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Category: A daily breath

a true treat

Posted on August 1, 2024 by j.g.lewisLeave a comment

August: always worth waiting for.

The glorious sun still shines, nights arrive a little earlier and morning takes its time coming around. If we are fortunate, the heat and humidity will dissipate overnight.

Yet, even as we sense summer slowly slipping away, we rejoice in the simple things that bring joy.

Ontario Peaches, fresh off the tree, locally grown, a true treat in every sense.

Colourfully fleshy and unimaginably sweet, a delicate taste like nothing else, ripe in-season peaches are now available at green grocers and farmer’s markets. Right on time.

A true taste of summer.

Peaches might be the only fruit where I will limit consumption to only the season. It is a thing I have. It’s always worth waiting for.

I sense a peach pie in my future.

08/01/2024 j.g.l.

the essence of the neighbourhood

Posted on July 30, 2024 by j.g.lewisLeave a comment

I took my camera out for a walk yesterday, I felt it was time.

For the past couple of months, I have been focused (excuse the pun) on other aspects of art, refamiliarizing myself with my paintbox and attempting to capture my world in a different sort of way. I’ve been enjoying, even benefitting, from the change.

Creating any form of art is not only how you fill your time, but also how you fill your mind.

The camera has been a constant companion of mine for a good five decades, both personally and professionally. Photography, always, has been my preferred art form. Photojournalism has long been a passion more than a profession.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been attempting to make photographs that do not look like they were taken for me. I might be the only one who recognizes it, but after a lengthy tenure in the newspaper world you find yourself relying — perhaps subconsciously or by habit — on certain angles, lenses and depths of field that become overly familiar when you see what’s going on through the viewfinder. A camera lens can actually limit your perspective.

Yesterday I set out to make a serious attempt to capture what summer can be like in the concrete confines of Toronto for no other reason than it is summer, I am in the city, and I had my camera with me. How serious is that?

My journal entry earlier in the day explained my intentions: I’ve not spent a lot of time looking through the lens lately, and today just seems like it would be, or could be, a beneficial way for doing exactly that.

Ending up on Spadina Ave., caught up in the congestion that has become downtown Toronto, I continued along the path to Chinatown and its vibrant street-front retail scene where you can buy pretty much anything off or along the sidewalk: produce, gemstones, trinkets, shoes, socks, and sundries.

For no other reason than being there, other than wanting or needing to spend time with my camera, I set out to study the essence of the neighbourhood a little closer.

What I see through my lens is only a small portion of the world around me, but yesterday that was enough.