On Wednesday night I met with Tom Chan and helped him sort through some of Mikael's camera equipment. When I left he sent me off with two camera flashes that wouldn't power on - a creative little challenge.

When I got home I took a look at them and saw that the batteries had leaked and corroded the battery terminals. The terminals were caked with white and blue crystals to the point where the batteries couldn't get a decent connection.

I looked up how to clean the terminals and found a few opinions. Generally people suggested one of the following;

• Wipe the terminals with a pencil eraser
• Wash terminals with a mixture of baking soda and water
• Wash terminals with a mixture of vinegar and water

So there is one non-chemical method, and two contradictory chemical based methods. I started with the least invasive method which was to use an eraser.

I scrubbed away at the terminals with a pencil eraser for a while but the corrosion wasn't being removed. I could have tried a more abrasive eraser; however, I didn't have one available. Time to move to the chemicals.

Now it is important to note again that two chemical mixtures mentioned are contradictory. Using baking soda assumes the corrosion is acidic, and using vinegar assumes the corrosion is basic. Only one of these two options will actually work.

Considering that batteries are typically alkaline (basic) using vinegar (an acid) was my course of action. I mixed equal parts of vinegar and water together and brushed the mixture onto the contacts with a cotton swab. The contacts began bubbling as the corrosion was neutralized by the acid.

I cleaned the contacts with some water and low and behold, the flash powered up and worked just fine. So if you ever have leaky batteries in an electronic device, I recommend using vinegar to clean up the mess.

This weekend I was at the saint benedicts table winter retreat at Camp Cedarwood. While the weather was decidedly unwinter-ish (we played broom ball on the field), it was a great time.

On Saturday I had some free time so I decided to go to Pointe du Bois to take some pictures. While I couldn't get close to the dam, there was lots of wonderful subject matter scattered around the general area.

Sorry for another photography sharing post, but I came across ck/ck's photography today and was really impressed by it. Simple, clean, minimalist photography seems to be pretty trendy right now, along with the 1:1 aspect ratio.

These and the Rune Gunnerisen pictures are making me think seriously about asking for a 28mm prime lens for my birthday.

A while back I stumbled across the photography of Rune Guneriussen, bookmarked it, and promptly forgot about it for the better part of a year. Recently when cleaning out my bookmarks I found it again and am simply astounded by all the pictures.

I guess part of the reason I am attracted to these pictures is that I enjoy night photography. Whenever I look at them I can't help but try to figure out how they were taken. Generally taking the pictures like these is easy, but I just cannot imagine the logistics behind getting all these lamps into the forest and supplying power to them.

A while back Mikael and I had an idea very similar to this where we would take a sofa, television, side table and lamp around the province and photograph them in various random places. I liked the idea of a living room set up in the forest, a normal, typical home but completely out of context. These pictures make me want to revisit that project although how to cart everything around and supply power to it still eludes me.

A couple weeks ago Emily and I spent the weekend in Ontario in order to attend my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary. I hope Emily and I live long enough to see our 60th anniversary when it comes.

Recently I listened to a podcast of a talk held at Aqua books in 2007 entitled Famine Porn: The power of images which talked about the concept of 'Famine Pornography'.  This talk raised interesting questions concerning the use of pictures as a method to solicit donations, and the ethics of talking pictures of people who probably don't want their pictures to be taken.

The beginning of the talk concerns with how people in other cultures view photographs.  Comparing ourselves to other people we have a very liberal view of pictures.  We have cameras, we take pictures of every occasion and have them all over our homes.  Most people in the world cannot afford a camera and the only pictures they have are one or two posed studio portraits which are truly prized possessions.  When we travel and take pictures the locals can feel violated since they are not given time to clean up and change into their most formal clothes.  We rarely let people represent themselves as how they wish to be remembered.

The second half of the talk focuses more on how we as humans respond to images of disaster.  Whenever there is a accident on the highway everyone slows down and looks - we just can't help it.  For whatever reason the image of a bombed building is more enticing than a intact one, a starving child more interesting than a content one.  These images don't only arouse our curiosity but also our emotions in a powerful way.  The problem is that we can grow acclimatized to these images the more we see them, lowering their effectiveness and creating a need for even more graphic pictures to captivate our attention.

This talk was very striking for me since I could relate to it through some of my experiences. I have traveled to Egypt, South Africa and Uganda and I have always been a cowardly photographer. I felt that I was stealing pictures and images from people. After all, I didn't know these people, I didn't know their names, and as far as I was concerned, I didn't want to get close to them. Nearly all the pictures of day to day life I have in those countries were taken from a moving bus, covertly through the zipper of my backpack or using all of the zoom available on my camera. I never connected or asked permission. I used people.

The other thing that this talk brought into relief was my feelings and emotions around poverty. When I first saw substandard living conditions in Egypt many of my friends were deeply affected by it but I was not. This troubled me and it happened again when I was in South Africa and Uganda. I only rarely got a strong emotional response to what I saw. At times I felt numb, other times I felt like a monster for feeling numb. To me this is a very real example of how much I have been desensitized towards images of poverty in my life. All the World Vision commercials left me so that when I saw something close to the real thing, it was just another ad, just another commercial.

After listening to this I can certainly say that I will not view images in the media or take pictures of people in quite the same way as I did before. I hope that you listen to it too.

At the Irgon mine site on Cat Lake, Heather and I wandered down an overgrown road and found what was left of the mine. The only indication that a mine was there was several foundations, some capped mine shafts and the tailings. Not much else was left except for some rusted steel metal and an old stove.

I was back at the cottage this weekend and had the opportunity to do some exploring with Heather. First we stopped at the remains of an old lithium mine, then we continued on to an old quarry. I'm not sure how long this quarry has been abandoned for, but nature didn't waste any time in reclaiming the land.

Emily and I went to the cottage this weekend to turn the water on and relax a bit. Apparently we had better weather than in Winnipeg although it was still quite cold outside.

Hopefully leaves will be on the trees in a week or two and the forest won't look quite as barren.