Day 4 - Downtown Shadows

I had hoped to capture the cold today. Fredericton endured a bitterly cold, windy winter day today and my goal, in setting out with camera in hand on my lunch hour, was to find some way to create a photographic image of cold.

I had been successful at just that task more than 20 years ago in Cambridge, Ontario, when I worked for a newspaper there. I managed to get a really neat photo of a couple of construction workers, in heavy coats, knit caps and mittens, blowing on their hands in vivid detail in the foreground with a line of stiff-looking flags slightly out of focus behind them. It was a great shot and a number of people told me it made them actually feel the cold.

Today, I was not so fortunate. While I found some flags in front of Fredericton's historic city hall building, they were too colourful and too breezy. It didn't help that the sky, instead of offering scudding clouds, was pure, almost warm blue. And no well-chilled construction workers offered themselves up to my camera.

I'm pleased, however, that I was able to take what I think is an interesting alternative shot: I like the brightness of the brick and the crispness of both the metal sign, "City Hall", as well as its shadow, on the wall below. Once again, the framing took place on-site so I didn't even have to crop the shot for today's blog.