Photography

Photos I’ve taken of scenery, interesting objects and other things.

Weird: March 7, 2024 bird shots are up!

Yes, I actually made a full gallery of bird shots, and only a few days after taking the photos. What wonders! Includes bonus bunnies and planes.

Mini-birding, March 2, 2024: A rare robin

Rare because it was in focus! Also, the outing was mini, not the birds. They were full-sized.

I gave my camera a thorough cleaning and took it to Lower Hume Park this afternoon to test it out and see if it would behave or go berserk.

It behaved!

I saw a Northern flicker, a pair of mallards, a bunch of robins and a song sparrow. I got pictures of all of them, but the song sparrow refused to stand still, so every shot is either an action shot, or it has its head down or facing away.

Here are three of the flicker, a robin and the male mallard.

Northern flicker searching for bugs and things.
A robin alert for worms.
A mallard gliding in a small pond that only exists after a heavy rain.

But is it art? Further photos to ponder

A crosswalk across a large parking lot:

And the same photo, after I finished abusing it with the perspective tool:

Construction sign that was:

  • cropped
  • had borders and other bits erased
  • converted to a high contrasts blue filter LUT
  • further tweaked with adjustments to black point, exposure, etc.

The original for comparison:

A few photos from Central Park

The one in Burnaby, not the one in New York. I didn’t want to walk that far today.

The weather was drizzly and misty, which added a certain mood. And I touched a tree. Again.

I might add a few more photos later, but there’s just enough friction with WordPress’s Gallery block that I’m inclined to stop at three for now.

I touched a tree today

And it allowed me to get this shot of the Brunette River. It was also drizzly in that “doesn’t seem like you’re getting wet but end up soaked by the time you get home” way. But worth it, because I touched a tree.

All the clothing we leave behind (not a U2 album)

I am mildly fascinated1Can one be mildly fascinated by something? I say yes. by how often when I go out birding or for a walk along a trail, I will find a random piece of clothing–a cap, or a glove (almost always just a single glove), a shoe (yes, usually a single shoe, too), sometimes a jacket and occasionally, a pair of pants, any of these, stuck to a branch, or laying on the ground. And I wonder, how did these things get left behind?

With some clothing, I can imagine various scenarios. For example, you might take off a glove to do something a glove interferes with, like using a smartphone, so you take it off, set it down, then wander off while still using the phone. By the time you remember the glove, you’ve travelled far enough to ask yourself, “Is it worth going back for?” and decide no, it isn’t. And so the glove stays in its new home, until it gets absconded by a crow or returns to the earth (in 500 years or something).

I am less certain about how pants get abandoned.

But here is a photo of a glove left on the railing of the 1001 Steps staircase in south Surrey, taken on February 10th. I converted it to black and white to artsy it up.

Have a random bird

Specifically, a juvenile bald eagle, which still looks big enough to grab me and drop me off into a volcano.

The original photo was nearly a silhouette, but thanks to the wonders of shooting in raw, I was able to reveal the eagle hiding in the dark.

This is from my set of bird photos from January 26, 2024. I swear I’ll post the full gallery soon. Soon!

Pretty soon.

An airplane up in the sky

Right where you expect to see them, unless they are ingesting or burping out passengers. This one was flying so low overhead that I had to actually pull back with my telephoto lens to get the whole thing in.

This was taken at Sapperton Landing on another unusually balmy midwinter day, as part of an experiment to find out what’s up with my camera.

(I think I found out. More test results soon.)

Jetliner flying overhead against a bright blue sky.
I don’t recognize the livery, but you could probably find out on the internet.

Photo gallery: Planes!

It was bound to happen eventually.

On Saturday, our birding took us to the northern end of Richmond, which meant we were near the airport, with planes and jets were regularly taking off and landing nearby. This meant I took many photos of planes and jets taking off. Enough to fill an entire gallery. And here it is!

A river rages, plus birds in a field

Shot yesterday (Jan. 23) on my iPhone 12, on a gray, wet winter day.

The Brunette River, misty and rising. The tent on the far bank is now gone.
View from the bridge on North Road. The construction on the left is for the new Millennium Line maintenance yard, set to open in 2027.
Ducks in the field at Lower Hume Park. The crows and gulls got very twitchy when I stopped to take photos. The ducks just kept sticking their heads in the muck.