The other is the photographer’s, or maybe just mine. The sun has already disappeared below the world, light is evening itself out, shadows give way to richer midtones, and if one is lucky, the sky puts up its most amazing display of colors as the sun’s rays are still reaching far up into the atmosphere. It’ll happen anywhere between a few minutes a
fter sunset and a good hour later. As a rule of thumb, when people are getting chilly and leaving and I wonder what to do, I stay. It usually pays off.
As time passed, the Seawall was emptying itself of its human fleas. Darkness was gaining on a long day. People were fewer and fewer. At last, the light changed. Subtle nuances emerged in the sky and calm water by the shore began flirting with them. Abe came to life on her pedestal.
XXXX
It was getting late. Kent had finished taking
shots of his open air temple on a small digital point-and-shoot and took leave. « Come by and show me your pictures some day, he said. » I was about to ask him where his office was when I remembered I was standing in it. « Sure, I replied, ‘be glad to. » Even he might be a little surprised by the results. It’s hard to believe that in the almost complete darkness which reigns an hour after sunset, so much light still exists for the sensor to record.
At such long exposure settings, the game is one of patience, of trial and error. Reciprocity failure kicks in and makes any precise calculations pretty much impossible. But nothing about Sunday night’s conditions was precise. It was the romantic hour, a time for fantasies and visions and dreams, for drifting thoughts and longing unleashed. I had to see the colors with my inner eye, the real ones having gone almost blind as Abe, even in manual focus and with my guidance, struggled to find her crisp edge.
And there, unavoidably, as the shots were stacking up unto the memory card and a silent night had fallen on the Seawall, I found myself connecting, to other places and different times, to memories and paths and directions, to the absent one who ought to have been standing there next to me, and soon would be, somehow, somewhere.
Defined tags for this entry: photoblogs, Vancouver
2008-06-16 23:16 • Posted in Always: & Photoblogs: & Vancouver:
4 Comments
Display comments as(Linear | Threaded)
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1 - Marie says:
« Beautiful... »
Date of comment: 2008-06-18 06:07 • -
2 - Jay says:
« Utterly beautiful. Balm to the spirit today. »
Date of comment: 2008-06-18 12:05 • -
2.1 - Vince answers:
« By the way, hi Jay, how nice to see you here!
Date of comment: 2008-06-18 16:40 •
» -
3 - Vince says:
« Thank you to you both, but really, the dude who balances these stones is the one who deserves the praise. I just press the shutter.
Date of comment: 2008-06-18 16:39 •
»
« Marrant, ton style n’a pas changé depuis les dessins que tu faisais à 12 ans... :) »
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 06:14 •« C’est malin tiens! That must be because neither has my mental age...
»
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 06:17 •« Nothing to do with this post, but I was looking again at your last HDR photos and I noticed that, finally, you have protected your work. I didn’t want to patronised you on that (I sometime work on IP matters) so I kept my mouth shut but... it’s done now.
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 09:13 •Good thing.
now, I’m in the blue with your drawing, did you get censored ? [is that good English wording]
B »
« Thanks Brigit, I used to embed the watermark some time ago and stopped after loosing my old hard drive, but it’s now recovered. Not that anybody would still my humble shots, but hey, it makes me feel important...
»
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 09:17 •We will win the battle against censorship! (Just kidding, it’s an inside joke between Marie and I...
« Hab your lawyer call my lawyer regardeen’ the use ob my ligheness arn whad passes por your blarg...
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 09:39 •Feleecitions an’ no hard, hehehe, feeleen’s. OK? OK.
Your Leedle Blagh Dude-frien’, weeth Represention: you cannard cadge me weeth my pands down, man!
Escuse me. I need to throw some feesh arn the marchers... »
« Oye Estorbito loco, pensé que te pondrías feliz por saberte famosísimo. Pero bueno, te llamará mi avocado. Ojalá encontremos un compromiso. ¿Quiza si compartimos a quién adoramos...?
»
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 10:42 •« Ah. Beence, you can share my pelleds anytime. I adore them... »
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 12:17 •« Very funny Estorbo, but I said « quien », not « que »... You’re going to have to be more generous than that...
»
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 12:42 •« Fine!
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 13:14 •Taghe hor! Hab hor! I doan’ wan’ hor no more!
An’ WHO ees the crazee lady weeth the paraglider, man? Ees amazeen’.
When you taghe me paraglideen’ I weel refuse to sign a release. An’ I wan’ treeple meenk insulation, OK? »
« Another item not dealing with this post but something I found that I thought you might find of some interest...and may not have already read. :)
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 10:54 •http://www.airspacemag.com/issues/2007/october-november/above_and_beyond.php?page=1 »
« Craig: Thanks for the link, I had read a post about it somewhere else, but that’s a much better article. Proves one thing: when your time hasn’t come, it hasn’t come. Bloody hell. 10 miles from the cloud and she still got sucked in!
»
Date of comment: 2007-10-10 13:44 •Estorbo: great, I graciously accept your offer then, thank you. You are a most honorable cat. And I’ll take you paragliding any time you want, I don’t even need a tandem wing for you. We’ll just stay away from TCUs and CBs.
« You the Man. OK, good. Do I need roadfoo’ por the fligh’? »
Date of comment: 2007-10-11 13:02 •« Yeah, actually bring a few pellets, food that is, we can do without the ice ones...
»
Date of comment: 2007-10-11 13:13 •« Beence! Ba ha ha ha! Beence! That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day. That Estorbo is just something else, even if flea-ed.
Date of comment: 2007-10-11 04:47 •Brother you have a new nickname as far as I’m concerned.
Beence! »
« LOL not sure I’m so thrilled about that, but hey, it’s always better than Vinnie Two Slices in St. Lucia...
»
Date of comment: 2007-10-11 13:15 •« Beence!!!
)) »
Date of comment: 2007-10-12 00:05 •C’est à tomber par terre...
Et en plus, Brig, ton fils va pouvoir dire’Uncle Beence’...Il ne colle jamais...
« Ah les filles, c’que vous êtes marrantes, quand-même... Et on peut aussi transposer en français: « C’est quoi ce beence? »
Yeah, well, I know, tiré par les cheveux... »
Date of comment: 2007-10-12 00:11 •« Ouais, tiens c’est vrai, j’y avais pas pensé à ‘Qu’est ce que c’est que ce Beence??’...
Date of comment: 2007-10-13 03:01 •Ça va devenir lourd, chui sure au bout d’un temps, mais pour le moment, sorry, I still think it’s funny! »
« Bon, pour les neophites and our favorite English speakers, we are now referring to an expression used in French as an equivalent to « a mess » and made famous as the closing line of a very silly comedy called Les Visiteurs, with Jean Reno. The spelling is different but it sounds exactly the same...
»
Date of comment: 2007-10-13 11:00 •« So would you say that you’re a mess right now?
Date of comment: 2007-10-13 12:29 •Thanks for the explanation: I really didn’t have a clue as to what was going on.
Jeez. If this drawing got a lot of comments wait for the GRabbits! »