Photography

Smoke and Mirrors

Category: Urban

  • Assiniboine Park Conservancy

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    Xerxes

    We spent part of an afternoon together,
    in quiet companionship
    enjoying the heat
    and noting the cold would come soon.

    The lioness was unimpressed.
    Not Esther, but Kaya this time.

    She gave me warning looks —
    a reminder of who was in charge.

    I think she had a recipe in mind.

    He nodded and if lions could smile,
    he did. He would enjoy the company
    and eat whatever she served later.

    This time it was not me.
    Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi RAW – African Lion (Xerxes) 2011

    Big cats have always been of particular interest to me. Xerxes and Kaya were there when I visited the Assiniboine Park Zoo in 2011 and I spent a good part of the afternoon with them. He was quiet and content in the sun, except when the man on the small tractor drove up. Then Xerxes was alert. Perhaps they had crossed paths before in a way Xerxes didn’t like. Perhaps it was the engine sound. I don’t know, but every time the man drove near the enclosure, Xerxes was tense.

    In May 2012, the two lions, along with their newborn cub, returned to a private facility in Ontario. Because it’s private, there is no information about the name of the facility, nor anything about Kaya or the newborn. Xerxes went on to Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle in 2014 as part of the Species Survival Plan breeding program and fathered three more cubs. I’m glad we met.

    NOTE: Xerxes and Kaya were a South African lion subspecies Panthera leo krugeri, known as the Transvaal lion. In 2017, the lion taxonomy was updated and this group is now included in the broader Southern Lion subspecies, Panthera leo melanochaita.

  • Rose Coloured Glasses

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    Winter Light

    Ontario evening sky colours are different from the dazzling displays on the prairies. If colour were music, we would be talking Brahms and Beethoven respectively.

    The Ontario colours are softer with shades of pink that blend subtly with the orange sherbet colours closer to the sun. This photo was taken in high quality JPG format on the way to the convenience store with the Fuji F10, a little point-and-shoot that continues to amaze me with the way it handles low light.

    In Photoshop, it was opened in the ProPhoto RGB colour space in order to avoid clipping the warmer colours and adjusted in Curves. This is my favorite colour space for processing everything, especially photos with yellows, reds, and oranges. These are the first colours to be clipped in smaller spaces. Then it was cropped with perspective to straighten the streetlight and horizon. Sharpening was done lightly with the High Pass filter.  Image was converted for web colour space and resized. It’s not a spectacular shot but rather an everyday memory. It captures a brief moment when the world was filtered through a rose-colored sunset.

    Writer’s note: Have you noticed that it is the warmer color that tends to be clipped in images? The same holds true for words. We often tend to censor our passion, allowing some to leak on to the page, but not in its true state. Explore both the vibrant western sky and the rose and orange sherbet sunsets of the central east. Each has value. Each describes a state of being that is breathtaking and neither deserves clipping.

    Fujifilm Finepix F10

  • Assiniboine Park Conservancy

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    Flamingo

    Stepping inside the darkness
    hoping for a shaft of light
    to bring colour into the frame
    but instead, a lengthy session
    preening and flirting 
    and arranging feathers
    just so.

    I waited.
    Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi RAW

  • In the Corner Garden

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    Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi 500×800 – Upscaled

    Gates Keeper

    Without a doubt, this was one of life’s more pleasant surprises as we walked back from rather interesting encounters along the side of the Misericordia Hospital in Winnipeg. Approaching The Gates, we walked past a home for sale on the corner with a garden any Englishman would covet. Truly.

    It was a very warm day and the entire garden was humming like a choir finding their respective keys. It was mesmerizing.

    It’s fair to say that while I love to listen to the hum and watch bees at work, I have a terror of them getting caught in my hair. Distance is my friend, but I really wanted a photo of this one on top of the echinacea. For a wild moment, I thought maybe the telephoto lens would be a good idea, but then sanity took hold.

    The moment I looked through the viewfinder, I forgot about everything except how lovely it all was and how easily she balanced herself on top of the flower. I was hooked and I’ve never looked back.

    Honeybee (Apis mellifera) – iPhone 14 Pro Max

    Wildlife photography isn’t only the larger animals, though they are amazing to find. It’s also the chipmunks and squirrels, the insects, snakes and amphibians you later have to look up in reverse photo search to identify.

    This little bee was found along Baille Ard trail in Sydney, Cape Breton.

    You don’t always have to leave home either. I had tiny salamanders in my basement by the sump pump a few years ago and while I was investigating, found a carrot growing down there, too.

    Honestly, I’ve learned more about so many little creatures since photographing them and now it’s only the thought of hornets in my hair that tends to give me nightmares.

  • Sunset on Glass

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    Reflections

    This photo was taken by my daughter on a snowy evening just as the sun was setting.

    Unfortunately, the camera did not fully capture the drama in the colours reflected on the windshield. It was taken as a high quality JPEG with a Fujifilm F-10 and it’s not a bad shot for a simple point-and-shoot camera. I am constantly surprised by how well this camera handles low light.

    However, the most important part of how well this camera works is the batteries seem to last forever! It’s the perfect camera to have in your pocket for all those moments when we usually say, “Oh, I wish I had my camera!”

    Update on this great little camera: As of summer 2009, it is at the bottom of Lake Winnipeg.

    Writer’s note: So what on earth would this have to do with writing? Remember the old saying that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’? It can be. Take snaps like these and use them as a visual notepad. It brings back the moment and you will be able to describe it vividly.

    Fujifilm Finepix F10 – Photo by Elle Brunet