The steady persuasion of spring where the trees meet overhead and the water divides below. You can sit in the freckled sun here, beside the water garden, and the birds will taunt you, posing only for a second before flitting off and then returning to a new perch. There are no other voices.
From the series Surface, Submerge.
© Karen McRae, 2013
“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.
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?
© Karen McRae, 2013
A little extra winter here the past few days but I don’t think the remainder of ice on the river can last too much longer. The coming days look to be shifting into real spring.
The footprints made by a black bear who has been walking near the river were quite distinguishable in the fresh snow. It’s not too often a bear would be wandering in this area so close to the city but there are corridors of greenspace and waterways that are well used by wildlife. It’s one of things that makes this city so interesting.
© Karen McRae, 2013
…to shed our winter coats.
Wrapped trees found along a highway. Sometimes you will see the newly planted trees wrapped like this to protect them from the harsh weight of winter. I really don’t know how effective it is.
I documented some smaller and very different looking ones last year. You can see that series here. After the drought that occurred here last summer many of the trees along the highway look as though they are struggling.
© Karen McRae, 2013
Reflections and remnants – another melding of two separate photographs. From the series Surface, Submerge.
© Karen McRae, 2013
© Karen McRae, 2013
Taking things apart.
Above are the two separate images I had combined in the previous post. The duck is cropped to make it less central. It still feels very familiar to me this particular bird-in-flight form.
It twigged a memory of watching the herons in flight during the last days of Autumn, just before migration. It is such a different form.
[Thank you to everyone who joined in the discussion for the last post. It was very interesting!]
© Karen McRae, 2013
I admit Kitsch is not ever usually what I’m after photographically, but this image just somehow seems to me an embodiment of landscape sentimentality and it got me thinking about how we perceive images and how difficult it is to make something new.
I photographed the landscape (slow shutter speed and camera movement), and the duck separately and then merged them together in Photoshop. It immediately made me uncomfortable and it took me a little while to figure out why.
Here’s the thing; I feel like I have seen the essence of this image a million times in a million different ways over my lifetime. As though it holds the spirit of so many images (sculpture, painting, photography, …) that came before it. I realize, also, that the composition is imperfect and I think it adds to that sense of kitsch.
Most images echo back to the past in some way, but this photograph seemed particularly striking to me. How does a bird in flight hold so much meaning? And why does it make me feel a bit wobbly? I suppose it is the idea of finding that you have made something that has been made a million times already. The same , only different.
© Karen McRae, 2013
[Each of these images are made with 2 separate photographs layered in Photoshop. The water reflection photographs are in-camera double exposures and the fish is merely a figment of your imagination. If it was real it would not be fresh.]
© Karen McRae, 2013
draw and shoot 