A walk in the fog

"It is not the clear-sighted who rule the world.  Great achievements are accomplished in a warm, blessed fog."  Joseph Conrad

Walking an old familiar street

A good friend lived on this street many years ago.  I had some time to kill so I walked here to see what I could find.

 

Community garden

I was walking in the city yesterday and spied this community garden in the downtown.   There was still much colour in it and it was obvious a great deal of love and care went into this small patch of ground.  The small touches made for excellent photo ops.

"Keep love in your heart.  A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead."

Oscar Wilde 

More leaves

I know I said "no more leaves", but I just can't help myself.  This year, the colours of the autumn leaves seem to be particularly brilliant.  Perhaps it's because of all the rain we've had.  I'll just enjoy them for as long as I can.

November sky is chill and drear

November's leaf is red and sear.

                     Sir Walter Scott

A new lens!

I just purchased a new lens! 
I am not a gear-head at all.  I still have my first camera and it is my only camera (besides a point-and-shoot that I purchased for $3.00 at the local thrift store).  I've just purchased a new lens to replace the kit lens that came with the camera four years ago.  I'm trying to remember Percy W. Harris' words "Skill in photography is acquired by practise and not by purchase", but oh - it is fun to be outdoors with my new toy!  These are a few shots from my first walk with it around my yard.

Looking down

Looking down is usually considered a bad thing.  Charlie Chaplin said, "You'll never find a rainbow looking down".  That's true, but I find a really interesting world down there, under my feet.

 

Into the mist

"For how can we know color in perpetual green, and what good is warmth without the cold to give it sweetness?"

John Steinbeck

 

 

 

Walking in Fall

A restful spot

Is not this a true autumn day?  Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonize.  The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallide hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit."

George Eliot

Mushroom or Toadstool?

I don't know whether this was a mushroom or toadstool, but it looked like a fried egg to me.

The last of the leaves

"Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit still and watch the leaves turn."

                  Elizabeth Lawrence

Shadows

 

"Find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and dark which that thing provides."

Junichiro Tanizaki

Scarlet Leaves

"Magnificent Autumn!  He comes not like a pilgrim, clad in russet weeds.  He comes not like a hermit clad in gray.  But he comes like a warrior, with the stain of blood upon his brazen mail."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

The milkweed patch

I went for a walk and discovered a milkweed patch that seemed to be waiting for me to come by with my camera.  These are terrible weeds, but they are very beautiful and interesting - photographically.

Autumn's arrival

I am rich today with autumn's gold

All that my covetous hands can hold.

          from Autumn (by Gladys Harp)

Flower or weed?

We think of a weed as something that grows where it's not supposed to.  A weed can have a lovely flower, so "beauty" is not a criteria.  I found this poppy growing in a patch of other weeds.  I normally till this spot, but this year the ground has been too wet to till until now.  Because of that, this poppy grew where there have never been poppies, probably from seed dropped by birds.  I wonder if that makes it a weed?  I left it there, hoping it will drop its seeds and I'll have more next year.

More flowers

"The goal is not to change your subjects, but for the subject to change the photographer"

Anon.

My garden

I haven't spent as much time photographing my garden this summer as I did in other years, but I did catch a few shots.

"You're only here for a short visit.  Don't hurry, don't worry.  And be sure to smell the flowers along the way."

Walter Hagen

Summer's end

This was one of my favourite shots of the summer.  It seems a fitting photo to post as summer ends.

"To see the Summer Sky

Is poetry, though never in a book it lie"

Emily Dickinson

 

More downtown photos

Downtown

I participated in a photo walk a few days ago.  It was a cloudy dull day.  However, I was intrigued by the reflections.  These were some of my favourite.

"Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness."  Frank Gehry

Texture

A friend told me recently that when he returns to a place he has visited many times, he goes with a particular type of shot, or camera setting, in mind.  One morning I walked around a semi-truck that had been parked close by which I have walked around many times and could not think of any way to photograph it.  It was a bright sunny morning, and the contrast would be high, so I decided to look for textures.  It didn't take long and I was seeing them everywhere. 

A running board

The grille

"The beauty does not live out there; the beauty's in my eyes."  Jonathan Lockwood Huie