Flowers and Smoke
Another August, and it seems like the world is on fire. We’ve had weeks of smoke in town. The sunrises and sunsets look like a movie set from a badly done dystopian futuristic sci-fi story. And yet beauty still abounds. Even a black hole creates incredible scenes.
And we’re not that bad yet… 😄
This one is short. I had an idea early in the summer to document the weekly changes in flora in the parks, but it’s been so dry throughout July, the flowers are much fewer, and those that lucked into some extra droplets of water are half the size and sturdiness as last year.
Still, here are a couple. This Black-eyed Susan was lucky enough to live by a ditch, where a bit of water still flowed:
A lot of fiddling went into the background, to frame the flower, and even give it a little mohawk 🙂
This next one took less fiddling, but I love the colours. I’m not sure what grass it is, but for now I’ll believe it is Big Bluestem:
A similar colour scheme is next, and I was back to fiddling. The occasional wind had started to come up, and it took a while between puffs for things to settle down. I really like the shape of these flowers, and looking closer, each one is a pot of nectar. This is not lost on the insect life, and there are numerous tiny bugs if you look closely:
Despite the lack of rain, one smoky morning as the sun was coming up it was quite humid, and everything was wet with dew:
Near the ditches there was still considerable bird life. This Goldfinch was tearing up a cattail, and he definitely looks guilty with his mouth full of fluff:
Meanwhile, behind me, a Common Yellowthroat was busy hunting and feeding his chicks. I could hear them peeping in the thicket. They are a very small bird, and stay firmly in the dense foliage, but this one eventually got curious, probably wondering when the heck I was going to move on. I finally lucked out and caught him with a beak full of bugs:
The rest of these are in black and white. The smoky featureless skies, while at times oppressive, make for an interesting play of light, creating a different kind of highlight and sometimes making the shadows richer.
This one is maybe a bit too contrasty, and I need a lot more practice at the urban scene:
Since that’s not my native habitat, I scurried back off into the woods 😀
First light of the morning created some nice highlights in the grass, and a pair of converging “light trails”:
The same light a few minutes later makes the grasses pop and almost makes the tree into an etching:
About an hour later in a little dell, I really liked the backlighting on the lower trees, and the depth of the shadows. It’s really hard to get any kind of elevation in this place to the point where you can avoid including the sky in a scene like this, but the opportunity presented, so I had to take it:
Finally, the title shot. This was fortuitous because, while I like the scene, there wasn’t anything particularly relatable in it, until the couple in the canoe drifted into view. But with or without the canoe, I hope it captures the eerie smoky atmosphere of the last month and more:
Thanks for reading, and may your future be smoke free! 😄
Cheers!
