Day One: The fields of Wind Turbines, Climbing Rocks, and a magic dusk hike

Day Two: Dance Hike at Dawn, Campfire Eggs and Tea, and a stop at The Jelly Donut

This little peek at me introduces a delightful local adventure I experienced this summer. My talented and oh-so lovely friend and frequent cohort, Susan is a person of many creative pursuits. You’ve seen her appear here before, but never like this. Susan is a photographer with whom I frequently work, but far fewer people know she is also a dancer. Dance is an incredibly significant part of her life, and she recently began a project that funnels her dance passion through her photography—A Dancer’s Soul: Photographing what it feels like to dance.

For Susan, dance is something that defines her. Even her business name references a ballet goal she finally achieved this year (going en pointe means to work in pointe shoes). I don’t think I have all the words to accurately describe the amount of fulfillment I get, hearing her talk about this personal project—doing something you are truly passionate about is such an inspiration. And you can truly see in the work how personal, emotional and meaningful this is for her, and for all the dancers she’s worked with.

I had the pleasure of going on a frolic with Susan to a little pioneeresque village in San Diego county. We had no firm plans, but Susan had her dance shoes, and I was privileged to gain some insight into her project—what it feels like to attempt to photograph what it feels like to dance. Having never photographed this sort of thing before, I didn’t know what to expect. It was certainly difficult to keep up with someone in constant motion, and capture that feeling. Initially, it was playful, a bit silly, even a bit awkward—Susan is all too self-aware, as a photographer. But there was a glorious turning point where she truly let go and let dance just shine through her. It was indeed a soulful experience. And here it is. I highly recommend you go take a look at Susan’s dance project. You will feel inspired.

Today, I’m thirsting for an adventure, something brimming with discovery and unfamiliarity and possibility. This is actually ’round the bend for me, happily—we’re going to Austin, TX in a week for a weekend adventure. With an even more major adventure in the works for the spring. Stay tuned, and go seek out adventure!

I’ve been saving this one for a rainy day, and literality has caught up to me. Today, the skies have welcome cloud cover and precipitation and, thus, I get to share this with you, because no matter your weather today, it feels right.

We live in San Diego. We fly back to Canada once or twice a year for visits. Scott’s parents live a couple of hours from Toronto. Mine live outside of Montreal. They’re about five or six hours apart. Every visit, we’re cramming a road trip in to get to each family.  This year, we opted for a train adventure instead of a road trip. While it didn’t prevent me from being horrifically ill on the return ride, it did offer me the opportunity to gaze for a long stretch at the country from which I’m now an ex-pat. That country has become utterly foreign—my own homeland is now bizarrely unfamiliar at this time of year.

I know the difference is significant in transitioning to a city that features an almost total lack of winter yearly, but, I wonder—when you guys have moved to new cities, upon return visits, did the landscape become to appear positively extra-terrestrialesque? I can’t help but feel that now, after four years in this place (the longest I have spent as an adult in any one place since leaving home), it has become so deeply etched into me as home that my previous home feels utterly unfamiliar. Amusingly, the landscape became increasingly alien to me as we closed in on Montreal—note how the initial absence of snow progresses to quite the presence of it.

These are admittedly not my norm—I would characterize them as a little bit melancholic, obscure, moody and brooding. You probably know that’s about a million miles from standard Jasmine. But something about January in Canada did always seem to have that affect on me. There is, nonetheless, some magic and mystery in this landscape that had me glued to the train window for the entire trek. So, for a change of pace—I give you Canadian winter by train, through the eyes of a near-pseudo-foreigner.

My family is a fun mish-mash of culture, heritage and origin. We’re mutts basically, with a combination of Eastern European and South American blood. My sister and I have been asked before if we have different fathers—growing up, our appearances were so physically different. I was short, with curly, red hair, fair skin and freckles. She was tall, with long, straight dark hair and perfect, dark skin. While we were both overachievers, we had such different personalities… I was a bit of a wilder independent, ‘edgier,’ a performer, arts-oriented. She was quieter, a creative writer, horseback rider, homebody. I was out of my parents house like a rocket as soon as I could get out, she stayed there through college and made her way out slowly.

We bickered like any teens, and she drove me up the wall. I am sure she felt the same. But right after I left home… well, she started to get cool. She was younger than me, and was finally becoming an adult—right when I moved out. Then I moved away to Toronto, and she got cooler, still. Then I moved away to San Diego, and more and more, I would think, “Man, if we lived in the same city, we’d be best friends.” The older we get, the more alike we seem to become, meeting in the middle of all our differentiators. It’s a bit sad—I really never had the opportunity to connect to my sister as an adult, in the same headspace as me. We get to see each other about once or twice a year, now, and it’s always so rewarding when we do. But all that is shifting tomorrow, as she’s moving to Australia for a major adventure that I am filled with pride and enthusiasm and envy about. She doesn’t have a firm plan, she is truly aiming for unknown adventure. I thirst vicariously for it all. I am so proud she is jumping into something that will absolutely be incredibly rewarding, no matter how things develop.

Today, I am sharing a brief excursion we made over the Christmas holidays, to my favourite sandwich café in Montreal, Santropol. Tam and Josh joined Scott and I on a FREEZING trek across town to get out there and then Tam and Josh got all cute, and I thought to myself—I have never shot these two lovebirds, and they are just the cutest. Thus, I had to pull out my camera and go wild as we finished our chai lattes. These two are really great for one-another, bringing out truly good things in each other. Josh (a YouTube gaming sensation) is wonderfully positive, a buoyant little kid in a man’s body. He brings out the energy and silliness in my sister and helps her let go of things that don’t matter. Tam’s organized, focused and smart—I think she’s taught Josh a lot about responsibility and persistence. I think they are going to have a spectacular adventure. They will be missed!

Oh is it ever good to be back. I have been swapping website servers and spent the last week working through that—if my URL seems wonky, we’re still transitioning, so I expect that within a week, this blog will be 100% hosted at www.thedailyfrolic.com. Please update your links accordingly—blog.letsfrolictogether.com will now just redirect. Please ignore the interim weird URLs (like thedailyfrolic.dreamhosters.com…) because they’re just temporary, allowing me to keep this site fully functional during the transition. So, yeah, it’s been a while since I posted and I have a plethora of good stuff to share. I am hoping this little adventure will have been well worth the wait!

You may remember my charming friend and talented film photographer, Brian, from our camping excursion to Idyllwild at the end of the summer or apple-picking in the fall. Well, we agreed it was high time for another photo trek, and decided to simply hit the road, make our way out through the East County, and see what goodness we could dig up. If you guessed that goodness would include a stop at Alpine Brewery, an escaped grazing cow, some of the most spectacularly dreamy light I’d ever seen, a chilly hike through Cuyamaca State Park, and a lakeside sunset wrap-up, well, then you’re totally psychic, dude. It was incredibly cold when we expected it to be desert-warm (it was, in fact, a 25-degree temperature drop just one hour East of San Diego), and we were woefully underprepared, but it was all worth it. I think these photos made me realize how terribly badly I needed that trek—even if was just a day thing. Sometimes one gets so wrapped up in life getting lifey that one forgets to feed oneself with inspiration and newness and adventure. And you know I’m all about the adventure.

Without further adieu—a magical little adventuring day trip.

Hey folks!

I have posted a little more heavily this week than usual thanks to MLK Day and the SOPA Strike. Today, it’s just a quickie to let you know that a) we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming and b) I am pretty psyched about some of the things I will be sharing in the next couple of weeks.

Just a couple of things to look forward (I hope!) to…

• By popular request, a What’s-In-My-Bag/Gear/How-I-Shoot post
• An autumnal dance post with the lovely Susan Yee, letting loose with reckless abandon
• A Joshua Tree desert camping trek
• Several posts recounting our California Coast by Car adventure (the image above features my friend Lara and the start of the adventure)

and a few other delights, for good measure. Can’t wait to share all this… stay tuned!

Hey, anybody notice the internet blackout this morning? Does your favourite website have a strange black bar censoring its header? Did you try looking something up on Wikipedia but get a kinda scary message, instead? Today, people all over are taking action against a seriously uncool and threatening US Bill that threatens the very fabric of the big ol’ series of tubes we call the internet.

Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself.

SOPA is a seriously scary thing. I’m not usually very particularly publicly political (say that ten times fast), but as a photographer with my own small-biz website, the possibility of this bill passing freaks me out. On the surface, it sounds like it’s there to protect us. You bet I have has my work misused and uncredited. But the cost isn’t worth the gain—we are giving the wrong people (the entertainment industry) power to potentially wreak much greater havoc on innocent and independent businesses and startups than we are protecting those innocent and independent businesses. I know this is a pretty difficult threat to wrap your head around. I am seeing a lot of tech folks getting it and promoting the message but I’d like to up the representation in the photography community.

I think regular folks like myself could really better understand the potential intense repercussions of SOPA if they check out this concrete example of how SOPA could totally screw over innocent photographers or other creatives, small-biz people and even casual bloggers. Seriously, it will totally help clarify why everyone is in an uproar about this potential bill, if you’re somebody who’s been hearing talk of this all over the interweb and wondering what it all means. If you want more information, Google’s in on it, and AmericanCensorship.org is a great sites to explore and gain knowledge from. I can’t help but feel that of this bill goes through, our internet landscape of free access and free speech is going to look a lot like China’s highly-censored and highly-controlled and restricted one.

The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.

Please feel free to use the above graphic anywhere you like. Sorry about this getting up on my soapbox thing—thanks for bearing with me. Not planning to make this whole political messaging a regular thing, but my post yesterday about MLK reminded me that it is always time to do the right thing. We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.