Space

Another day, another power station. After Didcot, Chats Falls: a hydroelectric power station in the Ottawa River, as seen from another beauty spot, Fitzroy Provincial Park in Ontario, 45 minutes upstream from Ottawa. This vantage point, unlike the one in Oxfordshire, is all about wilderness and untouched nature, which you'd think would make the power station stand out all the more as an eyesore. Somehow, though, it doesn't.

When I think about why this is, I come to the conclusion that it's all about space: Canada is so vast, people seem to have made little impression upon it. A few hydro projects, providing relatively clean energy for a much more scattered population, seems somehow far less intrusive.

This image captures the concept for me in several ways. The stillness of the river, the vastness of the sky, both dwarfing the dam complex. Also the awareness that beyond the buildings on the horizon there are virtually no significant settlements until you hit the far side of the Arctic Circle. Finally, there's the context in which the image was captured: at dusk, on a sparsely populated campsite, where (having tucked M into her sleeping bag) I spent a reflective evening, just me, the campfire and the space inside my head.

Details: Nikon D70, 18-200mm @ 22mm, f/9, 1/3s, ISO 200, tripod. 30 August, 2006. Fitzroy Provincial Park, Ontario. Placemark.

Camping

It's genuinely a bit frightening to realise that this photo was taken 17 years ago, that's nearly half a lifetime! Back then camping was my norm - cheap, easy, portable, no need to plan ahead. I still have a romantic fascination with the whole notion of sleeping under canvas (or nylon or whatever it is these days), but haven't had much chance to indulge since being shown the yellow card when I tried to take a tent with me on my honeymoon...

Anyway, it's slightly cheating to post a photo which obviously was not taken by me, but I need to mark an important moment in my life: the moment that my daughter is old enough to go on a camping trip with me. We're off tomorrow, and I'm as excited as a six year old on Christmas Eve! It may not be trekking to the Everest Base Camp, but it's a start. Here's to a lifetime of father-daughter adventures together. (She calls them inventures.)

Details: Minolta X-500, 50mm lens, exposure not recorded. Agrigento, Sicily, August 1989. Placemark.

Didcot

Recently I touched on my love of Wessex, the tamed landscape and its sense of history, and our relationship to our surroundings.

Here's a view taken from the summit of the Wittenham Clumps, a bronze age hill fort in Oxfordshire, just above the River Thames, in one of the most gorgeous parts of the world. It represents, and is surrounded by, the gentle natural beauty shaped by millennia of human activity. At its foot nestles a picture postcard English village with its 14th century church; in the distance, beyond the patchwork of hedgerows, fields and copses, you can make out the dreaming spires of Oxford. And then... there's Didcot Power Station. A carbon-dioxide spewing monstrosity dumped in the middle of God's Own Country™...

Not everyone hates it. I do. Give me a forest of wind turbines on a remote and rugged shoreline over this, any day.

Details: Nikon D70, 18-200mm @ 36mm, f/5.6, 1/400s, ISO 200, polariser. 9 August 2006, Wittenham Clumps, Oxfordshire. Placemark.

Flowers, and bee

I thought I'd run out of decent bee shots. I was hunting through my catalogue, looking for some nice flower shots, when I found this one, with possibly my favourite bee shot ever. :)

Details: Nikon D70, 105mm macro, f/5.6, 1/640s, ISO 200. 24 September 2005, Chelsea, Quebec. Placemark.

Garden

This was a picture taken in my back garden in Belgium, back before I had a macro lens and tripod. The rose is Gertrude Jekyll, behind it you can see cornflowers and sweet peas. As per yesterday's post, refreshing to remember what you can do with just a 50mm lens. This was taken during our second summer in the house, the first year in which I'd really devoted a lot of time to the garden. The first year, and the last year, as the following year we had a baby occupying our waking hours and then of course we left for four years. I really miss it; such a wonderful obsession. Always something to do, always a source of creativity and inspiration. I'm really looking forward to going back and restoring it. Five summers of neglect gives one the opportunity and excuse to do some radical redesigning and replanting. Something to look forward to.

Details: Minolta X-500, 50mm, exposure not recorded. June 2000, Kraainem, Belgium.

Shoes

Life has caught up with me since getting home, I've been neglecting my blog and I apologise. I'll try to be more regular, but probably won't manage daily updates.

These shoes were lying under a barbed wire fence on a beach in Jamaica. This is just one of many keepers that I took on the day I decided to ditch all my lenses except my 50mm prime. Such good discipline to have the single focal length, it forces you to be creative. Plus it's a lovely bright, sharp lens.

Details: Nikon D70, 50mm, f/1.8, 1/640s, ISO 200. Treasure Beach, Jamaica, 21 February 2006.

Being European

"Hey, this is Europe. We took it from nobody; we won it from the bare soil that the ice left. The bones of our ancestors, and the stones of their works, are everywhere. Our liberties were won in wars and revolutions so terrible that we do not fear our governors: they fear us. Our children giggle and eat ice-cream in the palaces of past rulers. We snap our fingers at kings. We laugh at popes. When we have built up tyrants, we have brought them down. And we have nuclear - fucking - weapons." (Ken Macleod)

(That last sentence is a self-consciously ironic reference to a Denis Leary gag, and the quote needs to be understood in the context of your common or garden transatlantic flame war, albeit on usenet and involving renowned writers of science fiction.)

I like this quote. I like it in part because I shouldn't. It's very un-European to exhibit this kind of pride, and I'm proud that we're not proud, if you see what I mean.

The shot is of M larking about in the ruins of Selinunte.

Details: Minolta Dynax 5, 50mm, exposure not recorded. Selinunte, Sicily, May 2004. Placemark.

Change

After the long, hot summer it's cold, it's raining and I'm packing. Tomorrow I head home. The French call it the rentrée, the return to home, to work and to school, and for me it's always had a more 'new year' feel to it than New Year. I always have mixed feelings about this time of year. Another year gone; another summer over. But new things on the horizon. I look forward to getting stuck into life with renewed energy. I can't wait to get home.

It puts me in mind of one of my favourite poems, by Brecht:

Alles wandelt sich. Neu beginnen
Kannst du mit dem letzten Atemzug.
Aber was geschehen, ist geschehen. Und das Wasser
Das du in den Wein gossest, kannst du
Nicht mehr herausschütten.

Was geschehen, ist geschehen. Das Wasser
Das du in den Wein gossest, kannst du
Nicht mehr herausschütten, aber
Alles wandelt sich. Neu beginnen
Kannst du mit dem letzten Atemzug.

Everything changes. You can start again
With every last breath.
But what has happened, has happened. The water
That you pour into the wine
Can't be poured back out again.

What has happened, has happened.
The water that you pour into the wine
Can't be poured back out again, but
Everything changes. You can start again
With every last breath.

Perhaps the corny sunset image doesn't really go with this sentiment, but I don't care, I like it.

Details: Nikon D70, 18-70mm lens @ 18mm, f/11, 1/200s, ISO 200. Treasure Beach, Jamaica, 20 February 2006. Placemark.

In defence of grubbiness

Here's a good aesthetic argument for throwing away your dustpan and brush. This railing wouldn't look half so nice if it had been kept tidy.

There are practical arguments too. A bit of muck is surely a good thing. I don't like the obsession with cleanliness that people seem to have in the west, especially North America. There's a difference between being clean, and being sterile. Every other advert on the telly is for chemical cleaning products. Food comes sanitised and shrink-wrapped, and it tastes of plastic. Every winter, office workers are required by their employers to take flu vaccines rather than build resistance by letting nature take its course.

I'm not surprised when I hear that we're facing an "allergy epidemic". We're bombarded with chemicals and isolated from nature. Kids are kept away from bugs and dirt and crud for as long as possible, and their immune systems don't get the early kick-start they need. When our natural defences do come on stream they overcompensate, with allergies and leukaemia the predictable result. So, honestly, when my nipper walks in from the garden with barked knees, grubby hands, a snotty nose and a big smile, I couldn't be happier.

Details: Nikon D70, 18-200mm lens @ 90mm, f/5.3, 1/1000s, ISO 800. Sintra, Portugal, 29 July 2006.

Devi

We can't work out which goddess this is - probably Parvati/Durga, but it might be Saraswati or possibly Lakshmi. If anyone knows any better, leave a comment!

Details: Nikon D70, 105mm macro, f/7.1, 1/60s, ISO 500. 23 February 2005.

Airports

The good news: the splint and bandages are off, I have an impressive scar but at last I can type again. The bad news: humanity sucks. I can't describe how little I'm looking forward to trying to fly home on Monday from Heathrow. As I've got older I've become a more nervous flyer, and this really isn't going to help. Rationally, I know that the safest time to fly is probably right after an alert like this. Irrationally, it makes me distinctly jumpy. Added to that, from a purely selfish perspective, I'm dreading the hassle. It's bad enough flying from Heathrow at the best of times. Now on top of the inevitable queues, security checks and assorted indignities comes the likelihood of being barred from taking reading material or music on board. Six hours of sitting there, bored and scared, chewing my nails, and that's assuming all goes well and the flight actually leaves more or less on time. Cosmic, as Rodney would say.

Obviously I'm pissed off at the nutters who threaten us with mid-air explosions, I'm far more pissed off with the politicians who deliberately pour vinegar on Islam's wounds, putting their own citizens at considerable risk and inconvenience. I can't wait to get out of the UK and I'm in no hurry to come back to this failing state; but I look to be heading back to a country where things are heading in the same direction.

In the meantime I've dug out this snapshot of a contrasting way to fly. No check-in, no queues, no security, everything is hand-luggage, and flights are short and interesting. Preferable in every way.

Details: Minolta X-500, 50mm lens, exposure not recorded. Masai Mara, Kenya, January 1997. Placemark.

Rose

A rose, taken in Halifax Public Gardens this time last year. I miss my garden.

Details: Nikon D70, 105mm macro, f/6.3, 1/2000s, ISO 500. 21 August 2005, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Placemark.

Path

This is one of five shots I took of pathways in the Moorish Castle above Sintra. I find the texture of the rocks and roots really interesting, and the black and white conversion brings this out. This is clearer when viewing the images at larger size (see here for a larger version, 700k).

Details: Nikon D70, 18-200mm lens @ 52mm, f/14, 1/8s, ISO 200, b&w conversion in Photoshop. Sintra, Portugal, 30 July 2006. Placemark.

Flame

A bonfire, in my parents' back garden, this evening. I spent a long time watching it.

Details: Nikon D70, 50mm, f/1.8, 1/3200s, ISO 1600.

Sintra

My Portugal shots are now processed and uploaded, on the whole I'm pleased with them given the restrictions under which I was operating. Mind you, it's hard not to take a few nice shots in such picturesque surroundings. In particular, I loved the archways and stairways of the town, and focused on these as a kind of theme.

It's fair to say that my month back in Europe has reminded me of the things I love about home, just when I was at risk of going native. But that's a longer post which I'll save for a day when I have the use of both hands to type.

Details: Nikon D70, 18-200mm lens @ 34mm, f/7.1, 1/80s, ISO 200. Sintra, 2 August 2006. Placemark.

Husk

Back from my holiday, with apologies for the downtime. I managed to do myself a mischief while away, with the result that my left arm is out of action, so no long accompanying texts for a while. The broken arm also put a kybosh on my photography plans, though I did as much as I could with one hand (now I'm glad I got that VR lens...). A photo set will follow as soon as I've processed them, in the meantime here's a macro shot.

This dragonfly(?) husk was clinging to a leaf in a shallow well in the beautiful gardens of Montserrate, near Sintra. I assume it had moulted. Ants were busy cleaning it out, popping in and out of a gap in the eye.

Details: Nikon D70, 105mm macro, f/14, 1/100s, ISO 200. 2 August 2006, Sintra, Portugal. Placemark.