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“When peace like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say It is well, it is well, with my soul.” – Horatio Spafford It’s difficult to put into words the multiple feelings I experience when paddling. My canoe is one of my ‘sacred places’. Like being behind a camera, I am in the moment, and experience only this. Through this photo, I’m… Read More
“Do not allow any negativity or ugliness in your surroundings, or anybody at all, destroy your confidence or affect your growth as a blooming flower. It is very normal for one ugly weed to not want to stand alone.” ― Suzy Kassem The bane of all dog owners and hikers. These ‘stick to everything’ seeds of the common burdock are really quite an ingenious way to transport seeds long distances. For those… Read More
“There comes a time in your life, when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh. Forget the bad and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who do not. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living.”… Read More
“When someone comes around at that dreary moment, when all hope was lost, and thorns emerged. And that fellow, walks on that thorn just to cross to your side, to bear the pains for your sake, to bleed, to self-destroy himself, just to protect you. He places you above his priorities, and doesn’t give a damn whatsoever taunt he receives, his foremost desire is to make sure you are save, feel loved… Read More
“The light of love, the purity of grace, The mind, the Music breathing from her face, The heart whose softness harmonised the whole — And, oh! that eye was in itself a Soul!” ― George Gordon Byron At this time of the season, when plants begin to wilt from the exertions of the summer, the cosmos still perseveres, brightening my gardens with their snow white purity and diaphanous petals. I see the… 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. This week, a return to the University of Toronto and it numerous spectacular doors. Today, I have chosen the main doorway to Knox College, another building on the U of T grounds, proudly facing the central campus grounds as they have… Read More
“I’ll admit that my garden now grows hope in lavish profusion, leaving little room for anything else. I suppose it has squeezed out more practical plants like caution and common sense. Still, though, hope does not flourish in every garden, and I feel thankful it has taken root in mine.” ― Sharon Kay Penman A photo of my neighbour’s hydrangea this time. You see, the hydrangeas we have are white Annabelles and… Read More
“Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep; whoever sleeps long, does not sin; whoever does not sin, enters Heaven! Thus, let us drink beer!” ― Martin Luther A change of pace, sort of, from garden plants and flowers, yet this is a flower. The flower of the hop plant. A chief ingredient in beer and a very interesting green flower. I had heard of hop plants and seen photos of them,… Read More
“Morning is an important time of day, because how you spend your morning can often tell you what kind of day you are going to have.” ― Lemony Snicket Dawn broke forth bright and very cool this past weekend. That’s the nature of September around here. Glorious, warm days spent basking in the last few weeks of summer, hoping for a mild and extended fall. It’s been a hot and dry summer… Read More
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Two views of the same flower, a week apart. Sometimes, I keep the flowers I photograph a bit too long but it was interesting for me to compare the two images. It also reminded me how gradually things can change without you really noticing… Read More
“Morning is wonderful. Its only drawback is that it comes at such an inconvenient time of day.” ― Glen Cook Such a stunning blue, it seems almost unnatural. I wished I had my portable background with me that day, but the opportunity presented itself and the light was nice. I may have to go back for a reshoot, provided the plant is still blooming. It’s in a friend’s garden and a bit… Read More
“Coming out of your comfort zone is tough in the beginning, chaotic in the middle, and awesome in the end…because in the end, it shows you a whole new world !! Make an attempt..” ― Manoj Arora This was, in fact, the first wildflower I photographed, five years ago, when I got my first DSLR. Not this actual plant, but a chicory blossom. It was also the beginning of my journey into… Read More
“Everything made by human hands looks terrible under magnification–crude, rough, and asymmetrical. But in nature every bit of life is lovely. And the more magnification we use, the more details are brought out, perfectly formed, like endless sets of boxes within boxes.” ― Roman Vishniac I dug this from my archive of macro experiments from earlier this year. The clematis looks, to me, like some creature from a sci-fi movie or some… 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. As the name tag indicates, this is the door to the Provost’s Lodge at Trinity College, part of the University of Toronto. It’s part of a full day photo shoot I did at the U of T a few weeks ago…. Read More
“…lace is formed from the absence of substance; it is imagined in the spaces between the threads. Lace is a thing like hope. It lived, it survived, and it was desired for what it was not. If faith, as the nuns said, was the substance of things hoped for, then lace was the outline – the suggestion – of things not seen.” ― Iris Anthony How appropriate is the name of this… Read More
“My temple is the swamp… When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most impenetrable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place, a sanctum sanctorum… I seemed to have reached a new world, so wild a place…far away from human society. What’s the need of visiting far-off mountains and bogs, if a half-hour’s walk will carry me into such… Read More
“A weed is but an unloved flower.” ― Ella Wheeler Wilcox This common north american wildflower has had me scratching my head over the past few years. In our area, it’s a prolific ‘weed’ that grows everywhere. A few years back, while visiting family in British Columbia, I notice people had them planted in their gardens and several seed companies offer them in their catalogues. They are beautiful, but I had not… Read More
“He told her the flowers in her painting contained exactly the purple substance of the flowers on the desk in front of her […] Let us open the window and see if your painting can entice the butterflies.” ― Sarah Hall Back out on the trails and enjoying the late summer heat. This oddly named plant, native to North America is named on a derivation of an aboriginal name Jopi, who was… Read More
“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” ― Lao Tzu As the summer continues, the plants begin to mature and change form. Some wither and dry up, others go to seed, while some continue to flourish till the air cools. This day lily was pretty much the start of my… Read More
“Wildflower; pick up your pretty little head, It will get easier, your dreams are not dead.” ― Nikki Rowe I hope I have these named correctly. I’m hoping my wildflower followers will correct me as required. It’s late summer and there is a noticeable shift in the plant life. The delicate pinks and purples are going to seed and yellows and orange are starting to make their showing. I’ll miss the abundance… 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. Yet another of many images made during my tour of the University of Toronto campus a few weeks ago The door above belongs to the University of Toronto’s “University College Building”. This building sites in the centre of the main campus. The plaque below can… Read More
“I have always been caught by the pull of the unremarkable, by the easily missed, infinitely nourishing beauty of the mundane.” ― Tana French A theme that keeps coming back to me is how much detail and beauty there is in mundane things. Generally, when Queen Anne’s Lace finishes blooming, I hardly notice them, until winter when the basket-like heads get coated in little snow ‘hats’. It was not till I was… Read More
The story behind this image was posted back in December 2015. Nikon D300 Tamron 70-200 mm f/2.8 @ 70 mm 1/100 sec, f/5.0 -0.33, ISO 250 For more images like this, please visit my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/EdLehming or my website http://www.edlehming.com
“Every form of art is another way of seeing the world. Another perspective, another window. And science –that’s the most spectacular window of all. You can see the entire universe from there.” ― Claudia Gray One of the benefits of this style of photography, for me at least, is noticing the intricate details in commonplace plants and flowers. This clover was growing wild along my neighbour’s lawn, which is significantly overgrown enough… Read More
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.” ― John Lubbock After perhaps the hottest day of the summer, and the date of my oldest daughter’s engagement party, the air shifted. Forecasts had predicted severe thunderstorms and torrential downpours, which… Read More
“Voiceless it cries, Wingless flutters, Toothless bites, Mouthless mutters.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien I think I’ve photographed this tree about a dozen times. Sometimes, it’s still and brightened by a golden sunset, other times, it’s filled with birds, darting to and fro. But on this occasion, the strong winds of a hot summer day tossed it’s branches from side to side. I took the opportunity to capture this motion through a long exposure… Read More
“Those who are resilient can more quickly regain their equilibrium and spring back when they are thrown off kilter by the storms of life.” ― Mary Buchan Yes, another flower. I’m simply enjoying this too much and am looking forward to going afield on my vacation time to capture more wildflowers, as opposed to plants from my gardens. But, they are handy and I like the results. I deliberately chose a less… Read More
“There are times to stay put, and what you want will come to you, and there are times to go out into the world and find such a thing for yourself.” ― Lemony Snicket This image was made last weekend in a small town in Central Ontario called Fort Stewart. It’s a small community in the high hills of the North Hastings Highlands that if it wasn’t for the ancient stands of… Read More
“A garden should make you feel you’ve entered privileged space — a place not just set apart but reverberant — and it seems to me that, to achieve this, the gardener must put some kind of twist on the existing landscape, turn its prose into something nearer poetry.” ― Michael Pollan I thought I would try this technique on leafy plants and expand from my blossom photos. We have several varieties of… Read More
“Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.” ― Guillaume Apollinaire We came across this little filly in a farm field near Fort Stewart. We had stopped to enjoy the grand view this little town offers and beside our stop was this little gal who wandered over to greet us. It was amazing how much joy seeing her, petting her velvety nose, and feeding her… Read More
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