2020 Dawns
And so 2020 dawns. Not exactly with a photographic bang: not only do I feel like these are some of the poorer pictures I’ve produced, I’ve only been out once since the last entry.
Holiday get-togethers and family visits and a lot of baking dominated the end of 2019. I really enjoyed having the kids back in town, even if it was brief. Then 2020 began with the darkest recesses of my home finally spilling out such that even I could no longer ignore it. I might be a blind and shambling male, content to live in my own squalor, but even I finally noticed and became disgusted. It was high time to clean up the house in a major way, and it’s become quite the project. Trash cans have been filled three times over, and I’m only 1/4 done.
And maybe, just maybe, I’ll have to clean my camera’s sensor less often as a side benefit.
Anyway, I have little to show. The one time I went out was December 22, and the night before I figured if I couldn’t get up early for the sunrise on the shortest day of the year, something was very wrong. I managed to drag myself up and out, and even though I thought I was early, I completely missed being in a scenic place when the sky turn to fire. I had to pull over on the highway and just make a shot of record:
Once again, too late, and what a missed opportunity. This keeps happening, and it’s obvious I need to get moving about an hour earlier than I expect. I could rename this blog “Tales from the Procrastinator”, but maybe I can reform. D’ya think?
By the time I’d travelled on and hiked for a bit, the show was over. I found a frozen marsh, cold and blue in the pre-dawn, the pale sky promising a rather dull day. Yet the deer prints are an assurance that not all is lifeless:
There was some haze in the air, visible in the distance. Getting closer to that line of trees made it more apparent:
It’s a lonely landscape, reinforced by the fact that I hadn’t seen another car on the way in, nor another person on the trails.
I thought the bank of clouds would block out the rising sun, but a sudden break in the clouds proved me wrong. The frozen marsh was bathed in a warm morning glow enhancing the subtle colours that are normally hidden by cloudy days, or crushed by the strong white light of midday. No autumn colours here, but the soft palette of willows and bullrushes and dogwoods, interspersed with the occasional evergreen, almost black by comparison:
This is one of those shots that looks rather dull when small, but there is a lot to look at in the details, and again I love the tracks and what stories they suggest.
The morning progressed and the light grew harsher, but was still coming in at interesting angles. I have only a couple more shots, both black and white. This first was more about the textures of the foreground. However, I didn’t do a good job of finding a strong pattern to lead the eye, so it’s a complete hodgepodge, like a lake ruffled by the wind, suddenly flash-frozen:
This final landscape shot was taken with a long lens, through a dark tunnel in the trees. It was a hazy backlit scene, very compelling to the eye, but I really had no idea how to capture it:
In retrospect there are a few elements that I could have used more effectively, like the bright backlit leaves of the Russian Olive in the foreground on the right, or zooming in tighter to eliminate the sky, or adjusting how I used the dark spruce on the left as a frame, and many other more creative ideas. What I really needed to do was slow down! Somehow I succumb to a weird pressure of “get the shot, now!” But there is no point to that approach.
Just like last month, and just for fun, I’ll end with a picture of a dog, in this case my ex’s dog taken during a walk with my son. What could be more heart-warming than a happy healthy dog?
May this new decade bring you as much fulfillment as this dog experienced on her walk! 😀
Cheers!
