“He stretched out on his back and looked up into the spring sky. It was a clear dark blue straight above him and a sea green over the tree tops. Somewhere under his hat the tune began to move, one part expectation, and two parts spring sadness, and for the rest just a colossal delight at being alone.”
Tales from Moominvalley
by Tove Jansson
I’ve often seen the alphabet photo people spelling out “love” or “joy” at craft fairs, and always thought the letters are kind of interesting and a little cheesy at the same time. But our minds often see random shapes and interpret them as symbols we recognize.
Anyway, I’m sure this photo says something, not quite sure what.
Taken in Lois Hole Centennial Provincial Park.
Another shot from the same day (as the last pic of the day). It was a warm December day and a fresh snowfall was melting and re-freezing into ice on the Tamarack trees (Larix Laricina).
The background is a completely natural artifact of having a large telephoto lens, leaving the aperture as open as possible, and having a fairly low quality lens. The telephoto focal length along with the wide open aperture (f5.6 in this case) made the background completely blurred out. The bright highlights become circles. If I had a much nicer lens, they might be softer-edged and not as distracting. I kind of like the way they turned out though. I suspect the little specks in them mean I had a lot of dust on the end of my lens.
Backlit birch leaf in winter. Taken in Halfmoon Lake Natural Area.
Grass texture near Hasse Lake.
I’m taking one university class this winter, and I’m getting pretty excited about it. After getting half way through a design degree I’m switching gears completely and taking “Wildlife Biodiversity and Ecology”. Should be very interesting in a completely different way. This is possibly an explanation for my renewed interest in correctly naming trees and animals in my posts. I’d love to know all this stuff thoroughly.
I grew up differentiating poplars between white poplars (what I now know is trembling aspen – white poplar is actually a completely different tree from Europe) and black poplars (a kind of balsam poplar). Not sure if these were local names from Saskatchewan or mistakes. Anyway, these are a kind of balsam poplar near Beaverhill Lake. Not sure if they’re Ontario Balsam Poplar (Populus balsamifera) or Black Cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa).
I found this cute columbian ground squirrel in Sunshine Meadows in Banff National Park. They’re super tame in the parks, which is cool for taking pictures, but a little disturbing too. I think it was looking for a handout.
You can’t see it very well in this picture, but this guy has some serious claws. I’ll just happily continue assuming they’re for digging.
Here’s a pleasantly bright respite from the winter blues.
I’ve enjoyed this tour through past photos but I’m looking forward to moving on. I’ve been working full time at McBain through December and I’m really looking forward to January when I should have time to get outside and get some new material up here. I have lots of projects I’m eager to work on, and I’ll share them here as they progress.
Once things are discovered they lose some of their allure. With the imagination there are so many more possibilities.
Taken after a forest fire in Astotin Natural Area.
