[weather | snowing]

This week, I have been writing. More precisely I have been writing and procrastinating about writing. And the current procrastination of choice? Well, a fair bit of curling, ice skating and other winter olympic action, yes. I have also embarked on a project of digitising my photos from Iceland 2001 (taken on seven 35mm films). It’s a while since I’ve seen these pictures, and seeing them again, I see the harsh beauty of the language with the eyes that I first saw the country almost five years ago now. I remember again my feelings and conversations and the soundtrack to that time. I also see and remember the juxtaposition of vegetation, rock formations, and ice that inspired the story – the isolation, the lonliness and the companionship.

Another thing I notice, is how few photos I took. At the time, I thought 7 films over two weeks! That’s a lot of photos – and I guess it is. But even so, it’s not until you go through the negatives one by one, scanning them, that you realise how in the space of 24 or 36 photos you can go through such so much. On these holidays, a lot happens that you can photograph, and 36 photos for three or more days is so very few – these days I can take that many in the course of one walk.

And this makes me think of a few years ago when I scanned the family photos from our year in America 25 years ago, and how there are only about a dozen films for the whole year. With those you can go from New York, to Cape Cod, to California and Yosemite all within three dozen photos.

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