close to home in more ways than one

To say that I’m excited today would be an understatement. For the last few months I’ve been keeping a confidence and I’m delighted to be able to tell everyone that my friend Stuart Sipahigil is now a Craft and Vision author. Oh that has such a lovely ring to it! Stuart’s book Close to Home is a much-needed ebook for photographers. So many of us believe we need to travel somewhere to make great images when the truth is if you cannot make images in your backyard, you will struggle to make images when you travel. Trust me, I know this. When I traveled to Kenya earlier this year, I came home disappointed with my images. The ability to create compelling photographs depends primarily on you, not on your tools and most certainly not on geography. It depends on your ability to see and with the help of your tools, to translate your view of the world into a photograph. Both of these aspects of image-making can be done right where you live. At the very least, you can practice them there.

One of the exercises in Stuart’s book is called the One Mile Project. In reading Stuart’s take on the project, I realized for some reason I was limiting myself to the most familiar part of my neighbourhood and that I should really explore a different direction. Silly I know but maybe because in the area closest to where I live, I have a few good places to go to photograph. There is a park to the north with a large pond, a walking trail, and a playground area. To the south, there’s a community garden (I call it Jill’s Garden as my friend David’s wife is the master gardener who takes care of it). The changing seasons have allowed for ample opportunities in those two locations.

It is however, a one mile radius and so a couple of weekends ago, I headed in a different direction from my home and landed up seeing things I miss because I just drive by. Over the last ten years, the city has slowly been re-zoning single family lots allowing for the development of more dense multi-family dwellings.  The remaining single family homes sit on large lots and some are not in great condition.  This image is a house set back from the road and it is covered in ivy. It was a rather scary place with junk piled up in the rear of the home and cars parked on the front lawn. All the makings of a tough neighbourhood but it isn’t really; it’s just a city in transition.

Thanks for the advice Stuart and a big “Congratulations” to you. I know how hard you’ve worked on writing and putting together this book and I’m sure people will love it as much as I do.

Stuart Sipahigil, Craft and Vision author.

Goosebumps!