For some, this week is the first week of winter, while for others, like me, winter is still three weeks away. It all depends on how your country has set up its seasons. The first week of December is, in most cases, a week of wintry weather.
So for this post, I went digging into my archives to find (presentable) pictures from the first week of December.
As it turns out, this week has always been a fairly active, if not busy week for me. I decided to stick with my digital pictures for this one, otherwise the post would be way longer. The main image is from Kyiv, Ukraine in 2005. The first frost over Hydro Park, in the center of the city. This was the first time I experienced temperatures of –22C. Quite memorable.
In 2006, I was on a bus from Kyiv to The Netherlands, mostly to be able to come back to Ukraine without irritating the customs officers by overstaying my welcome in the country. The waiting line of trucks getting into Ukraine was impressive. The ride in the (aging) bus was less so. 17 hours of “bussing” later and I was in my hometown for a few weeks.
In 2008, the Ukrainian adventure had to stop, as the government imposed rules that made my stay in Ukraine quite impossible. Therefore, I arrived in Winnipeg (somewhere in November) and shot this picture of the just-frozen Assiniboine River. The rugged temperatures from Kyiv were here too…
By 2009, I had gotten used to it and all I did was walk around town to see if I could shoot some more of the white stuff “in action”. Grant Park, with the then-still-alive Zellers on a fairly cold morning.
I used to live on Dorchester Avenue in those days, and by 2010 I had acquired a taste for night shots as well. The camera was a model that was fairly capable of doing so (a Nikon D90) so I was out in the night as often as I could.
2011 saw me again in Leeuwarden, Netherlands for a visit to my parents for the holidays. A lot less winter in that country, more rain and wind. The Gulf Stream (warm water on the coast) makes a big difference in winter.
2012 saw the start of a wonderful group of people with a common photography interest called the Manitoba Foto Friends. Many outings with them were in the evening or during the night and a shot like this one on Portage Avenue in Winnipeg was one of the many I have of these guys.
Not all outings with the MFF were inside the city. After a fine Christmas Party in Birds Hill Park in 2013, I decided to try out my new carbon fibre tripod. As it was not aluminum, I thought it didn’t need any protection from the cold. The tripod held out fine, but my hands suffered from picking up the ice-cold, frozen carbon fibre legs. Sometimes I can still feel that burn.
Ice fishing on the Red River is a major source of tourism in the Winnipeg area. Up until I saw it with my own eyes, I didn’t believe that cars and trucks were “simply” going onto the ice to set up camp. Ice-fishing tents were all over the place.
On December 1, 2015, I got the dreaded but not unexpected phone call from my brother saying that my mother had passed away in the early morning. The next day I was on my way to Leeuwarden again for the last goodbye. My closest family members are all buried in the cemetery of one of the oldest churches in the country. Although my mood was really not into photography at that moment, the shot was hard to pass up on.
That was the year both my parents left for a better world. In 2024 I would add my little sister into the same gravesite. 2016, however, came with what we called a “Wild Woolly Weekend”. This little Gray Jay was quick to eat MY breakfast. It preferred the ham on my sandwich, leaving me with the bread and the crumbs.
Then I decided that 2017 would be the year to shoot more than just “feathers”. Anything with hair or fur would be welcome. This guy was startled by my presence and bolted as soon as he saw me with my big lens. He was still quite a ways away, but he ran nonetheless.
Grain elevators on the prairies are a dying species, along with a lot of animals. This grain elevator in Rosser is to the best of my knowledge still standing. I got lucky to shoot is with an oncoming train in 2018. And yes, I was standing on the tracks with the train coming towards me. No, I was not going to stay there to find out if the train would stop out of courtesy.
2019 saw a lot of wonderful skies. Prairie skies are a sight to behold, but most people will think they can only be had in the summertime when storms roll through. A simple shot from my front yard proves the opposite.
But I had to “wait” until 2020 to shoot the setting sun with a lot of colours. At least from my house. The end of the day proved to be a pretty busy night with lots of pictures. More on that in another post. During 2020, it became clear that social housing was planned in the part where you can the trees.
The decision to leave was quickly made. Although the house still went up in price (it was sold twice since my departure), the pleasure of living there went out of the window when they started cutting down the trees. The above is not the same yard, this is the one I currently have in Nova Scotia.
The weather in winter is also a lot less brutal than in Manitoba. To the point where in 2022, there were seals lounging in the sun on some rocks at low tide behind the house. These guys are not the most athletic, so their way to get on those rocks is to arrive at high tide, slip on the rocks and let the low tide move the water out.
2023 was a year of more hidden discoveries in the area. This old dock is some 20km away from my house. I have no idea what purpose it served, as there are hydro dams up and downstream of it. No ship can ever dock here unless one calls the odd canoe a ship.
Nearly 20 years of the first weeks of December in a single post. Things have certainly changed over the years.
Until next time…