A few days ago we wanted to get out of the city, out of the near neighbourhood of the city. Into the wilderness, so to speak. With Winnipeg as a starting point that always includes a fair amount of driving to get somewhere. Be it Riding Mountain National Park or the Whiteshell Provincial Park, driving a lot remains part of the trip. Nopiming Provincial Park is the same, just in a different direction.

We started relatively early in the morning, with the heat already building up. On the road to Nopiming, the sky grew more and more cloudy. Little did we know that those clouds were the outskirts of the tornado-like weather they had in Ontario that day. The only weather we got was cloudy and a little rain.

Read more: Nopiming

Seasons come, seasons go. When it’s stiflingly cold, we long for the warm summer. When summer finally arrives and presents its scorching 30+ degrees, we long for spring or fall. When they come, we want the brisk freezing air again because the roads are so dirty and the cars are wearing the roads like a cloak, it seems. Whatever season we are in, we always want the “other” season to be here. So why don’t we simply stop complaining and enjoy what we have at hand?

Because that’s not in our nature. Humans always want what they don’t have. So here are a few birds that we don’t have right now. You can still enjoy them over a nice cool beer on the patio, no problem there

Read more: Gone hunting

Black Bear Island, an uninhabited island in the middle of Lake Winnipeg. The day we went there to scout out the possibilities for a photo shooting weekend, we were overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with the sheer number of shots one could take of this undisturbed place.

Imagine a place where nobody ever walks, there is no trash from previous visitors, apart from the “usual” flotsam thrown on the shores by the wind. Broken tree stumps, branches and such.

Read more: Black Bear Island (3)

Black Bear Island, Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada If you love shooting landscape, it takes little or no imagination to see the tremendous potential of shooting this shoreline during a strong northerly wind. The immense wave action pounding this layered limestone and granite boulder strewn shoreline would produce "World Class" results!

The shorelines have been pounded by the water for millions of years on this tiny island. Now it’s easy to say like that, but if you look closer, you can see the proof of my statement. Fossils are all over the place, for everyone to see. But you have to look for them.

Read more: Black Bear Island (2) – from a distant past

A few days ago I went with a friend to an uninhabited island on Lake Winnipeg. Not just to visit and have a good time, but also to evaluate what the possibilities are for photo-oriented trips to this place. As it turned out, the sky was hazy with smoke from forest fires in Saskatchewan and Alberta. The temperature was soaring into the lower +30s.

That is +32C or a sweltering 89F. Not the best moment to go and walk on a shoreline filled with rocks. Rocks that happily store the heat and send it back to you even in the shadow.

Read more: Black Bear Island (1)

While we are shooting, ahem, photographing everything like madmen and madwomen, we often tend to forget something. The ground we walk on is covered with great subjects for photography. If only we’d look down and stand still at the little marvels that surround us.

For me, that is what photography is all about. It’s about seeing. Seeing those little things, those little details that other people simply ignore. Sure, they will see that clump of mushrooms on a rotten tree stump, but do they really look closer at the beauty of those mushrooms?

Read more: Close to the ground

Manitoba is a beautiful province of Canada. By now everybody that reads this blog on a regular basis has seen pictures of places and animals in the province. What I don’t often blog about is the trips into the province. Most of my pictures are from around Winnipeg and rarely further away.

That was something that needed to change. So I teamed up with a friend and travelled into the province. As a newcomer here, I have always stayed close to home, a little bit like a cat in a new house. The longer the cat stays in the house the more it will discover and try out.

Read more: Manitoba travels