Literally. All weekend. Instead of hunting birds I decided to go and hunt for some foreign landscapes. Many people here in Winnipeg or Manitoba will already know the places I will show here, but this was a first time for me. As usual, a first time anywhere is full of awe and wonder. Well, mostly.
When I was younger, I travelled a lot and saw many different places and cultures. Most of them good, some of them are off my list of destinations forever.
Manitoba is dry this year. Winnipeg experiences driest April in 30 years, 4th driest on record, news outlets scream. And I wanted to go for a nice barbecue in the park. After all the fire pits are designed to keep a fire under control, right? Well, not so much. It all started with a handful of grass fires across the province.
The fires got out of hand and were uncontrollable within minutes. A local fire ban was quickly declared for the affected areas. High winds and more grass fires soon made that the fire bans were extended for the whole province.
Spring, the long awaited season, probably the most anticipated season of the year here in Manitoba. At least if you listen to all the people complaining about the weather since November. What better sign of spring than the first flowers of the year? I’m not counting the Orchids from the Orchid Show each year in March, those have been prepared for months before the show. No, I’m talking of wildflowers, the Prairie Crocus.
The Prairie Crocus, which is not a crocus in the first place, is the first wildflower to appear on the sandy grounds of Manitoba. They appear overnight. One day there is nothing to be seen, the next has plenty of fuzzy buds and small flowers.
Winter is dragging its feet to get out. Old Man Winter still has more stories to tell. By now, most people have had enough of winter and want to see something warmer. The quickest way is to go to Mexico on a beach and wait until the news of sunshine and warm temps reaches the beach. Or, one can try to find the signs of spring that hide beneath the snow.
Last weekend was kinda nice, temps around 0C, probably something like –0C, just enough to keep cold surfaces slippery. The little wind there was was enough to make you feel cold, but as soon as the wind died down, one was feeling warm. Where I come from, this is the weather that is the most prolific for germs; they arrive in the warmth and keep you busy in the cold.
A friend of mine (from Boreal Pursuits) lent me his 200-500mm zoom lens. Borrowing and lending lenses is something photographers do, on short, very short or longer term. I don’t fancy the “indefinite” term, neither for borrowing or for lending. This time it was my luck to borrow a 200-500mm lens, just to see how it would compare to my own 150-600mm. The result was a whole weekend of shooting with a single lens.
The weekend started off with a nasty wind, I don’t remember where it came from, but it was nasty cold. I decided to
Sometimes, the wide angle lens of your camera just isn’t enough. Whatever focal length it may have, it just doesn’t seem to do justice to what you are seeing and experiencing. Is that the end of your love for photography? Or are you suddenly in need of a much wider lens? Hopefully not, there are solutions for this.
When I was a kid, I loved to take pictures of wide scenes. Mostly on holiday as my parents were the ones paying for development and printing. The trick was to simply take pictures one next to the other, using some overlap that would allow me to glue them back together later.
We all have had the experience. Some foggy memories of what happened the night before. Usually we don’t want to be reminded of them either and strive to erase them from our and anyone else’s memory. My foggy memories are to be remembered and cherished as beautiful moments.
Many of these memories remind me of a specific feeling when I was taking the picture. Sometimes I can even remember my thoughts of that very moment. I hope that those memories will stay with me for a long time to come, and… that I don’t have to rely on this blog or even Lightroom for these memories.
I like to photograph the beauty of nature and human achievements. Everyone who has read this blog for some time will acknowledge that. I am also a person who does not like to trespass. UrbEx or Urban Exploration of derelict buildings is not really my thing. Photographing decay inside a building that has been abandoned, looted and whatnot has never been one of my activities.
As a kid, yes, we went into old buildings and a friend of us got stuck in a rotting floorboard. Once he was out and treated with tetanus shots I never went back to the building. A few months later it was torn down and replaced with a new building.
