what I did on my summer vacation

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So last week we went to my parents’ cottage. My brother and his family weren’t able to come after all, so for several days it was just me, my husband, my son, and my parents. Which means I got to read a lot more than I expected. I read Image Makers, Image Takers cover to cover first. It was fascinating to read about the methods, approaches, and philosophies of so many different photographers. Before we went to the cottage I went on an Alec Soth binge, reading his old blog and any interviews I could clap my eyes on. It was on his recommendation that I bought Image Makers, Image Takers, and it was also his recommendation that brought me to Robert Adams’s Beauty in Photography. I just happened to find his later book, Why People Photograph, which I also read at the cottage, and I think I actually like it better than Beauty in Photography. His essay on Paul Strand I found especially illuminating, not just about Strand’s work, but about how to read photographs and what makes great photographs great.

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Back when I first watched The True Meaning of Pictures, I thought that the critics who said that Shelby Lee Adams’s subjects weren’t sophisticated enough to really understand what was happening in the photographs of them were just snobs or assholes. But I’m coming to realize that there are degrees of visual literacy, and mine is deepening.

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I even read some poetry. My mom bought Jeramy Dodds’s Crabwise to the Hounds, which just won a Trillium Book Award and made the shortlist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. I actually have a lame claim to fame with this book, because I went to high school with Jeramy. He even dated one of my very good friends for a couple of years. Another friend from that time read his book a while back and said she’d always known he had the soul of an artist. But I knew no such thing. To me he was kind of intimidating; I had no idea he was interested in reading let alone writing – I thought just liked to get drunk and play mailbox baseball. Anyways, turns out he’s a really good poet. The language is so good and dense that I had to stop and think about each line, and I could only read a poem or two at a time. I meant to bring it home with me, but by the time we left my son had developed a tummy bug, so my packing was rather distracted and I forgot it.

I have to say the vacation had some big ups and downs. My husband lost his wallet in the torrential rains we drove through for two hours before we finally stopped at a Tim Hortons. We realized the next day his wallet must have fell out of his pocket when we ran back to the car. So he had to make all sorts of phone calls and trips into town to deal with that.

On the up side, we got to meet my new nephew, who my sister and her husband adopted in May. He’s 22 months old and utterly charming.

Also, the lake happened to have its annual corn roast and fishing derby, and my son caught his first fish — in fact it tied for first place in the under 6 fun fish category.

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He also ran in the egg and spoon race. And you know how there’s ALWAYS one kid who runs away? That was my kid this year. I was laughing too hard to get a decent picture, but I did manage to squeeze this one off showing one of the organizers in hot pursuit. I’m kinda proud to see him breaking the rules at such a tender age.

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We stayed at my parents’ farm for a night too, which is where I made these next few pictures.

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And now for a few more pics from the cottage:

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