Ed Lehming Photography

Archives

“Spring Thaw on Duffins Creek” – Whitevale “Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your hand into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it.” ― Margaret Atwood I have a love for water, especially moving water, and there is plenty of… Read More

“Anger is like flowing water; there’s nothing wrong with it as long as you let it flow. Hate is like stagnant water; anger that you denied yourself the freedom to feel, the freedom to flow; water that you gathered in one place and left to forget. Stagnant water becomes dirty, stinky, disease-ridden, poisonous, deadly; that is your hate. On flowing water travels little paper boats; paper boats of forgiveness. Allow yourself to… Read More

We were born before the wind Also younger than the sun Ere the bonnie boat was won As we sailed into the mystic Hark, now hear the sailors cry Smell the sea and feel the sky Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic And when that foghorn blows I will be coming home And when the foghorn blows I want to hear it I don’t have to fear it and… Read More

“November is usually such a disagreeable month…as if the year had suddenly found out that she was growing old and could do nothing but weep and fret over it. This year is growing old gracefully…just like a stately old lady who knows she can be charming even with gray hair and wrinkles. We’ve had lovely days and delicious twilights.” ― L.M. Montgomery It reminded me of a scene from The Hobbit, as Bilbo… Read More

“The river moved so swiftly and yet it had no purpose other than to flow, just flow.” ― Gioconda Belli During a recent backcountry drive, I tried to retrace my route to a little gem of a park I found a few years back. There is no road sign identifying the park, just an unmarked road that leads to a beautiful groomed park on the shores of Papineau Creek, near Maynooth, Ontario…. Read More

“Solitary. But not in the sense of being alone. Not solitary in the way Thoreau was, for example, exiling himself in order to find out where he was; not solitary in the way Jonah was, praying for deliverance in the belly of the whale. Solitary in the sense of retreat. In the sense of not having to see himself, of not having to see himself being seen by anyone else.” ― Paul… 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 A change of pace from all my recent flower and butterfly photos, though if you look closely, there are still flowers… Read More

“When you do or think or feel something, do it with passion. Let it come from the heart. Put your heart and soul in it. And when you do, you will feel a river flowing sweetly through you and especially through your entire life. Life has much more meaning that way. ” ― Angie Karan A painterly image I made yesterday, based on a photo of two trout swimming upstream at the Whitevale… Read More

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.” ― Norman Maclean The above, is one of my favourite quotes. it simply resonates with me… Read More

“Sense how Even the smooth stones ache With stories of their own In the shuddering light of day.” ― Scott Hastie Emerging from their icy bondage, two stones, or is it three, rest upon their captor, as ice water flows over them. What’s the story of these stones? They sit alone, apart from others. Where did they come from? The pure ice they rest in fills a narrow but deep, steep walled,… Read More

“How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change. And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.” ― Elizabeth Lesser I was considering numerous titles for this images. There is a lot happening here. I was considering “Transitions”,… Read More

“The magical way the wintertime warms you up is through its frozen beauties!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan Yesterday, was a spectacular day! Here we are in mid February and the temperatures hit 12° C. The light was glorious and the outdoors beckoned me. So, with camera bag in hand, I set out to enjoy the day and see what it would reveal to me. Since the temperatures last week were around -30°… Read More

This was an interesting phenomenon. With a change in temperature, the ice sheets had shifted and the water at this point of the river seemed to have to decide whether to go over the ice or under it. Most of the water went under the ice and seemed to pull at the surface water. The effect, which I tried to capture here, was a vortex of water which rotated on the surface… Read More

Above is another photo of the winter waters of Duffins Creek, north of Pickering , Ontario. It seems the creek had frozen solid to the bottom recently, as water was flowing over the ice in many places. This scene caught my attention as the sun revealed interesting aqua tones in the ice beneath the surface. The ice had tilted slightly, causing a bit of an ebb, or backflow, and created this wave… Read More

High Falls, pictured above, is the result of a dam built at the terminus of Baptiste Lake to control the flow of the York River, which begins at this point. The river, while very useful for logging, used to cause catastrophic flooding in the town of Bancroft a few miles below. The dam sits atop a large mass of rugged rock above a valley with steep banks. I would love to have seen this… Read More

Another long exposure from my visit to Toronto’s Casa Loma. This one is from the Conservatory. A bright spacious room, with a stunning stained glass domed roof. The Conservatory once once held beautiful plants in all seasons. Today it is largely empty but beautiful, nonetheless. The Conservatory is surrounded by large, ornate windows, has Italian marble floors in pink and grey and the walls are lined with pink Ontario marble, quarried in the… Read More

This remains one of my favourite photos. Partially because it was just a chance, unplanned, opportunity and secondly due to the sense of serenity it instills in me. The unplanned aspect of this photo was that I was travelling to the Yosemite Valley proper, with the intention of photographing some of Yosemite’s grand waterfalls. On the trip in, I happened to glance over my shoulder into one of the many steep ravines… Read More