Day 267: Opalescent

The rain is back - December has been remarkably dry so far. This means that the light levels are much lower and it's hard to get sharp detail shots. I took myself on my usual afternoon wander, snapping a few ideas along the way, but nothing was really working until I walked past a low bush. I looked a little closer and noticed it was positively festooned with clusters of small blue berries, each berry at the end of a bright red stalk. The title "Winter blues" came to mind as I pondered taking their picture. As I bent over to take a closer look, a student walked by and commented on the berries and she used the perfect word to describe them: opalescent. That inspired me to work at getting a good (enough) picture of them, and to use that word for today's title.

"Opalescent" blue berries

Day 223: Halloween

Today is Halloween, All Hallow's Eve. It is one of the four cross-quarter days of the year (close enough...). Coincidentally, it's also the start of the autumn Bike To Work Week - is it really five months since the last one already? I've been cycling in quite regularly of late, in whatever weather to prepare myself for this week. And we're off to a good start - a beautiful sunny morning, though the stiff breeze made cycling along the beach hard work... As I climbed the hill, a pair of ravens were expressing their displeasure at a bald eagle floating in the wind at tree-top height. The journey home was just as nice, the city lit up by the late afternoon sun as I passed Trimble Park.

But come the evening, I couldn't resist going out to look for more pumpkins to photograph. I didn't have to go far - within a couple of blocks of home I started running into all manner of carved pumpkins to an intermittent soundtrack of shrieks and bangs from fireworks. A few groups of Trick-or-Treaters were cruising the streets, including one particularly funny group of teenagers who offered the most dismally-unenthusiastic "Trick or Treat" when a front door opened before them. The smell of pumpkin mingled with that of the leaves and fireworks to make for an interesting aroma - skunk was mercifully absent. I spent about three-quarters of an hour seeking out ghostly, ghoulish and even superhero pumpkins, and found these two below on my way home. They won the day for me :-)

Cannibal pumpkin

Day 220: Pumpkin party

I spotted this cheery quartet yesterday on my bike ride into work and, knowing that today's forecast was for more rain, I figured that today would be the day to photograph them. And I was right :-) Aren't they cheery?

Pumpkin party

Day 201: Thanksgiving

This year we've found ourselves actually getting to some of the local farmers markets and we've thoroughly enjoyed the inspiration that comes from buying fresh food. It's almost the end of the regular season so we went along again today to pick up as much as we could carry, coming home with an 8-pound box of San Marzano tomatoes (for soup, bolognese and risotto), a large tub of cherry tomatoes, three varieties of potatoes, parsnips, beetroot, carrots, green and yellow courgette, garlic, Swiss chard, a turkey breast fillet, peaches, pears, and plums. With it being Thanksgiving weekend, the stalls were full of countless varieties of squash, and one of the local specialities, cranberries. We didn't buy any, but our friends did and they brought along a delicious cranberry sauce to go with our roasted-everything Thanksgiving dinner :-) Thank you to everyone who grows food.

Cranberries

Day 192: Nice hips!

Rose hips, that is... ;-) Not much time to grab photos today, so I took my chances as soon as I got into work when I spotted a squirrel leaping through the long grass. I thought that would make a fun photo and after dropping off my gear in my office, I went back to look for it. Of course it had long gone by the time I got back outside. I wandered along, camera at the ready, hoping to find something to photograph when I spotted the shiny orange-red rose hips. I don't think I've stopped to take pictures of them before. I had taken a couple when I got a rude reminder of how casual I'd been with the old camera lately: low battery! I quickly took as many as I could before it shut down. This one worked.

Rosy-red rose hips

Day 127: Berry nice

Last week I noticed a bush laden with ripening blueberries. (At least they look like blueberries - I'm not entirely sure, so I'm a little hesitant to try them.) Today I thought I'd try some nice close-up macro berry photos. Except the breeze had other ideas and although I got a couple of good-enough shots, on the whole it was really difficult to get what I was after. As I was hunting for good berries to photograph, I could hear starlings deeper in the bushes. I didn't pay them much attention (they're just starlings, after all) but some movement caught my eye and I found myself with a clear line of sight to one bird about 2 metres away. I stopped moving, and waited for it to move into a more photogenic position - which didn't happen, so I didn't get the photo I was after there either.

In the meantime another starling had flown into the top of the bush I was next to, and with a little movement to my right, I could get a reasonable view of it feasting on the berries. A quick fiddle with the camera to make sure it didn't over-expose the shot, and I was able to focus on the bird while it was feeding. I waited for it to grab another berry and took the photo as it lifted its head. What I didn't see at the time was how the bird tossed the berry into the air and caught it - and to my surprise my photo had captured that very moment.

Berry nice thank you

Day 116: Chard and cherries

With a weather forecast of liquid sunshine, we thought that this weekend would be the ideal time to sample one of Vancouver's farmers' market. We'd been to the one in Kitsilano a couple of years ago, and I guess it was early in the season because the only things for sale were frozen fruit or salad greens. This time went over to East Vancouver's market at Trout Lake, and I was looking forward to getting some colourful photos of all the fresh produce.

Except it was raining as if the clouds had to get rid of it all before the day was done. Just pouring down, and the camera stayed well and truly hidden away. Maybe I should have brought along the old camera, as I wouldn't have been so bothered about it getting wet. Anyhow, we spent our money on fresh Swiss chard, red-leaved lettuce, two types of cherries, a punnet of strawberries, potatoes, some sockeye salmon and pork tenderloin, a mixed bag of three varieties of mushrooms (mushroom risotto!), a loaf of bread and a bag of the subject of today's photo, heirloom tomatoes.

I first tried heirloom varieties of tomatoes at the Kits farmers' market and was really impressed with the flavour, despite them looking nothing like the shiny red orbs we all know. We walked past the tomato stall as we did our first circuit of the market stalls, and noticed that most of them had gone by the time we got back there. No matter, really - just having any of them would do, and so we filled a bag with a load that we liked the look of, and a few that didn't look so great but we were sure would still taste good.

My disappointment with today's photo is having to rely on a boring "still life" composition at home, rather than something more organic (no pun intended!). But it'll do.

Heirloom tomatoes