Departure

Well my backpack is packed and I am just about ready to leave. I have about 40 lbs of stuff to take with me on my adventure. I think for 60 days that is pretty good.

First stop is Edmonton.

Kyler

Trip Preparations

Time to officially announce on my blog that I have an adventure planned for the summer. I'm going to be going a sixty day bus adventure around Canada and the US to visit family and go to a bunch of other places. I haven't really figured out exactly when I will be leaving, but probably in roughly a week.

I have however started to prepare. Part of that preparation was getting a new camera lens. Here are some pictures from said lens.





As always there are a few more pictures in the web album you can access by clicking through the images.

It is an 18-200mm lens and I have come to realize how to think about using this lens: if I can see it well with my eyes, I can see it well through this lens. It doesn't really extend my vision like a telescope, it match's, which is something I've never really experience with a camera before.

My travels will take me to Edmonton, Vancouver, Vancouver Island and Colorado for sure, and I am going to surely venture further than that. If you are interested in having a visit from me, I would surely be up for it and will see if it can be figured out.

Kyler

Back in Calgary

Well I am back in Calgary. Here of some photos from the last few days in Montreal and of the airplane approaching Calgary.









If you click through the images, there are more in the Web Album.

Kyler

Original Description

Before I made the Crescendo Step, I had to go through a development process. The following is from an email I sent to my teacher to describe my film":



Synopsis: The experience of ascending, and then descending stairs.


This simple action will act as a metaphor to demonstrate how most of life follows the same path. We struggle upwards. Slowly and surely building up a store of energy. The journey becomes more and more precarious as we continue to invest our effort into it. And then we reach the top. It is an ethereal, other worldly place, we have a moment to pause.

To our great satisfaction we can begin our descent. At first leisurely, but always accelerating, recuperating the energy we stored away earlier. Like an avalanche, it soon becomes unstopable. Our speed is not a matter of strength, it is derived from sure footedness and fearlessness. Flying near the brink of disaster. It is exhilarating


In all of the life's endeavors there is always joy in releasing hard work.

Why spend weeks setting up fireworks just to have them explode.?

Why pratice piano for hundreds of hours to have a moment of glory?

Why spend mountains of times on an animation that will be a fleeting moment of joy?



The film will have a very simple form.

Ascent. Anticipation at the Top. Descent.

The Ascent will present the struggle of climbing stairs. By presenting stair ascents of ever increasing difficulty. More and more struggle, more and more stored work.

The Top is about silence, beauty, observation, quiet, anticipation, ethereal. Think Wanderer above the Mist by Casper David Friedrich.

The Descent is a release. All of the stored energy gets blasted into motion. The speed begins controlled, but in an ever increase crescendo it breaks out. The control becomes more relaxed, going down stairs, becomes running, becomes falling, becomes flying.

And that is the film.




So that was what I had in mind before I made the film, and I am pretty sure it is what I made.



Kyler