THE WAXWING
Scroll back a few days through my posts, and you'll see an image of hundreds of little birds flocking... this, you could consider a detail shot.
THE PENNY PLUNGES
On March 29th 2012 Canada's "majority driven" government unleashed their "massive" budget cuts, and while I wasn't one of the naysayers, screaming from the rooftop about how the right wing will definitely put us into a state much like our neighbors to the south are in the thick of, I was disappointed that our trusty friend the Canadian Penny was packing it's bags and moving out. It's just. It's the penny. What will our lives be like without this meaningless copper plated chunk of zinc?
What will I do when I can't dig into my pocket, sift through my change, and find a real piece of copper. Not the copper plated zinc from 1996 and up, the old ones stamped with dates like 1951 or 1945 or 1939?
The idea that I could have a handful of copper in my hand, copper pennies made before I was born.... little tiny pieces of history. It made me feel safe. Safe to know that even though we, as a society, had grown so much, had come so far, had evolved... we still held on to a tiny bit of the past, a small surmountable copper coin... with little to no value alone...
I suppose I hope that some day you and I are not the penny they say has no worth. That my country does not give up on me, and what I do for a living, even if they cannot see the value in it, because there is value... great value that cannot be calculated and placed in a budget.
JUSTING HANGING OUT
FLOCKING
There was a large portion of birds outside my house today. This picture represents ten percent of them.
BIRDIE NUM NUM
BIG BROTHER
MY FAMILY
LUNCHTIME
EDMONTON SPRING
FROZEN DINNER
THE TREE OUTSIDE MY HOUSE
MAKING A BUN
ANTIQUE STEAMER TRUNK
Claire and I are big fans of these old steamer trunks, and we have to hold back when we see them now because our house has reached it's limit for trunks. This one's my favorite, and it's also the best deal we found. Correlation... maybe.
BIRD IS THE WORD
SCHOOL AFTER DARK
FROM THE VAN: SECTIONS OF LAND
FROM THE VAN: CONTAINERS AT SUNRISE
FROM THE VAN: SMALL MONOPOLY HOUSE
BOBCATS AND LADDERS
When I was a young boy, I spent endless hours playing with a fascinating toy called the "Micro Machine". It's predecessor, the "Dinky Car", was also a toy of favor in my childhood... well... at least until the micro machine came along. Essentially the same idea with the Dinky Car, the one main selling factor of the micro machine was it's size, it was smaller, micro if you will. And while I didn't think about it at the time, the fascination of the Dinky Car when it launched played upon the same idea. A tiny detailed version of all the vehicles the big people were able to drive. Later in my years of growing, they came out with "Micro Micro Machines" an even smaller set of vehicles to entice children, and aggravate parents when they accidentally vacuum up the "toy" that is essentially .05 cents worth of plastic.
This photo reminds me of the innocence and naivety I had when I was a child, and proves I can still find that child if I dig a little deeper... sometimes it just takes a tiny bobcat.
FROM THE VAN: RED BARN
CROSSING THE TRACKS
MAGICICAL THROW UP
FROM THE VAN: TRACKS IN THE SNOW
FROM THE VAN: SNOWY PEAKS
FROM THE VAN: LINES IN THE SKY
FROM THE VAN: CALGARY TOWER
BIRDIE IN THE CEILING
IT'S SNOWING
SOMETIMES I WISH I WAS A CAT
FROM THE VAN: SUNSET
FROM THE VAN: LITTLE BOXES
NO NOODLE FOUNTAIN
FROM THE VAN: CANADIAN RESILIENCE
FROM THE VAN: TREES
THE POLLUTION OF CHAMPIONS
WATCHING THE WHITEOUT
SUN DOG
From my friend wiki: A sun dog or sundog, scientific name parhelion (plural parhelia) from Greek παρήλιον (parēlion), meaning "beside the sun"; from παρά (para), meaning "beside", and ἥλιος (helios), meaning "sun", also called a mock sun[1] or a phantom sun,[2] is an atmospheric phenomenon that creates bright spots of light in the sky, often on a luminous ring or halo on either side of the sun.[3]
Sundogs may appear as a colored patch of light to the left or right of the sun, 22° distant and at the same distance above the horizon as the sun, and in ice halos. They can be seen anywhere in the world during any season, but they are not always obvious or bright. Sundogs are best seen and are most conspicuous when the sun is low.
I just think they're cool.
LIGHT FROM ABOVE
FROM THE VAN
Driving back from a three show day out in Nameo. My lenses are very excited to hit the prairies and the mountains.
IRON WORKERS BEAM
GAZEBO PARK BOMB SCARE
Today, a suspicious brown package, with wire's coming out of it was spotted in the Gazebo Park in Old Strathcona. In the next two hours the surrounding area's were vacated, police tape was strung along a half mile radius, and the Edmonton Bomb Squad was sent in to investigate. To the far left you can see the remaining parts of the package, which was disintegrated by the robots. These are the robots that keep us safe at night people.
GRINDING THE GEARS
FLIGHT OF THE PIGEON
BIRD BOBBLE
These birds, along with fifty of their friends, hang out across from the building I'm currently working in. Between scooping down to scavenge crumbs left by the lunch rush at Gazebo Park, and flying around the block, they rest their weary wings on these wire's. Some poop, well, most poop, and when one bird decides to vacate the wire, the one's that shared that particular wire, are left to tackle the act of balancing the wobble and ripple of the wire. For a moment, they bobble, back and forth... I like to think they enjoy it.
VALENTINES PIZZA
On our first Valentines Day, Claire made me Gluten Free Pizza, she was very disappointment by the outcome of it, but I was over the moon with delight. Now, every Valentines Day, we make Gluten Free Pizza together. It's the best day of the year, and the recipe's have progressively excelled in tasty-ness, three years later, I'm over Jupiter with delight... who knows where I'll be next year... or ten years from now.
CAT EYE
When I was young I was convinced that marbles were actually just old cat eyes. I'd peer into Midnight Scratche's eyes, who was my childhood cat, and think, "I wonder if I'll ever play with those, that would be very unfortunate." Midnight Scratch was named by both me and my sister, she chose midnight, because the cat was black, and I chose scratch, because, yes, the cat scratched. I was four, I can't be blamed for such predictable naming. Regardless, like SO many cats, Midnight Scratch soon became: Kitty when she good, and Cat when she was bad. I was happy to call her Kitty, because that's what she came to. She lived over fifteen years, and I loved her very much, and I'm happy to say, I never played marbles with her eyeball.
THE THIEF
When I was young, my Mom took me and my sister on a vacation to Waskesiu Lake in Saskatchewan. I can't recall my specific age, but I must have been between 7-9. It may have been for the trip, or a birthday present that year, but I had been given my first camera, with two rolls of Kodak Film 24. I was so excited to use it. After an eight hour trip through the prairies of Alberta and Saskatchewan, of which we exhausted every James Taylor and Phil Collins album, we finally arrived at Waskesiu Lake. I jumped out of the car, and after the three of us acquainted ourselves with the surroundings, I went out on a hunt to find the best shot; a picture I could show all my friends and family back at home. And then, I saw a squirrel... I snapped my first shot, and ran after him and took another, up a tree, another, under a car, another, on a branch, one more... I ran up and down the camp taking picture after picture of this wonderful little furry model until my Kodak 24 Roll was full. I wound the camera up, just like my mom showed me and popped the full roll in my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fanny pack. I felt SO good, and couldn't wait to develop the pictures, I even pleaded my mom to get them developed there at the Waskesiu Drugstore, but she explained that developing takes time and if we dropped them off here they wouldn't be finished before our vacation was over.
So I waited. The anticipation nearly killed me. It was a glorious day when we picked up the pictures from the photo lab, I was so excited to see all the wonderfully captured moments. I opened up the pack and started barreling through my shots, first the ground, then a tree trunk... then some car's tire... a branch... some PINE CONES... I began to realize that what I thought were amazing close up shots of a wild furry squirrel model, were just proof of my slow reflexes and horrific composing ability. Then, finally, hidden in all the random shots of the lower three feet of a campground, I found what I had been hoping for, my captured moment of a very frightened, very tiny, very blurry, furry model. I was proud... or at least I told myself I was.
I took this photo today, for my 7 to 9 year old self, I hope he is proud of me.
I'm proud of him.
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