I sometimes see photography as solving a riddle.

You’re faced with near-infinite possibilities every time you look around with a camera in your hand; what lens, what shutter speed, what perspective, what to include and exclude, whether to wait for the light to change—but if you’re like me and have (almost) always used cameras with a sensor based on 35mm film, the one constant has been the shape and proportion of the frame. That’s what the X-Pan gave me all those years ago: a new riddle to solve.

So in the absence of a camera that forced the new perspective on me, I improvised—and it turns out the old riddle was there all along, I just needed to find it; and all it took was a trip around the world to prompt me to go looking for it again…

It’s been a funny time to be Canadian, lately.

Even watching from afar, the renewed passion for our home and native land (as the national anthem says) has been startling to see, as threats to make the country “the 51st state” have come from south of the border. Think pieces in august publications like The Atlantic have even discussed what an invasion—however unlikely it seems—might look like, if the trade war became a real one.

And the reaction has been passionate. Canadians have always loved the maple leaf on our flag, but the addition of the phrase ‘elbows up’—a hockey defence for when you’re being charged by an opponent, meaning the first thing they’ll hit is a nice sharp elbow.

They say a week is a long time, in politics.

For those of us who live in Australia or Canada—or if you’re a citizen of both countries, like me—this has been a very long week indeed.

Monday was the Canadian federal election, in which the Liberal Party of Canada pulled of the seemingly impossible and came from almost certain defeat to nearly winning a majority government. And here in Australia (as I write this), polls are about 2h from closing in our federal race as well. It’s not nearly as contentious, but potentially just as consequential…

We’ve been away.

It’s been quite a while since I posted an essay here—but also, we got out of town for a few days.

If you’ve visited Australia, you’ve probably heard of Byron Bay; it’s one of those towns whose reputation precedes it—beautiful beaches, surfers with Kombi vans, a relaxed lifestyle, music festivals, did I mention the beaches?

And yes, all of that is true, which is why when a friend very kindly offered his house for a week, we jumped at the chance to have a bit of summer in winter. (Yes, this is what Byron looks like in winter!)

Summer in Sydney is a test of how well you can avoid the harsh sun. We haven’t had any days over 40° (yet) here this year, it’s still possible though.

But what I find fascinating about those days when the sun beats down is the absolute starkness of the light, the contrast it creates—and its effect not just on people but the whole environment…

It’s been a while.

To be honest, it’s been SO long, I had to look up my own essays on this very site to see when the last one was, and what it was about. (It was June 2021, actually.)

We’ve all been distracted, diverted, disturbed from our usual patterns. Work has started up, work has shut down, work has started up again only to be shut down again…

A little while ago I found an essay online, written by my grandfather.

I never met him, he died in 1960, almost a decade before I was born; but through an accident of timing, he spent WWI in a German prison camp. Instead of becoming a concert pianist, which is what he was studying there at the time, he became a psychologist and professor, and wrote a book about the society that sprang up in the camp in the years he was held.

Later, while working for the Canadian government during WWII, he wrote for Maclean’s magazine about how difficult it was going to be for the soldiers and prisoners returning from the war, the trouble they would inevitably have returning from that experience to “polite society”, and how their imaginations of life back at home after all that time away would inevitably lead to disappointment with the real thing.

I think that’s what the return to relative normalcy will be like for all of us, as the pandemic starts to get under control around the world…

If you’ve been reading my essays for a while now, you might know a bit about my family in Canada—the birders of Southern Ontario, that’s them.

One of my sisters sent me a photo of the decorations going on their tree this year over there, which naturally enough included a lot of bird-related ornaments, gathered over many years. My dad and my uncle used to have a boxing day tradition of shopping for new ornaments, so the collection was pretty expansive by the time we were kids—and we had to be a bit careful around all that Czechoslovakian blown glass, I can tell you. But I think we did okay; most of it survives and is still being used by them & their own (careful!) kids today.

Not having kids, a tree, or ornaments here in Sydney myself, I decided to do pretty much the opposite of what I usually do for one of these essays: I took my longest lens, and my largest camera, and went looking for actual birds I could capture, and send to my mum over in a wintry lockdown in Toronto, to give her a bit of colour and summer light to enjoy for a while…

If you were to stop by my apartment, you might think I was mildly obsessed. And you’d be right—but it’s not quite what you’d think, at first glance.

There might be a Phantom of the Opera poster on the wall. You could find a Phantom action figure, lurking on my desk. And, sure, I do have six (SIX?!) copies of the film—many of which actually contain two versions of it.

But, I promise you—there will be no songs about him, no Broadway or London cast renditions of anything. This isn’t the Phantom you’re thinking of; well, probably not, anyway…

Like most of us, I’m finding this year hard.

I’m well aware that it could be worse, of course—Sydney (and New South Wales, and Australia) are comparatively speaking doing extremely well, with new cases under 20 per day for months now; meanwhile, to our south, Melbourne is in their second lockdown after case numbers went over 500/day for weeks on end.

But still, between my father’s passing earlier in the year, and the fact that the entire industry I’ve spent my career in is closed indefinitely, it’s hard to know what my purpose is at the moment. Mostly I try to stay safe, which means rarely leaving the house aside from walks in a nearby park or grocery shopping; so I see the same few blocks, and not much else…

To suggest that there’s been a lot going on in 2020 so far would be, well, the understatement of the year.

We drove inland from Sydney on the weekend to visit a friend (now that we’re allowed to travel locally), passing through lands that were scorched by the bushfires in December and January, flooded with rain in February, and quarantined for coronavirus ever since.

But what I was thinking about on this trip was, ironically, the things I didn’t need to think about. The many, many things that are just easier for me, as a whitefella in Australia—even as a recent migrant…

My last essay, from February, seems like a postcard from a bygone age. Me, at home; a life in the arts; what different meanings those have now.

Two days after posting the essay, my father died; by the following week I was in Toronto with my family, putting him to rest on a windswept hill, as snow fell around us…

I seem to be accumulating identities.

When we first started talking about this project for 2020, I thought I knew what it meant, more or less.

But the reality is, I don’t find it much easier to define myself now than I did at the end of high school, when we were supposed to be choosing careers, and figuring out our plans. I mean, I know what I do, and where I’m from, and where I live - but are any of those defining…?

I’ve been away.

Well, we’ve all been away, obviously - the last essay we posted was back in June, and it’s September now! But I’ve been back in my old home country, where I grew up.

Things are different there now - as I anticipated last year, my parents have downsized out of their Toronto home of 56 years.

This was also the first summer they didn’t spend July and August up north on the lake by themselves, they decided to was better if there were some younger folks around to help out while they were up on the island - so we drove up with them, stayed for a week, carried the groceries, and cooked. We also played some cribbage (which didn’t go so well for me)…

Really, photography is about the questions we ask ourselves as we’re deciding what to photograph.

My background’s in theatre; and the key questions I ask myself when I see a production (or decide to work on one) are these: “Why this? Why here? Why now?”

By which I mean, why this story, at this time, in this place - what particular, specific resonance does a show bring to an audience? We interpret everything in the context we experience it; so what is it, in particular, that makes the script relevant right now, to the people of this place? The answer isn’t always obvious; and, sometimes, the context arrives just as the show hits the stage…

Sydney’s a city.

Sure, there’s a harbour, there are beaches, there’s the Opera House - but there’s also all the things that come with a large population trying to coexist on a small amount of land.

Traffic, construction, development - history getting plowed under for renewal and development, with little pockets saved by determined campaigning that, once in a while, succeeds in protecting the past…

Personally, I’ve never been a fan. Of going out in the rain, of getting wet, I mean.

Swimming is fine - that’s different. It’s the sogginess, the smell of wet clothes, the waiting for your jeans to dry while you’re still in them.

But I have to admit, I quite enjoy photographing it…

I’ve been noticing the sun, this week - well, on the clear days at least, I have.

The sun, its effects, its surrogates - we miss it when its gone, we replace it with whatever we can find, we wait for it to come back; and in the mean time, we make do…

It’s not that I’ve led a double life. Not really.

It’s more like several, sequential, sometimes-overlapping (but often not) lives.

I was back in Canada recently, where my parents are (finally) starting to think about moving out of the home I grew up in.

But the side effect of that is, everything in the house has to go someplace else; so the things I left behind, when I went overseas “for a year” (in 1996), now need to be dealt with, sorted through, decided on. And, being a filer - someone who files things - I could hardly just throw everything out.

So one of those bags that came back from that trip was full of paper - and now it’s here. And it still needs to be dealt with…

Spring’s arriving.

Sydney’s warming up, flowers are blooming, and beaches are starting to fill up with sun-seekers, and even swimmers.

A birthday lunch on the north side of the bridge took us to the sandy shore, and the signs of the summer to come were everywhere to be seen.

The sun’s getting hard, again. The shadows are crisp and dark, without a cloud in the sky.

Spring’s arrived.

Sometimes, it's just the lines.

The intersections & collisions. The mix of new and old, of sun and shade, of hand-painted and computer-created - and, once in a while, a burst of something organic.

I guess because I've been away recently, the lines of Sydney are fresh to me again…

It's early. But I'm late.

People are off to work, I've got an appointment on the other side of our neighbourhood - but the light is good, and I can't help making myself just that little bit late as I walk.

Everyone else is rushing, but I go in fits and starts - I'm a fast walker any any time, but then I'll stop suddenly when something catches my eye, the shadows mingle, the angles line up, the dog has David Bowie eyes, whatever.

So I'm going at a relatively good pace; except, of course, when I'm not.

And...somehow, I've misjudged it…

A week is a long time in politics, and in life.

This time last week, we were in Canada, it was summer, the days were long - and we knew who was running the country back home in Australia.

Over the course of this week, we've spent 24h in transit, a week trying to adjust our internal clocks (finally with some success overnight); and 5 days watching our parliament being brought to a halt by internal struggles, and the party in charge attempting to choose a new leader - finally with some success overnight…