William Oldacre Photography

Tag: grandmother

  • Convergent

    I had a recent conversation with my grandmother (on her 92nd birthday) about the direction I’m taking – or rather figuring out the direction TO take. At the time the conversation didn’t seem to really help but I think it served to pry something loose.

    Later as I was driving home, I recalled an element I’ve been consistently drawn to  – a vanishing point. Just thinking about a vanishing point in terms of the shapes I was previously visualizing and attempting, has improved my mood. This is what I was trying to describe by saying the shape of the city – but really I think I was coming at it sideways.

    So, I’ve got some tests to do today exploring a vanishing point – a convergence point in the image and I think it will involve clamping my camera to my bike… once again – since motion is likely the key or at least part of the answer.

    That reminds me of a song from Shriekback– an 80’s UK band – “and its blue blue blue, colour and a surge, everything that rises must converge – she says one day soon, you and I will merge, everything that rises must converge.”

  • Where Are We Headed?

    Where Are We Headed?

    Light Signatures series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, blue, green, red, muted, overlapping, waves, circles, patterns, shapes
    Red Shapes Over Dark Green, 2013 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)

    I try to imagine how the world will all unfold as time moves on but after a certain number of folds it becomes foggy and indistinguishable from my dreams. I hope the world will spin a certain way but it never does. I’m not sure if its better to constantly dream about what might be or be slapped in the face by what is.

    When I was younger, there were lots of things to worry about like the cold war, apartheid, the Berlin wall, nuclear proliferation and lots of doom and gloom about how the future was shaping up. But in retrospect a lot of completely unforeseen things happened, a lot of predicted things never happened and the world is not the place most of us imagined it would become. Our lives are not the ones many of us predicted we’d have.

    When I look at my father and my grandmother, part of me thinks my life will run a similar course, but then I listen to the stories from both their childhoods and realize their lives never unfolded the way they thought they would either so why would mine.

    Part of us looks out at the world the way it is now and imagines it was always this way and will continue to remain this way. I didn’t realize how untrue this was until I returned to London where I attended university after 10 years away or until I returned to the street in Guelph where I grew up after a similar amount of time – everything had changed – everything that was important in my memory was different.

    I wonder how we all manage to function when everything we do is built on shifting sands and uncertainty – but somehow we do and eventually it all works out in the end – doesn’t it.