|
On Saturday the 19th
of February, I again forced myself to go out with my camera after
a long, tiring week at work. It was late (about 5pm) when I decided
to do this, so I figured I would just roam around near my home
and see what I could find. I started in the train yard behind
my place, which is almost always good for some interesting graffiti.
Sometimes I can read
graffiti, and sometimes I can't. One of the main graffiti games
seems to be the take letterforms and stylize and distort them
until they're barely recognizable. Here's a good example of such
a graffito; it's almost certainly a word or two, but I'll be danged
if I can decipher it. Let me know what it says if you can read
it.
|
|
 |
|
And yes, I can
read the "gnF", "up", and "beyond words".
It's the other thing that mystifies me.
Here's one that I'm
only about 90% sure is made up of letters. If it is letters, then
the top of each letter is the same. Maybe it says "rain,"
which is also the first word written along the bottom, and probably
some writer's name.
|
|
 |
| This next
one appears to be a cityscape in 3-point perspective. |
|
 |
|
That was it for graffiti
in the yard; it was pretty slim pickings.
I took a few photos
of train stuff; here's one showing two skytrains about to pass
above a freight train.
|
|
 |
| And then
there was this photo, which for some reason I really liked. I have
versions of this that are more sharp, or less tilted, or less overexposed,
but this one just seemed to say more. |
|
 |
|
After that set of photos,
I moseyed on out of the trainyard to the water side of my place.
Normally I see only
a few common bird species on the river: Mallards and Canada Geese.
For some reason, there were some interesting ducks out there this
day. The first duck I saw was a female Common Goldeneye.
|
|
 |
| Then she
took the plunge. Goldeneyes are diving ducks. |
|
 |
| Not surprisingly,
there was a male Common Goldeneye hanging out nearby. |
|
 |
| Then my
second interesting duck of the day popped up from a dive...a male
Bufflehead. |
|
 |
| After about
five minutes watching the divers, a pair of geese came sailing up
towards me. I probably would have fainted from surprise if the geese
had been as exotic as the ducks; it's a good thing they were Canadas.
As you can probably see, the sun is starting to set and I'm getting
orangish light on my birds. |
|
 |
| The two
geese turned and began a slow paddle downriver. The smooth water
was silvery and giving very sharp mirrorlike reflections, like in
this photo of the lead goose. |
|
 |
|
The trailing goose
was in the wake of the other one, and didn't have the clear reflections.
However, as it crossed the line between me and the sun, I was
getting dreamy magical sunset reflections off of the wake lines.
I like the effect so much that I ran down the quay so that the
bird would cross the magic line again. It wasn't easy, even with
the birds moving at a relatively slow pace.
|
|
 |
|
I'm going to put some
effort into figuring out the exact conditions for getting this
effect, and into going out looking for it. It might require relatively
calm water, which isn't always easy to find around here.
The setting sun also
provided me with my second interestingly-lit Mallard of the year:
this one a female lit from below by orange reflections off the
water.
|
|
 |
| Up on the
quay, I was about three meters higher than the duck. The following
tree was a few meters further up than that, and the light on it
was nowhere near as orange as that on the duck. That said, it might
be a little hard to tell, because the tree's branches were red.
I liked their contrast with the blue sky. |
|
 |
| Before going
in for the evening, I took a few shots of the Central City tower
in Surrey, where my main office is. As near as I can tell, my office
is the one where the vertical orange highlight from the sun meets
the treeline. I'm on the 15th floor, so that means that a lot of
the building is hidden behind the crest of the hill. |
|
 |
|
I was getting tired
of gettting started late, as it really limited my photographic
options. I went in with a promise to myself to go out in the morning
next time.
Chasing the sandman,
Tom
|
|