I love the Gatineau Park. To me, any day in the “Gats” is a good day, whatever the season or weather. My relationship with the Park began as a toddler learning to ski and became a constant thread through my life – as my soul place.
I also love to capture the beauty of the natural world around me in photos. I’ve done this for years, when in the Yukon on business travel, fishing in the Northwest Territories, traveling in the high Arctic visiting communities, backpacking across Baffin Island or canoeing the rivers and lakes of Ontario. I do the same when I’m on walking holidays in Europe. I feel called to try to capture the beauty that I experience.
More recently I’ve felt I’m just not conveying the felt sense I have of what I experience. My photos fall short of the expression I’m yearning to convey. So this year I’m embarking on a project to learn to create photos more than simply take photos: a much more intimate journey than one of documenting where I’ve been. So it is only natural that I turn to the place closest to my heart as my playground and subject matter for this journey: a year-long journey into seeing, the Gatineau Park intimately.
This past December I was given Freeman Patterson’s latest book, Embracing Creation, as a birthday gift. A quote in this book was the nascent seed that stirred my yearnings.
“Whenever we focus the lens of our camera on anything, we are also focusing it on ourselves. Something in the material world has “called”, however gently or strongly, to our inner self, our spirit, and we are responding. That’s how close the connection is between the material world and the spiritual one.
The lens of a camera is an instrument of recognition and clarity when it is used thoughtfully. It enables us to remove the peripheral from a scene, to concentrate on our vision.”
So, it’s not so much about the technology as it is the ability to have vision. The most important tools used for taking good photographs are the human eye, the human brain, and the human heart. I began to see my journey ahead was to become a journey of the heart and that it would most likely be much longer than a year. I see that there really isn’t a destination but rather that the journey itself is the destination, one of learning how to see and how to develop my own vision. My yearlong project will be but a beginning into this new territory.
So what I want to do here is to share this journey by sharing some photos of my beloved Gatineau Park. As I learn and grow my hope is that you fall in love with this gift of nature we have right here at the doorstep of our Nation’s Capital, where I live. I’m hoping there’ll be the occasional magnificent photo that conveys and honours the beauty of the Park. Likely most will be quite ordinary and some may even be duds. Which is all perfectly OK with me as this being a journey of learning and growing it will include the full spectrum.
I am comforted that I do not feel alone on this journey, even though it is mine alone, for I have wonderful teachers supporting and encouraging me. I am so grateful for the inspiration of Manny Martins’ year-long trek through the Terra Cotta Conservation Area in southern Ontario. I met Manny this past winter at his studio in Glen Williams, Halton Hills (http://marbluephotography.com/web/) and my earlier stirrings were instantly ignited by the visions he created and portrayed in his photos of that very special place (https://www.creditvalleyca.ca/news/story/photographer-takes-year-long-trek-through-terra-cotta-conservation-area/). I also am fortunate to benefit from ‘in the field’ exploration and instruction in seeing from both Manny and Harry Nowell, a photographer resident in Old Chelsea, Quebec. (http://www.harrynowell.com/home/).
