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“The waters flowed over the rocks like dancers clad in ribbons of silk, some fluttering like gossamer curtains in a summer breeze.” – Ed Lehming I know that I have shared previous images and thoughts of this magnificent series of waterfalls. As I continue to review my images, new perspectives reveal themselves. Here’s an image of a small section of the broad and complex waterfalls, just to the right of my prior… Read More
“It’s not about inviting great things into our lives. Rather, it’s about accepting the invitation of great things to step out of our lives.” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough For those following my Iceland journey from late October, you will know that it was made up of a series of ‘general’ destinations. We simply set up a schedule to take us from one overnight stop to the next, leaving time between those destinations to… Read More
“Look with open eyes and you will see the beauty of the waterfall.” ― Anthony T. Hincks In this post, I decided to return to Hraunfossar, as fascinating series of waterfalls in Western Iceland. What makes these falls so amazing, is that at first glance, they look like typical waterfalls, pouring down from some glacial stream. But, on further inspection, you realize that there is no stream involved here, at least not in… Read More
“Hraunfossar – Wide View” – Western Iceland “In Iceland, water is everywhere. It surrounds the land itself. Water courses from high mountaintops, bursts from the ground, itself, and flows in endless ribbons over the ancient stone, cleansing the blackened and tortured landscape. The water rarely stands still, as if it’s the lifeblood of the land itself.” – Ed Lehming Today, as we headed toward the town of Borgarnes, on Iceland’s western coast,… Read More
“October Afternoon at Kirkjufellfoss” – Iceland “People are very busy; they are so busy that when they walk in the crowds they see no one, no one but themselves; they hear no voice, no voice but their own voice!” ― Mehmet Murat Ildan Today was a day of long travels, over broken dirt roads, navigating a quicker route to our destination, the only real ‘destination’ we have had on this trip, apart from… Read More
“Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. Nevermore, however weary, should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day; whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.” ― John Muir I simply had to quote John Muir for this… Read More
“Nothing is less real than realism. Details are confusing. It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things.” ― Georgia O’Keeffe I’ve been wanting to make this image for a few weeks now, but the crocus did not cooperate, till now. Just as temperature began to climb, heavy rain and wind set in, followed by yet another cooling. So, many of the blooming plants… 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
“Light can be both friend and foe, too much or too little and the full story is not told, overexposed or unseen, parts are missing. Balance, deliberate balance of light, is the way to see the true scene. Our eyes are designed to create that balance, humans are created for balance, and I try to imitate that through my images. – Ed Lehming Still on the topic of ‘The Gut” Conservation area, near Apsley, Ontario. I had… 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
“The first problem of living is to minimize friction with the crowds that surround you on all sides.” ― Isaac Asimov I wanted to capture the hustle and bustle of this Montreal intersection with an experimental long exposure. It was interesting to look back on it and see the woman in the foreground moving quickly across the frame, while the car is stopped. This was also an experiment in light where I was… Read More
“…I hear the sounds of melting snow outside my window every night and with the first faint scent of spring, I remember life exists…” ― John Geddes It’s mid-February and our first significant snow has fallen and begun to melt within a few short days. Beneath the thinning blanket of ice and snow, water writhes, flows, and drips, only to be frozen briefly by the chill of night and released once more by… Read More
“Constellations shine with light that was emitted aeons ago, and I wait for something to come to me, words that a poet might use to illuminate life’s mysteries. But there is nothing.” ― Nicholas Sparks My first foray into astrophotography. Wow! There’s a heady handle! I’ve seen so many spectacular images of the Milky Way and constellations that I was determined to try my hand at this. So, with tripod in hand,… Read More
A challenging composition. Part of the ‘trick’ to capturing the motion of water is to create a time exposure based on the speed of the water and the light available. I tend to do most of these earlier in the day, or late afternoon, when the sun is soft and indirect. Last week I found myself, mid-day, looking at these wonderful scenes of water rushing past icy shores and trying to figure… Read More
Moving water and the light playing of the waves. A few years ago, I started experimenting with different shutter speeds, trying to capture the movement well, without loosing details. The shutter speed needs to match the speed of the water or the image is too soft. Doing so in the winter is a particular challenge, since long exposures can blow out all the whites. That said, I like the soft winter light. The… 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
It appeared that the water was escaping from beneath the weight of the ice and dancing across the rocks and another more appropriate title did not come to mind. The early afternoon light filtered through from behind me and lit up some of the rocks, creating a beautiful glow on the rocks under the fast moving water. Once more, I tried to convey the sense of movement and urgency by doing a long… 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
During my drive back from Bancroft this past Thursday, I commented to my wife that it looked like and felt like February, rather than April. Spring has been slow to arrive in southern Ontario this year and my thoughts wandered back to November, when I stopped at Burleigh Falls to make a few long exposure photos of the falls there. At this particular time of year I basically have the place to… Read More
This is the second shot of this little fellow. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was walking along the York River, planning on taking some long exposure shots of the rapids when this mink appeared among the rocks. He tried real hard to avoid me seeing him and I found myself dodging and weaving between the rocks to get a clear shot of him. At one point he even went into… Read More
Ed Lehming Photography 
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