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“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
“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
“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
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
“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
“Sometimes, staying alive solely depends on keeping your head in place and your senses alert” ― Susana Fortes Yes, this doe is alert indeed. She was crossing the road as I drove along the road to Fort Stewart this past weekend. I pulled over as she casually walked up the embankment to join her three fawns, who were busy grazing just outside the forest. She sat an watched , always attentive, twitching at… Read More
“There is so much to say about a past. It’s a vein of gold through a mountain, leading to an incontrovertible stone heart of truth. But the future is a horizon – a faintly visible line that will promise much, and always remain too far away to touch.” ― Aliya Whiteley At first, I had no idea what to title this image. It was made at the end of another day of… Read More
“After the wet spring, everything that could turn green had outdone itself in greenness and everything that could even dream of blooming or blossoming was in bloom and blossom. The sunlight was a benediction. The breezes were so caressingly soft and intimate on the skin as to be embarrassing.” ― Dan Simmons This is an image of the same thistle I shared a few days ago. The previous image showed more of the… Read More
“The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world. ” ― Michael Pollan This specimen came from my flower beds. In fact, this was the first blossom… Read More
“What we do see depends mainly on what we look for. … In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the colouring, sportsmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.” ― John Lubbock It’s strange how some of these fairly common wildflowers grow only in specific… Read More
“Once in awhile, you pick the right thing, the exact best thing. Every day, the moment you open your eyes and pull off your blankets, that’s what you hope for. The sunshine on your face,warm enough to make your heart sing.” ― Sarah Ockler One of my first attempts at this technique involved bringing a daylily cutting into my studio and experimenting with lighting and camera settings. I was so pleased with… 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. I went for a tour of the University of Toronto campus last weekend, knowing there would be some great doors. Surprisingly, having grown up in the Toronto area, I have never done a deliberate tour of the campus. The variations in… Read More
“What I’ve always found interesting in gardens is looking at what people choose to plant there. What they put in. What they leave out. One small choice and then another, and soon there is a mood, an atmosphere, a series of limitations, a world.” ― Helen Humphreys I’m not getting tired of these flower images yet and I hope my viewers feel the same. This is yet another image made using my portable… Read More
Here is this week’s 52 Week Photo Challenge: Week 1 – Black and White. This is another new challenge that is starting up from The Girl That Dreams Awake. If you don’t know her, you should check out her blog. I was saving this image for one of my daily posts but could not resist putting it out for this challenge. I’ll post it again at a later date with the story behind… Read More
“Yellow is a very favorable vibration for mental or intellectual activity, as it promotes a clear state of mind. Yellow heightens your awareness and alleviates depression, sadness, or any kind of despondency.” ― Tae Yun Kim This bright yellow Gerberia daisy is one of hundreds given out this past weekend at a huge wedding ceremony. Our town mayor got married on Saturday in a very large and public ceremony to which the… Read More
“For millions of years flowers have been producing thorns. For millions of years sheep have been eating them all the same. And it’s not serious, trying to understand why flowers go to such trouble to produce thorns that are good for nothing?” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Here’s a new one, studio style wildflowers. I was able to get my portable background to work and I’m looking forward to being able to capture… Read More
“Long experience has taught me that people who do not like geraniums have something morally unsound about them. Sooner or later you will find them out; you will discover that they drink, or steal books, or speak sharply to cats. Never trust a man or a woman who is not passionately devoted to geraniums.” ― Beverley Nichols I found the quote hilarious. The quote is from Merry Hall, a book about the… Read More
“Moments never stay, whether or not you ask them, they do not care, no moment cares, and the ones you wish could stretch out like a hammock for you to lie in, well, those moments leave the quickest and take everything good with them, little burglars, those moments, those hours, those days you loved the most.” ― Catherine Lacey My family and I spend a few relaxing days at Sauble Beach this… Read More
“Do you know how there are moments when the world moves so slowly you can feel your bones shifting, your mind tumbling? When you think that no matter what happens to you for the rest of your life, you will remember every last detail of that one minute forever?” ― Jodi Picoult As another day ends, beach visitors gather along the shore, looking west. We stand there, taking in the final moments of… Read More
“The problem with churches of all sorts, is that so often they ignore the key teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, like the doctrine of love. So often we ask God to be on our side instead of asking that we be blessed enough to be on His. That said, the wheat and the tares must grow up together, and in the days of harvest they will be separated properly.” ―… Read More
“These rocks are too heavy, can’t carry them any more, don’t know why I ever picked them up before, going to have to put them down where they don’t belong, ’cause I can’t get them back to where they came from. These rocks belong to no one, except history. Somewhere between the desert and the rolling sea, or maybe up in the mountains blue and tall, I picked them but now I’m… Read More
“Where’d the days go, when all we did was play? And the stress that we were under wasn’t stress at all just a run and a jump into a harmless fall” ― Paolo Nutini While travelling the Peterson Road outside of Maynooth, Ontario this past weekend, I stopped along the road to make some photos of a roadside lake, a swamp, and some local wildflowers. As I stood on the roadside, a… 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
Ed Lehming Photography 
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