POWASSAN MAPLE SYRUP FESTIVAL

This weekend we  visited the annual Maple syrup festival in Powassan. As always it was I very well attended event and of course watching the crowds and meeting friends was one of the main attraction of this event.

FRAGMENT, NORTH BAY

Jonathan Miller, in his photo book "Nowhere in particular",  refers to these type of images as bits and fragments. I like his ideas about these fragmented pictures. These abstract random fragments are visually quite interesting.

CASSELLS STREET, NORTH BAY

A typical small town view of thew back of some local businesses, which make up the majority of buildings along this street. I like the quiet atmosphere of this unassuming street scene.

GARDEN TOOLS, NORTH BAY

Again another black and white image, something david Ernest will appreciate. Yesterday I was walking through a pathway between the back of some houses when I noticed these garden tools hanging on the side of the shed. It gave me a feeling of almost ready to start gardening. 

7TH AVENUE, NORTH BAY

I like the architecture of these two house, which are part of a few duplexes on this street. It is actually the different porches which give an individual touch to these otherwise uniform designed houses.

SHADOW, NORTH BAY

I hope you will like this image too Cathy. What attracted me in this scene was the tree shadow and the pattern of the broken picket fence. I preferred the black and white version over the colour version.

FRONT GARDEN GATE, NORTH BAY

I am still continuing with my pictures of North Bay. I liked this composition of the wooden gate and the pattern of the front porch railing.

EARLY SPRING COLOURS

It was a nice warm Spring day yesterday. The early signs of Spring are everywhere and, even though the sky was grey and an occasionally shower, it was nice to walk on the trails and see the first colours of Spring.

PEELING PAINT

This is a simple composition of peeling paint but the image is reminiscent  of the abstract expressionist art of the 1950s especially the later work of Aaron Siskind, whose work I always enjoyed and which I am rediscovering lately.

ROCK LANDSCAPE, NORTH BAY

Today just a simple picture of various rocks from the sandpit. I prefer this landscape picture in black and white. I will have to go back to make more images of the great variety of rocks in this area.

ABANDONED SNOWPLOW

Walking through the bush, I came across this giant, which to me it appeared to be an abandoned, snowplow. I really liked the strong sculptural quality of this V shaped object. Actually it would not look out of place at a modern sculpture exhibition.

GRAVEL AND SANDPIT

We had a great Easter Weekend,very busy but we enjoyed seeing our young grandsons and of course also our oldest daughter and her husband. So today I am posting a simple black and white image from my last week trip to the abandoned sandpit. 

METAL COLLAGE

Continuing my series of the old rusting crusher, I named this ``metal Composition``. I realy like the strong red colours of the metal contrasting with the dark background. 

ABANDONED TOY JET PLANE

While taking pictures in the sandpit I noticed quite a lot of garbage, which  people simply dumped there. But I liked this little toy plane sitting quite forlorn in the empty space. The land scape itself was rather monochromatic so I simply turned the landscape into a  sepia print while leaving the plane in its original colour. This creates a strong visual contrast in this image. 

CRUSHER

The German artist Kurt Schwitters was, in his work, greatly influenced by machines. he saw them as abstractions of the human spirit. I wonder what he would have thought of this rusting remnant of a crusher. I found this old machine quite interesting and made some very wonderful images, which look very much like collages. I certainly will go back and see what else I can find around this sand and gravel pit.

IMPASTO LANDSCAPE

Yesterday I returned to the sandpit to see how this landscape would look in strong sunlight. The visual  effect of backlighting on this wall of sand was similar a heavy impasto painting technique. It turned this sand surface into a very wonderful tactile abstract painting. Yes I did enhance the colours of course.  I made the photograph with my Canon G11 mounted on a tripod.

SANDPIT, NORTH BAY

Sometimes you discover a place which you always ignored because you did not think that it would be interesting enough to get good pictures. well I walked into an old sand and gravel pit and found a place with terrific subject matter. First some of the old equipment of course, which are sources for many interesting images  and then the landscape, again very interesting. 

PINE TREE

The last few days have been dark and grey but I did manage to get a few interesting pictures. I made this picture of a pine tree then, using some filters, which turned it into this black and white  image.