Day 317 - Recognising our own impermanence

The classic footprint-in-the-sand image, taken on the slowly growing beach in Pickering, Ontario.

The governments here are trying to rebuild the shoreline of the north side of Lake Ontario, using a variety of techniques including adding clean fill and installing water breaks to create small, protected areas of beach. It seems to be working. The waterfront in this area is really becoming a lovely area and there are even real sand beaches forming.

Here, my sister's single footprint marks the sand. It's an image of surprising beauty that captures the significant impact each of us makes on the world while still conveying a recognition of our own impermanence. And also, it shows the weird treads on my sister's shoes!

Day 311 - Sparkles on Lake Ontario

Sunlight on Lake Ontario. I'm visiting family and friends in the ol' country and, while walking along the northern shore of this beautiful lake, found this wonderful scene. I tried a little experiment, asking my sister to stand in the bottom left corner of the frame to see if there was any way I could get, in one photo, a balance between the light on the water and the light on her face. The results: no way. Either she was reduced to a silhouette (as here) and the sunlight reasonably visible or you could see her face but the background was just a sheet of white.

Day 209 - Nothin' stacks like a Deere

I'm willing to accept that it's not great art. I'm willing to accept that it's not even great photography. But this picture, for me, speaks of New Brunswick.

Just about everybody has a lawn around here. A big lawn. And, with all the rain we get, that lawn keeps growing all summer long, as opposed to Southern Ontario where, by mid-July, the grass has dried out and stopped growing. So, when you live in Fredericton, you need power in your mower.

We started here with an environmentally friendly, we-all-need-a-little-exercise reel push mower. We had good intentions. But our lawn proved the better of us. After several months of four-hour grass-mowings (I'm serious, four hours each week and often more. It would take me several days to recover), my brother and sister-in-law saw our great need and, as a thank you, bought us an electric mower.

A nice one. Plenty of power. Wide carriage. Nice. The lawn, however, got the better of it. After I had left it too long over a couple of weeks last summer, the electric mower actually caught on fire as it tried to power its way through the long grass.

So now we have a super-powered gas mower. We're environmentally unfriendly, smog-producing New Brunswickans at last! But at least we don't have one of these John Deere ride-em mowers. Yet.

Day 71 - Memories of Summers Passed

Of all the photographs I've ever taken (and I've taken a lot), this might just be my favourite.

I offer it now because, to be frank, I'm sick of winter and snow and rain and ice. I needed something to perk me up and, as I was copying all of our pictures from older computers onto a new expansion drive, I saw this one. It made me feel happier as soon as I saw it and I decided to put it up on this blog today.

The photo was taken early one morning in Algonquin Park, Ontario while Patti and I were on our honeymoon. We were standing on the front porch of our cabin and this lone paddler appeared out of the mist. He didn't see us there and, while I had my camera trained on him, slumped forward, exhaustion in every line of his body. He must have set off paddling very early that morning. I have a closer-up picture of him that shows the exhaustion better but doesn't capture the colours of the beached canoes in the lower right, the tree to the left nor the mist still hanging over the lake in the background.