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“Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.” – Leo Tolstoy This is a very non-typical photo for me, but I do have a habit of making images of things that I find interesting or unusual. Yesterday, I spend a few hours touring the area of Bloor Street and Church Street in Toronto. It’s an area which I drive through frequently when visiting my daughter,… Read More
This week’s submission to Norm 2.0‘s Thursday Doors. Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favourite door photos from around the world. “Real Mexican Art?” – Todos Santos, Mexico I found this gem while visiting Hotel California, in Todos Santos, a large town on the Baja Peninsula.While walking with my family, I was attracted to this door being framed by the two round windows,… Read More
“To the complaint, ‘There are no people in these photographs,’ I respond, There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.” ― Ansel Adams A day to pull back the camera from the very close and focus on some mid-range landscape work. The image above was made while having dinner with my wife after a day of transporting new photos to a gallery I am showing at, in the town of… Read More
This week’s submission to Norm 2.0‘s Thursday Doors. Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favourite door photos from around the world. Another of many images made during my tour of the University of Toronto campus. The door above belongs to the University of Toronto Art Museum. I did not know that the U of T had an art museum. Shortly after making this image,… Read More
“When one tunes in into nature’s frequency, life becomes change, change becomes hope!” ― Aniekee Tochukwu Ezekiel This has been a year of change and experimentation for me. It’s all been fairly carefully thought out and exciting. I’ve experimented with new photographic techniques, such as macro photography and new ways of editing, like using some Photoshop plugins to create paintings from my photos. I also experimented with some new varieties of plants in my… Read More
“A fine work of art – music, dance, painting, story – has the power to silence the chatter in the mind and lift us to another place.” ― Robert McKee I could not resist posting one more dogwood image before the season passes. The image above was transformed into a painterly image using Topaz Impressions software in Photoshop. I can’t paint well and this plug-in allows me to create images in such a… Read More
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” ― Aristotle Art is everywhere. Sometimes, in the most surprising places, and with unexpected elements. Case in point, this algal bloom on a local pond. It looks a bit like a satellite image of some tropical forest and smells just like a horse stable. In fact, I was wondering if the local trail riding association… Read More
I’ve spent the past few weeks reading and enjoying Guy’s Book of Essays, “More Than a Rock” and finding myself deeply connected to his way of approaching photography. I discovered him through several Facebook photography groups that I belong to. Though he’s a more articulate writer than I am, his words and thoughts resonate with me. His blog did not have a re-blog button, but I thought I’d share his latest commentary here…. Read More
“One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe One of the many benefits I find when hiking is the abundance of free art nature provides me. As I walked a forest path a few days ago, the ground was just starting to melt, but it… Read More
“What is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?” ― Kahlil Gibran This year, I left a few dried hydrangea blooms in my garden. My usual ritual is to trim them all down in the fall. I’m glad I left them, they added some interest in this past, dull, nearly snowless winter, and created a nice franewirk for our recent freezing rain event…. Read More
“To my mind, a picture should be something pleasant, cheerful, and pretty, yes pretty! There are too many unpleasant things in life as it is without creating still more of them.” ― Pierre-Auguste Renoir Happy Easter! I wanted to try something new, something that satisfied the creative in me. I love paintings and have many friends who are extraordinary painters. My gift is photography, which offers me a similar outlet, but rather… Read More
“As I see it, life is an effort to grip before they slip through one’s fingers and slide into oblivion, the startling, the ghastly or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination before they whip away on the endless current and are lost for ever in oblivion’s black ocean.” ― Mervyn Peake A “Kill Plate” is the geological term of a particular strata in which numerous fossilized animals can be found. In… Read More
“To dwellers in a wood, almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature.” ― Thomas Hardy As I walk the trails, I can’t help but be amazed at the colours and textures of the stumps and standing dead trees along the way. I’ve started a collection of these aged and aging forest statues, each so unique in its appearance, yet somewhat similar. Some are recognizable as wood, while… Read More
“Beneath your burdensome regrets and who you think you are through the lens of past mistakes, there is someone beautiful who wants to emerge.” ― Bryant McGill Spring has arrived! Though, somebody needs to inform the weather. In stark contrast to last week, this one has been quite chilly. Despite the sun shining brightly and turning open trails to mush, the forest floor remained locked in a shallow frost. At least enough to create… Read More
“A world which sees art and engineering as divided is not seeing the world as a whole.” – Sir Edmund Happold The varied and beautiful architecture in New York City took me completely by surprise. It must have been quite the place back in the late 19th century. I love fine details and could spend hours sitting in front of a building like this and drinking in all the fantastic stonework. It’s… Read More
“Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him.” ~Carl Gustav Jung I am inspired by the art and writings of other creatives. That’s one of my reasons for blogging, connection to a larger community, people who see,… Read More
Nature is constantly amazing me. The image above is a simple shot of a frozen Duffins Creek. It looks like some marvelous abstract art piece that you would see in an expensive downtown gallery. But, this one’s free and created through the natural freezing process. If you take the time to really look, you can see how the layers may have built up, how the water ebbed and flowed between the rocks… Read More
I wish I could paint. There are so many scenes that I see on a regular basis and say to myself, “That would make a beautiful painting”. Especially if the light is just a bit off and I envision the image a bit different. That was the case with this photo I made a few days ago. All the elements were just right, the light was soft from the west and a… Read More
One of the wonders of photography, that I have noted before, is the fact that I can walk past a scene dozens of times and nothing ‘grabs’ me. In this case, there is a nice stand of poplars along one of my favourite hiking trails. I’ve photographed it many times and the results were “average”. I knew it had potential for a great photo, but conditions and lighting were never quite right… Read More
As I’ve said earlier, I like fine details and being able to reflect on them at a later date. That stand true for this photo of a sand sculpture at the Canadian National Exhibition. The sculpture take several days to create and are incredibly detailed. How the artists manage to keep them standing fascinates me. The details and emotion in this face are simply beautiful and with the wonderful light, I could not… Read More
I love doing the effect in camera. With the right light and strong vertical lines, you end up with what looks like a painting and it is never the same twice.
Ed Lehming Photography 
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