A: Angles

As I start the A-Z Project, I happily realize that it is in fact much more than a photography project. As I search for subjects that start with A to photograph, I start to observe things in more details: Is that foyer an Atrium? Does that nativity scene in the next door building have an Angel? Is that child carrying an Arithmetic book and don't the parents look like they are having an Argument? Is the man in the elevator wearing Argyle socks? I also have to think about how to express more abstract concepts: Can the trees still represent Autumn or do they look too wintry with all the leaves gone? Can I express Agony and Anguish with this facial expression? I am an Aunt and an Adult but how do I show that in a picture? I also start thinking about taking myself to the subjects: Should I shop for Apples in the store or visit the Arrival area at the airport? I can look for outdoor Advertisements on the street or check out new Art at the art gallery. The ideas keep rolling in and my vocabulary (in A at least) seems to expand as the day wears on.

Eventually, I settle on Angles. It's both abstract and concrete and it got me looking at objects in skewed and unexpected ways. I wish I had more time today to go out and explore different kinds of angles as it's a subject that would work well in all kinds of surroundings. I did find that lots of perspectives from my apartment are quite angular. I under-exposed the image to give it a slightly ominous feel. It's not the most interesting of pictures but the best I could manage on a busy day. And it does capture something of my mood today: haphazard, lopsided, and a little gloomy.

Project A-Z

This nifty little Nikon is the birthday present I bought for myself this year. To make sure I try it out properly, I'm going to take up a creative project so that I'm using the camera every day. I was inspired by a lot of great ideas on photographer Jennifer Jacobs's blog. I've decided to try out the A-Z project, hopefully finishing it within 24 days (or thereabout). Wish me luck!

Blue Valentine

I let Blue Valentine sit on my PVR for over a year before I finally watched it last night. Maybe I intuited how painful the experience would be and procrastinated from it. There is nothing new to the film's plot, which details the deterioration of a love forged on youthful desire and an accidental pregnancy. With two brilliant performances at its heart, the film stands out with its close-up (both literally and metaphorically) of two people falling in and out of love. Exceptionally skillful is the way it alternates two temporalities - the beginning and the end of the relationship - throughout the narrative. Scenes of raw sensuality and genuine sweetness of a youthful romance intercut with that of fatigue, aggression, and the stale desire of a faltering middle-aged marriage. Watching these two "bookends" of a relationship shift into each other, it suddenly occurred to me that the birth and death of love have always existed as parts of each other. At the very height of desire there is an edge, the cresting of something that will inevitably decline. And in the coldest moment of love's death, flashes of warmth linger and refuse to be entirely obliterated. If we look hard enough, we see that love's ecstasy and its terror seep imperceptibly into one another. Blue Valentine is one of those very rare films that dares us to experience this interstice, of love at its truest - and its most unbearable.