Alternative Process: Halloween Ceilidh

During a recent visit to the prairies, I saw a ceilidh much like this - a guy with bagpipes, enthusiastic kids, everyone having fun. Not having a camera to hand, a good photo went missing. So I recreated the scene as best I could. The kid on the left is Ole Michael, my grandson. A handsome lad, or what!!!
Cheers, Mike

Michael_Stones said:

During a recent visit to the prairies, I saw a ceilidh much like this - a guy with bagpipes, enthusiastic kids, everyone having fun. Not having a camera to hand, a good photo went missing. So I recreated the scene as best I could. The kid on the left is Ole Michael, my grandson. A handsome lad, or what!!!

Click to expand...

Frankly, Mike,

This is the first so-named Ceilidh I have ever experienced, even as a photograph! I am taken by the rural roots you have put into your recreation. It's a great introduction to such festivals. I found the following illuminative quote on the subject from a over a century ago:

"The 'ceilidh' is a literary entertainment where stories and tales, poems and ballads, are rehearsed and recited, and songs are sung, conundrums are put, proverbs are quoted, and many other literary matters are related and discussed

—Carmichael, Alexander, Carmina Gadelica, 1900, tome I, p. xxviii.[1]" Read more here.

So what's the full story of the components of this picture, for sure some Halloween pumpkins are in the make if it!

Asher

Hi Asher. More about making the picture over the weekend. It's the last week of the semester and I'm up to my eyeballs helping graduate students with an article they're writing. The only free minutes are while waiting for the computer to spew out statistical findings - it's a large database so this takes a while. Productive use of these interludes did result in a possibly improved image to make the characters stand out more.
Cheers, Mike

Sorry for the delayed reply, Asher. Here's the story behind the image.

Halloween was coming up and entered into conversation when we visited our son and his family just outside Winnipeg on the eastern edge of the prairies. Some people find the prairies monotonous but I love that endless landscape which contrasts with more limited impressions of distance around our home in a forested part of Ontario. A discussion about ceilidh we had enjoyed when living in Newfoundland gave me the idea for an image. Because Halloween has degraded to a commercialized time for getting whereas a ceilidh is an occasion for mutual giving, I wanted to create an impression of innocence returned.

The landscape was from a farming area where my son lives. The bagpiper and the group of kids were from photos at a prevention-of-elder-abuse event at which I was the photographer. The kid in the bottom-left corner is my beloved grandson, with the photos of pumpkins taken at a nearby farm. The crow/raven is a magical bird in aboriginal culture and so deserved an elevated scale within the image.

Although photography has traditionally been a means for recording reality, i know from your own work that you appreciate attempts to create a reality that is more imaginative than actual. This image adheres to that line of thinking.

Cheers
Mike

Michael_Stones said:

Sorry for the delayed reply, Asher. Here's the story behind the image.

Halloween was coming up and entered into conversation when we visited our son and his family just outside Winnipeg on the eastern edge of the prairies. Some people find the prairies monotonous but I love that endless landscape which contrasts with more limited impressions of distance around our home in a forested part of Ontario.

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Michael,

I like the round bales of hay left by the giant harvesting machines. These alone make wonderful landscape pictures. I hope you have taken a lot more and at different times of the year, just like the Monet haystacks of almost 100 years ago!

Michael_Stones said:

A discussion about ceilidh we had enjoyed when living in Newfoundland gave me the idea for an image. Because Halloween has degraded to a commercialized time for getting whereas a ceilidh is an occasion for mutual giving, I wanted to create an impression of innocence returned.

The landscape was from a farming area where my son lives. The bagpiper and the group of kids were from photos at a prevention-of-elder-abuse event at which I was the photographer. The kid in the bottom-left corner is my beloved grandson, with the photos of pumpkins taken at a nearby farm. The crow/raven is a magical bird in aboriginal culture and so deserved an elevated scale within the image.

Although photography has traditionally been a means for recording reality, i know from your own work that you appreciate attempts to create a reality that is more imaginative than actual. This image adheres to that line of thinking.

Click to expand...

Mike I like these gently constructed scenes made from a combination of memories, nostalgia, sense of social history and values. While not as obvious and stark as the heroic pictures of Marxist-Lenin-Maoistic socialism or the French Revolution, with idealized peasant workers and flags and bravely militant maidens, this gentle picture does also carry some of that socially-reponsibly legacy, not just, ''l'art pour l'art'', "Art for art sake". The picture evokes an increased awareness values we need to celebrate, treasure and conserve, but actually we could mistake it all for wheat really happened!

……………..and yes, this is just the sort of work I love especially. A lot of effort that pays off handsomely.

Asher

The photos below are to thank you for your kind comments, Asher. The first is the same background scene from a different angle, the second a view from the same location on the road we travelled upon. Both convey an endless emptiness that i love. The camera, by the way, was the often maligned Sigma Merrill DP2.


All good tales have a twist at the end to surprise the reader and complete the storyline in a significant way. The twist in this tale was that my daughter-in-law expected a baby in early November. Although I'd completed the Halloween Ceilidh image (except for minor retouching) by mid-October, the baby now named Jasper surprised us all by deciding to be born on the midmorning of Halloween. Halloween was also the day I met my wife 36 years ago. Even though I looked silly dressed as 'The Great Pumpkin', she accepted my invitation for a date the following week. Sometimes serendipity and destiny go hand-in-hand together across the generations.

Cheers
Mike.