That's the first photo that I've taken of a non-sunset where I've gotten the sun in the photo and liked the effect.

Looking the other way, with the sun at my back, here's the Patullo Bridge. This is the bridge that I normally take to work, now that I'm working mostly in Surrey.

Since there was still some daylight left, I headed down to 72nd Street in south Delta, to Boundary Bay. I didn't find too much out there. There were some songbirds (robins, finches, and sparrows) in the bushes, and a flock of Dunlin out on the foreshore. Flocks of Dunlin are really fun to watch in flight. One side of a Dunlin is dark, and the other light. When a group flies, they execute coordinated turns, so if you watch, you see a black mass of birds suddenly turn white, or vice-versa. Here's two photos of the flock in flight.

In this second photo, the birds on the bottom right have just turned to show their white side, and the effect is about to ripple all the way through the flock.

With not much else going on at the Bay, I drove back towards home through Richmond. I decided to take the small roads rather than the freeway, to see if there were any good photos awaiting. I came up close to the LaFarge Cement Plant, and decided to go over and take some photos of it. I've driven within sight of it many times on the Connector, and have always wanted to shoot it. Well, this was my chance.

Here's the main tower, with what appears to be prefab pieces of bridge deck stacked in the foreground on the left.

I don't know much about the making of cement, so I can't really say what the following structures do.

Here's a shot of the whole plant.

While I was in this little industrial area, I drove around and found some other stuff to photograph. First there was this Cat. The 345B L body is made for excavation and demolition, and is a pretty serious machine. But I don't recognize the attachment on it. If I had to, I'd guess that it's a vibratory plate compactor, one of those things that vibrates the ground to make dirt and gravel more solid. If so, it's gonna be pretty powerful, 'cuz I've seen vibratory compactor attachments that are about one third as tall.

Here's another shot of that attachment.

I drove around a bit more and found a small road that goes onto an overpass over the East-West Connector. I've often seen the overpass while driving the Connector and wondered how to get to it. My wandering has thus ended my wondering.

Anyhow, I parked before the overpass and walked up onto it, getting a pretty good vantage point. There I took a photo of this irrigation canal that runs beside the highway.

I also ventured further across the overpass and took some photos of the traffic in the long horizontal light of the sunset.

As that red truck passed under me, he honked, scaring the living daylights out of me. I had been concentrating on the image in my viewfinder and wasn't expecting such a noise.

Well, I searched around for a while, but I didn't find my living daylights until the next morning. (Funny thing, too--I found it in the east and I could've sworn that it ran off to the west.) And since most of my photography is daylight photography, that little incident ended my photo trip and this photojournal entry.

Still searching for my bejeezus,
Tom