Dawn of a second Decade ...

Committed to continue and looking for the way forward on this journey, a return to the past seemed a good start ...

de' light at dawn

On a morning walk along the Eramosa River, west from Rockwood to the mill ruins and Rockwood Falls, the arrival of light filtering through a thin morning mist provided a wonderful tranquil atmosphere. 

My presence startled not one but two Great Blue Herons into flight at separate locations along the way, prompting me to take note for a return in stealth, prepared with gear that might allow me to get a decent GBH image or two.

Continuing along the trail, memories of past visits played through my mind as familiar scenes and presented themselves. Blissfully lost in the moment, I turned around to see this ... simply delightful scene.

DJE

10 Years of Blog Posts ... Reflecting

Reflecting on a 10-Year Milestone ...

' a photographic journey ', this blog, has played no small role in my photographic life these past 10 years. Approaching this milestone post, reflecting on those years has opened up a flood of memories, thoughts and questions.

Memories of people, places, experiences and family have stirred. Alan, Grant, Andrew, Emma, Bruce and others. Some subjects, many friends for life. Rome, Florence ... ahhhh Florence, Ucluelet, Algonquin, Montreal, Albion Falls, Cathedral Grove, The Bruce. So many places. Out of my comfort zone at 'Help Portrait' - twice, a frigidly cold, dark, silent night on a back-road in Algonquin and that night sky, 'The Crack'. Dad ... and Mom. A wonderful flood of memories.

And some thoughts, of photographs yet to be made, a life without photography, life with photography, taking a hiatus, simply continuing, even calling it quits.

Then the questions ... ohhhh the questions. The silent kind that pop up while driving, having dinner, walking into the grocery store making you forget what you came for, lifting you up, bringing you down. As always, more questions than answers.

Have I made my "best" image? What if I have? Do I have better in me yet?

If I stop this blog how will it affect my photography? Will it continue? What would I do without photography?

Is the blog format even relevant for photography anymore? With the popularity of Facebook and Instagram attention spans have become minuscule. Who actually reads a blog these days? Does anyone read my blog?

Do I really have to come up with a photo and post every week? Oh shit ! I have to come up with something for this week ! 

Hold on ...

morning aspen

Why do I blog? My posts receive very few comments, over the years just a handful … so why even bother? Is anybody out there? Who is this for?

Weekly posts have motivated me to continue shooting regularly. The blog is sort of a journal for my photographic life ... slowly I realize, I do it for me !

Will I continue?

Photographing ... you bet !

The blog ... I think so.

See ya next week ... maybe.

DJE

Photo of the Week 2019-09-16

I've put the sunset photo posts on hold while I've been out exploring the world with my infrared converted camera. Not everyone will be a fan of this recent work, I get that and I'm OK with it. This blog and the path of it's posts log a 'Photographic Journey', one that is still underway, turning unexpectedly at times and perhaps looping back at others, always moving ... not necessarily forward, sometimes slow, imperceptibly slow, sometimes quickly ... always exploring.

In recent weeks, I've been deliberately concentrating on photographing heritage bridges in the Grand River Watershed in infrared then post processing using different methods ... exploring.

For this week's images of the Irvine Street Bridge north of Salem, the processing took a curve when the overcast skies created a blue colour cast to anything not foliage. Blue concrete and limestone rock simply did not look right. I guess one could say that the IR images I been posting all don't look right, but in this case I was exploring alternate processing methods and they just didn't give me what I was after ... until I removed the blue.

And now we have 'sans bleu'

Irvine Street Bridge - IR sans bleu

Irvine River - IR sans bleu

Irvine Arch - IR sans bleu

DJE

Photo of the Week 2019-09-09

Inspired by photographing and researching the history of the "Stone Road Bridge", I've noted the locations of a number of other interesting bridges to photograph in the Grand River Watershed.

After returning from a photo outing, I found the paper "ARCH, TRUSS & BEAM - The Grand River Watershed Heritage Bridge Inventory. Previously aware of some of these bridges, I've decided to add them and others to a list of locations to photograph.

The project started with captures in Infrared (IR) and may continue in IR, or it may wander into something different. We'll see ...

In this post, I continue with these images of Chamber's Bridge, a bridge I had visited several times previously. The first visit resulted in a favourite image of a fly fisherman casting his line.

This time I wanted to capture the bridge, in infrared

DJE

Photo of the Week 2019-09-02

Finding your way forward in a creative life is challenging, even vexing at times. The journey is fraught with choices, decisions of where to go, what to do, which path to take. There are as many options as imagination will allow.

Having these choices provides near unlimited freedom of where you may go, literally and figuratively. Making a choice can be daunting if you over analyze as I am known to do, or ...

... it can be as easy as just taking the next step, one step at a time as they say (whoever "they" are, I've never been sure).

I've learned that for me, there needs to be some purpose in those steps. Without purpose, it's really just wandering around and although that can be alright for a brief time, if left too long, yo can wander off. The end result being that you end up just going through motions. This is where I think I've had been the last while ... how long? It doesn't matter.

What matters is getting back the feeling that I am on track and creating with some kind of intent. Hence my recent decision to get out and visit some locations that I've had on my list for a while. Last week's image was made at one of those locations and that outing spawned an idea to photograph other vintage bridges to tell their story.

This week's image is from a location that catches my ever and my interest every time I pass by. With a plan to photograph it in infrared and explore what it is that intrigues me, I set out with some purpose ... and a way forward.

DJE