Sundown - Algonquin Park

Sundown - Algonquin Park
Originally uploaded by Alan Norsworthy

Sundown, the low sun streams across the beaver damn lakes and strikes the other side.

The effect only lasts a few minutes but the memory lasts forever.
Anyone who has ever visited Algonquin Park knows what I am talking about.

This weekend saw our annual Spring visit to Algonquin Park.
Unfortunately one of our merry band could not make it and was sorely missed. I myself found a place to stay at the last minute and was able to go.

Next year we will have to plan earlier because the more hectic or lives become the more crucial our leisure time becomes.
We all need to recharge our batteries, I recharge mine in places like this ..

We all need empty hours in our lives or we will have no time to create or dream. ~Robert Coles

Spring Colour

Spring Colour
Originally uploaded by Alan Norsworthy

As much as I enjoy the Fall and Winter months there is something about the Spring.
An awakening, that quickens the pulse and lifts the spirit .
I wonder at how the most fragile of creatures and plants survive the achingly cold, dark months, slumbering in the frozen ground.
Then as the warmth of the strengthening sun percolates down into the soil they stir, and force their way upwards, in celebration of life.

..... rebirth!

Of course not everything that awakens is benign .... mosquitoes, blackflies they are coming too, but not yet, not yet.

This is my springtime in the woods, the time to be enjoyed before the blood thirsty hoards arrive and drive me out.

And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
 
~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "The Sensitive Plant"

Grasses

Grasses
Originally uploaded by Alan Norsworthy

Sometimes photography leads one into unseen, forgotten, worlds.

A complete departure from the norm.

I mean how many people, well apart from children, do you see on their hands and knee's staring almost myopically at "something".

If you did stop would you wonder what was so fascinating and join them or would you smile to yourself and walk on?

If you are a photographer and the person doing the kneeling and staring had a camera in hand you would probably stop and enquire.

You could almost say that photography opens your mind to what you saw as a child, before you became an adult, before you forgot what an incredible place this world can be.

…the transformative photographer embarks upon an intuitive, insightful path which opens into an innate understanding of how marvellously grand everything is…
whether small or big, micro- or macrocosmic, minute or immense…it is all blow-your-mind incredible, in the sense that the «all of it» is simply awesome.
~ Simhananda ~ "Towards a Transformative Photography"

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
~William Blake~

This image was of an area less than 3" across

Sunlit Lane

Sunlit Lane
Originally uploaded by Alan Norsworthy

It's Spring, life is returning to our half of the world as the sun gets stronger and there are colours everywhere.
So why am I still shooting Black and White?

My friend Doug and I took a walk in the Arboretum this weekend.
We stood literally side-by-side and captured the scene before us.

He saw the vibrant green of the newly sprouted grass, the way the sunlight picked out the rock and lit the area around it

I saw the tonal range, the textures, the shadows, all in shades of gray.

Is my image better than his? Most certainly not, it's a great image.

Then why did I not see it the way my fellow photographer saw it?

Well I guess that is what makes this hobby / passion so intriguing....

Maybe I'm different, not right, nor wrong, just different....

or may be I heard the instructions differently....

I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help. ~Ruth Bernhard


You can see Doug's image here 

Derelict

Derelict
Originally uploaded by Alan Norsworthy

We see many, many places that are simply 'abandoned' the land purchased for it's future value, the house left empty but this one, this one is different.
I have never seen such a sight, everywhere we looked; garbage, the detritus of lives unknown. The scar's of fire, of decay, of total neglect. 

These places usually fill me with a sadness for what they were.
An empty house soon becomes a shell, a house needs people to live, once they are gone the house dies, the home dies. 
But this is far beyond that. 
This house has been abused, then cast aside and now it sits in its misery waiting for that final blow from the wreckers to end it all.

derelict
der·e·lict adj \'der-a-likt,
 Empty of people and unused, not maintained by the owner or inhabitants