to move up and down
Maureen MacGregor
I'm still learning
Photos taken 6/8/2013
I took a class Spring quarter called “The Camera’s Eye II”.
I struggled. The goal was to document Routes 5 and 20 along the northern tier of the finger lakes. And I didn’t have a car. I relied on rides, and it was hard to be out there with a group (Driver wanted to photograph this, I wanted to photograph this, etc, etc.) I made okay photos, but I didn’t do my best work by any means. We were assigned Leica M-4’s, which slowed us down. It was difficult. Near the end of the quarter, I got a car, but it was almost too late to do anything.
I was also in Elements of Advertising, the last of my foundation photo courses. My mediocre photos for Ad, along with my mediocre photos in Camera’s Eye, were draining my self confidence and desire to make images.
But some friends in Camera’s Eye went to Paradise Speedway, a dirt track speedway in Geneva, and brought back great photos. I knew that my first free Saturday this summer I needed to go out there.
The speedway is a Saturday staple for that area of New York. It is a community. My father would probably liken photographing there to “shooting fish in a barrel.”
I drove there yesterday afternoon and just wandered around and photographed for a couple of hours. I got to go out to the center of the track but only stayed for about 20 minutes because I nearly shat myself for being that close to the cars.
I haven’t gone out to shoot by myself in far too long. When I shoot with other people around, I get self conscious. I start comparing my photos to theirs and I just shut down and make really terrible images. Yesterday was a welcome change to my normal grind. I plan to go back throughout the summer.
Can’t catch a break. If you know of someone looking for summer housing near rit, please give them my info #rit #parkpointrochester #rochester #summer
+45° 31’ 28.88”, -80° 23’ 4.11”
7/24/2012
Every year in late July or early August for a week or two I go up to a family cottage on a small island on Georgian Bay in Ontario, Canada that my grandparents bought in the 60’s. We have no electricity, and our only running water is brought in by a hand pump in the kitchen and in the Bathroom. There is one flush toilet down the path. We light the cottage at night with Kerosene lamps. We have a gas refrigerator and a gas stove. Our only connection to the world is our small motor boat. We bathe in the cool lake water. It’s the most wonderful place in the world.
My fondest memories from childhood are from summers spent up there, and it’s where I learned to appreciate quiet and solitude. It’s where I learned to light a kerosene lamp, heat water for a bath, drive a boat, fish, cook. It’s the place where I said “Sorry” for the first time.
As I get older, though, I am brought more and more to terms with the struggle that is maintaining the property. It was much more fun to be there when I was blissfully unaware.
However, this year I am determined to relax and not worry about the future of the cottage. I am going to enjoy every second I have, because I don’t know when (or if) I’ll get there again.
I’m leaving at 5am and I’m still not done packing. It’s mostly just my camera supplies now, but I feel like I should sleep just a little before I go.
If you need me, you’ll have to come get me yourself.
7/10/12
I’m going back to the Plain Dealer tomorrow.
This week is going to suck
6/25/2012
But next week promises to be possibly the best of the summer.
There is this great Bob Ross quote that goes, “Gotta have opposites dark and light, light and dark in painting. It’s like in life. Gotta have a little sadness every once in a while so you know when the good times come. I’m waiting on the good times now.”
There is a beautiful and elegant equilibrium to the universe. But I don’t think that this equilibrium exists in just the movements of celestial bodies, I think that it exists in everything; especially including our lives. For all of the bad that we endure, at some point something will happen that makes up for it. I suppose that belief (or that fact or whatever it is) is what gets me through my worst days. I know that eventually, maybe not tomorrow or next week or next month, things will get better. Everything always works itself out in the end, and when it does you’ll know it.
This week is not going to be especially pleasant. There is a city-wide garage sale happening this weekend and my mom and my aunt have decided to participate together. I have been recruited to help.
Today I went through boxes of my childhood looking for things to be sold at the garage sale and tomorrow I will do more of the same. It’s weird, liberating to an extent. But also really boring. I’ll also be organizing my drawers so that I can finally actually unpack my suitcases full of clothes.
But as if this sale isn’t enough, we’re leaving for North Carolina the day after it ends to visit my brother for a week. Regardless, I am extremely excited to see my brother. I have never been to North Carolina and I’m excited to see it, but most of all I really miss my brother. He has been living there for a little over six months and it has been a strange transition. He is four years older than I am and my only sibling, so I am used to being the only one at home for most of the year, but when he was in college he still seemed accesible. But now I am in college and he is beginning a career three states away and I don’t really know how to deal with so much change at once.
So this week will be crappy, and hopefully next week will be the reward.
I’d like to know what my reward will be for enduring this summer.
9 year old Quin, front left, is splashed with buckets of water by 8 year olds Audrey, back left, and Isabelle, right, at Huntington Beach in Bay Village on June 19, 2012 (Maureen MacGregor / Special to The Plain Dealer)
6/8/2012
I went to Stinchcomb Hill today with my best friend. We packed sandwiches and sat on the grass under a big tree. And we ate, and we talked, and I had my first cashew (My brother is allergic to nuts so before he went to college there weren’t many nuts in my house other than peanuts). The weather was wonderful, sunny and high 70’s, so we were just having a nice time lying in the grass talking. What I love about her is that I can talk to her about anything and that she can talk to me about anything. I’ve known her for seven years, but it wasn’t until about three years ago that we connected. We’ve been more or less inseparable since. The hardest part about leaving Lakewood is not being able to see her regularly.
She said that trees are interesting because they are fractals. I thought that was beautiful so I snapped a picture.
