At first I was thinking of birds for this week’s photo challenge, as if somehow “flight” and “fleeting” were synonymous.
But then I thought of the shifting nature of clouds, of how they seem to take distinct shapes – animals, symbols, faces – but it is only for a moment before they become something else.
Do you see the fox? Or the skull?
These were all taken within a half-hour period, out storm-chasing one day in my special spot.
A massive storm seemed imminent, inevitable, but ultimately it was all a big blustery show, and the clouds moved on, and the sun came out again.
Tag Archives: photography
In the Background – full moon
This weekend’s “SuperMoon” – the moon when it is closest to the earth.
Behind clouds, behind trees, it still pulls on the earth, the waters, the tides of life…
Special spot
A week away, up every morning before sunrise, across the highway to the park – MY park is how I think of it – and as soon as I see the open space, the water on the horizon, my spirit lifts.
Funny really, the solace it gives me, cause it’s pretty harsh terrain, often looking like something out of an illustrated edition of the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe.
Or the location for a video shoot of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Truth is I really wanted to go to Mexico, but a $40 bus ride north and a free place to stay has its appeal.
Anyway, I’ve always loved Georgian Bay – it has some kind of clean, rocky, clearwater, cold wind feeling to it that I love, the weather coming across it dramatic and epic, and over the past 8 months or so I’ve developed this possessive almost jealous feeling for this park, this spot, MY craggly forbidding spot.
A few dog walkers use the paths, I allow them that, but the beach is always deserted – no humans, no footsteps, only geese and the occasional animal.
There has been talk of mountain lions, cougars in the area, and I scan the ground for tracks, though I’m such a city girl I have absolutely no idea what I’m looking for.
Many of the rocks have these indents in them – I imagine them as the finger-holes for a giant who uses them as bowling balls.
I take pictures of geese and think of Karen.
A new toy I’ve brought along to experiment with is a close-up filter thingy for the camera gives a terrible haze and not much focus, but I keep messing around with it along the edges of the ice as it recedes, vanishing day by day.
One afternoon I go to the spa and soak in the pools and have a massage just to make it feel like a real holiday. The masseuse tells me about her dreams of marrying Brad Pitt and spending her days shopping, and I think, Oh yes!, as if she’s reminded me what a normal woman would do with her free time, rather than getting her jollies squatting in her snow pants amongst the goose poo and rotting vegetation on a cold and stony beach.
But for me…. it was a delightful week.
Thaw
A couple of warm days round these parts and things are starting to come alive again….
Fish pond – Lost in the details
One of my most favourite things to take pictures of is the fish pond in the backyard.
And I’d been thinking of taking close-ups of the ice and had been hankering after a macro lens for the good camera but just can’t do it right now….. Then I remembered there’s a little clip-on fisheye/wide angle/macro lens for iPhone – that I can afford.
First day playing with it…
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
- Henry Miller
Ice, swans and seeds
On the road north
Six Nations of the Grand River
Winter returns
The gentle light of Canadian sun, a faint yellow for a few hours a day -
Temperatures have dropped again, making it feel like a normal January -
There’s even a sprinkle of snow over the yard -
Strange times
Strange times.
We’ve had some dramatic weather here recently – gale force winds and sudden temperature shifts, balmy January days and thundery nights like a stormy August season.
The sky has been lively and mercurial, changing quickly -
Living with the many faces of climate change is interesting, if not yet scary in this neck of the woods, like it has been in Australia recently or various other places.
In an article about my one true love, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, and his observations on the state of things, he says,
…the collective karma and ignorance of our race, the collective anger and violence will lead to our destruction and we have to learn to accept that
Out yesterday for a long walk with a friend along the Beltline, a thin strip of a park cutting through the north end of the city, we caught sight of a rabbit -
Usually when you see a rabbit outside and try to approach it with a camera, the animal moves away quickly, vanishing with the flash of an upturned tail and long jumping legs showing to the camera.
This bunny came up to me, more aggressive even than the socialized squirrels in High Park, hopping straight up to my feet, sniffing at the machine in my hands – startling, freakish.
Presumably a pet escaped and now living out along the Beltline…
Strange times.
