Salmon Fishermen

The Exploits River has always been an excellent river for salmon fishing and it attracts many fishermen each year. While driving past the Exploits River near Bishop's Falls, I stopped to photograph the fishermen on the river at that time. It was pretty active!

If you happen to be fortunate enough to see people fishing this summer why don't you photograph them. Feel free to send digital images to mqpphotos@gmail.com - it's the address for the Photo Album Project at school. The teacher who is taking my place at MQP is going to continue that project. I also plan to contribute to it as well. Thanks to an excellent parent volunteer, the Photo Album Project has been updated. Feel free to have a look around.: http://mqp-photoalbum.kidsinsafeseats.ca/main.php/v/PhotoAlbum/

Bees

I must have planted allium bulbs when I first moved to my house in the fall of 2007 because every year a few plants grow near my back steps. The large purple flowers on top of a single stem attract bees. This year there seem to be more bees around than over the past few years - which is a good thing since they are responsible for much of the pollination that occurs in this part of the world.

Today's photos were taken with my 75-300 mm lens and later cropped. The closest I can focus with that lens is approximately 4 feet. It was cloudy when I took these images so there is no harsh lighting. I saw three bees on this particular flower, but by the time I got my camera, two had already left. Bees don't stay still very long on many types of flowers, but they do like this one and stay around a while. You can see that this bee moved around a bit while I was making photographs of it.

Flowers 2

Throughout the summer I will share images of different plant species that I see in my travels as well as those growing in my yard. This morning I am sharing a images made at 1:30 on Saturday, which was a bright sunny day. This isn't the best time of the day to be taking photographs because the sun is at its brightest and photos tend to be have a lot of contrast.

Buttercups grow wild all around my property. They were among the first wild flowers to appear after our land was excavated in 2007. They are very prolific and try to grow everywhere, even my vegetable and flower gardens. To be honest, I don't like pulling them out, but must or nothing else will grow.

Three summers ago I planted 25 strawberry plants and only a few of them survived that first year. Last summer they reproduced well and I have plenty this year which are all flowering and producing fruit. mmmm

White flowers are difficult to photograph, especially in the bright sun. The last image shows flowers forming on a spirea plant that I put in a flower garden in late May. Maybe it is because it is the first year, but the flowers look much different than the photograph on the plant when I bought it.

Flowers

The lighting late in the evening, just before the sun sets, is excellent for making photographs. Today I am sharing a few images I made after I photographed the woodpecker a couple of evenings ago.

I love photographing lupines and have thousands in my collection. One would think that I wouldn't bother taking more, but each year I continue to photograph them. When I first moved to Holyrood 28 years ago, part of my back yard was like a gravel pit - mostly rock. I noticed fields of lupines along the sides of the roads and railway tracks in the Holyrood area and since they were growing in rocky soil, I decided to collect seeds and disperse them around the rocky areas in my yard. I did this for a few years and had fields of lupines in my yard. When I moved to my new house, I threw lupine seeds around the rocky areas, and now have these beautiful flowers growing here as well.

I planted the pink rhododendron several years ago and photograph the flowers most years. It has not grown as fast as I had thought, but it is now 3 feet high (tripled its size from planting) and producing beautiful flowers. I liked the effect of the light filtering through the petals of the individual flowers in today's images.

Woodpecker

Since many former students are on my list I thought I would share that I officially retired from teaching yesterday after 29 years in the education system. I will miss working with the students at Mary Queen of Peace School, but because of my voice issues, I think it it time to leave. Of course, I will still be busy since I plan to concentrate on making and selling photographs.

Last evening as the sun was setting I saw a woodpecker on a nearby tree. Unlike a woodpecker looking for food and moving around a tree, this one appeared to be trying to dig out a large hole. There were pieces of the tree flying in all directions. In the third photo you can see small pieces of wood in the air behind the woodpecker.

Since the bird didn't fly away after 5 minutes, I walked to my house and returned with camera in hand. I made a few images, then started to move closer. The woodpecker then flew to another tree closer to me and started looking for food. Even though I was shooting through the trees and leaves, I was lucky enough to get a couple of nice shots with the reddish light of the setting sun illuminating the bird.

At first I thought it was a northern flicker but after checking a bird identification book I believe this may be a downy woodpecker.

Hands 3

Today's photos show Musical Hands, which I also love to photograph. When I photographed concerts and events at school, I always included close-ups of hands playing the different instruments. Once, when I sent the photos to a band that had performed for the students, one of the musicians thanked me because he noticed that his fingers weren't placed in the correct position and until he saw the photos, didn't realize he wasn't playing the instrument correctly.

The first photo shows an adult playing during a choir practice at a local church. To get this view I knelt down next to the instrument and placed the camera as close to the keys as possible. I've uploaded a wider view of this scene to my Blog. If you have time, check out the effect of shooting a different view of the same scene.

The next image shows a young lady's hand playing the fiddle, which looks like a challenging instrument to learn to play well. This image was made in colour and later converted to b & w. The last image was also originally shot in colour but I converted this one to sepia as well as b & w.

Hands at Work

Today I chose photos of Hands at Work. The first image shows a fisherman fixing his nets. I am not sure what the tool he is using is called, but he pulls it through the nets repairing holes and weak areas.

The person in the second photo was splitting a fresh codfish. When I was a young boy I remember watching fishermen in Winterton, Trinity Bay as they split their daily catches of codfish. I remember how skillful and fast they were as they split the cod with very sharp knives. The woodcarvers were making tiny figures for sale, so this can be considered work. The guy playing the guitar was actually working - his band was playing at an outdoor concert in Florida.

Hands

As promised a while back. I am returning to my Hands theme for a few days. All three of today's images were from original slides and converted to black & white in Picasa 3.

In addition, all were taken in 1983, when I was working on a slide show of Holyrood Seniors. That was an interesting project in which I volunteered to photograph any senior in Holyrood who agreed to having his/her picture taken. It was a great slide presentation that was shown in the school auditorium during the 125th Anniversary of the Holyrood Parish. Of course, that was nearly 30 years ago and all the seniors I photographed then have passed on. I am lucky to have worked on such an important project.

Boats 5

This will be the last in my Boats series for a while. I am certain that I will return to it from time to time. I know many of you are enjoying this series, and I have lots more boat photographs to share.

In recent years, Newfoundland and Labrador has become a destination for cruise ships and every year several visit various parts of our province bringing much-appreciated tourism dollars. I remember a few years ago I was on the waterfront when Jim Nabors, well-known actor and singer, was one of the first passengers off that first cruise ship. Rumours at the time said that he found a local furrier store and purchased several mink coats for his Hollywood friends. Of course, I can not confirm this rumour. :)

I have shown three views of a cruise ship in Conception Bay which shows why it was too big to get into St. John's Harbour. The last photo shows a large oil tanker close by which gives you an idea of how big it really is. Passengers were shuttled (see 2 smaller boats tied up at its side in the first image) into Long Pond where busses took them to visit attractions in St. John's or the local area.

Boats 4

Today I tried to find images of boats are a little different than most I have sent before. The bright white boat, alone in a field of green away from any body of water, caught my attention as I drove around looking for photographs. The freshly painted boat really stands out in this image.

The unusual flat-bottomed red boat covered by a thin layer of snow was interesting and I stopped to make a few images of it in Chapel's Cove. The line of boats with strong sidelighting from the setting sun also made a different photograph. The boat floating on the ocean behind a bunch of whale bones in Dildo, Trinity Bay was also an interesting view, though I am not sure that is obvious to the viewer that there are bones in the foreground.