FC, B9, again

As you might know if you're a regular reader, I'm into Fish Creek Park a lot for photos. It's huge, the terrain ranges from flat and open to heavily treed and extremely rugged. From the west end of the park, wild animals can walk to the Rockies without encountering any built up areas, and only have to cross two roads, one gravel with little traffic, and highway 22. I've seen all kinds of deer and birds, foxen, coyotes, and there's been bear warnings, but I've never seen one. I'd love to get a good shot of a beaver, and I know they are active in the park, just hard to spot. The deer seem relaxed around people, but the beavers are more cautious. Perhaps they haven't forgotten how their ancestors were slaughtered during the Great Beaver Hunts of Canada's early history.

Fish Creek is kind of my go to place when I want to take photos but don't have a specific place to go. There's so much space, so much to see, in all different times of the year, that I don't think I'll ever exhaust the possibilities. I love walking along and trying to remember what's to be seen from the various side trails. If I can't remember, then it's detour time.

Over the weekend I dropped into the area near bridge 9. There's some spaces south and east from it that I haven't been into during winter. It was a beautiful day for a walk, although most of it was not photographically interesting. But there were 3 shots I liked.

I saw this as B&W right from the start, and hoped the texture of the bark would come through. I should have tweaked the settings for a wider depth of field.

Following a path and suddenly the light was lovely! Click. A few seconds later it was gone. I've been to this spot during the early summer before the slough dries up, and there are some lovely reflections to be had.

Normally I'm not a bird guy. But this little woodpecker caught my attention, and was a bit of a flirt. If I'd had a camera full of other images I probably would have kept on going, but what you see above are pretty much it. So I paused and clicked. No, I don't know what kind of a woodpecker it is.

Last night I got around to watching the documentary The Sparks Brothers. I was fortunate enough to be clued into them back in high school, and loved their first albums. Yes, they've been producing music since the very early 70's. No, you've probably never heard of them, or did briefly and then lost track. Let's just say they are an acquired taste.

I was struck by the point made, that they never wrote music to match current taste, or what might be commercially popular. They wrote what appealed to them, and didn't much care if some of their audience didn't like it. They didn't want to produce the same music over and over, for all they say that have only two songs, a fast one and a slow one, and just keep changing the lyrics. In fact, they have released 26 studio albums, 1 live album, and several hundred songs.

They had a bit of a dry spell in the early 90's, at least as far as the public was concerned. But they hunkered down in a home studio, and worked on music. Every day, all day. They had a routine. Many people think of rock stars as coming up with a hit song in a drug-fueled haze, and that's probably true for at least a few, but at least some are hard working artists. Ron and Russel Mael are the hard working sort. They were doing what they loved to do. That many people didn't know what to think of what they were doing wasn't their problem.

It got me thinking about my photography, and where I want to take it. There's some ideas percolating, and I need to start doing the work to express them. It's never right the first time, but there has to be a first time. Something to look at to better understand what needs to change. It just has to be done. First steps and all.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Peony

Lily

2 related images

Both are the same lily, taken a few seconds apart from slightly different places. The two photos do very different things in my eyes. The first was shot against the sky with the idea of highlighting the structure of the petals. The second was to capture the colour and a more 3D shape against the background of the other garden beds. My general thoughts about shooting flowers is to do it in natural light, no reflectors, and no artificial backdrop cheats to get a white or black background. Thus one usually sees an out of focus background of green or other flowers in my shots. There are times I've thought I should get a sun shade, but then I'd need someone to hold it, or bring out a C stand to mount it. Maybe this summer...