Day 242 - Weird mushrooms

Now those are some weird mushrooms. Like umbrellas blown inside out. I blame Hurricane Irene.

Day 241 - It's not nice to fool...

I walked to work on Monday with the Olympus in hand, intending to document the damage done to the good city of Fredericton by the winds and rain of Hurricane Irene. I felt a sort of guilty disappointment when I found little damage at all, but for the odd planter blown over or tiny branch on the street. So I decided to do a bit of a mockumentary, photographing the "damage" as evidence of how overblown (pardon the pun) the hype preceding the storm had been in NB.

How ironic it was, then, that Irene turned around and knocked out the power to our house (and our entire block) for 36 hours, robbing me of my ability to post my sarcastic response to her unexpectedly weak assault on this city. Just when I wanted to make fun of her, she took away my forum for doing so. At least or a day and a half. She left us living with candles and flashlights. We had to move all our food to the freezers and fridges of friends. Ahh, as the old commercial said, "It's not nice to fool [with] mother nature". Or Hurricane Irene.

Now, the power is now back on and the iMac is purring so I don't have to waste all those nice shots of the "carnage" Irene left in her wake. Other than the power outages that left about 50,000 New Brunswickans in the dark for anywhere between two and 36 hours, all the damage I could find is represented in these four photographs, snapped as I walked to work.

Overturned potted plants (and this photo shows just one of the two I saw), a toppled basketball net, fallen barricades and a couple of broken branches were, thankfully, the only real damage I could find. As for the photos themselves, I like the first and third best. They both have nice compositions and interesting colours. I'm not sure the basketball net pic works as art and the branch just seems to blend into the background.

Day 240 - Blue sky and Robbie Burns

A rather strange photograph of the statue of poet Robbie Burns that stands outside the Beaverbrook Gallery in downtown Fredericton.

It's a fairly nice statute and it's located in a nice place, with plenty of grass and trees nearby and the river in the background. But what has really drawn me to this photo is not the statue, the grass nor the trees but that beautiful blue sky with its cotton-ball clouds. I just think it's so beautiful.

And, with Hurricane Irene bearing down on the Maritimes right now, a lovely blue sky is worth remembering. We might not see another one for a while.

Day 239 - Photographing frustration

I chose this photograph for today's blog entry for two reasons: 1) I like it; and 2) it sums up for me the experience of trying to photograph Fredericton and its beauty.

I like it because I think it has nice balance and composition, with the layers of the foreground, river and background creating an interesting effect. I'm pleased with how the tree to the right serves to connect the land at top and bottom, bridging the river, and with how the port-a-pottie blends with the massive black sewer tubes in the foreground.

On the other hand, it is an image of frustration. Here we have a wonderful view: a gorgeous church in the distance, a lovely sky, a flowing river and beautifully shaped trees both near and far. And it's ruined by the manmade chaos in the foreground.

My experience of attempting to capture Fredericton's beauty is captured in this photograph. Lovely buildings, beautiful landscapes, impressive natural wonders, and yet in almost every situation someone has done something to mar the loveliness. Usually, it's hydro wires that get in the way. Less often, it's construction of this kind. But there's always something.

So, on this occasion, instead of allowing myself to seethe with frustration at yet another fantastic shot ruined, I decided to make my frustration the subject of the photo.

Day 238 - Pigeons and their photos

I don't really remember if I have put any photographs involving pigeons on this blog before but I will admit to you that I don't really like them.

What? Pronoun problem? To which "them" am I referring: pigeons or photos of pigeons?

Both, really, though probably the latter more than the former.

I don't really like photos of pigeons. They just seem to me to be too easy. The bird is ubiquitous and unafraid of people so pictures of pigeons are much too easy to take.

So why this one? Mostly because of the pose and the colours in this shot. I like the way the bird is perched on the grave marker but not posed on it. I also like the way the colours of the pigeon match so nicely with those of the marker upon which it stands and how well the green of the moss on the marker itself matches the green of the trees in the background.

I think this is an interesting, successful photograph and I'm quite proud of it. Maybe it will make me rethink how I feel about pigeons and their photographs.

Day 237 - The beautiful campus of... UNB???

I have been trying to find a way to get a nice photograph of the campus of the University of New Brunswick. Just about everyone who visits UNB says that it has a beautiful campus and it does. Getting a long-distance photo that conveys that beauty, however, isn't so easy.

I'm fairly happy with this shot, taken from the North Side of the St. John River. I like the way the rusting walking bridge provides a foundation for the many red-brick buildings of the campus. As much as I like this picture, however, I'm a little disappointed that it doesn't include any of the university's signature buildings, like the original "Old Arts" building, the Student Union Building and the new Currie Centre.

Many of the buildings you see to the top right of this photo are, in fact, not on the UNB campus at all: they're part of St. Thomas University. Interesting: the best shot I could get of UNB is actually mostly of St. Thomas.

Day 236 - The mighty river

The mighty St. John River, looking east from the walking bridge on the east side of Fredericton. That's the Princess Margaret Bridge, still being refurbished, in the distance.

I took advantage of a beautiful, sunny day to go for a walk on my lunch hour to take photographs of Fredericton's downtown from the North side of the river. It occurred to me as I crossed the walking bridge, however, that I should also try to take a shot or two that would capture just how BIG the St. John is.

I went with as wide-angle as the lens could go, f8 on the aperture and a shutter speed that was a step or two higher than what the light meter told me, to capture the detail in the beautiful clouds and reduce some of the glare from the water. I'm pleased with the results.

That's a big river.

Day 235 - Tremors in Fredericton

Call it "The Day the Earth Wouldn't Stand Still". Today, Fredericton experienced a brief tremor from the earthquake centred just outside Washington, DC.

And Fredericton was just a little bit freaked out about it.

While office buildings in the downtown core were swaying to the music, people all over the place decided, even before receiving any official word, to abandon ship and head outside. Ironically, most of these people who didn't feel safe staying inside the swaying buildings did seem to feel okay about standing right at the foot of those same buildings.

When I pointed that irony out to a group of them, they laughed nervously and began to shy away down the street.

The fire department was out in full force, focusing most of its attention on the NB Power building on King Street, right across from my office. And the media followed.

The Olympus had no chance of capturing the brief tremors themselves but I had plenty of opportunity to take pictures of the aftermath. I actually found it quite fun trying to figure out how to capture the action, the tension, the fear in one or two still frames.

I'm quite pleased with the results. Through careful composition and framing, I managed to capture a number of interesting elements in the top photo: the man being interviewed by CBC television, the reporter, the camera and the camera operator, the big still camera also being pointed at the man, all in front of the big yellow fire truck. Crisp, well focused. Not bad.

The lower photo is almost as good, in my opinion. The NB Power sign at the top, with the red fire truck (a ladder truck, I think) in front of the building. Two business men gazing up at the vehicle and a firefighter in full regalia in the background. Pretty good, I'd say. Reportage photography at its best.

Day 234 - As the storm breaks up

I have crushed my pinkie finger today and it is now purple, white and blue. It hurts a lot when I try to type and I keep forgetting not to use it.

This lovely photograph captures the dramatic clouds in the sky as a storm starts to break up. I like the balance of this shot: the church steeple in the centre with similar formations of clouds and trees on either side.

I'm also pleased with the drama of the sun in the picture. I tried it with the shutter speed bumped up a bit, to darken the building and capture more detail in the clouds, but I wasn't as happy with that effort. This one seems to me to be more dramatic, more effective.

I now have to rest my poor little purple pinkie.

Day 233 - Harnessing Fredericton's history

The RCMP's Musical Ride also gave me the chance to take this nice little photograph of one of Fredericton's signature scenes, with beautiful horses and brightly uniformed police to boot. Fredericton has a long history of harness racing and the Fredericton Raceway, located at the Exhibition complex on Smythe Street, is the centre of horse-racing activity.

I quite like this shot, even if I had to crop the top and bottom severely to get rid of a lot of excess grass and sky. There's something charming about the combination of the bright and lively RCMP troupe and the battered, faded sign for the local course. The lighting was a bit of a challenge but I was able to open up the aperture a bit since the two main focal points were so close together. That gave me some room to play to make sure the horses-and-riders were well lit without bleaching out the sign in behind.

Day 232 - Steely-eyed at the Musical Ride

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police Musical Ride came to Fredericton today and put on a great show in front of a pretty big crowd at the Fairgrounds. Despite the hot, humid day, people crowded around the show ring, filled all of the temporary stands set up on the race-track's infield and also nearly filled the permanent grandstand itself.

The Musical Ride is an impressive show, with plenty of nifty horse riding and choreography. Practically impossible to take a photograph that captures the movement of the show itself. So I went with a close up of one of the horses, taken before they trotted onto the field for the performance. With a bright sunny day and completely black horses, it was pretty hard to get the light right. Enough light to make the details of the horses meant too much light for the background.

Still, I love the way the nearest horse is kind of peering out of the side of his eye at me, while his friends are focusing on the job at hand. And look at the pursed lips on the centre rider: he's probably thinking about the heat and that heavy uniform he's wearing!

Day 231 - Small plane, big sky

I know. I know. Strange picture. A photograph of a small plane in the middle of a non-descript sky. Big deal.

Well it is a big deal to me. First, the autofocus on the Olympus managed not only to find this plane in the middle of that sky, but also to focus on it properly. That's pretty amazing for this camera. Usually, it has real problems finding objects that far away. Second, I managed to keep the plane centred in the frame for the entire period between the time I pressed the shutter release and when the shutter actually released. That is nothing short of a miracle.

And, to be honest, I like the photograph itself. It's kind of got an abstract quality to it, the feeling of the loneliness of the small plane in the middle of that vast sky. It's poetry, I tell you. Poetry.

Day 230 - Admiring a lawn embellishment

One of Fredericton's many fine features is the way so many of the city's residents maintain their properties. It's a pleasure to stroll through different neighbourhoods and see the lovely lawns, the beautiful flowers and shrubs, the interesting ornamentation, the many different lamps and lights and other embellishments.

I love the way these home owners have placed this installation in the middle of a not-quite-round patch of dirt. I like that it's not quite centred within that patch and that it's painted a shade of green that tends to blend with the surroundings.

I'm pleased with this photograph because I think it frames the many curving lines of the scene very nicely, without interfering with the movement of the eye over the landscape. I purposely placed the post slightly off-centre, to keep with the composition created originally on-site by the home owners or their landscape designers.

Day 229 - Black and white on green

Something of an abstract today, with this photograph of the rubber runners on a boat trailer in storage.

I took another shot of this same scene with the camera's aperture at its smallest (F8) in order to get all of the runners in focus but it just doesn't look right. I like this version better, with the focus uneven and the runners taking on an almost musical feel, like so many base-drum mallets or some other percussive instruments.

The green background puts the black-and-white colour scheme of the trailer into interesting relief and the runners themselves almost seem to move against this background.

Day 228 - Landscape in low light

I'm still working on my street scenes. This photograph shows York Street from the corner of King, looking south, with the King's Place mall on the left and one of Fredericton's many churches in the distance.

It's a funny little picture filled with interesting shapes and a rather neat collection of colours, both bright and more sedate. I'm also pleased with the composition of the shot, though it did take me a little bit of cropping in iPhoto to get it the way I wanted it (and to remove the faces of a couple of people who snuck into the bottom of the image).

Freddie has faced rain all week this week, making it difficult to find interesting photographs other than these larger scale landscapes. I was about to write, "I'm not complaining", but then I realised that I am, indeed, complaining. Still, it isn't the worst thing in the world that I'm forced to learn to take interesting photographs in different lighting conditions.

At some point, I must remind myself to make some trips to the Fredericton's North Side. After all, it is a part of the city too.

Day 227 - King's Place, Fredericton's anchor

I was reminded recently that this photo-blog is called FREDERICTON 365, which suggests that I should at least try to capture some of the signature sights (and sites) of this city from time to time.

Fair enough. But how do you make a picture of a big ugly mall like King's Place look even remotely interesting or attractive?

King's Place is the central downtown mall in Fredericton and houses maybe 30 stores and services, two banks plus a tiny food court and a Shopper's Drug Mart as its anchor tenant. It also offers an office block that is filled, as most such buildings are in this province, with government and related facilities.

I spend a lot of time in King's Place and have to admit that it does have a very nice shoe store ("Quality Shoes"), a pretty great women's shop ("Samuel & Company") as well as a decent fast-food Chinese place ("Shan"). It also serves as the central dispersal point for most of the city's bus routes.

I surprised myself with this photograph. I think the building looks pretty good in it. It looks modern and clean and worth a visit. But there are clouds in that sky, dark, ominous clouds that suggest that all might not be as it seems in this picture.

Day 226 - Victory for Freddie

There's not much to today's photograph, from a technical standpoint. I've admired this sign for some time now and finally got around to taking a picture of it.

Victory Meat Market is an old-style meat market with an old-style sign and a grocery store grafted on. Located on King Street, just on the western edge of Fredericton's downtown core, Victory seems to me like the place the "in the know" people in Fredericton go to shop, on days other than Saturday when those "itk" people are at the Fredericton Farmers Market.

I've only been into Victory once so far but I quite liked it. The meat is fresh and reasonably priced and the place has an old-fashioned feel to it. And that old-fashioned feel starts, obviously, with its sign.

Day 225 - A Cat Lurking

I offer this photograph because it makes me smile. I look at it and I think: "That's a cat, lurking among the trees".

I haven't figured out why these people have such a big machine half hidden among the trees of their side yard. I don't understand their choice of parking spot and can't imagine the damage it is doing to their lawn. Not to mention what it will do to their trees when they try to drive it out of there.

In some ways, the photograph reminds me of those old Far Side cartoons, which feature massive animals hiding from humans, often behind a single leaf, or behind a couch, or wearing a trench coat and sunglasses.

And the way this vehicle is parked, it really looks to me like it's watching the road, ready to pounce. As you can see, this photo has kept me entertained all day.

Day 224 - The Bert and Ernie of pipes

I have no idea why I like this photograph so much. It's of pipes, after all. Two pipes that run parallel to each other in vertical lines against the horizontal lines of the siding of a house.

But I do like it. I've been staring at it now for several minutes, trying to figure it out. Is it the shadows? The fact that, like Bert and Ernie, one pipe is chubbier than the other? Does the lock on the left-hand pipe speak to me for some reason? Is it the concrete base of the house that shows just slightly at the bottom of the frame that captures my attention?

I really have no idea. I don't even know why I took the picture in the first place. And yet, there it is. And I keep going back to it. I feel a little bit silly sharing it with you but I also would feel stupid if I didn't. I mean, how can I be this fascinated by a strange little photograph and not put it up on the blog?

Day 223 - The magic of careful framing

Ahh, the magic of photography. I have shown this photograph to several long-time Fredericton residents and all of have responded with some form of the following: "Oh, isn't that pretty! Where is it?"

Just the response I was hoping for. The image is of an alleyway that leads from King Street to Dolan's Pub in what is, at night at least, one of the ugliest places in the city. Dolan's and other nearby bars cater to the university crowd. Most weekend nights, the neighbourhood turns into one drunken party, littered with broken bottles and bar fights.

By using the lines of trees that bracket the walkway to block out the large, litter-strewn parking lot on the right and the less attractive shops to the left, I was able to create a scene that might just attract tourists for a friendly, afternoon stroll. As I said, you can do some real magic with a camera: I even fooled some locals who couldn't tell where I took this picture.

Day 222 - Back to the dormers of Fredericton

And we're back to downtown Fredericton after a period in Grand Manan.

Today's photograph depicts one of the windows at the top of the Garrison building. I've admired these dormers for some time but there has always been remedial work going on around them, blocking any possibility of getting a good shot of them.

That changed today.

The work seems to have been completed and the dormers are finished in this rustic, weather-beaten red, which I think looks great. I like the lines of this photo and the textures of the various types of wood and stone in it. The colours are nice too: quite calm and muted though they are.

Day 221 - Can't see the forest...

One of the lasting images for me of our visit to the island of Grand Manan is the trees. Grand Manan is covered in trees and just about every one of them has been affected, in one way or another, by the weather and the sea.

In this first photograph, a massively tall pine tree reaches into the bright blue sky, as healthy and happy as can be. The only challenge it seems to face is the wind and bitter cold from the Bay of Fundy below it. The steady blast from the water has been so profound that no branches have managed to survive on the sea-side part of the tree, except near the very top. It's really quite amazing to behold.

Even more amazing is the fact that this tree was not unique: Grand Manan has entire stands of trees on the cliffs overlooking the Bay of Fundy that share this wind-created characteristic. It's really quite something to look up at a wall of these tall, lovely trees, all with one bare side.

The growth of the tree in this second shot has also been affected by the wind and snow but quite differently. In this case, the tree has grown up with a natural bow in its spine.

Looking at it on a calm, sunny day like this one, you would still think it's being bent low by a strong wind. It must have taken years of howling gales to get a tree to grow like this, don't you think? Makes me shudder to think of Grand Manan's 2,500 full-time inhabitants, struggling through winters with that kind of wind!

Day 220 - Grand Manan Photo Essay (Part 3)

More from Grand Manan, this time involving photographs shot under low-light or other difficult conditions. This first shot was taken from the base of The Whistle Light House at the northernmost tip of the island. We were hoping for a more vivid sunset but it was too cloudy. Still, a dramatic photograph.

This is another of my favourite photographs from our visit. Taken as the last signs of sun disappear from the cloudy sky, it shows the main street in North Head, leading to the ferry landing. The street lights seem like stars and the road itself takes on a deep, romantic feeling.

The post office building in North Head, illuminated from within. Another 15-second exposure but I had to play with the aperture to get the lighting right. I wanted to be able to see the "Post Office" sign clearly without losing all detail from the building itself.

The night sky off Swallow Tail Light House. Patti, Marlee and I spent the evening sitting at the base of the light house, listening to the breathing of the whales in the Bay below. An amazing experience. It was too dark to see them but we certainly could hear a pod of ten or more whales slide past.

The ferry ride back to the mainland brought our last views of Grand Manan. This shot shows "Seven Days' Work" and Ashburton Head through a thickening fog. People at the Head told us they watched three hump-back whales play in the water off Ashburton two days earlier. We're sorry we missed them.

And finally the fog rolled in for good by the time our ferry had passed Ashburton and our visibility was limited to a few yards at best. The tolling of the bell of this navigational buoy reached our ears long before we could see it emerging from the fog. Though the fog was an amazing experience, I think we'd rather have had one last chance to see some whales.

Day 219 - Grand Manan Photo Essay (Part 2)

Fishing is one of the key industries (okay, other than tourism, fishing is the only industry) on Grand Manan, hence the island is littered with lobster traps, buoys, and fishing tackle and nets. In fact, buoys were EVERYWHERE. One house we saw in North Head was absolutely covered with them. This first show, taken in North Head at Whale Cove, Patti has dubbed "The Lost Buoy".

This second photograph presented itself to us at Seal Cove, on a lawn just outside the town's ball diamond. I think it captures a lot about Grand Manan: wood piles and water buoys. I wonder if they burn the old buoys in their wood stoves too.

Dark Harbour, on the island's mostly uninhabited west side, is basically a fishing camp and the fishing gear and nets strewn around the jetty speaks volumes for what happens there. I like the textures of the nets and their many colours.

On the morning of our first full day on the island, we took a walk along the "Red Trail" north from Whale Cove in the direction of "The Whistle" (yet another light house). What a fantastic trail! Much of it ran right along the cliffs overlooking Whale Cove and on two occasions I saw the spray of a whale's exhalation out on the water. This photograph of Ashburton Head and "Seven Days Work" is taken from the trail high above. A couple who camp near the Head told us they watched three hump-back whales playing in the water just past the point the night before. That news just killed us since one of our great goals in life is to see a hump-back or two.

Now we're down on the shore near Ashburton Head. It's not a beach, really since it's covered with these beautiful rocks, that actually look like skulls when you get close up. By then, the mist had cleared and the sun was out, making the colour even more spectacular.

And finally, a night shot at Swallow Tail Light House of another couple who joined us for our late evening visit to look out over the water in darkness. Taken with a tripod and a 15-second exposure, this shot actually makes it look lighter out than it actually was. But I just love the deep blues of this photograph and the fact that these people, without knowing how helpful they were being, stood practically still for the entire exposure period, making the shot look fantastic.

Day 218 - Grand Manan Photo Essay (Part 1)

As I said in yesterday's post, Patti, Marlee and I spent the last three days in Grand Manan, an island in the Bay of Fundy.

Grand Manan is a lovely place in many ways and I took, as per my usual, more than 500 photographs during our visit. I plan to publish a sort of photo essay on Grand Manan today and over the next couple of days, offering you the best of the shots I took.

This first photo shows the Swallow Tail Light House on a north-eastern point of the island, as seen from Net Point.

Net Point on a cloudy, shimmery day. That's the Bay of Fundy in the distance, by the way.

Decrepit set of steps, taken at Dark Harbour. Grand Manan is a mixture of the bright and shiny amongst the old and battered.

In baseball, you want to hit the cover off the ball. Apparently, the kids in Seal Cove can really hit a baseball!

Back to Swallow Tail Light House for this photo of a concrete block with an afternoon moon fuzzy in the deep blue sky.

And finally, Grand Manan is all about the food from the sea, as these boats on the shore of Dark Harbour will attest. There's a fairly well maintained two-lane highway that leads from the populated eastern coast of the island all the way to Dark Harbour but don't let it fool you. This photo captures most of the village you find at the end of the highway.

Day 217 - A first glance at Grand Manan

Grand Manan is a large island in the Bay of Fundy, as close to Maine as to New Brunswick, of which it forms a part.

Sparsely populated, GM offers fabulous hiking opportunities and wonderful views. And the chance to see whales from the safety of the shore. We're here for a couple of days' holidays and enjoying it very much. But more on the island later.

This photo attempts to show some of the beautiful rock formations in their best light. With the sun out this afternoon, I had a fantastic opportunity to photograph the glistening blue water that surrounds this island and I really liked this formation of rocks near the shore. That's a herring trap in the distance, by the way.

Day 216 - A boat-load of flowers

I think it's the colours that make this photograph. Well, the colours and the fact that the angle at which I took the picture makes it look like this vintage motor boat has been turned into a massive flower pot.

It hasn't, by the way. The flowers are growing on the ground behind the boat and its trailer but it sure does look like they're right there in the body of the boat. I'm pleased with the framing of this shot, with the two very white buildings bracketing the red vessel and the magenta flowers, and, to be honest, the boat and trailer are very interesting looking objects. For a snapshot, this one works well.

Day 215 - Nose to Nose to Nose

A joyous gathering of golden doodles this afternoon in our back yard.

Today, long-time friends Marlee and Riley (centre and left) made a new pal in Maple (right), a two year-old doodle who has just moved into the neighbourhood with her family. Apparently, Maple has a body and hair like Riley but a temperament like Marlee (shy and fearful of new people).

It took the new pup only a short time to find her role among the two older dogs: she's the playful youngster who gets away with things. To a point. Then Marlee has to put her in her place!

The photograph itself is evidence of the challenges you face when you have the low-light conditions of a deeply cloudy day and the non-stop movement of dogs as your subject. In order to get enough light into the camera, you have to sacrifice both shutter speed (with the result that moving objects can become blurred) and aperture (which means that your depth of focus is very narrow). Hence, Marlee and Riley are both a little bit out of focus: Marlee because she's beyond the depth of focus and Riley because, well, Riley never stops moving.

Day 214 - Chair Story

This photograph makes me smile. The blue-green chair seems to be leaning on its dusty-rose friend for moral support, upset at being left out at the curb for anyone to take.

It's a Toy-Story-type tale of abandoned furniture looking for a happy new home. And there are storm clouds on the horizon. Literally. As we took our morning walk with the dog and encountered these two sad looking souls, dark clouds had already gathered to the east, promising rain and thunder to ruin their upholstery.

That sad story aside, this photo is also a lesson to me in the importance of proper framing. When I first saw this shot in iPhoto, I liked it but it didn't sparkle for me. I then cropped it to remove some excess space at the top and to the right of the photograph and it looked a lot better. When I imported it into this blog, however, I couldn't help but feel that it was not yet quite right.

So I deleted it and went back to the original in iPhoto. I cropped it again, this time taking a little more off the top and side, to create a tighter focus on the relationship between the two chairs. And that's when I really started to smile.

Day 213 - Kayaking the St. John

The St. John River is an impressive waterway that winds its way through New Brunswick. It serves as the centre of Fredericton and, from the Mactaquac dam down many miles past the capital city, it provides a fantastic venue for water sports, like kayaking and canoeing.

I took this photograph, using the Olympus' automatic settings, while piloting a single-seat kayak down the St. John towards Fredericton. There's much to like about this shot, including the wide-open sky with its tiny clouds, the slight tilt to the kayak as I tried to hold the camera steady, and the breathtaking expanse of the river itself as you paddle your way down stream.

I didn't take this photo today. I spent the day painting the outside of our house so I was forced into the archives for the picture of the day. As I was wandering through the thousands of shots that now inhabit iPhoto on this computer, this one jumped out at me. It's New Brunswick, for sure, and lovely to look at.

The fact that it was on this kayak voyage that I encountered the bald eagle of which I wrote a couple of days ago only adds to the interest. This regal bird let me float right up close to him and take a number of pictures. At first, he seemed a bit agitated by my camera's clicking but, after a moment, he settled into this most eagle-like pose for me.

This is still one of my favourite photographs ever, even though from a technical standpoint it was very simple. A bright, sunny day, a subject that is willing to pose, lots of time to get it right. Simple.