Charlotte Makes Photos

Continuing through Old Ottawa South and to Billings Bridge last Wednesday, my mind was going. When I moved to Ottawa just over 26 years ago, it was to attend Carleton University. Having never been to Ottawa before moving here, I was quick to begin exploring my new city. After all, when I moved, even if school wasn’t, I moved for keeps and did not intend to return to the north.

Aside from the campus where I was living and Mooney’s Bay, where some friends were living in an apartment on Springland, the place I explored the most was the adjacent neighbourhood: Old Ottawa South.

It is, of course, no accident that when the Fall begins to make itself known in September and I’ve got a quiet moment in the area, my mind is cast back September 2000 with a very green Charlotte walking around late at night through the quiet residential neighbourhood and just feeling in her element and taking in her new city.

This past Wednesday, that was the feel. It’s not always (or even often) that I am able to translate the resonance of being in a certain space into a photograph that communicates it. At least when I’m holding a camera, that comes with the right eye, the right timing, and a healthy dose of serendipity.