About Me

Hi, I'm Claire.

Laughter, Sighs & Dreams is my photo/travel journal - a place where folks can keep track of my travels and glean a wee bit of what's going on in my life in general.

Essentially I am creating this website because I can. The technology is magic perfection and personal pages are the ultimate democracy of self-expression.

I want this site’s main focus to be about what I connect with visually in my world. I have always gotten lost gazing at things - a type of meditation I think. I see beauty and I feel happy. I see beauty in very humble things, quirky, or colorful or delightful things as well. I follow patterns with my eye and lately I’ve gotten into visual layers as well as gaining a deeper understanding of shapes of space and depth. Learning to see more and more.

With photography the subject has to exist in the first place and I merely have to be present at a particular place in a particular moment in time to take the picture. This fact seems fundamental to why I like it - it’s not so much about me - it’s all about connecting to what’s out there. A pause of attention.

Light is proving to be a big never-ending subject to study. That’s good though - I like learning things that have depth and no end in sight - no mastery ever really - no boredom.

I have a huge interest in movement and dance and hope someday to become adept at photographing dance. Right now I love street photography and catching shots on the street is a sort of dance for sure.

all about moi:

The most significant fact about me is that I am l female - a tall one at that (5'9").

My formative years were spent on the cusp of Psychadelia and Disco. I credit this schizophrenic early social conditioning for the fact that I now possess a fair degree of open-mindedness.

I am an explorer - of the mental realms always and just beginning to pursue my life-long dream of travel.

Strong (especially in broken places) - so far I’ve lived a life of numerous adventures and probably far more misadventures. And it’s true that all that stuff is a great teacher and I learnt my lessons well. Considering the obligatory soul-searching through the ups and downs of life lived so far, I can say that I am now at the stage where I am happy - it's all good enough and I'm here to enjoy life from now on. Being a life-long hedonist, well, I can only say that I am so very, very happy to be happy .......

I am rebellious - just seems to get worse as I get older. My boss used to say that I didn’t suffer fools well. My personality is such that I am always commenting on things that amaze me that people are tiptoeing around all mum about. You know, like the Emperor has no clothes on kind of friggin’ obvious stupid stuff. So, I can be a bit of trouble to some - but kids and animals like me so I must be doing OK, right?

Near and dear to my heart, my main social/political focus is community building. I believe that the ultimate subversive act is for a community to grow it’s own food. I also love community celebrations - lantern festivals, music events, carnivale type things and amateur theatre and dance.

Tidbits -

I am self-employed,

a nerd - love my digital world.

an animal-lover

Halloween is my favourite holiday.

I like to be barefoot whenever possible.

I love the seashore, country-side but it seems that at this stage of life I require direct contact with city energy

I have a non-existent sense of time - clueless.

The word that most sums me up is “independent”