Evening Stream

As human beings, many of us go about our lives during daylight hours. While walking in the evening and keeping a tuned ear, it becomes clear that, for much of the natural world, night is day.

Earth and Heaven

We long for spring, when the buds break and the trees clothe themselves in leaves. Winter has a beauty of its own, however. When the trees stand naked and the landscape is barren, the beauty of the sky is hard to miss.

Stream

There are times when I feel like the events of my life are carrying me along, much like a leaf is carried along the surface of a swiftly flowing stream. Events happen, and I make decisions and respond, but in reality it seems that life has a direction already set out for me.

Ruins / Crocus in Snow

The first day of spring finally arrived after a long winter. The air smelled alive again and the crocuses dared to bloom. Soon after, however, the weather turned once again and the snow covered the fallen flowers like sand covering ancient ruins. Still, even in their frozen state, the flowers were signs of hope. Spring had sprung once this year – it would soon spring again!

Broken Shell

There are times in my life when fears cause me to retreat, like a snail going into its shell. I saw this shell and it seemed to me a symbol of personal transformation. The shell looked as if it had been broken out of – from the inside out. I know that this isn’t the case – but the mind seizes on visual images to express things when words fall short.

For Granted

There is so much that we take for granted. It has only been for the last century or so that running water has been common. Much of the world still cannot count on easy access to clean water. The lighting in this photo highlights the golden nature of this blessing that we so often take for granted.

Transition

To be human is often to resist life. Things happen and we dig in our heels. Acceptance of things we don’t want seems to us to be a sign of weakness or resignation. But life goes on, oblivious to our resistance or our better ideas of how things should be. The sunset colours of this photo could just as easily be a sunrise, and are a reminder to me that every ending is a new beginning.

Bleeding Hearts at Night

It was night and I was turning out the lights to go to bed when I thought about the flowers in the vase on the table. All the beauty of those flowers still exists once the light is gone – but we just can’t see it. Giving into the temptation to take a few more photos before bed. I set up my camera on a tripod on the table, selected a long exposure, and then “painted” the flowers with a flashlight. The effect was moving – the beauty of the flowers complimented the night’s darkness.

Forget-Me-Not

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We like things to be permanent. We put photos behind glass, and other items in glass cabinets. Meanwhile, the world around us is able to let go of yesterday and generates beauty on an ongoing basis. These flowers are now long gone. While I pause and take satisfaction in the way this photo has made the flowers permanent, the natural world focuses on creating the next batch of flowers.

Frosty Morning Stream

Life on this planet depends on water. It is water that makes the marked difference between the frozen landscape of winter, and the fragrant springtime. Briefly, the weather sits at the boundary between freeze and thaw. During this time, the stream flowed with the energy of spring, while its splash froze on contact with the grass.

Green Shell

This shell has always been a part of my life. It is my mother’s favourite shell, and for as long as I can remember it sat on the mantle of my childhood home. All these years later, it is still a brilliant green. It was only after photographing the shell that I could see, in the photograph, the tiny cracks that reveal the shell’s age.

Winter Beach at Night

Winter is such a barren time with so little colour – even more so at night. But with the camera shutter set to 15 seconds and the moon rising above the snowy beach, a colourful world emerges.

Streetlight in Winter

While away at a meeting, I was snowed in during one of winter’s harshest storms. The world outside looked incredibly bleak – yet even there, there was beauty. The cold of the ice and snow, when mixed with the heat of the bulbs, created this beautiful fusion of ice and fire.

Fiddlehead Ferns

Out for a walk in the early morning, I noticed the sun shining through the trees and illuminating this cluster of fiddlehead ferns. In the bottom left corner of the photo, there is the hole of some small creature. I imagine being that small, with the fiddle heads growing above like trees in what looks to me like an alien landscape.

Into the flower

This photo gives me a sense of how the flower must look to a bee. For you and me, a flower is a small item to be admired from a distance, but to some creatures entering it, it must seem to be an entire world.

Fern Light

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This photo instills a sense of serenity. The sun peacefully filters through the quiet leaves of the growing fern. This peaceful setting was actually quite hostile to the photographer. The heat was sweltering, and the mosquitoes and stinging nettle were out in full force.