Week 14 – The Michael Lam Collection's Blog

I never really liked the whole Kite-flying thing… don’t get me wrong, the idea always appealed, but the fascination wore off minutes after the kite was actually airborne. As Easter approached each year (when I was somewhat younger, anyway) I would look forward to the whole idea of visiting relatives, flying kites, picnicking and so forth, but in hindsight, it was the totality of the experiences that made Easter special, not just kite-flying.

One of the fun parts for us as kids was helping to decorate the kite, finding magazines to cut things out of, or gift paper, or any printed matter with an image on it, that was to add to whatever fancy snow-flake pattern a parent, aunt or uncle had already cut out of coloured paper to stick as the centre-piece.

I thought of that as I saw this kite-vendor choosing pre-printed stickers to apply to his kites, was the child who got the kite going to think that he /she missed an opportunity to decorate their own kite, or would they be happy that they got one already prettied up and ready to fly?

Canon EOS 6D, Canon EF40mm f2.8 STM | 1/250s, f/8.0, ISO 200

Click on the image to see it in the Gallery

I am scheduled to do a presentation of some of my select works on October 9th at Moray House (part of the Moray House Trust’s foray into encouraging local photographer to express their vision of their art), and I am very nervous about the whole thing, I am not sure what to say.

I often don’t mind sharing my work, but to talk about it makes me feel queasy; I’m usually afraid I’ll either come off as not knowing what it is I’m talking about, or as being pretentious, trying to pass off what I do as “art”…

But, I’ve committed to it and I’ll either make a complete mess of the whole thing or come out the other end, not much worse for wear 🙂

The title I chose for my Seascape collection is “Oniabo”, an Arawak word meaning water, I’ve decided to use an extended version of this title for this presentation at Moray House, which will include most or all of the 6 photos in the Oniabo series as well as other images at the seawall.

That being said, the photo I offer for this week was one under consideration to be part of that presentation, but was subsequently side-lined. Although it in no way resembles Hiroshi Sugimoto’s work, it reminded me that Sugimoto’s Seascapes collection is the reason I had decided to begin a Seascape project in the first place,

Sugimoto begins his description of his series like this:

Water and air. So very commonplace are these substances, they hardly attract attention―and yet they vouchsafe our very existence.

My seascapes invariably often include some “land” or earth (a third element?), but this one I titled “Born of Air and Water” as a reminder to myself of Sugimoto’s words.