A sucker for a sunset

We've been praying for rain.  However, it's August in Victoria.  It's unlikely to rain much before the end of the month.

And even less likely after a sunset like this, brief as it was.

 

What can't be unseen

"Land of the eagle" - Audun Rikardsen - Norway

This is a photograph.

It was obtained through the effort, endurance, and patience of three years.

The photographer set up a branch on a ledge, attached a camera to it, built himself a hide nearby, and made the branch more attractive to eagles by hanging meat on it. After three years (three years), an eagle got accustomed to the set-up, and visited regularly.

This photo was the winner in the "Behaviour: Birds" category of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2019. It was one of my personal favourites. I had several other favourites, like this one,

"Summer Cornfield" - Joël Brunet - France

which was "Highly Commended" in the "Plants and Fungi" category.

Every year, the Royal British Columbia Museum is one of the few hosts of the display resulting from the competition. (I think there are only three venues in Canada.) Demeter has been going for years, and younger daughter and I have attended for the past three exhibitions. Younger daughter insists on carefully reading the description on each photo, including the camera settings. I've found the best way to accommodate this is by going about five times, which is enough time for younger daughter to carefully examine each of the hundred photos.

It's a little nerve-wracking, because her strategy is to stand sideways by the corner of each photo, and read the captions aloud, going back and repeating if she is deciphering a new word, or distracted by someone approaching to view the image, as they tend to do in an exhibition.

A pair of elderly ladies came up behind her, and asked her to move. I quickly pointed out that there was an excellent vantage point from where I was standing, leaning in to quietly say: "She reads out loud to process..."

They hastily backed off, and actually apologized to younger daughter, while I cringed inwardly.

Last year, the exhibit ended before younger daughter had had a chance to "process" all the images, so this year, I carefully noted the ending date of March 29th.

Of course the museum shut down on March 17th, but luckily, we had got in our five visits, with all the photos thoroughly viewed.

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year is a collection of jaw-dropping photos, illustrating the fragility of our eco-system, and how an image is a result of days, months, or years of patient waiting - or simply being in the right place with an adequate camera. Way too few women amongst the photographers, and a couple of photos I can't un-see.

So I won't show them to you. You can google "Wildlife Photographer 2019", and guess.

Bone idle

This time last year, I was locked out of my blog, and making almost daily descents down Linden Avenue, from Fernwood, through Rockland, then down into Fairfield.

Almost exactly a year ago, I glanced to my left, and was halted by this sight.

Someone having trouble letting go of Hallowe'en? A social commentary on texting? The ghost of Christmas Future?

Bye-bye November. Advent begins in earnest tomorrow.

Clouds in my coffee

I never wanted to become one of those people who take pictures of their food.

However, sometimes, I become painfully aware of the transiency of life, and of lattés, in particular.

It's also a kind of Rorschach test. For example, what do you see here?

How about if I stir the coffee? (I admit it's a different coffee on a different day.)

I see a profile silhouette in the first, and a bird on a perch in the second. Not being a trained professional, I can't tell you if I'm deranged or not, although taking pictures of one's beverages is probably not a good sign...

An unlucky day for rabbits

My Friend of the Right Hand learned that younger daughter (her goddaughter) had never been to the top of Mount Tolmie, so she drove us up there. I marvelled at the 360° view, which I haven't seen for years, and clutched a bit as I spotted my late in-laws' house below my feet -- something else I haven't seen for years and haven't missed one bit.

Younger daughter seemed somehow reluctant to get out of the car, but once she had, walked the perimeter of the viewpoint and snapped pictures. A hawk floated by the look-out, and spiralled down the south side of the drop. Younger daughter captured it as it began its descent.

Moon chaser

I walked fifteen kilometres today. One of the Resident Fan Boy's cousins is in town, and since the RFB is at work, I was escorting her.

For that, and a number of reasons I don't wish to discuss, I was making my way home through the dark streets. As I reached the corner of Cook and Fort, I looked east and nearly keeled over.

An enormous peach-coloured moon was rising over the hill. Of course, all I had was my phone, but I snapped and snapped anyway, chasing it up the street. This is the best I could do, shading the glare of the street lamps with the telephone poles. The orb is still blurred, and not nearly as clear and certainly not as peachy as it was.

I'm exhausted. G'night.

Sunlit

You may want to click on this one to enlarge it.

So I'm running back and forth, collecting laundry for the laundry-room, because I live in an apartment, and that's what I do now. I look out the window, and wonder why the lights are suddenly blazing at the school across the way.

It occurs to me that they're not blazing from the inside. The bright golden light of a winter sunset after a cloudless day is reflecting back from the windows.

This is totally unconnected, but I'm feeling a wee bit ill. Time for bed.

A pillar of fire

While waiting for a Chamberfest concert to begin at Dominion-Chalmers United Church, I glanced over from my seat in the left gallery, and saw the evening sun catching the ornate plllar.

Smoky mountains

If the sky is clear enough, you can see Mount Baker in Washington State from Willows Beach in Victoria, so I recognized it immediately from the runway at Victoria International Airport.

The first leg of the flight back to Hades this year was to include a four-hour layover in Calgary, where all the traffic congregates in one wing while the other two are oddly deserted.

First, however, I had to get across British Columbia, so we flew north-east - and directly at Mount Baker.

We veered to the left of it.

I had never seen it so close -- which is a wee bit alarming, because as lovely as it is, it's a volcano.

And not far beyond lay other terrors.

The Interior of British Columbia has been relentlessly savaged by wildfire this summer. This first plume flowed like a flesh-coloured serpent across the horizon. I think it was somewhere near Harrison Springs.

Below us, smoke bubbled up like a cauldron of burning witch's brew, from some conflagration in a hidden valley.

And not long before we reached Calgary, we saw this rising somewhere out of the Canadian Rockies.

I had to explain to younger daughter, when she saw the photo, that this, unlike Mount Baker, wasn't a real volcano.

A pall of smoke spread hundreds of miles over Alberta. I saw it from the plane to Hades.

Mandala sidewalk

In my years away from Demeter, three crosswalks in downtown Victoria have materialized in a whimsical way. One is your standard rainbow sidewalk - we have one in Ottawa, too, on Bank Street, which is kind of the gay downtown. Another is a colourful assortment of puzzle pieces near a games shop. This is my favourite: a frame of mandalas around the intersection at Fort and Broad.

Sunday morning, on the way to bus stop

. . . but they don't listen to me

I know I'm back in Victoria when I see the twisted branches of the arbutus trees and Gary Oaks -- and when I see pewter verticals of the cedars.  These were in Butchart Gardens today.  I'm a little too drowsy to say much else.

Tossed upon cloudy seas

On the night of the Thunder Moon, I went to water the outdoor plants of this summer's house-sit, and saw this.

My Nikon is back in Ottawa, so I made do with my phone and got something vaguely Van Gogh.

However, as a friend has pointed out:  "The best camera is the one you actually have on hand."

Sequential and sesquicentennial

I so wanted to snap a picture this afternoon.

I went to use the facilities at the Bay Centre in downtown Victoria and found a line-up snaking out nearly to the corridor.

It was a winding curve of women of many colours and shapes. I saw an older woman in a sari, a young redhead with sunburnt shoulders, and two Japanese students using the waiting time to maple-leaf each other with tap water and temporary tattoos.

Almost the entire line was a whiplash of red and white. One girl used the time-honoured out of wearing a Canadian flag as a cape, but it was mostly scarlet tops and white or cream trousers, or red caps and sun hats, or patriotic hair decorations.

And I thought of how Canada has changed, and especially, how Victoria has changed. It was once said that there was nothing wrong with Victoria that four hundred Ukranians couldn't fix. It was a bit homogenous when I was growing up here.

But I didn't pull out my phone.

Taking pictures in a women's washroom borders on the creepy.

So I took this one.

French braid

Running out of time again. This picture was taken eleven years ago, during one of my "used years", as it happens, although it doesn't look it. This was back in the days before I blogged, when younger daughter still permitted me to do her hair. Demeter knitted the cardigan.

Failing to peak at the cemetery

When the Resident Fan Boy and I took the Accent Snob for his first walk of the day early Saturday morning, the sun was reflecting brightly off the trees and we saw several of our neighbours packing the backs of their SUVs and/or hatchbacks. It was then we knew the autumn colours were peaking. Demeter has a friend in Victoria who would wait for the annual phone-call of her brother in Hades, telling her to book the earliest flight for that fleeting moment when the leaves reach their highest dazzle.

That moment wasn't last Wednesday, but it was the only time I had available to take the twenty-minute walk from our front door to Beechwood Cemetery. I took a few dozen photographs to compare my trusty Nikon with the camera in my iPhone. Here are a few of them:

My first truly successful panorama shot taken with my phone. Click to enlarge.

The Slater family - and some neighbours (digital SLR)

Taken with my phone

Taken with my single lens reflex. All of these can be enlarged by clicking on them.

A final phone shot before heading home. 

You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone

In October 2007, I took the twenty-minute stroll from my house to Beechwood Cemetery and, facing west from the Tommy Douglas monument, took this snap:

2007

Not quite nine years later, I went to the same spot:

2016

The trees that have flourished in the past decade just about hide the luxury condo that was completed about a year ago, whose tenants now enjoy the view of Parliament Hill that used to be available from the cemetery.

You can click on the photos to enlarge them. If you want.

Falling behind

So this is all I'm posting today. It's from a day or so ago and is in the neighbourhood.

Sidewalk serpent

Moon escape

I took this photo about two thousand, five hundred and fifty-five days ago, but the moon looked pretty much like this when I looked up at the sky early this morning. I shivered and comforted myself with how very much colder it is up there.