Lyon

Paulette and I are back from a month visiting France. We returned with many fond memories and 3000 photos of Lyon, Provence, Parc des Écrins and Chamonix Mont-Blanc. Lyon is a medieval city traversed by La Saône et Le Rhône and twenty-eight bridges.

I took this Passerelle du Palais de Justice with les Pentes de la Croix-Rousse in the background. I gave it a panoramic look by cropping the sky and the water for a 2.39:1 aspect ratio.

Of course everybody (except me) knows that Antoine de Saint-Exupéry , author of Le Petit Prince, is a native son of Lyon and commemorated in statues and place names (the airport abbreviation is LYS for Lyon-Saint-Exupéry). 


Shooting up from the ground against the bright sky produced a very contrasty, silhouetted image of Saint-Exupéry and his petit prince. Using Lightroom, I first increased the exposure as much as possible and secondly added a fill light to recover some detail in the figures. Taking the picture from the top of a twenty-foot ladder would have produced a better result; fortunately, I don't carry one when I travel.

Chimney Pond to The Knife Edge

Chimney Pond nestles in the Great Basin on the eastern slope of the Katahdin Massif. Here is a campground, a ranger station, a source of drinking water and a base camp for exploring the higher elevations.  The calm water reflects the saturated greens of the Maine forest and soothes the hikers' spirits. Over the three days we bunked in Baxter State Park, I went down to this pond time and again to watch the changing light and try to capture its beauty. This is my favourite close-up view (focal length = 95 mm); the foreground filled with a range of greens and reflected deadwood and the bright 4:30 pm sky removed from the background. 

Two and a half hours of relentless scrambling up Dudley Trail transports you from Chimney Pond to Pamola Peak and the famous Knife Edge Trail. Gone are the lush vegetation and soothed spirits. Hikers are faced with hard rock, unlimited views down to the east and west and potentially dangerous winds and exposure to lightning. However, on a fair day, this 1.2 mile ridge walk along to Baxter Peak (5267') is a most enjoyable and spectacular hike.

40% Chance of Thunderstorms

Our annual walk/picnic at the north end of île d'Orléans (Point Argentenay) started under a warm and humid conditions when I took this bucolic shot of two horses hanging out along the fence. 

An hour later we pulled up logs and driftwood along the gravel headland of the island and sat down to a potluck picnic still with no sign of a storm.

It wasn't until the end of our ten kilometre loop as we started driving home that these impressively dark storm clouds loomed over the island and the mountains of the north shore. I took the above photo from the Chemin Royal not far from Saint-Jean-de-île-d'Orléans.

Crossing the island on Route du Mitan towards Sainte-Famille we stopped at the height of land to admire the distant hills. While I tried to capture the irregular bolts of lightening on "film" this tractor and hay wagon came up from behind and presented me with this composition.

As Louis Pasteur famously said, "In the field of observation chance only favours the prepared mind". In this field I was happy to be carrying my Canon 7D.

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.

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!)