Yet another sunset

Another sunset shot taken on our holiday in Jamaica earlier this year, walking back up the hill from the beach. This is an example of how software can rescue a shot which would have been very difficult to pull off on film: by flattening the dynamic range we can keep detail in the darkest parts of the image without washing out the highlights in the sky (which is a bit like what our brains do to the image captured on our retinas). I hope it doesn't look too unnatural (I don't think so).

Details: Nikon D70, 18-70mm @ 18mm, f/10, 1/60s, ISO 200. Treasure Beach, Jamaica, 22 February 2006.

Captivity

After yesterday's "freedom" post, here's a stab at the opposite. I had a few ideas for this - for example, a shot of my office! That's pretty much the polar opposite of yesterday's picture, conceptually... but the picture comes first, and I prefer this one. Doesn't need much explanation: it's a timber wolf, looking at me through a wire fence (that's the blurry bit across the muzzle - which spoils the photo, except seeing as this is about captivity, it's actually the whole point, meaning I can use an otherwise flawed image - everyone's a winner). The wolf is one of the denizens of Parc Omega, a safari park near Montebello.

Details: Nikon D70, 75-240mm @ 240mm, f/5.6, 1/640s, ISO 200. Parc Omega, Quebec, 9 April 2005. Placemark.

Freedom

As I think I mentioned before, "freedom" is not a word I particularly like, given its abuse by certain people. Asked to find a photo in my collection that illustrates the word, or the concept, I had trouble getting my head around it. Ultimately I think it's a very subjective concept, and a bit romantic, which is probably why I've gone for this slightly hackneyed interpretation: a child playing games in an idyllic setting. He may have had his older sisters watching his every move; he may have had to go home for his tea in a minute; he may not have the vote (yet), he may not have had any money of his own, his family may be poor (or not, I don't know). As a child in a developing country he'd probably fail on most assessments of what it is to be "free" - but I doubt I'll ever be as free as he was there, jumping across piles on a beach in the Caribbean...

Details: Nikon D70, 18-70mm @ 34mm, f/5.6, 1/320s, ISO 200. Treasure Beach, Jamaica, 19 February 2006. Placemark.

Brooms

Halloween theme going on here. The broom maker's at the Upper Canada Village, an open air museum in Ontario on the Saint Lawrence.

Details: Nikon D70, 18-200mm @ 22mm, f/3.8, 1/20s, ISO 200. 28 August 2006.

Droplets

Spray from the Lauriault Falls in Gatineau Park on a maple leaf, this time last year. First snow shower today!

Details: Nikon D70, 105mm, f/5.6, 1/200s, ISO 200. Gatineau Park, Quebec, 22 October 2005. Placemark.

Fragile

It's turning cold - there was a frost tonight as we went to the temple for Diwali pooja. Not long to go now before the big freeze sets in. This was taken last year, before the river froze, but with an icy wind whistling down the valley whipping the river up into waves and freezing the spray as it landed on the grass. The resulting ice formations were gorgeous - until someone trod on them...

Details: Nikon D70, 105mm, f/5, 1/400s, ISO 200. 3 December 2005, Petrie Island, Ontario. Placemark.

Cheetah

On our first evening in Samburu we found this cheetah picking over a gazelle it had just brought down. We had about ten minutes to look at it in dim light before a dozen or so other safari vehicles spotted us and rushed up to join in the gawking.

Details: Minolta X-500, 130mm, exposure not recorded. Samburu National Reserve, Kenya, December 1998. Placemark (approximate).

Queensway

This is the underside of the Queensway, a motorway running east to west through Ottawa. Here's it's passing over the Rideau Canal in the middle of town. I found the lighting and the shapes pleasing to the eye. The image was converted to tritone inks and then back to sRGB for the web.

Details: Nikon D70, 18-200mm @ 18mm, f/9, 1/60s, ISO 200. Ottawa, 9 October 2006. Placemark.

Autumn woods

A lovely morning walk through the autumn woods in the Fitzroy Provincial Park, last weekend.

Details: Nikon D70, 18-200mm lens @ 38mm, f/8, 1/15s, ISO 200. Near Arnprior, Ontario, 7 October 2006. Placemark.

Opportunity

I took this in the souk in Marrakech, possibly the most mercantilist place on earth. I was thinking about the word 'opportunity' and came to this picture by a convoluted route. When I was starting out, communism was the Great Enemy, and we the West defined ourselves as capitalists, and capitalism as 'good'. The problem with communists, we were told, was that they didn't have the freedom to consume Pepsi. It took me a long time to work out that life was more complicated than that, and by the time I'd worked it out, the Great Enemy had vanished and we were at the End of History.

Obviously, this was utter nonsense, and we knew that even back then. Already we saw where things were heading: the Iranian Revolution, Gulf War 1, the Balkans... Radical Islam has its roots in the West's Cold War crimes. It took the idiotic War on Terror to promote Islam as the new Great Enemy of the West, though. Trouble is, how to define the enemy in black and white terms as we did the previous Great Enemy? Our leaders use the same clichés to mobilise our fear and hatred of the unknown. But "freedom" and "liberty" don't really work so well as a stick with which to hit Islam. We've been told for so long that "freedom" means "opportunity" and that "opportunity" means "consumerism" - the freedom to buy an SUV and eat Big Macs and dress in polyester and water your desert lawn with a sprinkler - that we've forgotten the real meaning of the words. Islam isn't anti-consumer; Islam has its roots in trade. The 6th century settlements of Mecca and Medina existed only because they controlled vital east-west trade routes; the Prophet Mohammed came from a wealthy family of merchants; Islam spread along trade routes and the Caliphate allowed global trade to flourish, helping Europe emerge from the Dark Ages.

Words are tricky. They can be twisted. We should be wary of clichés. Perhaps, by our standards, opportunities for women and minorities in some Islamic countries are restricted. Perhaps there are regimes in the Middle East which are undemocratic. But who are we to preach? Democracy should mean that the people hold power, but in most western participative democracies, all it means is that we get a chance every four or five years to chuck out one bunch of corporatist plutocrats who've behaved spectacularly badly and appoint a virtually identical bunch, who will stay in power until they in turn behave so spectacularly badly that a decade later we are forced collectively to turn back to the first lot. In some so-called democracies, even the limited choice available is abused. And who are we to preach freedom when our own freedoms are blithely ignored? So when our leaders tell us that our values are under attack, and that we need to invade some poor country on a transparently false pretext in order to defend those values, we should kick up a fuss.

This doughnut seller in Marrakech seemed happy enough to pander to my consumerist desire for deep-fried goodies. He was pretty friendly. I don't think he was a threat to my values.

Details: Minolta X-500, 50mm, exposure not recorded. Marrakech, Morocco, December 1989. Placemark (approximate).

Postcard

This is pretty much the picture postcard view of small-town Ontario. The Carp Holistic Health Centre, white clapboard, with a maple tree out front. I drove past it at the weekend and had to stop.

Details: Nikon D70, 18-200mm lens @ 40mm, f/11, 1/60s, ISO 200, polariser. 7 October 2006, Carp, Ontario. Placemark.

Speed

Bit of mucking about here, with my VR lens and a slower exposure. The first fruit of my promise to myself to get out and about a bit more with my camera. The cyclist is flashing by in a blur oblivious to the beautiful autumn cityscape around him. The shot was taken on the canal path at the bottom of my street. I cycle it myself to get to work. It's a wonderful commute, but yesterday was a holiday. Back home, on a sunny bank holiday afternoon, a place like this would be crowded with families taking a stroll after lunch; here, if you're not running, you're rollerblading, and if you're not rollerblading, you're cycling. Even the few walkers seem to be pretty hardcore, wearing neon high-tech wicking shirts, wraparound shades, listening to their iPods and staring fixedly ahead. Exercise is an obsession in this city, people seem to be so busy being active that they don't have time to appreciate their surroundings. A hundred or so metres further along, there's a little memorial wreath, constantly refreshed, pinned to the railings. A grieving widow lost her husband to a heart attack while he was jogging by the canal. Whenever I pass it I remember to slow down and enjoy the ride.

Details: Nikon D70, 18-200mm @ 18mm, f/22, 1/20s, ISO 200, polariser. Rideau Canal pathway, 9 October 2006. Placemark.

Getting out

My posting frequency is dropping off, this is not good. Will try harder. I was also surprised to look at my photo archive and see that I've been taking far fewer photos recently. I suppose it's inevitable that these things come and go in cycles, but it's a pity. I guess I haven't had as much opportunity or inspiration recently. I need to get out there more. This has been a fantastic autumn weekend but whever I go the trees seem either to have shed their leaves entirely or not to be quite there yet. This stand of birch trees (?) though looked glorious in yellow from the side of the Dunrobin Road, near Carp.

Details: Nikon D70, 18-200mm @ 32mm, f/11, 1/80s, ISO 200. Carp, Ontario, 8 October 2006. Placemark.

Rift Valley

I pulled this out because it's almost a mirror image of the previous post. This was on our first trip out to Kenya, our first day there, my parents took us out on the Magadi road as far as the Rift Valley escarpment to take in the view.

Details: Minolta X-500, 50mm, exposure not recorded. Ngong, Kenya, December 1996. Placemark.

Land

Mum and M having a coffee break during a tough day clearing undergrowth in our vineyard. We're looking south-west over Korb towards Stuttgart. We call it a 'vineyard'; in fact it's a plot of land within a larger vineyard which produces 'Korber Kopf', a light red Trollinger. It's overgrown and produces nothing much beyond a bumper crop of cherries from a few trees at the back.

This little plot of land, for all the paperwork and manual labour it entails, has a lot of sentimental significance for me. It's part of the family farm, and was given to us as a wedding present. It's a very tangible connection back to my childhood, long summer holidays spent cherry-picking, picknicking and going for family walks. It's also a link to a rural family past which feels a million miles away from my adult life but which exerts a certain romantic fascination. I know it's a romantic fascination because when I think of it I think of self-sufficient peasant farmers working their own land in the central European tradition, far removed from the post-enclosure latifundia of the anglosphere; and I ignore the reality which is backbreaking work clearing the weeds to conform with council regulations and putting up with nasty little jibes from passing old men who disapprove of the messy look and distrust my foreign number plates. Also, romance aside, I don't really feel comfortable holding onto a piece of land far away from my everyday life, however small and messy that land might be: land which somebody else could enjoy, perhaps even put to good use. But we've tried selling it, and tried letting it, and, well... no-one else seems to want it! So under the disapproving eyes of the local seniors I neglect it benignly, and lovingly, from afar.

Details: Minolta Dynax 5, 50mm, exposure not recorded. Korb, Germany, June 2004. Placemark.