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“Whenever there is stillness there is the still small voice, God’s speaking from the whirlwind, nature’s old song, and dance…” ― Annie Dillard Chilly water flows beneath icicles formed by the spray of the creek below. I found this to be an odd sight. April in my area has been ‘confusing’. We had beautiful sunshine and mild temperatures, followed by a deep freeze, snow, freezing rain, and strong winds, all within a… Read More
“No one is without troubles, without personal hardships and genuine challenges. That fact may not be obvious because most people don’t advertise their woes and heartaches. But nobody, not even the purest heart, escapes life without suffering battle scars.” ― Richelle E. Goodrich The dark shape hovers, just below the surface. Defying the rush of the frigid spring waters. Moving neither forward, nor back. Fixed in it’s intent, it’s goal. Progress from… Read More
“Peace is not found by seeking it but in simply letting it be.” ― Janni Styles I’ve enjoyed this small brook that flows from a farm field into Duffins Creek below Whitevale. The sound of the water flowing over the rocks is so calming. I could sit there all day and simply enjoy the peace. I made this photo just before a light, early April snowfall started (not impressed by that feature)…. Read More
“A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself.” ― Laura Gilpin A few mere weeks ago, this entire scene was filled with ice and snow. A handful of mild days, and it’s all a memory, preserved and recalled in thoughts and photos. Since I don’t live in an area with high mountains and grand vistas, I take great pleasure in long hikes along the local… 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
“He has made me wary of chronological snobbery. That is, he showed me that newness is no virtue and oldness is no vice. Truth and beauty and goodness are not determined by when they exist. Nothing is inferior for being old, and nothing is valuable for being modern.” ― John Piper One of the first things that I noticed while walking around New York was the wooden water tanks that topped most… 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
“Let us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotchpotch of impulses, our perpetual miracle – for the soul throws up wonders every second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death; let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks… Read More
“No reason for a feverish rush For we will all arrive in the same place At the right time. Justice will be served. There will be no better or worse, No big and small, no rewards, no punishment, No guilt, no judges, no hierarchies; Only silent equality.” ― Dejan Stojanovic The image above could be a churning ocean or a stormy beach, but it’s a small section of creek below the falls… Read More
“By March, the worst of the winter would be over. The snow would thaw, the rivers begin to run and the world would wake into itself again. ― Neil Gaiman Bubbles, trapped in ice, glow beneath the icy waters of the spring thaw, like a wraith, lit by some inner glow. Mid-February this year brings an early and rapid thaw. Cold water flows with life over frozen creeks, softening the shapes trapped below, beckoning… 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
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
I have to admit that I have been to these falls many times over the past few years, but never in winter. The falls are the result of a dam being build to keep and introduced species of trout from migrating too far upstream and eating the eggs of the native brown trout. I’ve posted a few photos of this dam in the past. The winter scene is beautiful, especially in the right… Read More
Never the same twice Wonderful patterns in the ice Beautiful randomness of nature Just add water Nikon D300 Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 200 mm 1/320 sec, f/9.0, ISO 250 For more images like this, please visit my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/EdLehming or my website http://www.edlehming.com
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
A revisit to what started as a beautiful mid August day at Sauble Beach this past August. We had heard forecasts of rain all day, but the day started out sunny and windy. Since it was too windy for a good game of volleyball, we all headed to town for a bit to shop. Shortly thereafter, the clouds, which had been hanging far out on the lake started to roll in and… Read More
Another visit to High Falls, the outlet of Baptiste Lake and the beginning of the York River. I keep trying to imagine the waterfall as it would have been before the dam was built above it. That would have been a sight to behold. As I noted in an earlier post, the dam was built to protect the town of Bancroft, some 5 miles down river, from being flooded in the spring… Read More
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of spending the weekend with family and friends at Ontario’s Sauble Beach, on Lake Huron. It began as a wonderful hot summer day splashing in the surf and playing hours of volleyball. The forecast was for thunderstorms late in the day. We watched across the water as the sky gradually darkened. The storm approached over the lake like a black wall, slowly creeping our… Read More
I can’t turn it off. I see patterns and photos everywhere. Last weekend I was volunteering at A Place for the Arts in Bancroft, looked out the back window and saw these beautiful patterns in the sand in the back parking area. There had just been a big storm with torrential downpours the day before (which seems to be the norm for Bancroft lately). The deluge of rain created a wide band… Read More
You really never know what you will come across in your day. This past weekend I drove to High Falls, the source of Bancroft’s York River and the terminus of Baptiste Lake. The dam there was built to prevent flooding of the town of Bancroft in the spring and features a beautiful, complex waterfall below the dam. There is a bit of a pool of water immediately above those falls. That particular… Read More
You never know what you might come across when you enter a natural setting. Today I took a lunchtime stroll to one of my regular haunts, the Stouffville Reservoir. Near the start of the trail there is a swampy area, where a small brook runs across the trail. This time of year it is particularly mucky and tricky to navigate. Generally, the water flows through at barely a meander and you might… Read More
A very simple photo of the scene from my trailer deck last evening. I had just returned from the lake shore, making photos of the beautiful reflections on a mirror-like lake when my wife pointed out the moon between the trees. The sun was lighting the distant shoreline and the clouds a soft orange and the sky was a deep blue, with the moon suspended between the branches of trees which have… Read More
On the spring theme of the Rainbow Trout spawn that occurs every year in this area, here’s a slightly abstract image of a trout mid-run up Duffins Creek, near Whitevale, Ontario. The image above is a time exposure of a single trout swimming against a particularly strong current at a point where the clear water in the foreground is mixing with water contaminated with clay, caused by the spring melt run-off from an adjacent… Read More
Taken last spring, during a walk along Duffins Creek. Another view of the annual trout run near Whitevale. In places, the trout are ‘stacked’ as they prepare to run up some of the shallower portions of the creek. Last year the creek was especially shallow for the time of year and there were a few deeper pools where multiple fish lined up for their run. I like this particular shot because it has a… 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
I have reflected on this photo many times. It was made one foggy morning in late September 2014. It was a cool morning and the air hung thick with fog and the feeling of change that comes at this time of year. I decided to go for a walk down to the lake shore. Through the fog, you could see the blue sky emerging, revealing shreds of clouds not typical of this time of… Read More
With the weather turning warmer in Ontario, I thought today would be a nice day to take a walk along Duffins Creek, near Whitevale, Ontario. It’s spring, the snow is gone, and the Coltsfoot is blooming, so it’s also time for the annual rainbow trout run up Duffins Creek to the Whitevale Dam. The dam was built several years ago to prevent the rainbow trout, which are an introduced species, from eating the native brown trout… Read More
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