Back to Birdland — Jon's Photoblog

Hello and welcome back!

Seasonal transitions, forest fires, and learning how to print a small ‘zine have all kept me very busy for the past couple of months. The ‘zine was probably the most exciting, wavering between philosophical pondering about content and sequencing, the anxiety of public presentation, and the steep technical learning curve that always comes from learning new software and new concepts (like print colour). I had a few different ideas, some of which I’ll pursue in future, but eventually settled on a group of images from around the Shoal Lakes, since I spend a lot of time there. The title page:

It’s 32 pages total, and overall I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. Having a project like this is such a different experience than producing the blog. The blog is more “documentarian”, a record of whatever happened; the ‘zine forces me to think more about a specific story or context.

Of course I ended up back at Shoal Lakes…but more on that in a bit.

Remember winter? Here’s the last of it:

A defiant rose hip bathes in the warming light…

Spring was kind of parched, with very little moisture. Smoke from forest fires in Alberta and Saskatchewan blanketed the city. I managed to drag myself out of bed early one Sunday morning and wandered around downtown in the eerie haze to try my hand at some architectural and “street” photography:

In the post-apocalypse, the Fairmont is still open…

I clearly have a lot to learn, struggling with the lines and shifting angles. Even stepping a foot left, right, forward, or backward, changes all the relationships and how the lines converge, diverge, or intersect.

I’m divided on these next two, waiting for the lights to change:

The main idea here is mirroring vs contrast. The red light shot is a bit “top heavy”, though I prefer the idea of the lights mirroring the sun, to the lights contrasting the sun. However, I prefer the balance of the composition of the green light shot, the inclusion of the yellow pedestrian marker in the sidewalk is key to spreading the “weight” around. Or I could be overthinking it :)

In the midst of all the urban linearity, it was a nice surprise to return to the car and its organic shepherd:

By this time the ice was finally melting on the lakes, and the birds were returning in numbers:

It would still freeze at night, and in the morning sun, I wasn’t the only one with foggy breath, as this red-wing blackbird demonstrates:

I should mention here that I recently upgraded my camera bodies, which have some fancy new AI for bird detection, and their ability to focus is uncanny. I have to admit, part of me feels like it’s cheating, but allow me a short RANT:

Auto-focus has SUCKED for decades. Most cameras have been completely lacking in a decent feedback mechanism for manual focus override. Not to sound like an old guy, but back in the day, I recall snap-focussing my Pentax film camera pretty instantly, because there was a good feedback mechanism built into the SLR viewfinder, in the shape of a Fresnel ring, and a split circle. However, for some reason unknown to us mundane mortals, this completely disappeared. My previous camera had a fairly decent way to focus, or even manually focus if you had the time, but with birds you just don’t have the time.

So now we have AI bird-detection, and I feel like we just got back to the 80s for focussing technology. Ok, I exaggerate slightly, but it’s amusing to do so :)

All that to say, this new tech is pretty cool, and I refuse to feel like I’m cheating. it’s already enabled me to get shots I would have seriously struggled to get with the old camera, to whit:

I saw this pelican foraging down the shoreline. I was hiding in the reeds waiting for him to come closer, until he finally saw me and took off. Since I didn’t do anything, and the headwind was strong, he settled not far away to make a nice point of reference for this landscape shot:

Later I was driving down the road and thought I saw something lean out of the reeds and then back in. It honestly took about 10 minutes of staring before I finally saw a Bittern. When they think they’re being watched, they put their head up so the stripes resemble the foliage, and it works really well:

Ostriches put their heads in the sand…amateurs…

I guess I stayed a little too long, because eventually it spooked and took off. Have to admire those talons!

Later on a hike I surprised a Marsh Harrier:

I’ll close out with a final shot of the lakes just after melt, and before the green, I’m a sucker for the variety of textures:

And that’s it for June. I’m all caught up, so I have no idea what’s next. We’ve had a LOT of rain, so I expect it to be a heavy bug season, there are already mosquitoes in my back yard.

Take care, and cheers!

Jun 2 Back to Birdland

Jul 13 Urban Explorations

Apr 11 Winter Six

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