Ravens' View

Welcome to my blog

 

Graffiti is like a dandelion - to some it's a flower to be appreciated and encouraged, to others it's a weed to be stomped out and eradicated.

I'm a photographer, trombonist, grandfather, writer, and promoter of graffiti as an art form and community change agent.

My photos on Flickr, as Ravensview Images, are here, I'm in the Ottawa New Horizons Band, I'm on Facebook and Twitter, blog here, contribute to some newsletters, and this past November completed my second draft novel as part of NaNoWriMo. I'm retired, and busier than ever, live now in the Parkdale area - and love it!

 Some of my recent photo sets are London Ontario graffiti,  a local Building Trades Ball Tournament, music at my local O'Connell's pub, an Obey mural downtown, and of course last year's House of Paint. I've been an active photographer for a number of years, covering  local graffiti, mural projects, sports, travels, models, arts events, even my local pub.  I've also covered live music events such as Ottawa's  Bluesfest and the Folk Festival. 

From my initial photography of back alley art I developed more interests and links into the culture of Hip-Hop, and have volunteered in several youth-related areas. I have worked with Const. Scott Mills of Toronto Crimestoppers, he uses this same approach as a way to reach youth and show them they can be valued members of the community. Check out his work at  Legalgraffitiart on YouTube. I wrote for him a "how-to" guide on neighbourhood transformations, that went into the Ontario School Resource manual, used by many police forces as reference.  

I've also kept developing my photography skills - and of course buying more equipment. I do have many old pics to scan in still, but also have a lot (as in thousands) of photos up on Flickr.

Random Photo Story

From the blog Terrible Minds, comes another Flash Fiction Challenge. We were directed to go this site, which pulls up six random photos at a time from Flickr. From those six, we were to pick three, and use those as inspiration for a short story, 1000 words max, by noon EST on January 27th.

These are the three I picked. I don't know anything about the people or places shown, nothing implied about them, I just used the images as starting points for my own imagination.

    
The images are - a building in downtown Taipei, Taiwan http://flickr.com/photos/22310015@N06/6016785855/

two guys sitting on a rooftop http://flickr.com/photos/50792682@N00/3457578328/

and two girls biking down a road http://flickr.com/photos/12203542@N05/5641941202 .

And now the story, it's about 575 words long ...

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After "the end"

I finished the first draft version of my NaNoWriMo novel a couple of days ago, typed "the end", and looked at the screen with a feeling of relief and the thought "now what?".

I liked how the story flowed along, and felt the ending worked out well. The characters kept surprising me all the way through, but still it was satisfying wrap up this second novel, part two of Due North. And it was nice to see it end with maybe a hint as to where we could go for a part three. 

It took a while to get those last words in though. I "won" with about 55k words by November 30th, but then it took me until now to add another 16k and get me up to 66k - maybe 180 pages so far. Sure, I had Christmas shopping and celebrations in there, and a week in Toronto, but the main thing was that there was no real deadline, no push to get in those 1667 words every day and add to your online count for all to see. And now, my next steps will be to start editing my novel - both novels actually, as last year's didn't really get tuned up and this year's novel is a sequel, so depends on part one somewhat. I did a lot of reading and thinking in between the two NaNoWriMo's too, so the first novel will need more adjusting, to character arcs and sub plots and description and dialogue, etc. etc. So will the second one, but it may need a boost to the action - I didn't have the same enthusiasm some days so just added whatever came into my head - I'm sure the characters were looking at each other wondering why they were there. Never have done a lot of editing before though, so have have no idea how long it will take, or how to measure/schedule it. My readings indicate I should plan for several editing cycles, starting high level with overall plot elements and flow, then gradually working down to line editing - looking for typos and punctuation errors. At some point I'll need to get some outside editing done too - either bribe a learned friend or hire a professional. To get there, I'll need to start with a couple of hours a day I think, and see where that takes me. Hopefully I'll still like my books by the end.

Be it resolved ...

I was going to write about resolutions again this year, but after looking at last year's post- I'm pretty well happy with what I said.

I noticed I didn't commit to any big changes a year ago, so don't have any big regrets to deal with. And that's what this whole resolutions thing seems to me to be - looking back at the year and rather than celebrating our strengths, poking around until we finding a failing or two that we can tackle. Not that I'm against "improving", but I wonder if it's our Christian background that needs to remind us of our failures and sins.

Christmas in a strange place

This was written for a challenge on Terrible Minds - we were given the title and a day to write 1000 words or less. Enjoy.

 

It was the quiet that woke him up. He could hear the faint murmur of traffic, the occasional screech of steel wheels on rails, but the familiar and constant rumble was missing. Strange for a Thursday morning, he thought, then remembered it was Christmas. He hated Christmas. Weeks of even more confusion and crowding and shoving, faceless people rushing about, loaded down with parcels, busy trying to out buy each other. Today, Christmas Day, most of the stops on his tight little route would be closed, so he'd have to spend longer up there foraging. His few friends would be at the missions and churches for the free dinners, but he avoided those places, with their sermons and lectures. Many of the workers looked at him askance, too, at his bushy white beard, rosy cheeks, and big belly, and asked why he was there taking a meal from someone that needed it. It wasn't his fault, as long as he could remember he had looked like this. He did sometimes remember Christmases in the distant past, of himself being busier at them, of kids and toys and laughter, but now he seemed to be pulling in on himself more and more.