Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Day 162: Tea in the snow

Today's photo is of the famous Lake Agnes teahouse near Lake Louise. Our hiking guidebook to the Rockies rates this hike as a "Don't do" on account of its dullness as a hike, popularity and, by Rockies standards, unremarkable location. But there's a but in there too: it's deemed an acceptable hike if you're using it as a way to get somewhere else, or on a rainy day in the shoulder season when there's really nothing else to do. Well, it's not shoulder season but it is a cool rainy day and our curiosity got the better of us. Besides, a hike in the rain with a hot drink at the end is pretty much always welcome.

Sure enough, the hike was unremarkable to the point of being truly unworthy of bothering but at least it was fairly quiet. We came to a point where the trees thinned out and we noticed the rain appeared to be falling more slowly. Err, that's not rain - it's snow! So we continued up to the teahouse in light wet snow. The hot soup and cup of tea were very welcome (if a little on the pricey side...) and for a short time, we were the only people there. The rain even eased off a little, and I captured this photo of Maria and Merewyn outside the teahouse.

More photos from today on Flickr.

Teahouse at Lake Agnes
Lake Agnes, 31 Aug 2011

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Day 161: The Burgess Shale

Yes, the famous Burgess Shale! After reading Stephen Jay Gould's book Wonderful Life in the mid-1990s, I was hooked on all things related to these fossils. Our original plans for this trip to the Rockies were to spend a few days in the Lake O'Hara area, but when we couldn't book that we thought we'd just idle away our time in other parts of Yoho National Park. We remembered seeing the Burgess Shale beds from Emerald Lake a couple of years ago, and we pondered the idea of going on one of the guided hikes to see the fossils. This trip offered us the perfect opportunity and we were delighted that Merewyn was also interested in going along. Parks Canada warns people signing up that it's a long, strenuous hike but for us it falls into "moderate day-hike" territory :-) Mind you, having just done nearly 30 km in the two days before, I had some misgivings on the morning as we hauled ourselves out of our tent before sunrise...

But we needn't have worried. It was actually a pretty easy hike on the whole, though I do tend to find long hikes more tiring than steep hikes. I remember reading in Gould's book about the steep scree slopes above the treeline in the Rockies, and it sounded so risky. At that point I never imagined that one day I'd actually find it quite easy to make my own way up there! The quarry was perhaps a little underwhelming but it did give me an appreciation of how hard it is to find good fossils: you have to shift and sift a whole lot of rock to find the good specimens. We were free to explore for the better part of an hour, and though I found a few fossils I was, at heart, a little disappointed that I didn't find any of the "classic" species, such as Marella or Anomolocaris. (I've since learned that most of these specimens are in collections at the Royal Ontario Museum and in the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.) But at the end of the day, that didn't really matter: it was a treat to visit this amazing place, with its amazing views.

I have to say I think it was well worth it. More photos from the day are on Flickr

Marella
Burgess Shale, 30 Aug 2011

Monday, August 29, 2011

Day 160: Wowed by the Whaleback

From the Iceline to the Whaleback, Yoho National Park has its fair share of interesting-sounding trails! We really liked the sound of this trail, though we were a little uneasy about adding more elevation gain to our hike, made worse when we saw Whaleback Mountain itself and for a second or two wondered if the trail follow its ridge. Thankfully it didn't, climbing a steady (if steep) 300 or so metres onto a similar bench as the Iceline of yesterday. The sights which greeted us made us forget the early-morning slog. Yet more stupendous views, back to the Iceline and ahead towards many distant peaks and their glaciers. "Wow" doesn't even begin to describe the impact. The English language is sadly limited in its ability to truly express the awe and wonder of these magnificent mountain vistas. Or at least, my vocabulary is sadly limited...

Wow. That's all I can say.

More photos from today on Flickr.

Mt Des Poilus from the Whaleback
Whaleback Trail, 29 Aug 2011

Sunday, August 28, 2011

Day 159: The Iceline

The Iceline. Quite an intimidating name for a trail. Before we headed to Yoho, we'd eyed up this two-day trip as a possibility, depending on the weather. And thankfully, the weather was very much in our favour as we enjoyed a flawless blue-sky day dragging ourselves uphill out of the Yoho Valley, above the trees to spend the time hiking with limitless views.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this trail was to see Takkakaw Falls from above. We'd visited the base of the falls back in 2008, and it's reputed to be the third highest waterfall in Canada. Well, this trail certainly delivered on that count, and so much more. Rated an "Outstanding" backpacking trip by the Copelands, we can only nod open-mouthed in agreement. A truly spectacular trip - and that was just the first day!

More photos from today on Flickr.

Takkakaw Falls from the Iceline
Iceline Trail, 28 Aug 2011

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Day 158: Cheam sunrise

Another sunrise photo but this time one taken of a view I've wanted to capture for ages: the sun rising over the Cheam Range of mountains. This was an opportunistic photo as I pulled off Highway 1 just before we reached Chilliwack on our way to Yoho National Park. I drove a few hundred metres along the road and stopped next to a field full of ripening crops. A grain silo (or similar) was silhouetted against the morning light, adding a nice level of rural goodness to balance the jagged mountains. I'm not sure what it is about Mt Cheam and its fellow summits, but it has a hold on me I can't explain. Maybe it's because it's just such a picturesque mountain, maybe it's the notoriety of the road to its trailhead. Dunno, but I love taking photos of this mountain.

Cheam sunrise
Sunrise, 27 Aug 2011
PS Mt Cheam is the one at the far left :-)

Friday, August 26, 2011

Day 157: Sssunrise

I got up this morning with the intention of getting a photo of the waning crescent moon. I was a little later than I wanted to be, and the moon was too high in the sky to make an interesting picture. The sun was about half an hour off rising, and there were some clouds to the north west which lit up pink as I stood on the balcony. Nothing unusual about that I suppose, especially given the glorious sunset of two nights ago, except the line of clouds was edged by a series of S-shaped clouds. Now these were far more interesting than the moon!

Pink clouds at sssunrise
Sssunrise, 26 Aug 2011

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Day 156: Stirring up the hornets' nest

Ha ha ha - not really, I value my life more than that. I got stung by something at the beginning of August and I was reminded how painful it can be. I didn't see what stung me, I just felt the stabbing pain right above my sock line. I was wearing shorts which, when I think back to an incident from my childhood, has a touch of irony about it. It was a warm summer's day, a loooong time ago when it was fashionable for jeans to be somewhat wide at the bottom, and a wasp flew up said jeans and stung me behind the knee. I was told in no uncertain terms that would not have happened if I'd been wearing shorts as "advised". Fast-forward a blurry number of years and there I was in shorts with a painful wasp (or hornet) sting.

A few days ago I happened to walk past a tree outside the Student Union Building and noticed this nest. I didn't have my camera on me so I made a mental note to return to it the following day. The next day I found something else of interest, and then the day after that (yesterday) I forgot the camera altogether! So today - finally - I got the photo(s) I was after, and I was never more glad of the long zoom lens as the nest is being built by bald-faced (or white-faced) hornets which are easily provoked into stinging. Maybe that's what stung me?

The hornets' nest
UBC, 25 Aug 2011

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Day 155: Constable clouds

I forgot my camera today, so I'll have to get the photo I planned for yesterday tomorrow. If you see what I mean :-) I ended up relying on that good old fallback, sunset, to provide something worth taking a picture of. I stepped out onto the balcony as the sun dropped below the horizon and hoped to see some colour. A few nice clouds were dotted around the sky and I photographed a few of them. I found myself going back to one in particular, almost directly overhead, as I could see some interesting structure that I hoped I could pick out later. The sunset only got more colourful from then on, and at one point all the clouds in the sky were lit up a wonderful deep pink.

But in the end I went for my interesting cloud. The original photo was low in contrast, so I had to adjust the levels quite a bit (which has a detrimental effect on the colours, causing some nasty posterization) but a little dab of noise reduction and a minor boost of the saturation got me as close as I could get. I could probably do better processing from raw, but I haven't made that leap yet.

Now the structure in the clouds is obvious, and it immediately brought to mind the kind of contrasty, roiling clouds seen in the paintings of Turner and Constable. Hence today's title.

Constable clouds
Clouds, 24 Aug 2011

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Day 154: Postcard from UBC

As has happened a few times with this project, I started out with the intention of photographing a particular scene and ended up with something different. I'd walked past these brown-eyed susans a number of times and had noticed how the flower bed just seemed to be growing more and more of them. Today the mix of sun and clouds was just right to create a postcard feel, and I just liked the way the flowers grew acting as a foreground to a view of the Walter Gage towers. If I was searching for ways to make the UBC campus look good, I think it one such view might be something like this photo. If I'm to be picky, the exposure is a little flat in the mid-tones but, hey, it's the old camera again ;-) I'm just happy to get a good-looking photo from it.

Flowers and towers
UBC, 23 Aug 2011

Monday, August 22, 2011

Day 153: Not yet, please?

Monday... I awoke to an unfamiliar sound - rain. But not just rain, heavy rain. It was pouring down, and it continued for much of the day. As I crossed the road to catch the bus to work I saw the rainwater rushing down the gutter to the drain, partly blocked by the first leaves and detritus from the nearby trees. I snapped a couple of photos hoping they would capture the sense of motion of the fast-running water. I don't think they did, but this one came close enough. Which is a good thing as I only took two photos during the entire day :-)

Well that's summer down the drain...
Leaves, 22 Aug 2011

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Day 152: Snowpack

Day 2 of our overnight trip to Tenquille Lake. Despite the amount of snow we had over the winter and the cool spring, we encountered only small amounts of snow on our extended exploration. This photo makes the snowpack look much deeper than it actually was because this patch is on the north side of a ridge where wind-blown snow piled up over the winter. There was probably a cornice here too. Most of the snow patches we hiked over were only a couple of feet deep at most. But this little 6-metre snow cliff makes for a good photo, especially with Maria in it for scale.

Snow on Mt McLeod
Mt McLeod, 21 Aug 2011

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Day 151: Tranquil Tenquille

One of the reasons we bought our little Honda CR-V this year was to get to some of the more remote trailheads which require high clearance and/or four-wheel drive (4wd). Our destination for this weekend can be reached from three directions, two of which require 4wd. Since we were camping overnight we didn't fancy the 1400-m slog from the valley as listed in the "103 Hikes" book. The eastern approach required driving through an alder tunnel, which I didn't fancy because I'd like to keep our paintwork in reasonable shape for a little bit longer. That left the western approach from Branch 12 leading off the infamous Hurley Forest Service Road. The first 2 km of this road used to be driveable with a regular car but at some point a series of water bars were dug in, so now those folks are faced with an extra 5+ km (and a couple of hundred metres of elevation gain) to get to the lake. Despite a few tricky spots, and scraping the bottom in a few places (not too surprising with five people and their gear in the car), we made it to the official trailhead, joining three other high-clearance vehicles.

There's no doubt that the road was hard on the car - a 2-litre engine pulling that load up a dirt road has to work very, very hard at times and now I begin to see the advantages of a bigger engine with greater torque (and a low-gear setting too). Well, maybe that'll be for the next upgrade. For now we'll be content with where can get to with this one, and enjoy views such as this. Now, if only someone could come up with an anti-mosquito device...

Enjoying the view of Tenquille Lake
Tenquille Lake, 20 Aug 2011

Friday, August 19, 2011

Day 150: World photography day

Apparently today is World Photography Day so I wondered how I could make my contribution. In the evening we're going to a talk at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum on the Burgess Shale, and I figured I would take a walk over there to check where we have to go. Since I work at UBC, I get into the museum for free (yay!) so I took advantage of that to get a picture of the main attraction there, an enormous blue whale skeleton. I've seen one before at the Natural History museum in London, but somehow the scale didn't register, perhaps because it's hung in a very large hall. At the Beaty, the skeleton fills the space, and it feels like it's possible to get a closer look. I was really impressed as it dawned on me just how large these animals are. And it was great to get a close-up view of an animal I first heard about in the 1970s when Greenpeace launched their "Save the whale" campaign.

Blue whale bones
Beaty Biodiversity Museum, 19 Aug 2011

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Day 149: Flower of Scotland

Not the song, but the humble thistle, bane of lispers everywhere. But before I go any further I must warn you of an upcoming pun, so if such things make you groan then find another website to read now :-) I've been after a good thistle shot for a while. When I went a-wandering today I found that most of the thistles had gone to seed and were dying off already. Fortunately a few more were just coming into flower. I missed getting a good photo of a bee on this particular thistle head (I can't blame the camera this time, even if it was the old one - it was me that was too slow to recognize the shot). But I liked the shape of the new flower and, after risking severe blood loss from the surrounding blackberry bushes, I managed to get a picture I was happy with. You could say that I said to myself that "thistle-do"...

Flower of Scotland
UBC, 18 Aug 2011

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Day 148: Curves and lines

Yet another phrase which, for me, immediately recalls a song: "Grand Designs" by Rush. The lyrics go, "Curves and lines // Of grand designs". Not that it's relevant, just puttin' it out there... ;-)

I took the bus downtown on a bright sunny morning to run an errand. The glass high-rises reflected each other and the blue sky and I couldn't resist lining up a photo of this building, especially given the symmetry. The sun was almost directly behind it so the light is all reflected from the sky or other buildings. It's always hard to get building shots right as the perspective quickly goes awry, so viewing a building face-on like this is the easiest way to go. I also made sure I had the lens-distortion correction on too to keep the edges of the buildings straight. I've wanted to get a good "downtown highrise" photo for a while. This will do for now.

Curves and lines
Vancouver, 17 Aug 2011

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Day 147: Space stations and coathangers

I was disappointed to find that the final space shuttle mission would not make an evening appearance over Vancouver, but this week seems to be a good one for catching the International Space Station. Tonight (as on day 30) it's visible twice during the evening thanks to its 90-minute orbit of the Earth. The photo below was taken on its first pass while the sky was still blue.

A surprise awaited me when I was looking at the photo on the computer: towards the right-hand edge of the frame I noticed a familiar pattern of stars: the Coathanger Asterism, formally known as Brocchi's Cluster. I've marked it as a note on Flickr (click on the photo below to go there). I remember first discovering this upside-down coathanger in the sky when I was first getting into astronomy in the mid-to-late eighties. I don't think I've really thought about it much since then though, so it really was a pleasant surprise to re-discover this little patch of the sky.

ISS streaks through Aquila
ISS, 16 Aug 2011

Monday, August 15, 2011

Day 146: Sparrows

Another juvenile white-crowned sparrow photo. They're not quite as skittish as adult birds, and I've been pleasantly surprised at how close I've been able to get to them. I was lucky enough to capture a few of this youngster on a branch and on closer inspection at home I think this might be one of the best bird photos the old camera has ever taken. I'm very happy with it.

Young white-crowned sparrow
UBC, 15 Aug 2011

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Day 145: Misty

If yesterday was tasty, then today is definitely misty. The clouds descended overnight (as promised - how come the weather forecast is always accurate for bad weather?), and the top of Needle Peak was hidden as we sat and ate breakfast. No sooner were we contemplating making a move than the cloud base dropped to completely enshroud us in damp mist. Time to pack away our gear and get under way.

As we reached the north ridge to begin our descent, we had to cross a couple of small snowpatches. As usual I was lingering at the back, stopping to get flower photos and I liked the scene of the four hikers in front of me disappearing into the mist with no suggestion of a trail to follow. It helped that Andrew and Carollyne had colourful pack covers on - I suppose I should have been in the shot too as my pack cover is a very bright orange. Of course, it was sunny by the time we got back to Vancouver...

Hikers in the mist
Flatiron, 14 Aug 2011

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Day 144: Tasty...

It's the 13th of August and we are finally getting out on our first backpacking trip of the summer! This is the latest we've started backpacking - in previous years out first trip has usually been about the time of the Canada Day weekend (though in 2009 we did one trip on the Victoria Day weekend in May). Of course I'm not counting winter overnight trips, but we've only done two of those (both to Elfin Lakes).

We'd got together with our usually backpacking partners and discussed a few options, and one of them was an overnight trip to the so-called Tasty Lake near Needle Peak. Five of us piled into our CR-V (seats 5 including backpacks - yay!) and headed east to the Coquihalla region on a gorgeous sunny day. A slow but steady ascent had us camped by lunch time and while Andrew took off to summit the peak, the rest of us ambled about on the flatter terrain known as the Flatiron. It may not sound as impressive as peak-bagging, but the views are still superb and cover 360 degrees. The best view is without doubt that of the lake and Needle Peak and this photo is the best of the dozens of good ones that we got that day :-)

Yak and Needle Peaks above Tasty Lake
Flatiron, 13 Aug 2011

Friday, August 12, 2011

Day 143: Au naturel

I was determined to get out for a walk on the beach today. It's not that far away and the return journey of 400 steps up from the beach is a good workout. I wandered out past the Museum of Anthropology and took Trail 4 down to the beach. My plan was to assess the tide and turn left towards Wreck Beach if the tide was low, and right towards Tower Beach if it was high. The tide was low, so left I went. Wreck Beach is a famous Vancouver "clothing optional" beach so while there have been plenty of sights to behold, not many of them were for photography.

I took off my sandals and walked along the sand, wading through the warm shallow water. I took a few ambient photos but nothing was really standing out as interesting. I reached the big breakwater, and climbed up to view the log-booming area on the other side. A heron croaked and took off barely 10 m away, so I moved more carefully and slowly after that so as not to disturb the others. A group of three herons was wading the shallows in search of fish, and their reflections were perfect in the still waters. I sized up a shot only to notice some ripples messing things up. I quickly took the shot before the reflections disappeared, and looking up from the camera I saw a seal poke its head up - I was surprised to see a seal in such shallow water. Another joined it and the two of them swam away from me. I waited for the water to calm again and took a few more heron shots but it was the first one that I really liked.

After that it was time to get back to my desk, back across the hot sand, past the various naked bodies and up the steps, two at a time!

Heron party
Wreck Beach, 12 Aug 2011

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Day 142: Yellow

Red, orange, yellow. I wasn't as careful as I should have been with the exposure for this photo with the result that the yellow looks a bit too orange. A little bit of tweaking improved it slightly, but still looks too orange to me. I originally had some huge multi-headed lilies in mind for my yellow photo, but they all looked even more orange. I'm not a big fan of roses, another one of those over-cultivated flowers that is omnipresent. Normally I prefer the wild counterparts, but I have to admit I'm not even a big fan of wild roses. Go figure...

Yellow roses
UBC, 11 Aug 2011

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Day 141: Sunset to the rescue

Another day goes by without much inspiration to get out and take pictures. Not that it was a bad day, just one of those "can't be bothered" days. I did try and get some outrageously hideous lily photos with the old camera but I forgot I'd left it on a higher ISO setting and the photos looked just terrible....

And so I kept an eye on the sunset, hopefully capturing something different from the recent sunset photos (on day 136 and day 133). Fortunately tonight's clouds came to the rescue with a nice combination of mackerel-sky and ripples, and there was just enough colour to enhance (I bumped up the saturation a little, added a bit of red) to make it a pleasing photo.

Ripples in the sky
Sunset, 10 Aug 2011

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Day 140: Seeking symmetry

I wasn't sure what I get today - I had the old camera, and it was quite dull and cloudy. As I was passing the Student Union building, I stopped to peer into one of the planted flower beds to see if anything caught my eye. A purple flower with pale petals and long deep-purple stamens has been on my target list for a while and I tried a few photos of it today. I have no idea what it is but it reminds me of silky phacelia, a low-growing alpine flower. Those photos were alright but nothing special. As I was sizing up some more, a bee flew past the camera and landed in a barely-open poppy. I tried to catch it as it buzzed from flower to flower, but the camera was just too slow to focus. But it then flew over to a clover flower and spent a good few seconds searching out the pollen, long enough for me to capture it.

I liked this view in particular for a couple of reasons. The first is that it looks like the bee is playing hide-and-seek - it could be the hider or the seeker, but I first saw it as the seeker, not looking at the rest of the world and counting to the allotted number. The second (and main) reason is the symmetry between the bee's wings and the leaves of the clover at the base of the flower. At first I couldn't work out why I kept coming back to this photo, rather than any of the others (which are equally good from a technical point of view) and then the symmetry jumped out at me: my subconscious was hard at work before my brain realized what it was seeing :-)

Hide-and-seek bumble bee
UBC, 9 Aug 2011

Monday, August 8, 2011

Day 139: Sorry

Another sunny day at work whizzed by without me getting out and taking a photo. Once again I was left to hunt for photos on our balcony and I was a little too slow in getting out there as a large group of crows took off from the roof of the building across the road. Fortunately a few of them circled and landed on the roof of our building, and I was able to get a clear line of sight to one perched on top of a pole. A second one joined it and the two of them proceeded to have a short grooming session. Lovely to watch but the photos didn't capture it at all. So I had to make do with a couple of shots where the crows were well lit and doing different things. The photo I chose for today could be mistaken for one crow humbly apologizing to the other (which is in a huff and looking away). It wasn't like that but that's the story I made from it. Sorry for the lack of originality. ;-)

Apologetic crow?
Crows, 8 Aug 2011

On another note entirely, when we lived in Maryland we were lining up at the social security office (to get our social security numbers) and the couple behind us had a young baby (less than a year old), which kept sneezing. Every time the baby sneezed, the parents said "sorry". It turns out that they were from Nigeria, where people don't say "bless you" or "gesundheit" when you sneeze; they say sorry.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Day 138: Craters and lakes

The short title of one of our hiking guide books is called "109 Walks" and as expected it mostly contains a series of gentle outings with flat, easy trails. Mixed in for good measure are a few trips that could qualify as hikes involving rougher trails and some elevation gain. We'd eyed up today's trip in the past as one of many to do "sometime", and today "sometime" arrived.

The main attraction of this hike was the old volcanic crater which the trail circumnavigates - sounds exciting, doesn't it? While not on the scale of Oregon's Crater Lake, I have to say I was really impressed with what we saw. The trail really does follow the rim of a volcanic crater with steep drops either side and several good viewpoints, despite being forested. And fortunately it's really pleasant forest too - open dry woodland, the ground carpeted with moss and dotted with bright pink coralroot plants. Before we did this hike I imagined dark, gloomy second-growth fir and cedar.

Today's photo shows one of the views of the central lake, surrounding by crumbling columnar basalt cliffs. The lake is called "Logger's Lake", which to my mind conjures up somewhere I'd rather not visit. I think more people would know of this and visit it if it were called the more appropriate "Crater Lake". Mind you, plenty of people did seem to know of it, and it looks like a good swimming lake, so maybe it's just another one of those open secret destinations.

Logger's Lake
Crater Rim Loop, 7 Aug 2011

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Day 137: Up close and personal

With harbour seals. Today we got closer to seals than I have ever done before in my life (with the exception of one at the Vancouver aquarium). Maria bought a Groupon voucher for Rocky Point kayaks and we used it to rent a "divorce boat" (i.e. a double kayak ;-) for a couple of hours. We haven't paddled in the Port Moody area before so we asked what the highlights were, and were pointed in the direction of the log booms where the seals (and their pups) tend to haul out.

The folks at the Rocky Point helpfully launched us into the water (so we didn't even have to get our feet wet!) and off we went. Within five minutes of paddling we were alongside a mother seal and her pup. The mother watched us with alert brown eyes as we drifted past on the incoming tide, the pup occasionally looking up to see what we were. We left them alone and paddled all of ten metres to find another mother seal and pup :-) This pattern kind of repeated itself for the next twenty minutes as we paddled around one log boom, before heading over to another with even more seals on it. It was an amazing experience to be so close - and by "close" I mean about 10-20 metres away, not in their faces. A couple of times we startled a seal into the water, and moved further away from the boom to give them space.

Since we were on the water, I had the old camera in hand with its very useful long zoom lens. I took about 40 seal photos :-) but this one was the best by far - the seal is one of the mothers, and her pup is just out of the frame to the left. I'll probably put the companion photo on Flickr anyway, as it's nice to see the two side-by-side.

Having run out of seals, we set off on the rest of our peaceful paddling adventure around the eastern end of Burrard Inlet. We finished up with fish and chips at Pajo's (fish - good, chips - meh) before driving home to catch the finale of the Celebration of Light. What a gorgeous way to spend a Saturday. And in case you're wondering, a divorce is not imminent ;-)

More photos from today are on Flickr.

Watchful seal
Rocky Point, 6 Aug 2011

Friday, August 5, 2011

Day 136: Orange

The next colour in the rainbow :-) I was keeping my eyes open for suitable oranges but tonight's sunset made it easy for me. I had a couple of choices but liked this one best in the end.

Orange sunset
Sunset, 5 Aug 2011

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Day 135: Restore function

Sometime last year (or maybe the year before?) we were walking on Jericho Beach and were approached by someone with a flyer that laid out the case that the wharf should be saved. We took the flyer and read through it, but there was nothing in there that convinced me that this structure was worth saving. Over the winter the city council voted on the issue and decided to demolish the wharf. This week they began the process, with the goal of restoring the shoreline to its former sandy beach within a year or so. I rode in to work along the beach to get a view of what they were doing.

The answer was, on day 2, not much :-) But it was a calm morning, and the safety fence had a nice reflection as it led into the sea.

Disappearing fence
Jericho Beach, 4 Aug 2011

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Day 134: Sleepy

That's how I was feeling today, and it appears that this young white-crowned sparrow was feeling pretty much the same :-)

Juvenile white-crowned sparrow
UBC, 3 Aug 2011

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Day 133: Spots on the sun

Sigh - back to work today. And after the photo frenzy of the weekend (where we filled the 16 GB memory card again...) I wasn't feeling particularly inspired to go out and look for more pictures. But for some reason, after I got home I went rifling through our photo-gear storage and pulled out the sun filter we'd bought back in 1999 for the solar eclipse we viewed (partially) in Cornwall. I placed it in its holder, attached it to the camera and went out onto the balcony to get a sun photo.

One small snag: the sun was so faint through the filter that I couldn't take the photos by hand, so back inside I went to get the tripod. Now I was in business! It took a few test shots to get things right, and the photos still came out rather soft, but I was happy with my little experiment. I initially wanted a clear disk picture, but in actual fact I'm very happy with the clouds at the top and bottom. And as for the sunspots, well, they were a real bonus. I knew the sun had some spots visible but I didn't expect them to be as obvious in the photo. Serendipity strikes again.

Sunspots
Sunspots, 2 Aug 2011

Monday, August 1, 2011

Day 132: Snakes at sea

As we walked through Smuggler Cove provincial park, Dawn lamented that she hadn't seen a snake all weekend. Within the next 100 m we saw two garter snakes swimming in the shallow water of the swamp. The swamp was created by beavers damming the creek and occasionally floods the trail, but today we had no problems with just a muddy puddle to avoid.

Down in the cove, I took advantage of the low tide and rock-hopped my way over to a small island where I startled another snake. At first look I wasn't sure it was a garter snake, on account of its markings, but a bit of reading at the BC reptiles website has me largely convinced I was looking at a northwestern garter snake. It darted across the water to hide in a small rock crevice, where my shadow duly persuaded it to move on. I followed it over the rocks for a while, and eventually managed to get a really good angle on it next to a few barnacles. The snake must have been barely 20 cm long, I'm guessing a youngster from this year.

Basking garter snake
Smuggler Cove, 1 Aug 2011