photography

A Soft Place to Land: Part One

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I’ve been thinking about the textures of spring. The things you slowly come to notice. Like the way the air sort of rushes through you instead of around you. The yellow-greens that hover at the tips of the trees like a dancing mist. The velvet carpets that slowly roll out under your feet. Some of them solid. Some of them shifting. How your senses heighten and make everything more absolute. But with this, a softness.
The temperate softening of the landscape. There is a beautiful energy to the spring; a measured growth and a bursting freshness.









All images © Karen McRae

Shell Games

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There are several different kinds of mussel shells in the river each with their own subtleties  that I find intriguing. (okay, I don’t get bored easily…) As the outer layers of the shells are abraded away over the seasons it’s as though tiny luminous landscapes develop on the surfaces. This is what catches my eye.

A bit of trickery: I’ve photographed some of these shells on a mirror while reflecting a white surface onto the mirror at the same time.









All images © Karen McRae

Ready for Release

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I had a chance to visit with the wrapped trees today. I thought they might be released from their winter trappings, but no. Surely, it must be well past time. The little trees are trying to fight their way out with the aid of the prevailing winds. They are ready to feel the sun and the rain on their restrained boughs. There are bits of green popping out.

I brought a little sun-shower with me but it’s not enough. The earth is cracked and dry.


Some of them are looking rather defeated. Who will come and start the unraveling?









*All these trees are as I have found them, along the highway and wrapped for the harsh winter. I have been documenting them through the seasons and you can find the whole series here.
All images © Karen McRae

Landfill

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These are images from my first visit to a site where I am working on documenting the land. I wasn’t initially going to post these as I consider them to be snapshots really, quick reference images for the start of the project but I now see some value in them, even if it’s just for myself. A small introduction:
It is strange perhaps, to be intrigued by a landfill. In a way it is an interest 20 years or so in the making. Twenty years of driving by; observing, passing glances, fleeting questions. Images stuck in my head.

I pass no judgement on this place. I only want to get a sense of it, to understand it and to learn. In a way I know that part of me is already here. A cast-off part. I am one of the small bones in the spine of the ridge that makes up this place. I am implicated.
There is also a beating heart to this place. We have shaken hands. We share a respect, for the landfill, for each other. The beating heart and the fragment of spine have an understanding. I am after the beauty of it. I’m not sure how this will unfold exactly…






All images © Karen McRae

Vestiges: Flora

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Collected from among the flotsam and jetsam washed up along the shoreline. There are surprising things that gather after the frayed edges of winter wear off but these things belong there. Of course I’ve taken them out of context because I like the surprises I get when I look at things in that way. In a sense I compare these little studies to doing sketches between paintings, really looking.
I love the diversity. The roots systems. The texture and character. The delicate veins that weave things together. The same things that weave us together.











All images © Karen McRae

A Residual Winter Breath

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Our temporary “summer” has been replaced by more normal seasonal temperatures.
A windy breath of -10° c overnight drove the waves and spray up on to the sloped shore of this bay resulting in a strange and magical landscape when I came upon it yesterday. Not that long ago the ice fishing huts resided in this wide bay.


The perfectly ice-upholstered and fringed rocks along the shore.




Surreal spaces…



Although this place is quite removed from the city and looks idyllic and peaceful there is a strange juxtaposition of bird song and intermittent rapid gunfire from the nearby rifle range. It all feels rather surreal as I wade through the water in high rubber boots; a strange shore bird among chandelier skirted trees.



Shirley’s Bay, Ottawa River

All images © Karen McRae

Vestiges: Fauna

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I have photographed this freshwater mussel shell every way I could think of to bring out the pure beauty of the subtle pearly colour shifts and the worn layers, but until you pull it out of the shallow icy water at the shore and hold it in your hand under a luminously overcast sky you won’t be able to see just how exquisite it really is.





A good-sized bird skull, I don’t know what kind it is. Perhaps the size of a seagull. Found along one of the breakwaters, over wintered and broken beaked.





All images © Karen McRae