from the garden

bark_roll

bark_roll2

bark_roll3

bark_roll4

Recently, when pruning some shrubs in our garden, a tube-like piece of bark slipped off one branch. The curl of the bark, the almost transparent parts, its textures and colours all appealed to me and I brought it indoors to play with.

The results from the scanner were not good as there is too much depth, so I left it on the windowsill. The next day when I walked past it, I was struck by the bright sunlight on it and decided to try the camera. The extreme contrasts were challenging to work with, but I think these images capture some of the beauty and intriguing shapes and textures.

textures in March

seedBunch

a bunch of seeds hanging on a wall

seedheads_on_rail

and seeds falling on a rail

burlapBag

a burlap bag – what is inside?

PeelingPaint

I watch paint peel

rust, water, rocks

rust-water-rock915

rust-water-rock916

rust-water-rocks920

rust-water-rocks921

some of my favourite scenes from the rocky end of McKenzie Beach

rust on sand

rust_sand934

rust_sand935

rust_sand933

odd, lovely rust-toned streaks in the sand on McKenzie Beach near Tofino

We’ve been back home from our Vancouver Island trip for a few days but very busy catching up with home things, including the garden. Spring is at least a month early and too glorious not to be outside enjoying the flowers and budding leaves, even the grass needs cutting.

Now and then I find moments to go over the photos from our lovely stay and try to sort them. We have visited this area on the wild west coast so many times over some two and half decades that some images do reappear many times.

glass & rock

waterglass&rock

sunshine, a glass of water
a round black volcanic rock
a pine table top
play of light and shadow

knotty

knotty1

knotty2

knotty3

knotty4

knotty5

as I gather details of textures and patterns in wood for my image files
I remember something related: textures of home #3

mystery stone

StoneWithTile

StoneWithTile_detail

a curious small stone with what seems to be thin layer of glazed tile on top
with mysterious star-like crackling, like a petroglyph

odd layering beneath with another glazed bit and white stone on the bottom
man-made? nature-made? both?

winter petals revisited

HydrangeaScan1B

HydrangeaScan2B

HydrangeaScan3

I enjoyed some further play with the faded and dry hydrangea flower head which I had photographed and posted previously. This time I used the scanner and dealt with two challenges: the shallow depth of field for a very three-dimensional object and the lack of lighting behind it, that is ‘above’ the flower head sitting on the scanner bed. Thus parts of the images are out of focus as well as missing those sharply delineated tracings in the petals that you saw in the previous photographs.

It was like working with different beasts of another dimension. Also for the third image, I shone a desk lamp down very close in the hopes of some backlighting but instead captured a bit of the movement of the scanner bar (or whatever it’s called) moving across, resulting in some interesting distortions in the background. In the end, I grew to like these a lot and now wonder how they would print, for they are a much higher resolution than the digicamera photographs.

another weaving

MexWeaving

ducks in a row
another weaving in our home
possibly Mexican or Central American

added Nov. 30th: as I’m editing posts for errors, I came across another post on weaving details and their patterns

Alert Bay Res school: details

AlertBayResSchool974

AlertBayResSchool978

AlertBayResSchool975

AlertBayResSchool982

AlertBayResSchool980

Details of the walls and windows of the now closed St. Michael’s Indian Residential School in Alert Bay. This kind of weathering and aging activity is a very fascinating subject for me to record. Yet these images are a deeply disturbing record and reminder of what happened behind those walls so I’m not sure I could bear to ever print these.