Flora Isadora: Camera Obscura: wayback machine

Sunday, February 14, 2010

a macro of a leaf after rain + random thoughts as of late featuring black dogs

Going through old pictures again since I'm having trouble finding anything to shoot right now.
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How about a worthless trivial sidebar that has absolutely nothing to do with this photo?

Been fascinated with black dog legends lately… Black Shuck, Cu Sìth, and Garm, the Cŵn Annwn, Barghest, Gytrash and the like…both the stories themselves and how the folkloric origins of the legends later became corrupted once Christianity took hold particularly in the British Isles and Scandinavia. It's this turn that makes me especially engrossed by the few variations of these stories post-Christianity that allow for the benevolent nature of these spectral beasts- the protective dogs that accompany lone women travelers and the visions of these dogs that appear as warnings rather than indicators of inevitable danger. Not all the stories attribute them to hellhounds, animalistic grim reapers, cannibalistic shapeshifters or demonic portents of certain death.

My first pet was a mongrel black dog, Sam, a stray dog of approximately 6 months old who adopted *me* when I was two and a half years old. He showed up one day at my father's station and we became instantly inseparable. I have no idea how much this fact plays into my interest in this myth, but maybe it does. He most definitely was an awesome dog who loved me as much as I loved him. He tried to follow me to Kindergarten when I started school and would wait by the gate for me after school when I started riding my bike in first grade. As a child born on Friday the 13th, and a little weird anyway, I was always absorbed by supernatural folklore so from a pretty young age I was aware of the concept of witches having familiars- but never being a cat person, I thought it was just as appropriate to have a black dog as it was to have a black cat.

So, back to the point. I've been kicking some story variations around in my head based on the black dog- but I know myself well enough to know that I can start a story but it doesn't mean I'll ever finish it. Instead, and even better, I want to find a black dog to photograph. I think maybe this is why I've turned to photography in part in the first place- I may be a wordy person with a lot of ideas, but I tend start writing a lot of things that I never finish. With photography- snap! you've got it; you're done...

This being said: wanting to photograph something and actually finding that *thing* to photograph- the difference between wish and reality- therein lies the wide chasm of dull disappointment. Hmmm.

Oh well. *shrugs* The good news is that after a couple of weeks, I finally have an idea. Now I just need to find a big, black dog. An English mastiff would be perfect. *sigh* I wish I knew where to find one.