The city of Richmond lies south of Vancouver. It doesn’t have much going for itself. Flat, populated, and with an odd mixture of industrial and agricultural land, it’s a place that you won’t visit unless you have a purpose. That could be flying into the Vancouver Int’l Airport, which I’ve done, photographing the Yearly cranberry harvest, which I’ve done too, visiting the Night Market, which, well, I’ve done again, or buying a generic digital camera battery, which I was just doing this week.

Built on the delta of the Fraser River, Richmond has a lot of bridges and the resulting traffic too. So after nearly missing my bus number two and arriving four minutes before closing time (finding a locked door against which I banged until someone came to inquire what the noise was all about), I decided to stop on one of those bridges and wait for sunset with HDR in mind. Yes, I had Abe, my camera, with me.

A long rainy day, and at the last minute, magic. This is for Emma, in a very humble attempt at making us dream and wander, and be free. Thanks Emma!

If eyes are a mirror into one’s soul, does anybody around me even have a soul? (Sour grin)

Eyes are shifting uneasily, biased and afraid. They stare straight ahead into nothingness, preoccupied and worried, or just inert. They reflect neither joy nor interest, no spark, no life. They are tired and worn out.

All those eyes seem to have forgotten how to shine and smile. They have retreated behind high invisible walls, the impenetrable defenses of shades or the anonymous shelter of a mask. They display a perpetual busy signal and do not show any sign of actually seeing the magical world around them. And yet they constantly navigate through an extraordinary maze of colors, shapes and people, an ever-changing, infinitely complex kaleidoscope which is theirs for the taking.

What a terrible shame getting home after a journey – whether it’d be a day’s commute on the bus or a year-long trek through a strange land – and having seen nothing, having only paid attention to the inner movie of routine, fears and regrets. And the journey doesn’t only happen on the outside. A real journey evolves on two simultaneous fronts: the outside scenery and the inner voyage. The magic is all around and inside us too, as my awesome sister rightfully reminded herself recently.

So when I’m out and about, I often challenge myself to take the test. Yes, I do talk to myself.

« How much of a scene can you actually absorb? How many of the small details can you aggregate in order to get the bigger picture? How completely in the present can you locate yourself to just be here and now? And how much will you enjoy it?

Are you in the transit? What’s people’s mood like? What colors do they wear? How do they position themselves in the space they occupy? How are their eyes? How many are willing to sustain a look or even return a smile? Have you noticed someone looking happy? Have you let them know you appreciate it? Is someone wearing a stunning piece of jewelry? What is the sky telling you about the weather? Have you noticed the reflections on the streets in the rain? Is the sun drawing strange long shadows in the movie playing out the window? Can you avoid swearing at the cowboy manners of the driver and the sheep-like attitude of commuters and just be there?

Now, are you in an urban jungle? Have you noticed how the touch of man is everywhere? Have you analyzed how different styles have impregnated the very fabric of the city’s architecture? Can you appreciate the many places where craftsmen and artists have left their imprint and obviously worked on creating something out of the ordinary? Can you still manage to see the ordinary features with a new eye? The intricate mesh of the tram cables, the complex network of road signs and painted lines, the global pedestrian flows as seen from a bird’s eye, the graceful lines of skyscrapers reaching out to space, the life-long history of suffering that probably dragged that beggar to the street? Can you isolate individual sounds in the large background noise of the city’s heartbeat? A child’s laughter, the ringing of a bike’s bell, a distant ship horn, the acid cry of a seagull, a great song playing out of a car’s rolled down window, the obnoxious ring of a cell phone that makes you thrilled you are not the bearer, the clap of a nice pair of boots on asphalt, the hissing of a coffee shop’s steaming machine, a siren nearby, reminder that things could always be much worse…

Are you surrounded by nature? You are lucky. Have you reminded yourself of that fact? Have you taken a deep breath and analyzed the smells carried by the wind? Have you walked around, pushed on to the next somewhere, and then a little further? Have you noticed the warmth of an afternoon sun or the crispiness of mountain air? Have you noticed the changing light? Have you listened to the sound of your steps, crisp and squeaky in cold snow, muffled in fallen leaves, silent in thick grass or loud and indiscreet in the woods? Have you bent down to pick a flower and decided it looked better alive where it grew (unless it was to be offered, which gives its death a meaning)? Have you stopped and talked with the locals about their land, which they take for granted but know intimately?

And most importantly, have you taken a picture, lately? »

[ P.S. I often fail the test myself, but I get an A for Effort. ]

Last Saturday night, Vancouver was invaded by the most amazing fog bank I have ever seen, seemingly seeping right out of a scary movie. Of course I was stuck at work without my camera, watching helplessly as extraordinary landscapes were drawn at my feet. As soon as my shift ended, I rushed back home, grabbed the camera and ran back downtown to at least capture the fog from street level. Here are a few views of Gastown and Canada Place.

Yes, the title of this post was a direct allusion to Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on the Bare Mountain, but since Grouse has bears, I figured... Ok, it might have been a little « tiré par les cheveux »...

In any case, we took a chance - leaving Vancouver late at the end of a cloudy day. But by the time we were riding the Blue Skyride up, clouds were gone from the mainland and barely clinging to the mountain slopes, where they didn’t stay long. Gorgeous sunset as usual. Bears and deers in the next post.

Question: What do the following creatures have in common?

Answer: They are all above me in the great evolution scheme and I respect them for their superiority, like a soldier respects a general. Why? They all have wings and I don’t!

[As usual, click on the images to start the slideshow and use N for next and P for previous]

Having mentioned in an earlier post that the colors of fall were not in Vancouver what they are in the East, I then decided to prove myself wrong. I didn’t have to go very far. The trees lining my own street were quite nice already. Then there was John Hendry Park and Trout Lake, a few blocks away. There was the southeastern end of Stanley Park, and even Butzen lake, across from Deep Cove on the right side of Indian Arm. But I found the most mesmerizing colors at the VanDusen Botanical Gardens. See for yourself.

In the end, there are amazing fall colored trees everywhere in and around Vancouver. All we lack is the widespread forests of deciduous trees, ours being mostly evergreens.

In any case, if colors have a sound, then autumn must be a symphony.

There are quite a few fantastic toys keeping me busy these days. First there’s Timothy Farrar’s FFDD5 set of scripts and actions for the digital darkroom. I’m experimenting with simple sets of 3 bracketed RAW exposures and blending them into an HDR digital negative that I can then develop to my taste. The results are much more natural-looking than with Photomatix, for instance. And for inspiration, I go browse through the Farrar’s stunning photo galleries.

Then there’s Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, released as a beta version (now v.4) to the public for testing. Lightroom combines in one single interface the functions of Adobe Bridge and Photoshop, as well as my Canon Digital Photo Professional. It is aimed entirely at digital darkroom work and even though it doesn’t yield the same results as using FFDD5 or working with masks, it’s a great way to develop RAW pictures fast and very efficiently. The interface is slick and intuitive, and the program seems pretty stable despite the beta stage. A very complete panoply of settings are applied via easy-to-use sliders and the results are displayed in real time. Cool and complex toy.

My desktop and Windows now have a new look. It’s called BricoPack Vista Inspirat 1.1 and it looks really, really slick! The kit is an alternative skin for Windows XP, supposedly based on the upcoming Windows Vista. In any case, between this pack and the included software (of which is Stardock’s ObjectDock, but I already used my own free version of it), my computer looks and feels almost like a Mac...

And finally, there’s the new baby. But birth was a little difficult, so I’m not quite ready to talk about it. Soon, though. Soon.

A few days ago, while strolling around Beaver Lake in Stanley Park, I felt the slight brush of a feather against my head. Surprised, I looked up and realized a cute little bird was dive-bombing at me. I assumed I was getting too close to his nest and to avoid worrying the little guy, I walked away. But then from another direction, another attack. That’s odd, I thought. They must all be nesting in the fall.

The crazy idea of catching a shot of one of them in flight as they were flying by me immediately took shape and I got the camera out of the bag. Not knowing how to focus on them, I opted for a manual preset to an arm’s length and hoped the birds would keep flying as close as they had. So I held up my hand away from me, arm extended, and attempted to manually focus on it - an operation that isn’t so easy with only one remaining hand.

There. I had my fingers well framed in the viewfinder and they were just about as sharp as the bird standing on them. The bird? I blinked, looked again. I wasn’t dreaming; one of the kamikazes had just landed on my fingers and was calmly looking at me. I looked back. We exchanged a few silent words, not to scare each other off.

- Welcome, I thought.
- Hello, he answered, where is the food?
- What food?
- The food that’s supposed to be in your hand. Why do you think I’m here, carefully perched on a human being 100 times my size?

He nibbled at the palm of my hand as if to punctuate his hunger. I snapped a shot. The shutter scared him and he flew away.

I was beginning to understand. The birds had been trained by passers-by to come and eat seeds in their hands. The fly-bys had been attempts to land on my head, probably judged - at the last second - too big and round to be seed-bearing. I looked down on the ground, found a few old seeds and some peanut shells that I immediately presented to the sky, open palm and camera at the ready.

The birds came back, taking turns, landing on my hand, nibbling, looking at me, flying away. They were cute and speedy. A lady told me they are called Chickadees. So check-a-’dees photos!

He sits in the darkness of a dying day, thoughtfully smoking as his thoughts wander away. The smoke lingers around him in thick volutes like fog banks in a deep valley.

He is getting old. When he became an apprentice, so many years ago, it seemed as though the Art was so complex and mysterious that he would never learn it. But now practicing his craft has become like talking with an old friend, exchanging secrets and sharing moods. He is on his way to becoming a Master, however only others will call him that way; he doesn’t think he could ever master nature and that’s what he is attempting to reproduce. At best, he will tame her.

His fingers and eyes are lovingly following the curves of today’s work. It’s not quite perfect yet. A sharp angle here, a nasty color there, and maybe still too much grain for his taste. He’ll get up at dawn and work on it in a new light.

For now, he feels lonely and just wishes he had someone to pass his knowledge onto. Of course his work will remain as testimony of a short passage through the world. But each piece carries a story of its own and telling that story is becoming more important to him every day.

The how of his craft is emerging in his mind as an equal to the what. He’d love to be able to stand next to each of his creations forever, telling passers-by about the hidden details, the long hours, the patient search for a better light, the infinite grinding of unnecessary edges, the sharpening of softer zones and the blurring of harder angles...

But they will have to figure it out by themselves. Or not.

They are painters, sculpters, carpenters, architects, authors, musicians, actors, photographers, gardeners, artists, craftsmen. They endlessly create - out of clay, paper, wood, ceramic, paint, ink, stone, metal, imagination, inspiration, words, ideas, dreams. It takes them hours, and days, and years. Thousands of repetive actions which nonetheless are unique in their own moment. Shutter clicks, paint smudges, chisel nudges, ink drops, torn paper, sleepness nights. These people keep the material world around us full of art and beauty. They are an antidote to the machine takeover, bringing out the best in mankind. And what a pain they can be, too...