Highgate Cemetary (August 12, 2004)

Karl Marx's grave at Highgate, taken on my first trip to England. The stone holds the classic line, "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it". Above, just below Marx's head, are the words "Workers of all lands unite".

Highgate is the loveliest cemetery I have ever seen, and I do like a nice graveyard. I'll be posting more pictures of it eventually. I recommend going out of your way to see it, if you get the chance.

Avenue Coloniale (Autumn, 1999)

Another image that I enjoy without really knowing why. There seem to be no words for it--not the scene itself, which is remarkably ordinary (for the area, Montréal's Plateau district), but the reasons why it appeals to me.

Kitten Leg Cleaning (December 10, 2008)

One of the first images of Mr. Darcy that I was able to capture. I got both my cats when they were about 9 weeks old (litter-mates).

Here, the more-orange kitten (Mr. Darcy) enjoys late-morning winter sunlight as he gives himself a wee bath.

Sun Rises Over Japan (December 10 [?] 2000)

Taken (with my Minolta) on a flight from Los Angeles to Taipei.

The effects of light I discussed in an earlier entry--those that follow movement, and cause temporal disorientation--were even more apparent during this flight to New Zealand, during which I stopped in LA, Taipei and Kuala Lumpur (then looped back to Auckland), and consequently lost all sense of the actual date. By the time I arrived, it appeared as if three days had passed (hence the question mark in the title).

Technical note: I had trouble uploading this image. Sorry about the size (a bit small), and also for the flecks of dust; I believe this was residue on the scanner.

Blue Sky, Highway (March 6, 2007)

Taken on the GO Transit bus from Hamilton to York University (407 Highway), probably in the early morning.

I include this in a series of photos that was jokingly nick-named "Development!", and which I started shooting in 2002 on colour film (I'll post some of those eventually). There are now two sets of images belonging to that group, and the above is drawn from the second set (taken with my Cybershot). Both sets focused on the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), but the initial series was focused on "cookie-cutter" housing developments around Hamilton, Oakville and Burlington, while the follow-up set was shot along the 407 Highway that also passes through Missisauga, Brampton, and the northernmost part of Toronto.

The latter were inspired by my commute between Hamilton and North York (York University) during my Master's degree in 2006-2007. I usually took the bus three or four times a week, and after I bought a digital camera in October 2006, I started using it during the long (1h 45m) rides to and from campus.

Running Raku (Spring, 2001)

A Raku session in the small courtyard adjacent to the glazing room, ceramics area, Visual Arts Building or VAV as it was known (Concordia University, Montréal, Québec). Apparently the Visual Arts have been moved to a new building now; from what I recall, this one was converted from a parking garage. Even if that was a myth, I could see how it could have been true (given the size and shape, and general layout, of the building).

After being removed from the dustbins in which the "reduction" of the glaze took place, Raku pieces were carried with tongs (as in this image) to buckets filled with water in which they were dunked, before being cast onto the snow to cool. Later they were scrubbed to remove traces of sawdust and ash.

Loch Lomond, Cape Breton (September, 1998)

Something about the colour in this image pleases me a lot. There's a kind of sharp saturation to it, it's like a visual salad of bitter greens with vinaigrette--muted, with twangy intensity. The picture is of the fire pit used for cooking and general fire goodness on the island I was visiting.

Cape Breton, like the rest of Nova Scotia (and indeed, Eastern and Central Canada) takes many of its place names from the UK and from Scotland in particular. Loch Lomond is clearly no exception to this trend. Note: There's also a Liverpool, Nova Scotia, complete with a Mersey River.

Matapédia, Train (July 18, 2000; 04:45)

Matapédia, Québec, taken from the window of a VIA Ocean train to Halifax (with my trusty Minolta and 35mm lens).

Two things struck me about this image, and have always made it a favourite for me. One was the softness captured with the movement of the train, softness brought about not only by the blurring of the closest trees due to a slow shutter speed, but also because the early morning mist is still muffling the firs, causing them to recede more rapidly than is normal into an opaque backdrop of fog.

The other element is time, a factor built in to the title of the photograph. I've found that when travelling to the far north or south (I have done a little of both), my sense of time and space becomes a shifting disjuncture, one often brought to focus by the effects of light: as here, where (I note) the time is slightly earlier than 4am, and yet there's enough light that it echoes off itself (the drops of water forming the dense mist), forming the impression that dawn has passed and that an overcast sky now hangs, threatening, perhaps, a heavy fall of mountain snow.

In fact, it is July and not far past dawn, if dawn has occurred; tricks of light and water play havoc with time, causing doubts about movement/directionality and location. Like the 9:30pm sunset I saw last time I was in the southern hemisphere, this northern dawn conjured something mystical akin to a sense of approaching limits (limits of the earth? Of latitude? Of day and night? Dawn and dusk?). The feeling of journeying, rather than merely travelling, is somehow heightened by these alterations.

Snow Blown (February 14, 2007)

One of a series of "snow photos" that I have taken, over time. I really enjoy the apparent physics/resultant aesthetics of snow, and also the great variation in effects according to what variety of snow happens to have fallen.

This was a very large snow-storm; a number of my best snow shots were taken immediately after it. In this one, a spray of snow left earlier by a passing car or plough has been dusted with a drifted layer of much lighter, powdery snow, which fell later.

What's interesting is that the effect is very similar to that of wet and dry sand on the beach, a sight familiar to me from spending a good deal of time at the ocean when I was younger (in New Zealand). Dry sand seemed to build eddies in the lees of clumps thrown up earlier in the day by vehicles' tyres, dogs' paws or the furrows left after beach-goers had dragged their umbrellas, beach chairs and "chilly bins" to and from whatever spot they had staked out for the day. This memory is probably one that informs my enjoyment of the patterns made by sun on snow, and highlights a kind of analogous yet oppositional relationship (winter/summer, moisture/dryness etc.) between the images involved.

Columbine (June 7, 2007)

Taken in early morning sunlight. I planted columbines in the garden at the Queen Street South apartment (Hamilton) during the summer of 2006, and in summer 2007 they grew back far more lusciously and produced hundreds of flowers, with one plant producing flowers of several different colour combinations.

I will probably feel the urge to post a lot of garden pictures, but I'll try to restrain myself (not everyone sees plants the way I do, though hopefully some of my photographs can change that!).