Finally getting around to pulling this guy outta my drafts. In January I took a trip with my partner & a close friend down to Albany to visit with a big group of online friends we had made starting in 2020. I’m glad we made the trip. It was really refreshing and really nice to be able to get closer with this rowdy group! We’ve met once before last summer though Tas and I didn’t get to participate much in the hangout because we were booked with a convention.
It was just really fun and really nice to get to see everyone again. I’ve got a lot of big sappy goopy feelings about this trip and this group in general but I’ll spare ya.
Hi everyone, I know a lot of you are (probably) reading this haha!! This trip still sits in my brain so here’s the pics I took from our insane hike–I don’t think I’ve ever done a hike quite like this one but god did it feel amazing being at the top of that mountain!
What an experience making that climb. I hope to work up my cardio better for any future hikes we have with this group. <3
If you know the game this title is referencing then eeyyyyy (its a really cute game) if not then I urge you to check it out! Ironically I wasn’t the one playing it but my partner played it a while back and I got to watch and it was very cute.
Same vibes as this post! A friend invited us to hike up The Mountain and so we did and I took my camera along to capture the leaves changing colour because we were very fortunate to make it in time this year (I swear we just miss it every year because its gone from one weekend to the next).
Admittedly I don’t really have too much to add to this post. I’m just feeling really thankful for the friends I have and sharing moments with them. I’m excited about the things we talk about. I’m eager to see what comes next but I’m taking things one step at a time. One Step At A Time.
I’m having a lot of currently complicated feelings about… big changes. I’ve been wrestling a lot with feelings of regret as I learn the art of capturing moments into stills and trying to be kind to myself about those missed chances. I’m trying to divorce my hobby of photography from an obsessive need to capture every single moment, from kicking myself with every instance I miss.
I’m not a photographer, not really. I was once a filmmaker but nowhere is quite built for sharing small slices, small pieces of me and the things that I see. So I pivoted. Past an aching nervousness, past feeling like an absolute imposter and despite all the discouragement of an old teacher (yikes, ten years ago, now).
I like to think that my voice in my photos has become stronger. I am enjoying the push and pull, the thrill against my own social anxiety and convention. Instead of worrying about missed moments. I take the time to make moments, to make my space in the world. To occupy instances of time I might be too shy to insist upon. If I don’t take these moments… I miss my chances. Sometimes I am okay with that. Sometimes the chance is not worth taking. I think these small lessons have taught me that it’s alright to make the mistake. To miss the moment. I will grow my eye for these moments with every chance and every missed instance.
I think there’s something to be said about this, even in our lived experiences. In all of my time, both childhood and adulthood, I’ve missed chance after chance to document these spaces up north, the moments I’ve spent time there. I have a few to speak for. Certainly family members can pull up old files. But I sometimes lament the thought of missing the last chance I had to take in my grandmother’s old home.
I took these knowing I’d feel this way if I didn’t take the chance, even if the moment seemed strange. Even if it perhaps looked a little strange to those who didn’t realise I was into photography as a hobby in the first place. I took the moment inside myself to trust my eye, and take this time and this space.
Just these last two years I can feel the ways in which I’ve grown up. But somehow I feel like I have so much growing to do, still. Maybe that’s just a feeling that sticks with you forever. Honestly, that would have scared me once, to know that I’d never really feel ‘grown up’. That there’s not a particular age that determines this. That I’ll always be learning and changing and growing and becoming something different with every stage of my life.
I’m not scared of that now. I’m definitely more scared of not getting to experience that full ride though.
I took these photos during the small get-together after the funeral of a man who was the life and soul of this place. Of every place I knew up here in Lac-Des-Plages. He was a grandparent to me, his big jovial smile is distant in my memory already. It’s been years since I’ve seen it proper even when he was still with us. It’s sad what illness and ailment can do to a person.
Change is exciting, but change can also be just as terrifying. I’m used to change being a crushing weight in my life as of late. I’ve lost a lot of family, and a lot of memories with them. I’ve lost a lot of places that were once dismal escapes as a kid. Being ‘forced’ to go play outside and make the memories I look back on fondly now. Sometimes I wish I could experience them just one more time.
I don’t really know what to feel very much these days. But I know that change is inevitable, and a lot of it is out of my control, and losing this control is terrifying, but I’ll adapt and change, and one day grow from it. Become a more well-rounded person, become a more jaded and sharp personality. Who really knows until it happens to me in real time. I think either of these happening is okay. I’m allowed to be a rough personality, to be disliked from time to time. To be disliked by certain people. To have hard feelings to decipher and build a hard shell that softens only with time. I’ve been giving myself permission to feel these emotions, but not to dwell on them. The second part is the hardest.
I also know that a lot of change comes from within, from decision I make going forward. People say life is short, but really its the longest length of time we have. I’ve come to notice the stillness of time taken in small moments. In breathing fresh air, in centring myself in moments of bliss, and happiness. Acknowledging these moments as strongly as I (unfortunately) dwell on things that hurt and take pieces of me with them.
Its been difficult, but I think I’m doing okay all the same.
I get off a nine-hour flight of horrible airplane food and freezing temperatures into sweltering forty degree (Celsius) heat in long pants. The family is piled into a van with no air conditioning because when the AC is blasting, the person sitting the farthest back is blasted with heating. We’re sweating more than we ever have in our lives.
The apartment is up a couple flights of stairs, it is beautiful the view we get here in Athens, I wish I could enjoy it more. My skin feels like its burning right off of my bones. A second-aunt or a half-cousin–I honestly forget–hands us the keys and laughs a little bit at our comments about the heat. The apartment is sweltering even when we open up all the windows and doors… the AC unit in the small space barely stirs the air and the air it does stir is about room temp and not very cool at all. This first day is so long and so grating we’re sure it’ll never end.
But in the evening I walk with my Dad to scope out the locals, buy up some medication for my mom’s jet-lag, buy some groceries… and … goodness the bakery. We stumble into the most beautiful little bakery I have ever set my eyes on. They have pastries of every shape and sort, bread and treats. The smell in this place is incredible.
That night we also eat the first of many very delicious and extremely cheap gyros. The food in this country is absolutely out of this world. If there’s anything I really miss its this.
What I don’t miss is the heat. The first night I spend hours with my sister, jet-lagged on the stunning apartment balcony listening to the voices of the locals gathered in the town square enjoying the cool(er) breeze of the evening and chatting away. We learn quickly that the locals eat much later than our dedicated suppertime of 6-7pm in the west. The days are so hot here it’s difficult to want to get together in the middle of the day at the heat’s highest point. So, in the evenings, the locals gather in the town squares to socialize and I honestly grew to really love the atmosphere of kids playing soccer and the boisterous laughs as people cheered on teams or the muffled whispers of shared secrets.
But the thing I truly and vividly miss about Greece is the scenery and the history it brings. Having a tempered struggle with my own identity and connection to this culture that’s a half of me, this trip really struck me with the need to try and connect with it even more.
This is where my photo journey starts. I honestly took more video of this trip than photo and I am sincerely hoping to finally edit all of my footage together and to really outline my whole experience of it all… τζίτζικας included. But for now here is a taste of the wonderful things we got to see…
We started our trip visiting the Acropolis right in Athens.
Ακρόπολη
We are foolish, going to see the impressive and imposing structure that is the Parthenon. It has hardly been 12 hours since we landed, we hardly got more than a scattered 3-4 hours of sleep. We took public transit right to the Athens’ market downtown in even sweatier and more sweltering temperatures than the day before (or so it feels like it at this point). We make our way up to the Acropolis, stumbling into pockets of shade and trying to avoid other tourists who are from countries far hotter than ours ever get even in the summer months. When my sister and I order some lemonade, at the nearest stand, the seller asks us where we’re from.
“Montreal.” He gives us a knowing look and a little chuckle as he hands us 5 lemonades. We sit under trees for some solace in the shade. Luckily for us, in this dry heat the sun is forgiving when you’re not under his gaze. We rest for a few moments, my mom who is struggling with a migraine elects to stay put while the rest of us continue our journey on the last stretch to the Acropolis.
I am not feeling the greatest, my camera is overheating in my hand and it has hardly even been turned on but I tell myself that I will regret it if I come all this way without making the last stretch of the trip.
For our first location, the sheer size of the Parthenon, Zeus’ temple and the Theatre of Dionysus (don’t quote me on this one) are impressive and in the same instance, a little personally disappointing. There is a lot more construction and scaffolding surrounding a lot of these mythical structures. I take photos but they don’t have the same impact as the real thing standing so tall before me.
We don’t spend very long up here and this is when I worry for the future tourist destinations we have planned for our stay. This place is packed with bodies and the heat seems to close in from everywhere. My sister and I leave my dad and my brother behind to experience the Acropolis to their heart’s content but the two of us descend before my camera can die and the sun can stop burning the tops of our feet.
When we regroup again, we get food in our bellies and spend the rest of the day resting in the apartment and deciding we are all a little bit nuts for doing what we did and not simply choosing to stay home that day. We take this evening to relax.
We depart on our 3 hour road trip to Delphi in the morning.
Δελφοί
Delphi is a completely different experience.
The road trip is spent reading and laughing and breathing a little easier. Its still hot but the overcast skies provide just enough reprieve we aren’t exactly baking away in the sun. We spend a lot of time winding up mountain roads that make us a little nervous at the novelty and the narrow precariousness of it all. But when we reach our destination we are met with views unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.
Delphi is a location that plays an important role in mythos. It is the location of a prominent oracle and of a temple of Apollo. Fitting as not only is he the god of the sun but of prophecy as well. Around this place feels like there is nothing but wonderful luscious wilderness. It’s hard not to imagine his twin all around us. Artemis kisses the scenery with green and cicadas hiss about in the heat all around us. We make it to the top, the experience is littered with pit-stops but on our way down from the summit the thick heat breaks enough to sprinkle some rain and relieve us of the beaming temperature.
But as the rain sets in we find ourselves rethinking our plans. Instead of continuing our journey to Dotsiko today and the Meteora the day after, we decide to go back to the apartment and take the trip tomorrow during the crummy weather instead.
Δοτσικό
This next destination… is less about it’s ancient history so much as it is just weighted in my own history.
Dotsiko is a small town in the Greek mountains (roughly) 8 hours out of Athens. It’s got a population of about 35 and a stunningly beautiful inn. The people are sweet and kind and excited to have visitors to talk to and learn about. It turns out we learn a lot from them too. We specifically took the trip out this far because our family in Canada told us that my παππού (pappou) had family here once, long enough to found this particular village. My dad speaks to the locals a lot about this though he doesn’t translate very much…
This is the home one of my ancestors built when he founded this village. From what I know this building still belongs to us to some degree though it is in terrible shape but has great character for photos. There’s something about it I really love. But I am also a sucker for things with history we might never truly know about. It might be worth turning it into a writing thought-piece of some sort down the line but for now I get to admire its looks and charm and the pieces of the story I have to hold on to.
While the temperature is cold today, the inn is a nice warm place to set up for the night. The sound out here is near-silent when we sleep.
Tomorrow our trip takes us to the monasteries and it is still a few hours drive to get there before we will make our way back to the apartment… Unfortunately we don’t stop by Mt Olympus and climb it to meet Zeus so I can kick his ass so he escapes me… for now.
Μετέωρα
My dad can’t help but stop the car a few times on this drive. The scenery taking us to the Meteora is some of the most beautiful landscape I’ve witnessed with my own two eyes. These are the images my mind is filled with when we head home. These are images that inspire Myth Retold. It’s hard not to want to let your imagination run wild to visions of what could only be described as fantastical.
And even when we reach the Meteora… the monasteries don’t disappoint. It’s hard to believe the following photo was taken by my own two hands.
This part of the trip leaves me emotional. I wonder a little how I can leave this place without having it follow me around for the rest of my life. I realize now, in writing this, that it never has really. Some of these moments stick so strongly in my memory I feel like I’m right there again.
Ολυμπία
A couple(?) days later we take a trip all the way out to Olympia. This is another Big Drive that we make. We get a little turned around and only make it there by late-afternoon… which honestly worked for a lot of my photos, the lighting was extremely rich and dramatic!
This location probably has the most melancholic feeling for me. Unlike a lot of the other sites that have been updated and maintained over time to keep their preservation, a lot of things happened to Olympia, the ruins here are in true fashion, ruined. Between the country’s earthquakes and the effects of multiple wars taking part in also defacing historical landmarks, there is not much that is left here but an outline, a shade of what once was.
There is a kind of beautiful sadness here. I feel like this place has more layers of history than the ancient history we know the best. This is where the first Olympic games were held. I can imagine ancients partaking in them. I read plaques about wrestling arenas, racing domes and the more intimate changing rooms.
But I also see army men using old artwork as target practice and an environment so unforgiving it topples the greatest structures here.
While we’re visiting, an archaeologist emerges from an underground-someplace and dusts off their latest finds and I’m sad I don’t know the language enough to head over and ask what they think they’ve found.
We have our fun here, but I feel the reflection among our whole group as we sip on our lemonades and consider all that we’ve seen on this trip and how this place I probably the most heartbreaking.
Μύκονος
Mykonos… Mykonos… Mykonos…
Oh is this ever the adventure of our trip. To take in these photos without taking in the sheer turmoil behind them would simply not do them justice. The last four days of this trip were supposed to be spent here, enjoying the lap of luxury and relaxing to the true vacation part of this trip. We selected an island with only a short ferry ride. It had a few iconic landmarks we could take our time exploring and beaches like no other (supposedly…)
This is what really happened:
We wake up so early it isn’t even bright out yet. We find our way to the ferry and snooze on board. Its packed with quite a lot of people, we get through the very distressing experience of disembarking as a crowd of people mixed in with our vehicles trying to crawl their way out. Its absolute mayhem these moments.
But this is still nothing as we spend the next few hours locating our airbnb… only to find that it is absolutely nothing like the images provided, it is the farthest walk from any beach on the island and our van cannot make the steep uphill climb… at all. With all of us packed in, the van nearly rolls off the side of the cliff before my dad can manage to put the breaks on. We all scramble out, he somehow gets it up the hill.
We spend time arguing with the guy who rented us the place, he refuses the refund, airbnb refuses the refund, we leave figuring we will find another place somewhere on the island, surely there has to be a room elsewhere…
Except this is also a holiday weekend in Greece and where do the folks from the mainland go for a vacation getaway? The islands. The hotels are booked, packed with people. We spend the whole day trying to find anything, anything at all before we finally come to the conclusion that we are going to have to go back to the apartment in Athens. We locate the ferry ticket booth (walking all around the island this time as if we aren’t tired enough), and the earliest ferry leaving the island is at 10pm…. we… sure have a lot of time to kill.
We eventually settle to enjoy ourselves in town. We walk through the city, buy a couple of souvenirs. I take these photos and I wonder sometimes if they aren’t the best ones I took all trip long!
We at least leave Mykonos having been able to say we visited an island and having the images to prove it, despite our turbulent day. We sleep like rocks in the apartment when we get home at 3am.
So we spend the last three days of our trip in Athens.
Ναός του Ποσειδώνα
We take the last few days easy. We visit the beach/cove in Vouliagmeni and swim one day, and in the evening we were told to visit the Temple of Poseidon, both by locals and family who told us we absolutely had to visit during sunset. So we go, its a nice little drive, the first time we spend a while with the structure waiting for the sun to set.
The first image is before the sun began to set, the second was the temple catching the orange glow as it descended from the sky. I think the image turned out lovely, but during our escapades across the country we had seen a few lovelier setting suns. The sky may have been a bit too clear so the setting rays didn’t have any clouds to catch on and really paint the sky for us.
The rest of the trip we take it easy. We spend another day at the beach, and one scoping out a local mall to escape the burning sun… and then we go home.
And I sleep for a solid week– kidding, but I sure needed a nap after everything. I wound up having a horrible migraine on the way home, strong enough I almost lost all my airplane meals before we stepped through the front door of the house.
And despite all of these ups and downs, I’d do it all again.
[For the sake of clarity and confirmation, all these photos were taken by me!]
In 2015 I graduated University with a bachelor’s in Fine Arts and a Major in Film Animation with a stocky little body of work and a thesis film I spent a year attempting to fine tune into perfection. I spent that spring and summer applying fruitlessly to festival after festival after festival in the hopes of pushing my name out there….
It… didn’t go so well. And as a fresh graduate watching your future drift away in a cloud of smoke as alum after alum from your program gets picked up by studios or manages to make a serious dent in their film fest applications…. there was… a considerable amount of panic on my end as festival after festival after festival rejected my entry.
But then I get a reply back from a festival in Switzerland and not only this, but they asked me if I would be interested in visiting the festival for the weekend so that I could speak about my film during a couple of 10am round-tables with some of the other directors.
Naturally I said yes…. and I managed to extend my stay for the week and brought my dad along for support and as a travel buddy because I hadn’t been this far out of the country ever, never-mind alone!
So we flew out in the fall for the festival. My first nine hour flight to Europe excited for what could possibly await me at the end of it. When we landed it was warm for September but not hot. We took a taxi from Zurich to Baden where the festival was being hosted, settled into our room at a little bed ‘n breakfast and enjoyed the view for a few moments– (these were not taken exactly the day we arrived but throughout the trip).
Admittedly this day we were a little bit foolish and didn’t consider how strong the jet-lag would be so we ventured into town to scope the place out and just barely made it to the first screening of my film… and both of us promptly fell asleep before the end of the screening. We saw my film but I don’t remember many of the others viewed during that particular one. From what I remember we went back to the bed n breakfast and absolutely crashed into bed that night.
Walking into town that morning we became more acutely aware that the walk was… a little bit longer than we remembered it being but we grew to learn that there were two routes. One slightly shorter cutting straight through a more metropolitan part of the city. We most distinctly noticed that if you even so much as approached or were but a mere couple feet away from a cross walk cars screeched to a halt to let you pass… Just a bit different than my experience here in Montreal.
Our second route (which we took far more often) was longer and more scenic. It took us down toward the river bend where we were met with more beautiful moments like this:
But as we made our way through the either the metropolitan area or our nifty little scenic route we reached the festival grounds and here we found big banners introducing us to FANTOCHE International Animation Film Festival. It was really pretty here. I liked these quirky parts of city spaces, more artistic, just fun.
This is also where we had definitely gotten up too late that morning and absolutely missed the first filmmaker round-table that I um… was supposed to be a part of. Woops. They managed to re-schedule me, luckily, and honestly everyone was extremely sweet and eager to help make us feel right at home. I had a little polaroid taken of me to put on a wall filled with other visiting filmmakers. I got a fancy little festival pass which I’m sure exists somewhere in my keepsakes. We were treated to vouchers for a certain number of free meals courtesy of the festival which was amazing. I think we got most of our lunch and breakfasts out of that.
As silly as this is about to sound, I honestly did not spend much time AT the festival as most would have in my place. Here I was, granted the opportunity to network, to make connections outside of my own small social circles. But I’m socially awkward and I struggle with these things and slapping down a German language barrier only serves to make my anxiety greater.
So, yeah, I did see my screening. I did pick one or two more screenings to view. Went to a talk. Absolutely knocked my filmmaker’s breakfast round-table out of the park. But who wants to be in a theatre all day watching short films when you’re in a brand new country? (No offence, obviously, to the filmmakers of said films, I’m sure they were all beautiful in their own right, but a young 23 year old is unfortunately not versed in enjoying artistic integrity and nuance and all that other jargon… when they’re in a new country for the first time…)
I’ll be honest, looking back, I don’t regret it at all.
While I didn’t spend much time cooped up in theatres and observing talks, I did spend a lot of time sight seeing, and taking photos of an environment that would only come in handy as inspiration later locations in stories of my own. I spent time loving every minute of this trip, squeezing in animation know-how into downtime moments with exhibitions. But most of my time was spent exploring the city’s nooks and crannies.
This trip comes back to me in bits and pieces, I remember small moments like the morning we first called home and distinctly realising how massive the time difference was.
Staying up late one night trying to quickly finish a small segment of animation so that it could fit into the festival’s trailer.
Exploring a small fortress with feet so sore I could barely walk the next day.
Experiencing small exhibitions throughout the festival grounds, there was a display for stop motion puppets and zoetropes. Small sets nearly impossible to imagine how anyone could animate on.
Walking through the small art store and touching all the hand-made notebooks there.
The long conversations I had with my Dad about the future.
Sitting on a terrace on one of the last nights of our trip and absolutely freezing our asses off because we started off this trip in a simple t-shirt and jeans and left Switzerland in thick jackets.
I’m a bit regretful that I don’t keep more of a journal in order to fully relive these sorts of moments.
