Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Last Look


Ten days ago I re-travelled the path by the Cap-Rouge River for another look at spring's finest colours. I photographed these trout-lilies (Erythronium, dent-de-chien) elbows propped in the soil for a ground-level shot. For this effect I set my zoom lens's widest angle of view (15 mm or 24 mm equivalent) and cropped the picture to a cinema widescreen panorama (2.39:1).


In this an un-cropped normal view (50 mm or as it looks to the eye) of the Cap-Rouge River looking north back to one of its several bridges. By now theses pale greens have mostly darkened and dulled into a summer uniformity.

June brings other photographic pleasures and challenges: time to head back into the mountains and other vistas.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Spring Energy


Indian Poke (False Hellebore, vérâtre vert, Veratrum viride)

May 10 along the Cap-Rouge river; our favourite and most frequently walked path and best place to watch for early spring flowers. Besides the fiddleheads,  Indian Poke is the most conspicuous and fastest-growing plant in the moist soil. Its bright yellow-greens leaves of early spring turn a dull green as it grows quickly to a metre tall.

Bloodroot (sanguinaire, Sanguinaria canadensis)
Bloodroot, a member of the poppy family, grows very close to the ground and has very showy but transitory white petals. A week after this picture was taken all that remains are the pale lobed-leaf that surrounds each stalk.  


Ten days later on May 20, we re-walked our river path, Paulette with her binoculars and I camera in hand. Stay tuned for another spring-flower post. (Now that our living room has a nice fresh coat of paint it should be soon!)