Day 279 - Charlie Brown could tell you

This photograph is a tribute to my favourite comic strip character, Charlie Brown, who seemed to have a knack for putting his own kites in just this precarious position.

We've had a cold, windy and wet time of it here in Fredericton these past four or five days and I wouldn't be surprised if this scene is the result of some daring but foolhardy scheme to fly a kite in the howling winds of our most recent storm. I had gone out on my lunch hour, intent on taking pictures of the beautiful colours of fall here in New Brunswick, but, finding none, I wound up with this fun little snapshot instead.

Snapshot, perhaps, but not so easy to get. First there was the positioning issue: where should I stand to get the best possible angle on the kite? Then there was the problem of light: the bright sky behind the kite demanded a much faster shutter speed and usually I prefer sky over just about anything else but, in this case, I wanted the colours of the kite to come through so I slowed down the shutter and allowed the sky to bleach out. And of course, finally, I had to decide on the zoom level: did I want a close-up of the poor kite among the branches or would a longer shot do better to establish the situation and the height at which the kite found itself perched?

I ended up going with the most distant shot I took because I liked the way this photograph demonstrates the power imbalance in the battle between tree and kite. The tree is tall, broad and strong while the kite is small and fragile. Guess who won? Charlie Brown could tell you.

Day 265 - Illuminating the fog

With 100 days to go on this year-long journey, I bring you this rather amazing combination of sunlight, tree and fog. Taken as I waited for my bus this morning, this photograph exemplifies for me everything that is good about reportage photography.

There was no planning to this shot; I simply had my camera with me and my eyes open. There was no arranging of elements into a nice composition; I simply moved myself until I was in a good position to frame the existing elements well and used the zoom to make the final adjustments.

I took several shots of this scene and am happy with them all. But I think this one, with the dazzling sun just visible through the dark tree on the right, the rays of light illuminating the fog on the left and just enough of the roof to provide a foundation for the shot, worked out best.

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 108 - Abstract Tree with Flags

I liked yesterday's picture so much I went back to see what else I could do with the amazing trees that stand in front of the various government buildings along Queen Street in downtown Fredericton.

In this case, I thought it was neat the way the flags in the background seemed to hover in the space in and amongst the different-sized branches of this tree. The autofocus of the Olympus defeated my efforts to capture the flags in crisp detail and blur the branches in the foreground but, even so, I am pleased with this shot. It's not perfect but it does seem to blend very nicely the natural with the artificial.

Day 67 - Freezing Rain

A bright, sunny morning presented some beautiful sights: the trees in our backyard, their branches coated with a thin sleeve of ice, glistening in the sunshine.

Beautiful, yes, but difficult to capture on film. (That's an outdated expression, isn't it - "capture on film"?) I tried to photograph this delicate phenomenon in a variety of ways, from shooting the sun through the icicles that hung from our roof to reaching out to the very tops of a couple of ever-green trees to attempting to isolate the thin brown branches themselves against the blue sky. I think you can guess which approach worked best.

I think this is a nice picture. The blue is deep and lovely, the lattice-work of the branches provides interesting shapes and the ice does glisten, at least a little bit. So why do I feel disappointed with this effort? How can something so beautiful in the world lose so much when transferred through the camera's lens?