introduce you to my blogging and life 
08
29
2010
These images didn’t make the cut but I am posting them now for documentary purposes, in a more down-to-earth look at Rockport and the Cape Ann area. Truly lovely, still.
On the road: Travel updates and news. These will either be blogged from the road or at a later time when the photos have been processed.
08
24
2010
As a photographer, I am a child of the 21st century. I love color. I crave it. I couldn’t be or do without it. So I tend to underexpose a touch and to slightly boost saturation, or rather the newcomer vibrance*, because 
that better reflects my inner view of the world. I don’t really dissect a scene into zones like Ansel Adams did. What I look for are balance, color, contrast, shape, texture, question marks, surprises and puzzles. I let them talk. I analyze how much they move me. If they tip the scale towards the positive, I press the mental shutter first and the camera’s second. If not, the mind looks elsewhere.
But every once in a while, color fades and abstraction and mood prevail. The time has then come for black and white, or any monochromatic tone. It sometimes happens in the field and others back at the ranch, in the comfort of my digital lab. I have caught myself staring at a shot for an eternity, uncertain of what was wrong or missing, only to realize later that nothing had been - there was just too much color. I’d take that distraction away and the shot was reborn.
Any way. Here’s a monochromatic look at Rockport, with more color photos on the way soon.
* Vibrance is the new chic variable in color correction. While the old saturation adjustment would boost color saturation of ALL colors - actually clipping those already quite saturated, a rather destructive result in terms of quality - the new vibrance smartly boosts the saturation of the less saturated colors and leaves the saturated ones alone, achieving images that are much closer to what the human eye perceives in its infinite wisdom of intelligent universe translation.
08
23
2010
In October of 1991, the quaint little town of Gloucester, MA, was put on the map at the epicenter of a highly mediatized maritime drama when one of the strongest extratropical cyclones in Eastern Seaboard history, fed by the 
remnants of hurricane Grace, unleashed its fury at coastlines and scrambled open seas, engulfing boats and randomly taking lives. It was a « Perfect Storm » that sunk the Andrea Gail and lifted Sebastian Junger to the top of charts.
Yet all things weather-wise are rarely that intense around Gloucester and casual summertime visitors would never know the region hides such a terrible temper under its clever cover as a touristic but pleasantly quiet coast. There are many gems to be discovered, neat little places that seem to have avoided the pitfalls of over-development and remain as they were five decades ago, tranquil, well-behaved and picturesque.
One such rarity is Rockport. Located 15 minutes north of her big sister Gloucester at the northeastern tip of Cape Ann, Rockport could easily be missed as one takes a sharp left towards Essex Bay and pushes on to New Hampshire. The town bears its name well, consisting of little more than a small harbor nestled within a cove between natural rock formations and a man-made breakwater. Leading out along the port is the Bearskin 
Neck, a mostly pedestrian stretch of eclectic art galleries, sinful fudge and candy stores and various eateries.
By some twist of fate - or maybe the actions of a smart town council - Rockport has thus far skipped the typically North American infestation of fast-food chains and strip malls. The town seems to be 95% residential and obviously survives from tourism alone as a seasonal industry. There are plenty of options for those seeking summer accommodation and although it gets pretty busy during the warmer months, crowds never seem to be out of control and decibel levels remain acceptable. The fact is that one doesn’t come to Rockport to party, but rather to relax.
A series of beaches interlaced with rocky shores gives Cape Ann a moody character. While nearby Gloucester charges a whopping $25 for parking at its two main sand strips, the beaches of Rockport are free and less crowded. Whether it is at the sandy downtown Back and Front beaches or further south at the long mix of pebbles and sand of Cape Edge, the summer ocean remains chilly all year-round. It smells fresh and pungent and is usually clear and inviting. Locals are nice, too, smiling a lot and greeting 
everyone, and once behind the wheel they respect pedestrians in a very West-Coastedly manner. In a word, Rockport... rocks.
So Marie and I decided to escape the Big Apple frenzy for a few days and hook up with a few of my relatives who ritually spend a couple of weeks by the sea. Car rental rates being outrageous in New York, we opted for the trusted Amtrak train that took us to Boston in 4:30 hrs. There, we hopped on the subway, crawled stealthily underneath the city and emerged at the North Station where we caught a wi-fi equipped commuter train to Cape Ann. We were stepping down onto the Rockport station dock at 3:30 PM.
I had messed up our arrival time notification and no one had come, so we did what most people do all day around there, we walked. Our guesthouse was located about a half-kilometer away but not having visited the town in at least 20 years, I took us on the long way home, suitcases in trail and photo gear on my back.
But Rockport is a small place and it wasn’t long before I spotted a cousin walking towards us with a welcoming smile. We were escorted to our shelter where more 
welcoming notes awaited with explanations of everyone’s current location, mainly the beach (mom), taking naps (undisclosed) or playing PSi (my nephew Yann.) Word of mouth was in full swing and with family members staying all over town, it was going to be a fun week of friendly gatherings here and there, the older children roaming freely between houses and beaches and everybody maintaining an deliciously independent schedule within the general momentum.
Lazy days were spent perfecting the sacred art of doing nothing. Marie and I stayed in a charming small room right across the road from Back Beach at the Beach Knoll. In the morning, we had breakfast on the porch looking at the sea, coffee in hand, feet up, analyzing tides, watching divers on their check-out dives, counting cormorants and letting our thoughts drift and our hearts calm down.
There were various daily beach rendez-vous, there were games of pétanque, there were swims in the cold water and wild body-surfing 
sessions, and lobster picnics with Gitte, and pizzas and fudge sampling and ice cream extravaganzas. There was a proper meal with my adorable mom at My Place By the Sea, sitting outside at the very end of the Bearskin Neck as the sun went down, and it was almost like sitting at Harbour House in Kalk Bay with our other adorable mom, half-a-world away in the southern hemisphere.
There were drives out of town to Gloucester and the marshy estuary of the Essex River. There were sunrises and sunsets - and pitiful attempts on my part at recording them, as I succumbed to the seaside town’s incredibly slow rhythm and began to replenish my soul with peace and laziness turned wisdom.
Then all-to-soon we were on a train again, and as we left the ocean behind and rolled rapidly towards 8 million of our fellow New-Yorkers and a 
single black cat, my blood pressure rose a bit and my heart sank. Just as Da Vinci said it so well for the skies and love of flying, so it goes for one’s attraction to the sea: once you have slept for a while in salty air, rocked by the gentle sound of waves flirting with their beach, the ocean will flow in your veins forever. It never gets out. Your blood becomes salty and when stranded far inland or near dirty water, you can only lick your lips and remember the taste of everything maritime, the motion of swells, the cry of sea birds and the eternal cycle of tides.
The ocean might have given birth to life itself but if we do not take care of it, it will take life back. For now, though, it keeps sustaining my dreams.
»
08
22
2010
A short interlude while I’m working on a more picturesque rendition of Rockport...
These tree swallows (ID?) were swirling in a dense flock around the Good Harbour Beach, which we only visited because the outrageous parking fee had been lifted on a cloudy week-day afternoon.
08
21
2010
Here’s a full 360° panoramic shot of the Rockport harbour around which we just spent a delicious week. More photos and a short story to come soon. For now, as always with these new panoramic shots, please click on the « full screen » icon at the bottom right of the viewer's Menu and then click and drag the mouse to pan and explore the image. This was shot in HDR to compensate for strong shadows and highlights in the middle of the day. The stitch isn't perfect, I'll have to work on it further - and the shoot was expedited because of too many tourists walking in and out of the scene. 48 shots were involved in total. Rockport surely is a beautiful little town. Some of its peace and ocean rhythms still flow in my blood. For a while.
Update: Oh, I forgot the most important part! Let's play "find Marie." The winner wins a... mention on Coriolistic Anachronisms, the coolest, photographiest, laziest, bizarrest, most irregular and yet hopefully most randomly and occasionally entertaining blog around... ;-)
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Posted at 10:36 AM in + Panoramas: & On the road: & Photography:
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08
09
2010
It’s been almost twenty years since I’ve walked up and down the Bearskin Neck. Rockport, MA, used to be a quaint little fishing town, lazily asleep in the shadow of her big sister Gloucester, home to a large fleet of swordfish trawlers - the very same boats that were made famous in « The Perfect Storm. »
Marie and I will be there next week, taking an unexpected but well-needed break and hooking up with our loved ones from Quebec. The Massachusetts coast is almost half-way from both Montreal and New York; they will drive down, we will ride Amtrak’s Northeast Regional train to Boston and on.
Expect tales of early morning runs along the beach and freshly caught Maine lobster simply boiled and served with butter and garlic. Some pictures of course. 360° panos. Maybe an HD video, its soundtrack infringing as always on sacred copyright laws. I will plea fair use.
The air will smell of ocean stories and kelp. It will cleanse our souls and CMOS sensors. Our circadian rhythms will once more tune themselves up to sunrise and the bird-announced return of fishing boats. It should be sweet. It will be fun. It has been so deeply anticipated.
It can’t really be justified, though. Unless we live by the all-too-used credo of making the moment count since this is all about the ride, not the destination. After all, if now didn’t taste good, how could then be flavorful?
07
26
2010
Not all is ever smooth and peachy with Cape Town’s weather. Table Mountain acts as an incredible torturer of skies, focusing the impact of conflicting air masses and unleashing strange downdrafts and pouring rains unto the city it dwarfs.
Below is an example. Approaching from the south and stuck in slow-moving traffic, we had ample time to marvel the mountain’s magnificent impact on every aspect of the city’s mood.
Posted at 12:39 AM in On the road: & Photoblogs: & South Africa:
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Back in January this year, when the Southern Cross was still filling our South African nightly skies and the FIFA World Cup was no more than a distant 
future thrill, we took the trusted Kombi for a drive around False Bay. Leaving Cape Town behind, we crossed the Cape Flats, zipped through Somerset West and wound our way along the edge of Cape Hangklip towards Betty’s Bay.
The ocean was just delightfully turquoise and the sky streaked by rare cumulus. As always when exploring South Africa, we saw our share of wildlife. From the top of a hill, I spotted a great white shark cruising near a rocky shore, less than half a mile from a beach where surfers paddled through wave sets.
Then in Betty’s Bay we visited yet another South African penguin colony, less idyllic than the one in Boulder’s Bay, but as prolific and definitely smellier. I haven’t yet gotten over my surprise of mingling with the comical birds in a 
temperate environment. With my eyes half-closed, I could almost pretend that the sun-bleached and guano-covered rocks were in fact ice and snow. There was something odd to the scene, as if a giant blunder had been done at the Creation level and a drop of arctic life had splashed into African heat.
But the penguins seemed well-adjusted and happy, and despite relative tourist activity and the clicking of cameras, they just didn’t mind our presence and did what penguins do best: mostly nothing.
Read 66 Square Feet for a more extensive post about the drive.
In 1994, when Apartheid fell, black South Africans must have seen their hopes soar far beyond barbed-wire fences and absolute repression. Everything was suddenly possible. The world, their world, had just become a better place.
Some 15 years later, as I ventured last March into Khayelitsha, second largest township in the 
country after Soweto, I was forced to admit that if the world had become a better place, this wasn’t it. In the long, painful transition from radical racism to relative freedom, something, somehow, had gone terribly wrong.
Cape Town, jewel of the Western Cape and arguably one of the most beautiful cities in the world, is surrounded on all sides by extremely poor neighborhoods called townships. Khayelitsha was established in 1985 to deal with illegal settlement on the Cape Flats and after initially being populated by forceful relocation, it eventually became a top destination for willing settlers in search of work and education.
The numbers are quite staggering. As of 2010, an estimated 900,000 live in and around Khayelitsha. It is composed of three different kinds of dwellings, categorized as formal, informal and illegal informal. The former are also called Mandela houses; they are single-room, often brick-and-mortar, small rectangular houses built by the authorities after Mandela promised housing for the people. They usually have power and water.
Informal settlements are given a very basic lot-based water supply in the form of a toilet shack with a water tap and people are left to build their living quarters around, either in solid materials or tin sheets.
Last and least, illegal settlements appear here and there, often on public space such as highway sides and have no utilities whatsoever. If I remember correctly, the law states that they must be displaced by the authorities within 90 days or they become legal.
The very disturbing thing about townships is that, just like in our 
fancy First World cities even if on totally different scales, extreme poverty can be seen clashing with relative wealth. Satellite dishes abound. Electricity is either distributed officially or tapped into illegally but TV’s are part of the township’s everyday life and the outside world erupts into each house, riding on radio waves and full of unattainable glamor.
Our guide Thabang, good friend and son of Selina, one of the nicest, kindest woman I know on this silly little planet of ours, runs a small tour company, Ezizwe Travel and Tours. He has specialized in township tours, having been brought up in one himself. For hours, he drove us in and around Khayelitsha in his Volkswagen Kombi, trying to give us a sense of what life can be for 90% of the South African population.
I am not sure I got it. It was all very surreal. The daily existential reality in townships is so far remote from my own experience of life that I could at best stare and wonder. Understanding would take months if not years. Accepting, even longer.
The daily existential reality in townships is so far remote from my own experience of life that I could at best stare and wonderMarie and I were also quite uncomfortable with the very reason for our presence. It wasn’t voyeurism, we had actually dreaded the visit for some time. But having never truly explored a township, we felt like our South African experience was that of ostriches, our heads firmly stuck into the sand, refusing hard to see the darkest side of things and focusing solely on a very privileged white-only way of life.
But as we cruised through the townships, stopping here and there to interact with locals under the very calculated supervision of our guide and watched as he rewarded them on the spot with small amounts of money, turning our visit into a tourism initiative and their hospitality into simple business deals, we couldn’t help but to feel embarrassed and guilty.
Despite a thorough awareness of the potential benefits of tourism for any undeveloped, poor or isolated area, I felt like the visitor of a zoo or circus. The township limits are indeed a cage, no longer restricting movement but certainly locking out opportunity. Such a cage must make for endless sadness and the likely eradication of free will, a combination likely to tame the wildest people.
We visited Vicky’s B&B, a 
modest yet well furnished bed and breakfast, set right in the middle of the township and obviously catering to the most adventurous visitors. They had internet and a plasma TV, won in some contest and placed in the center of the common room. A girl gave us a well rehearsed speech about the premises and encouraged donations. The effort was there.
We drank locally brewed beer in a dark shack with a row of men sitting opposite us on low benches, watching us from the shadows with impenetrable gazes, as the huge beer bucket ritually got passed around the room and we were forced to take a single sip of the warm, frothy and bitter liquid than had absolutely nothing in common with the beer I know. Thabang explained that one paid R6 (under a dollar US) when first walking in and would then be allowed to return all day and drink. It cost R12 on week-ends. Marie remarked aloud that visiting on a week day was smarter. The men cracked up.
We paid a short visit to Ndaba, a Langa sangoma (or medicine man) who has setup his practice inside a container that’s become completely overtaken by hundreds of bizarre objects and potions. Marie bravely spoke to him about dreams and he dispensed his wisdom while waving a sacred switch through the air. When we left, men outside his door were trying to sell us souvenirs. One of them, sizing us up with highly trained eyes, saw my 200m Titanium Citizen Promaster dive watch and commented on it. We were back in modern times.
We watched ladies skinning, glazing and roasting sheep heads in the fierce sun, surrounded by blue smoke and the many undisclosed smells of poverty and decayWe watched ladies skinning, glazing and roasting « smileys » in the fierce sun, surrounded by blue smoke and the many undisclosed smells of poverty and decay. The smileys are discarded sheep heads obtained from local slaughterhouses for pennies and later sold at a profit, a fully cooked head costing R17.
We visited a school and interrupted a class or two, politely greeted by kids in clean uniforms. I noticed very old computers in a corner. This was one of very few such schools. Dozens of kids attended. I have no idea what the remaining hundreds of thousands do with their days.
Marie and I both carried our cameras but were basically paralyzed. Neither one of us has much journalism training and we let our feelings and self-consciousness come before the requirements for matter-of-factly recording of our visit. The very few photos that accompany this post paint a rather incomplete picture of the townships. Some were taken earlier in the trip while driving through on the highway, much like taking pictures of the 
Keys from a plane and pretending to have been to Florida.
I am left with a feeling of unease, and sadness. The tour was incredibly instructive. It was terribly depressing. It probably didn’t make any difference at all. We contributed a few dollars to the work of local craftsmen, and a few more, via Thabang, to the emerging tourism scene. So much remains to be changed. So little exists now to inspire township inhabitants, to let them hope and dream of practical goals rather than of mythical ones.
Apartheid might have been defeated but it left a legacy of chaos and high crime that many equate to having changed a dollar for four quarters. The racial barriers still stand, not so much in law and politics as on economic, demographic, geographic and social levels. The vast majority of South Africa’s black and colored people remain poor and uneducated. They are still hurting. They merely have acquired the right to do so freely.
Yesterday, on the green expense of a football field half-way around the globe, under the welcoming South African skies of the Free State, a stone’s throw away from Lesotho, the two countries dearest to my heart were facing each other, a checkered ball between them. One of them made me feel ashamed.
The French lost the previous FIFA World Cup at the last second because of a ridiculous bad-tempered head-butt. They had otherwise behaved and played masterfully. This year, they performed badly from the beginning and now take a shortcut to the Exit. I couldn’t care less. What makes me blush is Domenech’s arrogance in refusing to shake his rival’s hand after the match. No matter what the reasons were, when you are taking part in the world’s biggest professional sporting event, on international television, representing your country, your team and carrying the hopes of millions of fans, you play fair. Pompous ass. Quel con.
South Africans, on the other hand, and despite not having done much better on the winning field, seem to be doing a magnificent job at hosting the Cup despite much initial local worry and slow ticket sales. Kudos to them. The world is watching.
« What a great place! And if those pics didn’t make a cut, # 11 specially, then I’m putting my camera down :) »
Date of comment: 2010-08-29 23:36 • Reply« Now if I didn’t know better, I’d say you loved the place...
»
Date of comment: 2010-08-30 11:51 • Reply