This week’s photo challenge is Let there be light.
This week’s photo challenge is Let there be light.
As I look outside today at the cold and snow I remember the warmth I enjoyed this summer – even the wet stuff which, though style-cramping, is still not completely debilitating.
Here, for example, a couple of Toronto ladies seek caffeinated refreshment on a Distillery District patio in between the rainstorms. I remember it as a cool day, but then I look outside today and acknowledge: “at least we didn’t have to shovel it.”
It’s a warming thought.
“Some things are so unexpected that no one is prepared for them.”
Leo Rosten
Here’s something else unexpected.
This is not my favourite time of year – ask anyone. These first snow storms – the ones that first tweak your winter bone – the introductory glancing blows of ugly after the short summer nice – are a real trial every year. From these little events we learn things about ourselves. Or at least, we remember things. Muscles, cold, frozen fingers – that kind of thing. No, I’ve invented new swears on days like yesterday – I just don’t dig winter.
Of course, some aspects of these storms are redemptive – for a while. Like when the Sun comes out and reflects off the fresh new snow, really giving my pooch something to contemplate.
It’s the quiet time now. The weather is turning, the nights are long and the temperatures low. The air positively snaps with the promise of storms ahead, and I’m truly not looking forward to it.
But what can I do? What can anyone do? The weather is the weather, the seasons are the seasons, the planet is bigger than any of us and we might just as well get used to it.
Well, there is something we can do. We can haul a little memory from our memory bag – perhaps something a little like this:
It’s just a little mountain thing from this past spring, but it appeals to me.
A lot more than what’s going on outside right now anyway.
What better way to honour connections than to show you a bridge?
This little footbridge across the Bow River in Calgary, Alberta, was architecturally eye catching when I took the pupster for a walk earlier in the summer. But when I got home and gave it the ol’ pencil blush in post I thought it made it even more appealing.
To me it’s the sparseness. I mean, it’s just an old concrete bridge – nothing to write home about. But showing it in pencil, with very little detail, seems to accentuate the rails so that the architectural lines just pop.
I hope you enjoy.
I found this little fella hiding in the front yard on Halloween night. I tried to start a conversation but he was afraid, and then when I took this photograph he cried.
Keep your eyes open for the friendlies in your yard, and feel free to drop ’em an occasional hello.
Somewhere in this great and noble country we call Canada, in the western province of Alberta, the county of Rockyview, near the town of Cayley, there’s a long, straight, gravel road heading west toward Longview and the Rockey Mountains. It is so long and so straight that after a while when I was on it earlier this summer I started to think I had somehow missed a turn.
So I pulled my car over… and started searching for a map.
Ordinarily, a simple alto-stratus deck in the southern foothills of Alberta would not offer much in the way of inspiration, but I’m constantly amazed to see what can be made of innocuous fare in the modern, app-based laboratories of post-production.
Add a little contrast, sharpen, tweak saturation, then sprinkle with sugar and nuts and – boom! – you’ve got something intense.
Hope you enjoy.
Okay, cover your ears, I’m shouting now.
Weekly photo challenge: Eerie
Behold the terrors of the night.
Heart to Heart
Aspiring to be the best at writing. Poetry lover, haiku and free verse to be precise, I hope to one day master