My Coat Wept Fake Blood

I’m obsessed. It’s crept into my blood. My perception is altered. I’m fixated on light. I’m fixated on dark. I’m fascinated with painting patterns of light in the night. Now it’s in the rain.

It’s been at least twenty years since an art form incited an insatiable hunger in me with such ferocity. I’ve had a lot of loves. I’ve done many forms of art, crafts, and a plethora of creative endeavours throughout my life. I have already accomplished my creative goals, which is why I left the fine art world behind over a decade ago. I had no expectations of falling in love again with a new way of creating. Especially now, when I’m rapidly running out of time and resources.

I’m self-indulgent when it comes to anything I wish to create. I’ll take all the steps necessary to facilitate the process. I love to create. I need to create like I need to breathe. It’s always one of the primary driving forces in my life.

So I have a new love in lightpainting, coupled with limitations of circumstances beyond my control. My camera is old by today’s standards. I need a new one. I need additional lenses. I need lightpainting tools. Most of all, I need to meet others in my area who are also involved with lightpainting. From what I’m seeing and my own dabbling, it’s best explored with a team of at least one other.

Limitations. Between a rock and a hard place. Giving up is never a card in my deck. I just have to get creative in my approach to working with those limitations. This is my solution whenever I meet any hurdle in life. I get creative. I figure it out. I find ways to overcome obstacles and move beyond them. It begins and ends in creativity because creativity is not limited to art and craft. Creativity is a crucial aspect of all problem solving. It’s a way of seeing, thinking, and being.

Hours of rain pouring down. I was chomping at the bit to go do a shoot. I waited. I waited for two hours. Maybe the drenching downpour would let up enough. Nope. Screw it; I’m practically dying to get out there with the camera.

Guess what @dandays? Epic Wet Fail. Your kind suggestion of, “take an umbrella” for rain photography does nothing to protect a camera or me in rain, especially a downpour at all angles. I skipped the blooming umbrella. Threw on this extra-large jacket I made a colour collage on of dye, paint, and then waterproofed. Best time to test the waterproofing (or so I thought). Even better, the camera nestled safely inside the jacket, protected from rain, unless shooting.

I’m quite taken with combining water and light in any form when I do photography. Call it a bit of a fixation. It’s so wet. Icy cold water raining down. I ducked into wherever I could to shoot without the rain landing on my camera too much for as many shots as possible. Lots of puddling on the street, cars going by, distortions from rain coming down, and these strings of shifting LED lights reflecting in the puddles, created the patterns in the next three images.

It’s close to midnight. I take off across the street and land under where the lights are strung. No shelter for the camera. It’s never going to forgive me. What a thing to try and time, position and move in a meddling maelstrom of rain.

Worse still, there are a few homeless/addicts/I don’t know what near the dumpster bins twelve metres from me, clocking me. I hear one say not in a good way, “She’s got a camera! She’s taking pictures!” I make some made up on the spot gesture to get them to chill out and that I’m not taking photos of them doing a deal by the bins.

I keep shooting. I speed it up. I stop being fussy and hustle. Either I get the shots or I don’t. Too many things to juggle on this spot. At least I’m dry. Bang up waterproofing jacket job.

I’m ready to pack it in. My camera is complaining too much rain. On the way I spotted lights strung on an iron fence entrance. One more shot. Camera cuddled in zipped up jacket. Why do I have blood on my hands? Searching for a source, my eye catches what looks like red raindrops nested on the outside of my jacket. It’s probably my imagination. Almost home. I’ll deal with whatever this is then.

Decided to stop at a store with far too much white…floors, walls, blinding bright ceiling spotlights. Halfway into the store I notice I’m dripping what looks like blood on the floor. I freeze. I stare at my jacket. It’s weeping blood out of every fabric pore and running down onto a too white floor.

I move. Keep going. Move along. Nothing to see here. Everything is normal. I’m not dripping fake blood all over the floor. It’s not all over my hands. I hope the cashier doesn’t see it. I tuck my hands mostly into the sleeves. He doesn’t notice. No one notices. No one says a word. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. I mean, what if I was wounded and bleeding? Who am I kidding? No one in this city gives a crap.

I get home and in the door. I have a good look at my jacket. One of the colours I used on it, a reddish brown dye, didn’t hold. I forgot to use a mordant after dyeing it. Years of dyeing fabrics and I forget this simple rule in the throes of some creative storm.

The next day, I leave to go out. I’m locking up when I see there’s a fake blood smear across my door and part of the wall. Back into the apartment for a rag to clean that up asap. I can’t have my neighbours thinking I have dead bodies stored in my apartment. I keep that on the down low.

_{All photos taken by Nine with a Pentax digital 35mm camera.}