I Recommend…

July 15, 2013July 21, 2013 | drawandshoot

I recommend leaving the world behind for a while. Taking along light canoes and heavy packs and paddling to a new campsite every day. A campsite with a warm lake and a crackling fire.

I recommend sleeping in a tent under the stars, watching the fireflies light up the velvet night and then waking to early morning birdsong you can’t identify.

I recommend morning coffee, evening tea, and daily swims.

I recommend traveling with a diverse group of people and having a (borrowed) 6-year-old in your canoe at all times. One that tells jokes and sings songs and just might be smarter than you.

I recommend changing pace.
The pace of a paddle, a canoe, and some wilderness.

[All these images were made this past week at Killarney Provincial Park in Ontario.]

*Note: I also recommend bug spray and short portages!

sea change

July 4, 2013 | drawandshoot

Fluid Limbs

June 28, 2013 | drawandshoot

A double exposure (the figure), water reflections and merged layers. You have to learn how to swim in all this rain…

The Rain Becomes You

June 13, 2013 | drawandshoot

A damselfly that tells fortunes…?

I think this might be a small weevil(?) of some sort, managing to hang on to the underside of a leaf with the weight of all that water.

We have had a fair share of grey and rain around here. The earth is well watered, and you could disappear in the tall green grasses. It is easy to gripe about the greyness of it all, but when the sun returns you are reminded that each drop is a transient gem.

World Oceans Day, June 8th

June 7, 2013June 28, 2013 | drawandshoot

I’m hoping this image can stand on its own because I’m sort of at a loss to describe the importance of the ocean. But you already know.

World Oceans Day Worldwide
World Oceans Day Canada
World Oceans Day Sheds Light on our Blighted Seas

The Water Garden 2

May 30, 2013June 28, 2013 | drawandshoot

Double exposures; the surface, and things submerged.

Spring Belongs to the Birds

May 1, 2013 | drawandshoot

Birdsong and squinting into the sun. The earth is greening.

What Water Does

April 19, 2013 | drawandshoot

“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.”
― Loren Eiseley

Above and below: Seedheads covered in ice from freezing rain – the patterns develop as the ice starts to melt away and break up into smaller pieces.

FrostFeathers Frost flowers develop when it is very cold and the air is quite moist. The ones pictured here formed on thin ice at the edge of the river near open water, on a night when the temperature dipped to -25C.

Above: A tiny branch with phantom ‘leaves’ on a cold winter morning.

Below: A small frost formation on a window.

The Ottawa River shifting through the seasons.

I sometimes find it difficult to shift my visual thinking/creativity away from the winter landscape in the spring. For me it holds a bit of magic like no other season. The key to these transformations is water. From raindrops to snowflakes, to ice and frost, is there anything with more imagination than water?

The landscape is mostly shades of brown now with small bits of green trying to emerge through the damp earth. The river has lost its ice. Most of the photographs here have been posted on these pages before, some even from the previous winter, so I guess this is a bit of a recap (or an ice cap), but together they attempt to illustrate, and to let go of, the season that has just passed.

Also, on Monday April 22nd it will be Earth Day! In 2013 the focus is on climate change and how it is impacting people, creatures and environments the world over. You can learn more (and participate) by going to the Earth Day website. It is our collective voices and actions that make changes.

What are your plans for Earth Day?