On Canoeing and Shooting

This is what Pierre Elliot Trudeau had to say about canoeing:

"What sets a canoeing expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other travel. Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hundred on a bicycle and you remain basically a bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature."

And I couldn't agree more.  While Lynda and I did not canoe 100 miles on our recent trip to Killarney Provincial Park, we did spend considerable time canoeing our favourite lakes in and near the park.  We try to make it to Killarney at least once every year.  This trip was our chance to escape after a busy summer, a chance to do some shooting for the upcoming ArtWorks show and to work out some details for next September's Fall Colours Workshop which we will run out of Charlton Lake Camp near Willisville, Ontario - a camp that I have been visiting for over twenty years.

I've talked often about the need to find a way to quiet your mind when you are photographing.  We've talked about meditation, getting in the "Gap," getting out of your own way.  Well canoeing is just one more way of finding peace and stillness as you look for photographs.  Canoeing is meditative.  Canoeing connects you with nature.  

Killarney in the fall is magnificent.  The trees are just turnng colours, and the nights and mornings are cool.  There are very few people around.  With only the sound of the paddle dipping in the water, the wind in the trees and the ocassional maniacal call of a loon, canoeing and shooting are made for each other.