Hello Darkness, my old friend… Photography and darkness went together for decades. No darkness somewhere? You got no pictures.

The moon

Today, this is completely different. You don’t need a darkroom anymore to create good pictures. You don’t even need chemicals anymore to have a print. So what about photographing the darkness? Well, there is lots to see, lots more than the obligatory moon picture…

Read more: Night photography …

In other words: “Welcome!”. This is how we were greeted at the Ukrainian pavilion on the Folklorama Festival. Folklorama is the “other” international cultural festival in Winnipeg.

Dancing at the Ukrainian Pavilion

Folklorama is held in the first two weeks of August. Pavilions from all over the world are here, not to compete, but to make you sample and enjoy the cultures of people that live here in Winnipeg. Among these cultures is a very strong Ukrainian presence.

Read more: Вітаємо!

Aurora Borealis or Northern Sunrise are supposed to be in winter, right? Wrong. They will occur whenever it pleases our Sun. Last Sunday, a solar eruption occurred. The particles cast away from the Sun travelled the 93 million miles through space in about 2 days.

They arrived in the upper atmosphere of the Earth and started exciting atoms. Once these atoms came to rest, they emitted light… Light that we have come to know as Aurora Borealis or Northern Lights. More frequently seen in winter because of the dark nights, they can also occur in summer.

Read more: Aurora Borealis

The saying “Going Downtown” often means going shopping. Downtown Winnipeg certainly offers this possibility. Although many of the bigger and easier facilities for shopping are located out of the city center. What is left in downtown Winnipeg is a place where old and new live together and collide.

Portage and Smith

The history in Winnipeg is a little more than a couple of hundred years old, but the styles of the past periods are still visible. Some say that the city is too quick in removing old buildings and putting up modernity. There are still places where we can disagree with that. Let’s take a look…

Read more: A stroll downtown

“Is it safe?” - “No, it’s dangerous, terribly dangerous.”

“Is it safe?”  - “Yes, completely, utterly safe!” Ah, that’s more like it. Yes, the not-even-close-to-a-marathon photo walk this morning was completely safe. Except, of course, for those who wanted to show off they were more acrobats than photographers. Let’s leave those out of this story though…

The World Wide Photo Walk in Winnipeg (clickable)

When I first heard of the World Wide Photo Walk, I promptly forgot about it. Until it popped up in my view only a few days before the date of the event. World Wide, yes… even as far away as Sydney, the Photo Walk was to be held.

Happily we didn’t have to walk to Sydney from here, though…

Read more: Marathon…

Every year, the Assiniboine Park Zoo holds a “festival” just before Halloween. They call it “Boo at the Zoo”. It’s a fun time to go at the zoo as well as the only time you can get there in the evening hours. Of course, the theme is Halloween and the skeletons, ghosts and ghouls welcome you with all their absent hearts.

Free running peacock in the zoo

On the 1st of July or Canada Day this year, I went to the zoo and found that my only “worthy” or viable photographic subjects were the visitors. So, to give a more accurate image of the Zoo, I went there again…

Read more: Horror at the zoo

Since the moment we were here in Canada, we have heard how people spent their weekend “at the lake”. It is obvious that in a country where there are thousands of lakes people spend the weekend at the lake.

It also helps if you have a car, a map and a good address to go to.

Arriving at Lake Winnipeg

Since I have passed my driver’s license here in Manitoba, I can drive any car I like, although for rental sakes I have to stay in the province. At first sight that looks rather restrictive, certainly if you come from Europe. There, often a province is hardly bigger than the city of Winnipeg, give or take a few square kilometres. Manitoba is roughly the size of 1.5 times France or Ukraine.

Read more: A weekend at the lake