The following images have been published at 1X in January and February 2010:

The following three images have been published at 1X:

The 2009 Rossland Mountain Film Festival is happening November 19-22. 

As part of the Festival, Rouge Gallery will sponsor a Photography Show.  The "Mountain Culture Photo Exhibit" will include an opening gala in the Rouge Gallery this Thursday, Nov. 19, from 6-10 pm.

I have these three pictures in the Photography Show:

The following pictures have recently been published at 1X.

Blue camas are just starting to bloom. I love to look at them in groups, they make such beautiful blue patches on the new green grass. Closeup, these flowers look like little banana trees. They have these tiny, little bananas stuck to their pistils.



Here is a link to a lot of information on this beautiful wildflower: http://www.nanps.org/featuredplants.aspx?article=bluecamas.html

Yesterday evening this beautiful (but not too big) bear was right next to our yard, right outside our fence. I had the 150mm macro on the camera, and decided to figure out if the macro was good for stuff other than closeups (like I didn't know, it's just that I was worried the bear would get away before I could snap a few shots).

Anyway ... here's the bear. We are very careful to not leave anything outdoors that could attract bears (or racoons, or coyotes), but this bear found someone's trash, and dragged it into the place right next to our yard. It was rooting around in it, and eating. It is such a pity that people aren't more careful with their trash! This is no good for that poor bear.

But I got some shots of it. Here the bear is looking right over the fence:





After a while, a neighbour's dog came along, and chased the bear away. I don't have a dog at this time.

These wildflowers are in full bloom in the Kootenays right now. They just glow in the sunshine. In some places they cover the hillsides, making the whole side of the mountain look yellow/orange.

The first five pictures in the album are from today, the rest are from last year May.

I live very close to Teck-Cominco Trail operations, it's a constant in my landscape. Many times I really don't like the factory (the smelter), but other times the play of light with the steam against the mountains/sky is quite beautiful to see. I added four more images to the gallery today.

I have been thinking a lot about graffiti, and reading about it. I find the concept fascinating, how some person somewhere feels the need to make this fantastic thing that they know will likely just be painted over with some impersonal, institutional colour, on someone else's property ... and so much of it is absolutely beautiful! Like this piece, on the side of a train car:



And below my sort of interpretation plus the individual pieces. Two of the individual pictures (the pieces) were cropped slightly, the others are full frame. Little editing on any of the images (except the poster) besides conversion from RAW. The full picture was edited for perspective and cropped.

Dedicated to Japanese-Canadians



http://www.newdenver.ca/nikkei/

The Nikkei Internment Memorial Centre (NIMC) in New Denver is the only interpretive centre in Canada dedicated to the history of the uprooting and internment of over 22,000 Canadians of Japanese heritage. The centre, in New Denver, British Columbia, is situated on one of ten Canadian internment camp sites, which were located in the interior of BC during the Second World War. It is a project of the Kyowakai (translated - "working together peacefully") Society. The Centre consists of five buildings, three of which are the old original huts or shacks that were built in 1942 to accommodate the displaced citizens. Inside two of the huts you will see the furnishings and stoves that were actually used by the occupants. At times two families occupied one hut, one family on either side of a common kitchen. Toilet facilities, rows of outhouses, are also preserved. The large central hall displays pictures , texts and equipment of tents, desks, boxes and other luggage used in their journey to the various campsites from the coast. Although sixty years have passed, there are a few citizens still living in New Denver from those originally resettled here in 1942.

(Information copied from the website)

What strikes me most when visiting this place is the delicate grace preserved by people living in very difficult conditions, how commonplace many of the objects and situations are, but also how achingly beautiful and full of care and love of life. It is very curious how this everyday beauty brings a smile to your face and makes your chest feel tight and full of hurt all at the same time. I don't know what else to say about this place.

Street photography is an area that I find fascinating, but I haven't had the courage to try it much at all.

This past week I was able to spend a few days in Seattle, and I thought I would try my hand just a little at street photography. I need to think a lot more about street photography, and learn bunches, but here are the results for now.

I had a project for this Summer, "BC Weeds and Wildflowers". I started working on this project in the Spring of 2007. The goal was to get to know and create beautiful images of all the common flowering plants (weeds, wildflowers, shrubs, trees) in British Columbia. There are many. Way too many. Last year my goal was to photograph/catalog 30 different flowers (goal reached and surpassed). This year (2008) my goal was to increase that number to 75 flowers identified, photographed, and cataloged.

A couple days ago I went out, flower-hunting once again. Specifically, I was looking for Arrow-leaved balsamroot, a kind of sunflower that grows in dryer areas around here, sometimes covering whole hillsides, sometimes in clumps by themselves. I found numerous bad patches, but towards the end of the day I found a couple very good patches on Anarchist Pass, between Midway and Osoyoos (BC - Canada).

And then it hit me. I wasn't enjoying myself. I was fed up with the project, not interested anymore, tired of it. At that moment I could hardly stand the sight of another flower!

Has this happened to others? That you have some project you love dearly, and then, all of a sudden, things change, sometimes dramatically, and you're not there anymore.

So here I am. I am not giving up on wildflowers, I like them too much, but I think I will enjoy them just because, without worrying about making pictures of them or cataloging them or other such things. Maybe that will work better.

On Thursday (May 29) I got to spend 5 hours walking at the Creston Wildlife Management Area (http://www.crestonwildlife.ca/) close to Creston, BC (Canada). This is an area of marshes (wetlands) at the bottom end of Kootenay Lake, on the west side of Creston Valley. It's a great area for birding, and also for other wildlife viewing (elk, moose, deer, coyotes, muskrat, beaver and river otters).



I saw many birds, one moose, 3 river otters, and ... something else.

While I was walking on one of the many pathways, I met a young woman who was sitting in the grass behind a couple trees and bushes next to the path. She is a student at UVIC (University of Victory), working on her PhD. She is studying how animals camouflage, and how their camouflage patterns vary from area to area, even within the same group of animals. We got to talk a little bit. That day she was collecting snakes, garter snakes, and she had just caught a good specimen, a pregnant female! Garter snakes give birth to live little snakes. Anyway - she asked me if I wanted to hold her snake. Now, I had never held a snake before, I had touched snakes, and been close to them, but never actually held one all by myself. I was a little scared. But over my dead body was I going to tell her no, so I said, "Yes, I'd love to!" And I got to hold the snake. She showed me how you can run your finger over her abdomen and feel the little snakes inside. It was beautiful!

Interesting things I learned about garter snakes (besides that they give birth to live young). Their patterns in the BC Interior are different than the patterns they have in the coastal areas. They have only one hole where everything comes out (pee, food waste, babies). They are not as cold to the touch as I thought they would be. They have glands that produce musk that they release, this is what makes the strong smell you get when you're close to one.

But, in my excitement over all of this, I completely forgot to make any pictures of the beautiful snake. Or to ask the young woman for her name. I was just so excited to meet her, and to be able to hold the snake - it made my day!

I am finally getting around to organizing my images into galleries grouped by categories. So far I have 3 main categories:
- people pictures
- natural things
- man-made things
Most images in these galleries are published at OnExposure (the main site). A few are rejected images.

So far the gallery that seems to hang together best is "the B&W KITCHEN". I am attaching it to this journal entry, in part because I want to find out how this attaching of galleries works.

I also have another category, "BC Weeds and Wildflowers". Images in this category are not entered for publishing at OnExposure (the main site). This is a project I started working on in the Spring of 2007. The goal is to create beautiful images of all the common flowering plants (weeds, wildflowers, shrubs, trees) in British Columbia. There are many. Last year my goal was to photograph/catalog 30 different flowers (goal reached and surpassed). This year (2008) my goal is to increase that number to 75 flowers identified, photographed, and catalogued. I am planning to arrange them by colour. We'll see what happens.

One thing I noticed from working on my page here -- my pictures are rather colourful! Well, I guess that's the way it is. I like colour very much. I have always liked B&W work also, but felt that it was beyond what I could do, I never felt I was "artistic" enough to do good B&W work. But I think I am slowly developing a good appreciation for what might work in B&W for me, and I hope to grow in this world of B&W.

~Ursula