Canada goose. As seen through the viewfinder. (Part two)



Looking for a nice convenient neighbourhood is not an easy thing...



  Have you ever tried to watch birds? Try. Start with Canada goose. You can  watch them all year around, the same couple. It's fun.You will see how much they remind us, humans. They miss their country, they fall in love, protect each other, take care of each other, stay committed for 24 years and longer.  I am not sure whether they celebrate their silver anniversary, but they build their own home and bring up their children, teach them and guide them, and make sure they follow the tradition.... 

The stores should be in a walking distance... 

It's good, that the city is repairing the roads now, for a few years it will be less hassle ....

 This crossroad has traffic lights - it will be safer for kids...

 It's always good to have swimming facilities close enough...

 Kids are always kids....some like to be left alone, other prefer to organize trouble together....

   They have to be supervised all the time, though accidents happen.... In our case it's not bad, because they are born with the skill to swim and dive - less headache for parents.

Canada goose. As seen through the viewfinder.

   
       How much do we know about Canada goose? Something like - the male and female look identical (male is a bit bigger), they fly in V-formation. Their honking makes us happy (in spring) and sad and nostalgic in the fall. Most of us know, that they are devoted to each other all their life ( average 24 years long) and that there are too many of them in Toronto, because the city happened to be on their way.
      I noticed them as often as anybody else - hearing their honk or running into them and then running away from them - they are really scary when they mean it.
      But last fall walking around with my camera I heard their honk and looked at them into the viewfinder. It changed a lot. I saw beautiful and proud birds. They were making circles and circles  around the same area. There was an order and consistency in their flight. There was rhythm. There was energy...
       Yes, I tried to do it right - to catch, to pan and zoom while panning.... Over and over again, waiting for them appear exactly from the same spot, the whole flock together, flying the same direction. I was waiting for their honking, hoping that they didn't flue away -for how long it was going to continue? I became a part of that rhythm and that energy, and didn't want it to stop... But it did stop. And for a moment I felt deaf (later I couldn't believe this feeling, as I was standing on a highway). I was disappointed, and upset, as if something exciting  was taken away from me.... Half a year away from that moment I still feel goose bums ( of course, what else?) while remembering the noise and the view of synchronously  moving wings, so close, that I had to get off their way to be able to take the picture....
       The picture just couldn't be good - I had no experience at all in photographing birds (or anything else, running, driving, jumping or flying). But all this experience made me do some research about Canada goose and just watch them.
Shortly, there are some more facts about them.
     They mate "for good or for bad", staying by the side of their partner no matter what, protecting and defending, or just being supportive.
      They never change the routs of their migration. The next year the young ones come back exactly to the place of their birth. They can travel 2400 km for 24 hours.
     The female lays 5 - 7 (up to 12) eggs  - an egg a day. During incubation period the adults loose their flying feathers and are not able to fly.
      They use their body language and honking to communicate (10 different sounds have been identified). They are very sociable - stay in flocks all year around (except when nesting).

      The main enemy of these beautiful birds are people.  And excuse is lame - " just 50 birds can produce 2,5 tons of excrement a year and pollute ponds and pools". Has anybody calculated how much excrement can 50 men/women produce during a year? We already know how much they can pollute  (look at the pictures on my page Day of Earth or Toronto ugly). I don't want even to mention what that pollution costs us. I hope, not our lives.

Photography and Victoria Day.

     It was a long expected  weekend. Two days off in retail is hard to get, even for a manager. (It is over, though, and I am kind of  trying to sum it up). A lot of Canadians, I guess, spent it at their cottages or at least left the city for a day.We didn't go anywhere, but spent it close to the ground - I planted flowers and made our balcony look nice and cosy.  Finally the chairs are out and the umbrella is open, candles are ready and now we can say, that the summer is close. But the weather is still not stable - rain, rain, and again rain... Anyways, yesterday we "opened the balcony" officially - we had burgers and beer in the  evening, talked and laughed a lot. It was a nice day and a very warm evening.

        For today there were some plans. First of all, we wanted to go for a walk - like an exercise. I didn't take my camera - it is usually more standing than walking if I do. Though I enjoy it a lot, I feel sorry for my husband, who, being supportive, has to wait instead of walking. So today I decided to separate flies from jam. But rain interfered and we couldn't really go far enough to feel it.

I ended up on the computer, arranging my pictures. Oh, gosh, it is soooo time consuming all this digital stuff. I think, I have to spend twice more time, because my knowledge of the computer and photoshop is very little. Sad. But what can I do? So, looking through my pictures and erasing tons of them, I realised that I am already  tired of taking pictures of flowers. It' so easy to  show their beauty - they are pretty anyways...  I have to move somewhere... Where? I am lost. I have to develop my vision of things, composing them, etc. I look through the pictures of photo.net, read, listen to my friend's advise, but it doesn't help much - there's something one cannot just learn. Photography is an art. Picture taken on a street should be an art too. Each artist has his/her vision. It looks, like I don't have any..

. So I took my camera for a walk trying to look at things in a different way. I don't think I managed, but I ended up in a place I have never been before - on rail way, that passes by not far away. We live on rail side, but I never was on the bridge.... It was kind of fun to see something new. That's about it. I am sorry that I need another 10000 hours to come close to what other photographers see... I hope I will have fun. Here are some results of my attempt...

About this picture at the bottom I have to explain. I read , that there's one of the ways to take candid shots and shots without  rules to make them look different - to take them  from a hip. It means , without framing, focusing, etc. So I tried.... I hoped I'll get this couple into the shot. He is a blind white man, she is a black woman, he has a dog (the dog jumped out of the frame:)), behind them there's Canadian Bible Society...

And of course, I had to finish with the flower. Just because I think it is the last tulip left in the near by area - I know all of them personally, I think.... This is special too, because back home, in Belarus, we called them black... My mom had them in her garden and just a day ago we were talking about black tulips with my friend.... I hope she'll see it...

I forgot to mention, that my adventure was interrupted by a thunderstorm and I had to run, because it was raining cat and dogs... You can tell looking at the pictures - the sky was heavy...Here's a report of my Victoria Day. I wish I could here the response....

Dzmuhavec - Oduvanchik - Dandelion....

   ....A flower that has dozens of names, grows almost in every country, every part of it can be used either in food, drink or medicine, known in Europe for about 30 mln. years... It is an inspiration for poets and writers, lives in folklore. It can be used as a barometer, and a  very precise one. You can check it now - when it feels rain is coming, it stays closed, if the weather is going to be sunny, it is blooming at

it's best best. It is loved and hated at the same time with the same strength....

     I guess, it is not the most interesting flower to be photographed - it's hard to think of some outstanding picture of it, because there are thousands of them. Though it's hard not to be tempted  to photograph it, when after 6 month of winter we have a nice sunny spring day with fresh green carpet of grass and hundreds of yellow spots all over it. Simply beautiful!

       When I was a kid, we would run around, pick the flowers, trying to chose the ones with the longest stems, and then sit in a row competing who is the fastest in making a wreath. After that we would wear it all day, till the flowers get closed. The wreath is left behind. Till the next spring.... 

 I tried my best to look at them from different angles, distances, sides...

This one was taken at 8: 30 in the morning near the bus stop...

Isn't it a survivour, growing everywhere and decorating the most ugly places?

 

This group was shot with my new macro lens

   The only thing I have never read about the Dandelions is that they are " a beautiful decorative flower". Shame, isn't it? They love outdoors so much, that don't last for too long. But they can be elegant, bring  little sunshine into your room and be very enjoyable. Even if it is only for a few hours...

What is Photography? For me...

     What is photography? I think , it's a projection through the lens of some person's abilities to see and to feel the world. (Wow, it's my thought! I swear! ). Skills mean a lot, of course. But no matter how  skillful you are in drawing, it will not make you a great artist. At the same time world knows artists, who never went to school to study arts. Famous russian Paleh artists, a lot of native artists, even  Salvatore Dali never finished school. English artist Lowry was painting during nights, hiding even from his mom. He never thought of himself as an artist.  Nobody new him as an artist till he was almost 70 years old!.

       It means, that if you have something in you, if you want to draw with your soul,  The God will lead your hand...The same is with photography. If you can SEE, you will see the world even better through the lens. Another thing about photography, that makes it  a miracle - to be able to look at THE MOMENT again and again (not only on paper, but on a computer screen) . But the most attractive for me is not just only to be able to take the picture, that will make myself proud, but the memories of every moment that made it happen. Wandering around, looking at familiar things differently (yes!), cropping the scene in mind, looking under my feet, see not rust or wood, but structure and colour, watching birds and snails, and worms... After that comes motivation to find out the name of the grass, habbits of snails, and, of course, try to find out why the hell I couldn't take that picture the way my virtual photo.net fellows did.  And start over and over again...

                                                             

 Look, how elegant this little diver is! I don't know what his head is doing , but the legs .... acrobat...

I stepped on these snails without thinking - there are tons of them after the rain. One day I NOTICED them  - it changed everything...

Now I know they can live upto 15 years.... They lay eggs, and that egg the baby comes from, is the very top of it's shell.... so the circles show the age (like in a tree)... they are hermophrodites, but they mate, and  they are not so slow, when you are trying to focus...

And they have eyes! Four?  Maybe the picture is not very esthetic - it was my first try of macro lens - but I managed to look into A SNAIL'S EYES!!!

Some thoughts about spring...

        Let's see with what I am going to come up  today... There's no special thoughts. The main news, I guess, is that spring is coming,  sloooowly, very sloooowly though. Today is the First of May - back home it always was a big holiday: spring, mood, parade, music... When I think about all Soviet holidays I always think of the holidays of my childhood. I am from a small town where good neighbours mean everything, where everybody knows, who you are and where you come from , your parents, grand parents, etc. We call each other by a "street" name, it means  some name that got stuck to you or may be to your grand pa, and some time it's the one that should be rated...

     Tradition was a great thing too. For example, we couldn't do gardening or laundry, or sewing on Sunday. Nobody attended church,(there were no church!), nobody talked about  church, religion, believes, but there was God in every house.Some of them had Icons, some didn't , but everybody cherished Sundays, Easter, many other religious dates.... I cannot explain how we knew, because we didn't study it at school, my mom was born in the Soviet state, my dad's dad was fighting for unity of  Belarus. But we knew when to eat the first apple, and what flowers to bring for Easter. All holidays were like Christmas. So The First of May was a holiday of hope - don't you have that kind of feeling every spring, when you see fresh green leaves, grass, flowers, when blackbird's song is the sweetest song ever, and the evening is so fresh, and the smell of a bird cherry is wrapping you?... (and note, there's no allergy!) All the neighbours are out - from small to old - because how can one be inside during such evening? (thanks God, there were no computers, iPods, i -anything... and we could live).

 

    All these feelings come back to me when I am in a park, near some river or in some nice neighbourhood...